How "Romance Novels" Take the Romance Out of Romance

How “Romance Novels” Take the Romance out of Romance

by Alan Elsner

       This may be my most controversial contribution. Please let me say upfront, I don’t wish to denigrate or dismiss the work of any of my fellow authors. Still, I feel a need to get these thoughts off my chest. As author of a novel called Romance Language, I’m often asked if I’d written a “romance novel.” My instinctive answer was to say “no” -- but I hadn’t actually read any romance fiction for many years so I went to the library and borrowed a stack. I must admit, I was quite surprised at what I read. Here are some general conclusions from my not-very-scientific survey:

1) Most romance novels take place either in a relatively few “historical” periods and venues. The most common are Regency England, featuring clones of Mr. Darcy; medieval England featuring knights in armor; Scotland, with kilted gentlemen growling “aye lassie” at frequent intervals; or contemporary America, usually in rural areas of the South, New England or the Pacific Northwest or in New York and L.A. Not many of these books happen in Reformation Germany or ancient Rome or Brazil or North Dakota for some reason.
2) The female protagonist, who is young, feisty and gorgeous, has been damaged by a childhood trauma such as the tragic loss of her parents. All alone in the world, she is proudly independent but distrustful of others. She longs for love but is also afraid to love.
3) The male protagonist is normally older and full of self-confidence, a prototypical alpha male who doesn’t take ‘no’ for an answer. He’s hunky but haughty. For all his sexual experience, he’ll soon find himself way out of his depth when this chit of a girl awakens feelings he’s never known.
4) The two experience an immediate mutual attraction. But they can’t immediately hook up because of some perceived barrier -- usually based on a misunderstanding.
5) Despite their initial dislike, the two are usually exchanging fluids by around page 60. This involves detailed and highly explicit descriptions of kissing, oral sex, mutual masturbation and full penetration. Both parties experience mind-blowing orgasms, described in excruciating detail.
6) An evil character emerges to threaten the two protagonists and their relationship, through social scheming or actual violence.
7) The hero rescues the heroine (or vice versa) and they engaged in even more mind-blowing sex, resulting in even more cataclysmic climaxes. Marriage and children soon follow and they live happily ever after.

I have nothing against such escapist fiction in principle. But I simply don’t find these books romantic. Let’s compare them for a moment to the grand-mommy of all romantic fiction, Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. In that wonderful book, the two leading characters share a strong physical attraction – but it is scarcely overwhelming or determinative. The real romance takes place in their heads as they change and grow and shape themselves for each other. It is only when Elizabeth Bennett perceives the true moral character of Mr. Darcy that she allows herself to love him. It is only when Darcy understands that he must win Elizabeth through his actions rather than just relying on his social rank that the relationship becomes possible.

 I should note here that I don’t do explicit sex in my books. That’s not because I’m squeamish or repressed. Partly, it’s because it’s so easy to write bad sex scenes and so difficult to write good ones. In romance novels, these scenes are pretty much all alike, relying on strained metaphors while indulging in graphic anatomical detail. But mostly, it’s because I’m interested in love rather than in sex – and love takes place in the mind where it has to fight for its existence against all the other challenges presented by life.

In the romance novels I have read, love is expressed through sex and only through sex. The fact that the hero and the heroine can provide each other with tremendous orgasms becomes proof positive of their undeniable love. If the sex is that good, the love must be real. As for the historic settings for these books, they are usually little more than an excuse to dress the characters in period dress that can then be lovingly discarded in the sex scenes.

The true disservice that the “romance” genre does is that it sucks all the oxygen out of the room. It sets up expectations and lays down rules of what “romance” should be. Publishers expect writers to follow these rules. So do readers. Anyone trying to write a “real” love story involving real people grappling with real dilemmas is breaking the rules of the game.

