Has anyone told you? You look marvelous today. (When’s the last time a book complimented you, and meant it?)
Moreover, happiness is not created by the presence of someone else in your life. Happiness and joy should already be hanging out with you (and complimenting your appearance) when you encounter someone else who captures your attention.
That someone else augments and adds to your happiness—sort of like fantastic icing on a rich, moist cupcake, or a really savory and delicious gravy on your already-gourmet dinner. You are the most important element in the process of finding your happy ending, and you must start with happiness already riding shotgun in your life. A small dose of romance can add to that happy-happy, reminding you that things will all work out, and that, yes, you are marvelous as you are.
But romance isn’t merely the printed version of a “There, there” ham-fisted pat on the head. Romance, in addition to being All about the Happy, is also mentally active—and is, we all freely acknowledge, a form of entertainment. Romance is fun! It’s sometimes emotionally twisting, or light, sparkling comedy, or straight-up sudsy, fluffy fantasy, but it’s fun. But reading romance—and reading in general—is, and always has been, a mentally active pastime.
Compare reading with television viewing: With TV, you passively sit and receive visual and auditory stimulation. With reading, you actively fill your mind and absorb the story mentally while embellishing with your own creativity. The reader creates the voices, imagines the scenery, and envisions the ambiance. Some readers dislike seeing cover models’ faces on the book jackets because they want to imagine the faces themselves.
Because of that involvement, women are very critical of their romance-reading entertainment. This is not a surprise for me, since I review and critique romances every day, and the Smart Bitches, Trashy Books website is largely fueled by the passion of romance readers gathering to talk about what rocked their worlds or what made them irate at the poor quality story. That passionate response (pun intended) is created because romance-reading is complex. It’s not a simple endeavor, all that mental creation and emotional connection. The entertainment and creative value is huge—and makes for a very personal and often vivid response in the reader, because if the reader is actively involved in the reading experience, she is giving of herself and wants to be fulfilled. A bad movie might create a feeling of disgust or disappointment, but the same two hours spent with a bad book can create a much stronger negative emotion, up to and including outright rage. Just check out some Amazon book reviews if you don’t believe me. Hell, check out some of my D and F reviews on Smart Bitches, Trashy Books for evidence of bad-book-rage. It’s just as true for the positive response as well: good romances will create an absolute joy and possibly the desire to forcibly beat someone with a paperback until they agree to read that fantastic book you’ve just finished. (I refuse to incriminate myself by stating whether I’ve committed such an act.) (Oh, screw it, I totally have. C’mere so I can beat you with my copy of Bet Me.)
That incredible positivity at the end of a good romance is part of why romance-reading is so addictive: that emotional lift at the end creates a sustained feeling of happiness, and if readers don’t get that expected joy, they are not happy about it, because, oh boy, do they know what they are missing. And when they don’t get what they wanted in a book, they are the exact opposite of happy—and that goes for me too.
I’ve often joked that romance readers have a sound that they make when they finish or even talk about a wonderful book they’ve read. I can’t transcribe it here, but it’s somewhere between a sigh and a moan, similar to the sound you make when eating the most delicious meal when you’re supremely hungry, or when you finally come into a warm room from a cold day.
The happiness that comes with finishing a good romance also means that this happiness spreads. Reader Liz Talley says that the bonus happily-ever-after (more commonly known as the HEA) “has to give some chemical reaction in the brain that promotes satisfaction and happiness. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve closed a book, sighed, and thought ‘Today will be a good day.’”
Romance novels are both the story of the characters finding each other, and the story of finding themselves deserving of the effort that creating a happy-ever-after requires. Happiness might be as difficult to spot as an undercover duke operating a cattle ranch in Texas. But if you’re already familiar with joy and contentment, your continued happiness will be as easy to spot as a plucky nineteenth century heroine dressed as a boy. I mean, doesn’t every nineteen- or twenty-year-old woman fit into a ten-year-old boy’s clothing? Of course they do. I’ve been to the mall and time-traveled to Regency London. I know these things.
Cross-dressing and tight pants aside, if you want your happy ending, you start with a happy beginning. So let’s start right there: you, you holding this book in your hands (hi there!), you’re awesome, and because you read romance, you’re smarter than the average savvy person. Welcome! Let’s celebrate all we’ve learned and loved in romance novels.
LORETTA CHASE PRETTY MUCH KNOWS EVERYTHING
As I was writing this book, asking every romance novelist I could think of for her perspective and querying readers for their ideas on how romances have affected them personally, I asked one of my very favorite writers for advice. Loretta Chase has written some of the best romance novels ever in the history of the universe, and I say that without exaggeration or hyperbole. Her books are amazing examples of characterization, with strong women and challenging men, and stories that take place all over the world.
When I asked for her perspective on hero and heroine behavior and on character traits that are required for a romance, her response was so illustrative that I had to include it in its entirety.
