Elements of Modern Storytelling: Romance, A Guest Blog by Mindy Klasky

By Stephanie Osborn
http://www.stephanie-osborn.com

[Today is a special day for me -- it so happens that we are discussing romance on my wedding anniversary. GO US! Ahem...now on to the regular blog.]

Today's guest in our ongoing series of elements of storytelling is Mindy Klasky!

Mindy Klasky learned to read when her parents shoved a book in her hands and told her she could travel anywhere through stories. As a writer, Mindy has traveled through various genres, including hot contemporary romance. In her spare time, Mindy knits, quilts, and tries to tame her to-be-read shelf.

~~~

Mindy:

I've been following the various guest posts about Elements of Storytelling with great interest, especially the posts about romance.  Over the years, my own writing has transitioned from traditional fantasy to humorous paranormal romance to contemporary romance (with no magical or fantasy element.)  My writing has also become a great deal "spicier" than it was in my early books.  Therefore, I'm looking forward to chatting about an important Element of Storytelling:  The Love Scene. 

Okay.  Not everyone is going to call this subject matter a love scene.  A lot of people will say that I'm talking about sex scenes.  I used to think the difference was academic – a discussion point used by romance writers to remind the world that their work isn't just about sex; rather, we write about real emotions with real personal stakes. 

I've come to realize, though, that the nomenclature does matter.  Because when a scene-with-sex is done right, it becomes much more.  It becomes a scene about characters, a scene about emotions.   

Most readers are completely familiar with the mechanics of sex, both the basic physical function and its most common variants.  If the only purpose of a sex scene were to describe that relatively limited range of physical activity, our books would get boring almost immediately. 

But a well-written love scene does more than describe the mechanics of sex.  A proper love scene informs the readers of the emotions of the characters before, during, and after their physical interaction.  Those emotions become the engines of the scene, providing the layers that keep readers from skimming and yawning (or, occasionally, laughing uproariously at physically impossible actions). 

Imagine these scenes: 

• An imaginative woman seducing a willing man, making love for the first time and discovering each other's preferences and reactions to assorted stimuli (for example, a key love scene in my novel PERFECT PITCH) 
• A couple who have known each other for decades, never acting on their mutual attraction because of society's condemnation of May/December relationships (the background for CATCHING HELL) 
• An experienced lover with extensive knowledge of sexual stimuli seducing a willing but inexperienced and partner for the first time (the setup for REACHING FIRST [coming soon]) 

The mechanics can be identical in each of these scenarios – naughty bits will rub against naughty bits.  But the weight of the scene, the meaning of the actions, will vary vastly depending on the underlying emotional gloss.  Therefore, as an author of love scenes, I need to focus on the emotional words in the scene.  I need to pay especially close attention to my action verbs, to my adjectives, to my adverbs. 

Love scenes have a lot in common with action scenes in a novel.  Sure, it's great to know my hero is the greatest broadswordsman in the history of broadswordsmen.  But a truly great fight scene will show me what it costs him to use his weapon – how he needs to harness all his strength, what it takes for him to heft the blade after his ribs are broken by his opponent, how the bones of his arm jangle after each clash.  He must be aware of each cost of every action (and inaction) in every second of his battle – his deeds may result in his own injury or death and/or in the injury or death of all his allies. 

Violence.  Sex.  When written well, they both allow an author to reveal depths of a character. 

What books have you read that have effective love scenes – scenes that divulge information about the characters, even as they advance the story with the sexual activity they present? 

~~~

Nicely done, Mindy! Yes, I must agree -- a well-done love/sex scene is a powerful way of depicting the inner lives of the characters involved!

So, Gentle Readers, care to answer her closing question in the comments? What books can you think of that have love scenes that advance the story AND tell you more about the characters?

