Believability is the key to romance plots/sub-plots for me, I think. Well, that and having it be something other than innocent and naive waif is swept off her feet by dark handsome but somewhat cruel and brooding stranger, or one of the other anti-feminist scenarios. Hell, even Jane Eyre has more backbone than a lot of other romance heroines when it comes to falling in love with men who are "mad, bad and dangerous to know."
I just remembered that when I was rather young, I read a lot of Mary Stewart's romance novels, and Some of Georgette Heyer's Recency romances, many of which had the kind of character/plot scenario mentioned above. This could have prejudiced me against the pure romance genre. ;-)
Also, I've read a fair amount of lesbian romance and slash from all sorts of fandoms, and... as a queer person myself, sometimes one tires of seeing pairings being written in an almost arbitrary fashion just so that there will be a queer love story. Which has happened more than some care to admit. It's the difference between creating two characters who suit each other, and at the same time creating them to be the same sex, and taking two characters of the same sex and writing them as falling in love even if there's no reason for them to do so. Which is a pity, because I have very strong feelings about the necessity for greater representation of honest and believable same-sex relationships in fictional works.
But when the romance is part of a good story that has other goals than to lust tell a standard love story, and when the romance develops in a believable fashion out of the characters and the experiences they have together, then it can be very enjoyable.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2007-07-12 07:38 pm (UTC)I just remembered that when I was rather young, I read a lot of Mary Stewart's romance novels, and Some of Georgette Heyer's Recency romances, many of which had the kind of character/plot scenario mentioned above. This could have prejudiced me against the pure romance genre. ;-)
Also, I've read a fair amount of lesbian romance and slash from all sorts of fandoms, and... as a queer person myself, sometimes one tires of seeing pairings being written in an almost arbitrary fashion just so that there will be a queer love story. Which has happened more than some care to admit. It's the difference between creating two characters who suit each other, and at the same time creating them to be the same sex, and taking two characters of the same sex and writing them as falling in love even if there's no reason for them to do so. Which is a pity, because I have very strong feelings about the necessity for greater representation of honest and believable same-sex relationships in fictional works.
But when the romance is part of a good story that has other goals than to lust tell a standard love story, and when the romance develops in a believable fashion out of the characters and the experiences they have together, then it can be very enjoyable.