Dear Sarah:
When I started thinking about rules, I immediately had an avoidance reaction. I hate the idea of imposing rules on the genre, because someone can come along and break them beautifully. But then I thought about my rules for character traits, and I realized most of my answers were in the movie The Wizard of Oz.
THE WOMAN IS IMPORTANT
Interestingly, the hero of the movie is a girl. Everything revolves around Dorothy. Romances are one of the few genres in which the woman really matters. The hero might drive the story, but he’s focused completely on the heroine. Oh, yes, he might have to save the world or build a canal or fight murderous antiquities hunters, but those are little problems to be solved on the way to winning She Who Is the Love of His Life. Forever. And with whom he’ll have the best sex of his life. Ever.
When women read romances, they can live for a few hours in a world that looks like real life but is more delicious
Right there we have our obvious fantasy element. All women know this is not the way it is in real life. Among other things—and I have to leave out politics and the media to keep this at a manageable length—in real life men imagine having sex with other women; the hero of a romance barely even sees other women after he’s met the heroine. In real life, men compartmentalize; in a romance, most of the compartments are filled with Her. In real life, men are easily distracted by, say, golf or a football game, when their women are trying to tell them something; in a romance, the hero is totally distracted by Her.
CHARACTER TRAITS
The Lion, Scarecrow, and Tin Man are seeking traits that, combined, make my idea of a romance hero—Courage, a Heart, a Brain—and Dorothy, who has all those traits, is a heroine. Equally important, we can relate to all of them at some very basic level.
Seeking to become complete. All the characters are imperfect, but in the course of their journey, they bring out the best in one another. As a team, they become a sum greater than the parts. In a romance, the hero and heroine bring out the best in each other and again, it’s more than that: these two people could do all right separately, but when they’re together, they create something that transcends who they are as individuals. And I think the great sex we give them—the transcendent sex—is symbolic of t
hat.
Journeying home. Dorothy is trying to get home, and that is my take on finding the Love of Your Life. When the hero and heroine commit to their relationship, it’s like a homecoming: one finds one’s heart’s home in the loved one.
Individuality. Like these movie characters, the hero and heroine of a romance novel—or any genre novel—need to be larger than life. Maybe in a romance novel, the couple’s problems don’t amount to a hill of beans, as Rick tells Ilsa in Casablanca. Maybe they’re ordinary folks, like the ones who peopled LaVyrle Spencer’s books. But the author makes them big in some way—memorable.
Appeal. I don’t think there’s a rule that characters need to be beautiful. Most of us have written our Beauty and the Beast or Ugly Duckling stories. However, I’m shallow, so I make all my heroes tall and hot (at least to the heroine). They don’t need to be, but my feeling is, this is a fantasy and we all know it and so why not make the hero fantastic? The heroine doesn’t have to be attractive—except to him—but we need to understand what draws him to her.
“In real life, men compartmentalize; in a romance, most of the compartments are filled with Her. In real life, men are easily distracted by, say, golf or a football game, when their women are trying to tell them something; in a romance, the hero is totally distracted by Her.”
* * *
—LORETTA CHASE
Faithfulness. Sexual faithfulness isn’t an element of Wizard, but its friendship counterpart is there, and I think sexual fidelity is crucial to the idealized friendship of a romance hero and heroine. Once they start down the obstacle-strewn path of the relationship, he needs to be sexually faithful. See above re the woman matters. But faithful applies in other ways: He is or becomes the kind of man a woman can count on. He’ll be there through thick and thin. So will she. Again, real life can be so unstable and people are constantly having the rug pulled out from under them. The romance myth offers the beautiful alternative.
IMPOSSIBLE OBSTACLES
The history books are littered with “Truth Is Stranger than Fiction” stories. Couples overcome religious differences, racial differences, political differences. They find a way to make things work, even when they have mutually exclusive goals. That said, it’s no good putting in historical fact if the readers won’t buy it. The obstacle to be overcome and the way it needs to be overcome must be plausible within the context of the story.
Once the house falls on the witch, we’re ready for the rest of the Wizard of Oz extravaganza. We, including children, know it isn’t real. It’s a story! But we know how to suspend disbelief. So we’ll believe, for the time of the romance story, whether the impossible obstacle is physical or psychological. In real life, not all that many people overcome deep stupidity about something or mule-headedness or psychosis or neurosis. But part of the myth belonging to romance is this element of healing, with love being the balm. Again, don’t we wish that could be true in real life?
“I would never recommend shooting a man to help him get his head on straight.”
* * *
—LORETTA CHASE
THE CHARACTERS LEARN TO HAVE A HEALTHY RELATIONSHIP
My sister tells me that Lord of Scoundrels was impressive in that way, but you know, I would never recommend shooting a man to help him get his head on straight. But fantasizing about shooting him might help a woman get through a rough day.