-Stephanie Osborn
http://www.stephanie-osborn.com

Elements of Modern Storytelling: Romance, A Guest Blog by K. E. Kimbriel

by Stephanie Osborn
http://www.stephanie-osborn.com

Katharine (K.E.) Kimbriel was introduced to me by last week's guest blogger, Barb Caffrey. Author of the Chronicles of Nuala (available through Book View Cafe) and more, Katharine is an experienced, talented writer. 

~~~

"Where does ROMANCE fit as an element of modern storytelling?"

Stephanie Osborn asked this question, and my immediate thought was “as a subtle puzzle piece.”  I know that is not the usual response to the question.  Half the fiction books published in this country every year by major New York publishers are romances, in almost every flavor you can imagine.  (That is, if by flavor you are imagining one woman and one man who end up in a HEA--Happily Ever After--or, more recently, HFN--Happy For Now--relationship.  Everything else slides in from the shadows, makes a surprise appearance, or even has a small independent publishing line somewhere else.)

Where does romance spring from?  I’m not asking in a technical sense, or a scientific sense.  We know that chemistry and biology triggers the first flush of attraction, and we can research to find out where the modern Western concept of romance began.  I always think of it as starting with Jane Austen—a woman choosing to reject offered security for the hope of at least liking and respecting her partner.  That she ended up with a man whom she also loved, who was solvent enough to support her and their children, was a bonus.  For most women, having it all was a fantasy, but a lovely dream.  We can go back further, into legend—but most of those famous lovers did not end well.

Thinking about it now, I wonder if romance novels were simply a woman’s first reach for respect and mutual affection in a relationship—to regain the ancient courtesies between the sexes, the respect for each sex’s wisdom and knowledge that still lingers in some tribal cultures.  The current tribal forms may not be at all what modern women want in relationships.  But in the past few hundreds of years in Western culture, women were mostly shut out of commerce and expected to make the home (and that was big doings before the Modern Era of electricity and convenience foods.)  All they could hope for was a marriage where their intelligence and personality was respected.  Marriage was often a financial transaction, or a melding of two families’ talents and assets.  Respect, humor, liking the person you were going to share a life with—those were traits to be desired.  Romance was the dessert, the last thing you wanted but could only dream of, because so many failed to get it.

Then more people began to marry for love—for better or worse.  But did they understand each other?  I think women learned to understand their men, to try and keep a home their husbands wanted to return to, a refuge for their men.  But too often the men had no clue what was going on in the heads of the women.

A thesis was once written proposing that women read romances—pure romance, not the newer stories escalating in sexuality—because it is a story where a man becomes obsessed with a woman and is spending all his free time trying to figure out how to understand her, please her, win her.  I suspect that the root of romance lies in understanding The Other—the other sex.  Or if they do not completely understand the other person, they still unconditionally accept them.

I don’t write pure romance, I write fantasy, science fiction, and mystery.  I am interested in putting people into unusual or challenging situations and watching them work their way back out to their new life.  But there is always a romantic thread in my stories, because whether people plan on it or not, romance happens.  Sometimes one of two people thinks, “hummm…” and starts working at it, like my young would-be rebels in Hidden Fires.  Sometimes two people look at each other simultaneously and think “Why did I never notice this person in this way?”  as the protagonists of my short story “Feather of the Phoenix” do.  And sometimes people are working together, surviving together, laughing together, and along the way they realize that something new is growing between them, even as they are saving their corner of the universe, as in Fires of Nuala.

Sometimes there are challenges to the relationship, or temptations.  Some fans want to see Alfreda and Shaw from my Night Calls series finally make a match of it.  Shaw and Allie are only young teens, and they have skills that demand training—they aren’t the kind of people who will fall willy-nilly in love.  But if they awaken to it, after challenges, and others who attempt to lure them in other directions (for if they are both worth winning, they are worth winning by others) then they will fight the world to stay together.

But getting there can be subtle—until the moment it is everything.  I think I write romantic subplots for those of us who position ourselves in things we love in life, and hope to be surprised by love.  Just like in a romance!

~~~

Well said, Katharine! Romance can fit well and surprisingly easily into almost any genre, because in real life, it just...happens.

