{"id":1999,"date":"2011-11-18T18:55:41","date_gmt":"2011-11-18T23:55:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/?p=1999"},"modified":"2011-11-19T08:08:42","modified_gmt":"2011-11-19T13:08:42","slug":"what-is-romance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/2011\/11\/18\/what-is-romance\/","title":{"rendered":"What Is Romance?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This week\u00a0over at Smart Bitches, SB Sarah\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com\/index.php\/weblog\/comments\/popular-romance-in-the-new-millenium-a-summary-or-attempt-at-one\/\" target=\"_blank\">summarized a recent conference <\/a>(link may be down; understand they are doing some work on the site) she attended. \u00a0What caught my attention was the\u00a0disagreement between Dr. Mary Bly, who writes as Eloisa James, and the President of the RWA (Romance Writer's Association) over a topic that - at first blush - seems very simple:\u00a0 What is romance?<\/p>\n<p>The RWA Prez had been judging a Food\u00a0Network Romance Cakes cooking competition. She ruled out one of the finalists because it showed a married couple.\u00a0 She said\u00a0books featuring a married couple weren't romance novels.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>It's an interesting question.\u00a0 What is\u00a0romance? What books fit the genre?\u00a0 I guess every reader and every writer has their own definition.\u00a0 To me, a book is only a romance if it fits three\u00a0key criteria.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>First and foremost AND forever, amen - to be a romance it\u00a0must have a happy ending.\u00a0 By that,\u00a0I mean that by story's end the hero and the heroine must\u00a0have committed themselves to more than a relationship. They must have committed themselves to each other forever.\u00a0 (My definition of a happy ending is pretty strict for such a loosey goosey duck lady, isn't it?)<\/p>\n<p>Second, the\u00a0book must focus on the relationship between a couple. And third, the book must focus more on internal than external action.\u00a0 It's both an exact and a very loose definition.\u00a0\u00a0But I don't think every book that many consider a romance fits.\u00a0 Several\u00a0of Nicholas Sparks don't fit the definition because there's no\u00a0HEA. Gabaldon's \"Outlander\" doesn't fit for the same reason.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>A\u00a0romance novel is\u00a0a tale of the heart.\u00a0 Action, interaction, scenery and setting are\u00a0window dressing. Emotion creates the story, emotion\u00a0carries the story and emotion concludes the story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This week\u00a0over at Smart Bitches, SB Sarah\u00a0summarized a recent conference (link may be down; understand they are doing some work on the site) she attended. \u00a0What caught my attention was the\u00a0disagreement between Dr. Mary Bly, who writes as Eloisa James, and the President of the RWA (Romance Writer's Association) over a topic that - at <a href=\"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/2011\/11\/18\/what-is-romance\/\" class=\"more-link\">...continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> \"What Is Romance?\"<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3,4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1999"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1999"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1999\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2007,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1999\/revisions\/2007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quackingalone.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}