The Language of Romance Language

The Language of Romance Language 

by Alan Elsner

www.alanelsner.com

        I thought it might be interesting to explore the thought process that goes into creating a novel using as an example my latest book, Romance Language. The novel mostly takes place in Romania, partly in 1989 and partly in 2007. It tells the story of Elizabeth Graham, an American magazine writer assigned to write an exposé of the situation in Romania under Communism early in 1989. She falls in love with a dissident poet, Stefan Petrescu. Their history, climaxing with the revolution of December 1989, is interspersed with the adventures of Elizabeth’s 17-year-old daughter, Petra, who shows up in Bucharest hoping to find the father she has never known.
        I use this story as a framework to explore two central themes – the power but also the limitations of love and language. The book portrays and contrasts many different varieties of love. They include: love at first sight; mature love and puppy love; sexual passion and casual sex; maternal and paternal love; love of country and love of an idea; love of religion and love of self. The second theme I wanted to explore had to do with language – hence the title, which itself is a play on words. (Romanian is known as a “romance language” – one of the family of languages descended from ancient Latin that also includes French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese.) The book meditates on some of the uses and misuses of language. The main characters, who are both professional writers, live through language and believe in the power of words. But at crucial moments, they find that language fails them and they are forced to resort to other means of communication.
       Free speech is a basic human life, but under Communism and other forms of tyranny, as George Orwell observed, language is perverted to become a tool of the regime. This happened in Romania and I explore some of the false slogans and lies employed by the state to oppress its citizens. I decided to include many different forms of language in the book. So I wrote some chapters using first person narrative and others employing third person narrative; there’s prose but also poetry (I wrote four poems for the book and I also have the characters discuss and analyze two Shakespeare sonnets); there are also letters and emails – and two entire chapters that consist only of dialogue.
       Of course, one can read this book purely to enjoy the story without being concerned with, or even aware of, these themes. But I believe as an author that they add a level of complexity and interest that deepens the story and the characters. None of us, after all, lives in a vacuum. We all experience our personal stories against the background of the time and place in which we find ourselves. For me, as for my characters, love is important but so are ideas and so is language. To this extent, I believe Romance Language is a case of art imitating art.

Tomorrow: How "romance novels" take the romance out of romance!

Alan Elsner on Publishing

The Joys and Pain of Publishing

by Alan Elsner

Author of Romance Language

www.alanelsner.com

            I have published four books – one non-fiction, one memoir, one thriller and one love story. In each case, I loved the writing process and tolerated the editing with fairly good humor.

            The pain begins once the book is actually published.

            Each of my books has been well received by critics and readers and each has sold respectably, if not spectacularly. But any success I have achieved is due entirely to my own efforts. I have received no help from publishers.

            I believe most authors experience the same indifference from their publishers. Once the book is out, if it does not achieve “bestseller” status within a month, it is dead.

            A generation ago, there used to be a category of “mid-list” books which sold well without becoming bestsellers, and earned a moderate profit for publisher and author alike. This category has now almost entirely disappeared.

            Publishing now is dominated by a few multinational conglomerates which own multiple imprints. They are interested in one thing and one thing only – finding the next blockbuster.

            Look at it from their viewpoint. A book like The Da Vinci Code can sell tens of millions of copies. With movie tie-ins, it could earn half a billion dollars or more. With that kind of money at stake, publishers don’t care if a book earns them $25,000 or loses them $25,000. It has almost no relevance to their bottom line. When book that goes “viral” can sell 60 million dollars, why bother with one that sells 20,000 or 30,000?

            While this has been happening on the publishing side, the same has been going on among booksellers. Today, there are only two or three outlets that count for anything – Amazon of course, Barnes & Noble and perhaps some of the discount stores like Walmart. Independent booksellers, which used to push great books and pride themselves on finding promising new authors, have disappeared from most cities. The big outlets are interested in volume – get as many books out of the door as possible. That means pushing proven names – Dan Brown, John Grisham, Dean Koontz, Nora Roberts – and ignoring the rest. A huge proportion of sales at Barnes & Noble go to books on the front tables, which publishers have to pay for. If you’re lucky, you’ll get two or three weeks on the table. If your book isn’t flying out of the store by then, you’re history. Forget about slowly building a readership. In this age, no one has the patience to wait.

            Despite all this, the advent of the Internet has given authors a way of reaching potential readers through their own efforts-- if they are persistent and inventive enough. It means identifying the target audience and plying it with information. It means using blogs, social media and contacts and milking them for all you’re worth. It means sending out scores of emails and press releases a day and plenty of free books.

            It’s frustrating. Some people promise to review your book and never do. Others request a free book and then sell it on eBay. You have to accept this.

            And then, you pray for the miracle that sometimes happens when a magic ingredient called “word of mouth” takes over. It’s tough and the odds of success are slim – but it’s not impossible.

Tomorrow: The Language of Romance Language 

Welcome to The Word Place, Author Alan Elsner

Why is it so hard to write about love?