There were a lot of books dealing with unhealthy relationships (can you say Wuthering Heights?) that left an impression on me as an adolescent, but the great book about two people learning to have a healthy relationship is, I believe, Pride and Prejudice. The change happens by degrees, and it takes time, and Elizabeth and Darcy overcome a social difference that, for the time, was a considerable obstacle. It happens in the context of family and friends—the gossip, the backbiting, the changing opinions, the family tensions, the interference, the competitiveness—it’s all there, and it’s so human and so well done that teenagers reading the book today can relate. Elizabeth reading Darcy’s letter, for instance, and the way her view of him begins to change, is I think one of the great examples of character growth.
I know people are going to say that isn’t a romance novel; it’s literature. But it’s both, and don’t we romance authors all wish that might be said of our work some day centuries hence?
Loretta Chase
WHAT ROMANCE ARE YOU?
Ever wondered which romance novel you would be, if you were a romance novel? Of course you have. Who hasn’t wondered which paperback subgenre they might be, on a metaphysical or psychological level? Duh.
Anyway, your late-night ponderings are answered with this handy, and somewhat bizarre, chart. Once you’ve identified which type of romance novel you are, you’re only a few hundred thousand books away from knowing the secret to all mysteries, including why paranormal investigators wear four-inch heels and leather pants to work.
Regency Western Harlequin Presents Contemporary
How do you like your steak? Well done Mooing In a boardroom Au poivre, cooked by hero
Who is your preferred dictator? Napoleon Stalin Mussolini, the original Castro “Italian Stallion”
How many pairs of black pants do you own? 0 1 1.75 million
What is your favorite dessert? Pudding, in a trifle Biscuits Angel food cake Crème brûlée
What is your favorite holiday? Boxing Day Independence Day Boss’s Day National Fruitcake Day (12/27)
Chick Lit Erotica Romantic Suspense Paranormal Historical
British Hot, with béchamel cream sauce Under indictment Hairy Medium rare
Lenin Caligula Kim Jong II Mao Franco
25 1 (if the pair in a pile on my floor counts?) 5 10. And they’re all leather. SQUEAK FREE leather. Pants?
Fat-free ice cream sandwich Whipped cream Anything on fire Ice cream truck Melons
May Day S&BJ Day (3/14) Winter Solstice All Saint’s Day (duh) Talk Like a Pirate Day (9/17)
We Know Who We Are, and We Know Our Worth
AKA: SEEING YOURSELF IN A ROMANCE NOVEL IS NOT A BAD THING!
Romance readers take a lot of heat for their love of the genre. It’s fluffy pornography, it’s fantasy-land, and it gives readers unrealistic expectations of real life—oh no!
That right there is deep-fried hogwash. Romance readers are savvy people who can celebrate the fantastical elements of the genre—what, like every murder gets solved in real life like they do in mystery novels?—while recognizing themselves and familiar situations in each plot. Harlequin CEO Donna Hayes says that romances allow women to see pieces of themselves reflected in the books they read—and she’s right. We aren’t looking for mirrors of our entire lives, just bits of familiarity—which is why we can learn so much from them. Those pieces of familiarity can be very illuminating.
As a rule, the heroine is usually the focus of a romance, but it’s not just all about her. It used to be that the hero would show up at some point and be present in a few key scenes, notably marked as “the hero” by the number of times the heroine would notice him, and how amazingly handsome/smart/dangerous/all-of-the-above he seemed. Nowadays, romance novels, as defined by what’s currently popular—and romance is popular, to the tune of over a billion dollars annually, according to the Romance Writers of America—feature the stories of both the hero and the heroine as equally important.
So what does that mean for romance readers? Well, for starters, we read a lot of romance, and we meet a lot of heroes and heroines. We’re reading narratives about a woman’s self-fulfillment and her own achievement of happiness, whether that’s beating the bad guy or finding her way back from a trauma, and we’re experiencing the repeated discovery of someone who not only fought for that happiness but realized that she was worth that struggle.
In short, romances teach readers that we should know ourselves, and value ourselves, in order to find happiness. Romance readers experience the repeated discovery of someone who not only fought for her happiness, but realized that she was worth the s
truggle. That’s the first lesson of romance novels, really: romance is found in how we treat ourselves. Would you want to read a three-hundred-page novel about some woman who beat herself up constantly for being those extra few pounds overweight and having the wrong shoes? Maybe, like many of us, she does that every once in awhile, but characters worth reading about eventually conclude that they are awesome as they are, and don’t need to put themselves through abusive crap like that every time they get dressed.
Everyone has their kickass outfit, the clothing that fits and flatters and makes the wearer feel invincible and, well, kickass. A romance heroine arrives at that feeling more and more often, particularly if she begins the story feeling poorly about herself, because feeling kickass is the first step to a long day of awesome. Reading that type of self-discovery teaches clearly and openly that women are valuable and awesome.
Romance is found in how we treat ourselves.
So how do romances teach the value of knowing yourself and your worth? Well, just reading one is an act in and of itself that demonstrates that you care about yourself. If you’re like me, there’s hardly a moment in your day when you’re not doing six things simultaneously. If you’re reading, then you’re likely doing just that one, indulgent thing.
Everything I Know about Love I Learned from Romance Novels Page 2
