I don’t know if I’ve ever read a book that didn’t involve a romantic plotline. When I was in elementary school, my love for reading flourished and I devoured every book I could find at the library in our small little Tennessee town. Even then, most of the novels making up the massive stack I’d tote out to the minivan after a fruitful trip to the Spring Hill Public Library involved a romance of some sort.
My tastes evolved over time, of course—I eventually came to abandon Anne of Green Gables for Meg Cabot’s more sophisticated (at least in my unsophisticated brain) Princess Diaries series, or E. Lockhart’s The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks. But even these new books involved romance, despite their entire plotlines not centralizing around two protagonists falling in love.
It was then, during my Meg Cabot phase, that I discovered Sara Dessen’s novels— all of which fall decidedly into the, as I will deem it in this edition of Noteworthy, ‘straight-up romance’ category. As I read through every one of Dessen’s novels that were available at said Spring Hill Public Library, I quickly ran out of further options in the very small two-shelf wide young adult section, and my foray into classic literature began.
Now, I was reading Jane Austen’s entire repertoire as I hung over the foot of the bed in my dark-blue bedroom, and recommending that all of my friends read Jane Eyre as soon as they could get their hands on a copy (unsurprisingly, the book was of little interest to a bunch of high schoolers who were not literarily inclined.) This was also the same time period during which I was introduced to inspirational historical romance through my mother’s collection of Janette Oke books. She’d kept series after series of the Canadian author’s novels on her bookshelf since she was in high school, and decided to pass the literary torch on to me.
And thus, my love affair with the romance genre was cemented into place.
And an internal debate ensued.
I found myself entranced by the different ways authors portrayed love in their novels. As you can imagine, I saw quite the spectrum—from squeaky-clean Christian novels like the Love Comes Softly series, to the historically chaste romance of Anne Elliot and Captain Wentworth, to teenagers without fully developed frontal lobes freaking out about sex on every other page in Teen Idol. It was a lot to digest as I was fluttering between too many different romance novel worlds, and it left me debating which genre—and which approach to romance—appealed to me as a reader the most.
By and large, I’ve settled on romance novels with a low level of steaminess throughout (more on what the industry thinks about that in a minute.) That’s usually my safe place when it comes to reading. I like to think of this safe space as the old library of a Victorian manor lined with classic books—and the entirety of the historical fiction section of the Christian bookstore—when looking for something to read.
But I’m still not entirely sure where I land on the debate between sizzling and sweet romance.
Especially now, as I’m starting to write romance.
If you’re familiar with the romance genre, you’ll know that there are a lot of different subgenres within romance as an umbrella genre. These subgenres are often referred to as romance ‘categories,’ and if you write for one of said categories, you write “category romance.”
There are…a lot…of different categories within romance, but most category romance novels are short(ish) at somewhere in the range of 50-70k words. The different categories that abound in romance also have their own tropes and plots that pretty much must be followed to a T. Some of the categories include inspirational (Christian-themed romances), sweet/clean romance, sizzling romance…you get the picture (but a good place to see some of the categories out there is to look on Harlequin’s Submittable—they have several different lines of category romances, and Harlequin is basically the standard when it comes to publishing romance.)
The interesting thing about these categories of romance is that they all come with different expectations. When a reader picks up a Harlequin Desire novel, they are expecting some steamy bedroom scenes. When a reader picks up a Harlequin Heartwarming novel, they are expecting a clean Hallmark-movie-style story.
There’s room in the romance world for both wild levels of steaminess and nothing more than a quick kiss between lovers.
And that’s what I find interesting.
You see, I’ve read both sides of the proverbial romance coin.
In the last edition of Noteworthy, I mentioned my love for the Outlander book series by Diana Gabaldon. Outlander falls decidedly on the steamy side of the romance spectrum. In fact, there are times when the books get so steamy that I skip a page or two (it’s all about personal preference, here.)
I am much more inclined to read through an entire book, not skipping any particularly sizzling scenes, when it is Hallmark-movie-level clean.
Again, it’s just personal preference.
And apparently, if you take a little stroll through Harlequin’s Submittable page as aforementioned, there truly is an audience and a market for writers on both sides of the spectrum. When you think about it, there are examples of each in both books, movies, and anything else you can think of (i.e., for every Hallmark movie, there’s a 50 Shades of Grey equivalent hitting the big screen near you.)
There’s really something out there for everyone who has even the slightest interest in reading a romance novel. As if to prove my point, one of my good friends has recently started reading paranormal romance, and she’s someone who would never have claimed any interest, feigned or otherwise, in reading romance up until a few months ago.
I want to know your thoughts.
To steam or not to steam? That is the question. What is your preferred level of steaminess in a romance novel (both as a reader and as a writer)? Similarly, what category line of romance would be your pick? Paranormal? Historical? Inspirational?
And if you’re not one to read (or write) romance, does any of this resonate with you? Is there such a thing as category science fiction or fantasy? Even if there’s not, do you prefer sizzling romance scenes in your favored genre, or are you more into the Hallmark movie equivalent (again, in whatever genre is speaking your language.)
Here are the places my words have ended up this week:
How to Create Characters Your Readers Will Fall in Love With republished on my blog
This week I have started reading (unsurprisingly) another Outlander novel, An Echo in the Bone. This is the second to last novel in the series that has already been released—the next installment in the Outlander saga is coming out this fall. I’m hopeful that starting now gives me enough time to read both books by the next one’s release date! I adore the characters, and Diana Gabaldon’s writing style, but these books are so incredibly dense and always take way too long for me to get through. Nevertheless, this is what I’m going to be reading for the next few weeks.
As for something for you to read online, I’ve loved following Melissa Coffey on Medium. She has published some beautiful poetry, and always has some interesting insight into writing on Medium and writing about life in general.