By Alan Elsner Author of Romance Language

(www.alanelsner.com)

        When I told my agent I wanted to write an old-fashioned love story that also explored serious historical themes, he was appalled. “There’s no market for that; stick to thrillers,” he told me. He explained that publishers were reluctant to bring out love stories that were not part of the “romance novel” genre – a category with its own strict rules of procedure. In fact, publishing nowadays is as strictly divided into “genres” as the old Indian caste system. There are so-called “literary novels” usually about unhappy people becoming more unhappy, there’s science fiction and fantasy, there are thrillers and mysteries, westerns and romance, gay lit, chick lit, mommy lit and of course innumerable memoirs about unhappy, abusive childhoods. Readers seem to want to know before buying a book what they’re getting. They don’t want to be confused.
        Author Carol Shields writes in her novel, Republic of Love (Penguin 1993): "Love is not, anywhere, taken seriously. It's not respected. It's the one thing that everyone in the world wants but for some reason people are obliged to pretend that love is trifling and foolish. Work is important. Living arrangements are important. Wars and good sex and race relations and the environment are important, and so are health and fitness. Even minor shifts of faith or political intention are given a weight that is not accorded love. We turn our heads and pretend it's not there, the thunderous passions that enter a life and alter its course. Love belongs in an amateur operetta, on the inside of a jokey greeting card or in the annals of an old-fashioned poetry society. Moon and June and spoon and soon ... It's womanish, it's embarrassing, something jeer at, something for jerks."
       Rachel Kadish, in her novel Tolstoy Lied: A Love Story (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2006) bravely declared her aim of writing a book that takes happiness and love seriously. Her heroine, Tracy Farber, speaks for the author: "It's as if our whole literary tradition, which has been unsparing on the subjects of death, war, poverty, et cetera, has agreed to keep the gloves on where happiness is concerned. And no-one has addressed it. I mean, shame on us all -- readers, critics, writers. Anyone who tries to take happiness seriously is belittled. The writers who pen happy endings risk getting labeled 'regionalists' which is like a paternal pat on the head and a nudge back to the children's table. Or worse, they're called 'romance writers' -- the literary world's worst insult."
       I’m proud to be following these two courageous women and others like Audrey Niffenegger with my novel Romance Language. But my literary inspiration goes back even further to books I loved as a youth like Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms and Erich Maria Remarque’s Three Comrades. In these great novels, and in my modest offering, brave, intelligent and sympathetic protagonists struggle to sustain their great loves against the crushing weight of historical events they cannot control. In the case of my novel, it is the tumultuous revolutions that swept Eastern Europe in 1989. I try to explore different kinds of love and its overwhelming power – but also its limitations in the real world. Surely my agent was wrong. Surely there is a market for that.

Tomorrow: The Joys and Pain of Publishing

Press Release: Alan Elsner's Romance Language

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November 9 – 12, The Word Place will host author Alan Elsner, a journalist with 30-years experience as a Reuters correspondent. His first book,Gates of Injustice: The Crisis in America’s Prisons (Prentice Hall, 2004), won praise for its searing look inside the walls that hold society’s offenders and rejects. Guarded by Angels: How My Father and Uncle Survived Hitler and Cheated Stalin was published by Yad Vashem in 2005.

His debut novel, The Nazi Hunter (Arcade, 2006), was described by Publisher’s Weekly as “a gripping debut thriller”. Library Journal described it as having “the bells and whistles of a thriller while tracing the honest emotions of its appealingly sincere characters.” 

Romance Language Portals Press, 2009), Mr. Elsner’s second novel, released November 1. Set in modern-day Romania, it flashes back to 1989 when the country struggled under its communist regime. Petra O’Neill, born to a magazine writer and a dissident Romanian poet, returns to the country of her origin to seek the father she has never known.

Please join me in welcoming Alan Elsner to The Word Place on November 9 and check back on the following three days for more of his experiences and insights for writers.

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Passionate love story against the backdrop of tempestuous revolution “Romance Language” by Alan Elsner 

 Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the violent revolution that ended Nicolae Ceauşescu’s cruel dictatorship in Romania, journalist Alan Elsner captures those dramatic events in his new novel “Romance Language.” Elsner was State Department correspondent for Reuters News Service in 1989. He traveled with U.S. Secretary of State James Baker to Berlin, Prague, Moscow and Bucharest and was present during tense negotiations and dramatic street events. His 30-year career with Reuters has included stints in Jerusalem, London, Stockholm and Washington. Former Sen. Chuck Hagel (R-Neb) said, “Alan Elsner is a world class reporter with a deep reservoir of experience and ability who understands the craft of writing and selling a story.” In 2007, Elsner was a Knight International Journalism Fellow in Romania where he advanced the cause of a free media in an emerging democracy.

Elsner’s first book, “Gates of Injustice: The Crisis in America’s Prisons” won wide praise as a dramatic exposé of appalling neglect and abuse in the nation’s jails. The late Sen. Edward Kennedy said: “Elsner makes an overwhelming case for reform, and his many sensible proposals deserve to be implemented. This book should be a wake-up call for federal, state, and local governments across America.” In 2007, Publisher’s Weekly called Elsner’s first novel, “The Nazi Hunter” “a gripping debut thriller” while Library Journal said it, “chimes with the bells and whistles of a thriller while tracing the honest emotions of its appealingly sincere characters."