-Stephanie Osborn

http://www.stephanie-osborn.com

Elements of Modern Storytelling: Romance, A Guest Blog by Barb Caffrey

by Stephanie Osborn
http://www.stephanie-osborn.com

Today's take on romance as a part of modern stories is rather unique, since Barb Caffrey (a new Twilight Times author, and now something of a protege of mine, as well as an excellent editor in her own right) looks at the history of romance itself, and how that factors into storytelling over the centuries. Her first book, An Elfy On The Loose, by TTB, will be out soon! (Rumor has it the release will be in June -- which seems appropriate!)

~~~

Barb:

When Stephanie Osborn asked me and a number of other writers to talk about romance as an element of storytelling, I wasn't sure what to say. Sure, there's the obvious – romance has been around forever in one fashion or another, and many novelists and playwrights have written about it. Geoffrey Chaucer had an ironic and bawdy take on it with his stories of the Wife of Bath (who was married many times more than once and proud of it, too), while Shakespeare had so many different takes on romance – failed and, every so often, one that actually works – it's hard to keep track of them all.


Courtly love, though, used to take different formats than it does now. In the 13th and 14th Centuries, women were to be adored from afar and put up on pedestals. Troubadours and Trouvéres sang to court ladies, and some lost their hearts to them, no doubt...but most did absolutely nothing about it for a wide variety of reasons.

Actual marriages were usually made for business considerations – say, if two people from adjoining farming families married, land would be settled upon them from the existing family farms. Or if a prosperous merchant family trained an apprentice from a different family and that apprentice wanted to take over the family business, usually he'd have to marry in.

So how did romance as a thing actually come to be? Well, feelings and hormones aside, the lot of women from early on was probably none too good in most societies. Being bartered in marriage was by far the least of these ancient women's worries. But as our world matured and societies became more stable, there was more leisure time available – especially in the upper classes – and people started to think.

Why couldn't marriages be made where both people respected and liked each other? Why, if everything else was equal, couldn't a suitor actually romantically care about his proposed wife? Wouldn't that be beneficial to all concerned?

Slowly, societal mores changed, and as they did, storytelling changed with it. This is when we started to see tales like Chaucer's, where the older Wife of Bath tells younger, prospective brides and grooms that love is not all it's cracked up to be – but sex has its charms all the same.

So there was a two-stranded theme to romance as of that moment: Love, and sex. If you can get both at the same time, more power to you; but if you can't, sex by itself along with respect and a bit of liking beats whatever's in second place.

We see that now in contemporary romances of all descriptions, but most particularly in erotic romance. There, the sexual act is much more of a player, and the romance behind it usually doesn't signify too much (though in the best erotic romances, both are intertwined).

In other romances, love is usually shown to be a melding of sexual attraction (hormonal), liking and mutual respect. The latter two take time to engender, but once you have them, they build and build and build...

In my own work, which is relentlessly cross-genre but I suppose you could call "humorous romantic urban fantasy," that's the tactic I use. My hero and heroine in AN ELFY ON THE LOOSE, Bruno and Sarah, get to know each other during an extremely stressful period in both their lives. The more they know about each other, the more they like each other...and as both are at the right age for a romance, it's not surprising they have one. It's my own conceit that a young man of whatever species (Bruno is an Elfy, a type of shorter Elf) would worry far, far more than he is usually given credit for when it comes to romance, in order for people to laugh a bit while remembering their first attempts at dating and romance.

Personally, whenever I try to write a story without some element of romance in it, I find it much harder. Romance is part of the human condition, and whether you're in the far future (as is my late husband Michael's character Joey Maverick, hero of "A Dark and Stormy Night" and "On Westmount Station"), the not-so-distant past (as with Katharine Eliska Kimbriel's Night Calls series, set in early 19th Century Michigan), or the present-day (as with Stephanie Osborn's own Displaced Detective series or my own AN ELFY ON THE LOOSE), romance is possible because the human condition doesn't change all that much over time.

Even in stories where romance isn't part of the main theme, such as Rosemary Edghill's Bast novels about a Wiccan detective in modern-day New York (collected in BELL, BOOK AND MURDER), romance still plays an integral part. Who's dating whom and who's sleeping with who has to be factored in by Bast as she does her best to solve mysteries; who wants whom, and why, also must be considered.

Don't think that because your story doesn't contain a well-developed romantic strain that romance doesn't matter to you as a storyteller. Sometimes the absence of romance tells you more than its presence.

To sum up, the way we express things now has changed from Chaucer's or Shakespeare's time. Women have far more of a say in our governments, we have more say as to who we marry and when (at least in the West), we can and do own businesses and we often direct our own affairs. But our need for connection, for closeness, and for understanding has not changed.

Whether you're talking about a romance between a traditional male-female couple, a same-sex romance or a romance between two aliens we can barely comprehend, romance still matters and must be taken into account regardless of genre.

So long live romance! And may we continue to see it in all its various forms as long as stories are told.

~~~

Excellently said! And a nice historical brief on romance through the ages, both in story and in real life. I look forward to posting a blog about Barb's new book, An Elfy On The Loose, when it's released!

-Stephanie Osborn
http://www.stephanie-osborn.com