Part love story, part historical drama, part coming-of-age novel, "Romance Language" begins in 2007 as 17-year-old Petra O'Neill runs off from college and shows up in far-away Romania on a quest to find the father she's never known and uncover the tumultuous events that led to her birth. We flash back to 1989. Petra's mother Liz, an experienced magazine writer, is assigned to write an expose of Europe's most brutal Communist regime. She discovers in Romania a half-starved nation cowering under the heel of a cruel, paranoid dictatorship. Liz meets Stefan Petrescu, a dissident poet, one of the few with the courage to defy the regime. But in Ceausescu's Romania, it is a serious crime for a citizen even to talk to a foreigner and the secret police are constantly watching. As the action swings between 1989 and 2007, we follow Petra through her own, first love and Liz, caught at the center of a revolution that has turned the capital into a deadly battlefield. Meticulously researched and based on numerous eye-witness interviews, “Romance Language” is also a meditation on the power and limitations of language and literature. Portals Press is a small literary publisher in New Orleans, devoted to bringing out poetry, novels and short stories of exceptional literary merit.

Welcome to The Word Place, TWRP Author Roni Adams

I write for the Yellow Rose and the Champagne Lines for The Wild Rose Press. Both of these lines are for contemporary romance, but the Yellow Rose line includes the added benefit of having cowboys included! 

I’ve always had an odd fascination with Texas and the ranch life and cowboys. I’ve written stories based on these locations most of my writing life and my latest series – the Double B takes place on a large cattle ranch in the Hill Country area of Texas.

I am published in A Cup of Comfort for Women, several short stories have been published by Dorchester in their magazines True Romance, True Confessions and True Stories.  I was a small town newspaper reporter for a few years and finally I have three short stories which are part of anthologies with The Wild Rose Press and my fourth full length novel will be released in November also with The Wild Rose Press.

Tips for Writers

Write. No matter what else is happening in your world carve out time to write ever single day and never give up.  Listen to those that understand more than you do about writing and publishing, ignore those who tell you that you can’t ever do it, and above all remember the only guarantee that you won’t get published is if you quit.

Trouble in Texas is the third installment in my Double B Series for the Yellow Rose line of The Wild Rose Press. It will be released by Thanksgiving. In the meantime, the first book in this series has been out since mid 2008 and is called To Tame A Cowgirl.  Here’s a sampling of this:

To Tame A Cowgirl The first in the Double B Series out now at www.thewildrosepress.com.“I said I dare you.” Sara scooted to the edge of the sofa and reached out for him but Buck was smart enough to step back so she couldn’t touch him.  She came off the couch in one fluid movement and walked towards him.  She wasn’t wobbling or swaying and he would have sworn she was stone cold sober if it wasn’t for the stupid stuff coming out of her mouth.  “Are you going to be the first one of us to back down from a challenge?”

She moved steadily towards him and he retreated until his back hit the wall next to the door to his bedroom.

“This isn’t like that.  This is nothing like that.” Bucks hook his head.

“Yes it is.  I want to do something with you and you’re backing down..”

His head spun.  What the hell was she trying to pull? Did Charli put her up to this?  She would never have thought to do this on her own.  “What did you and Charli talk about tonight?”  

Sara’s hands were on his waist.  Her fingers slid along the top of his jeans.  The open snap made them loose and he bit back a moan when her fingers flittered to his zipper and drew it downward.  He pushed her hand away.

She shrugged.  “This and that, nothing important.” She shook her hair back and looked up at him.  “Look Buck, we’re going to do this, tonight.  We can do it the easy way or the hard way.”

Buck laughed.  “What are you talking about?  How are you going to make me?”

Sara raised one eyebrow and gave a mysterious half smile.   She pressed her body into him until the part that was rock hard on him was up against her warmth. She tilted her head way back and looked into his eyes.  “I want to do this with you and if you turn me down I’ll know you were all talk that night behind the barn and you were too chicken to go further than a kiss.  I’m telling you straight up that I’m not drunk.  I know exactly what I’m doing and who I’m doing it with and I won’t be mad or regret it in the morning. Now are you in? Or are you all talk?” 

Visit me at: 

www.roniadams.blogspot.com and my web site is www.roniadams.com

All commenters have a chance to win a free PRINT copy of any of my books including the one Trouble in Texas which will release by Thanksgiving.

Monday's Guest Blogger

Monday's special guest at The Word Place is Roni Adams, who writes for the Yellow Rose and Champagne Rose lines. She also wears the hat of editor-in-chief for The Wild Rose Press.

Leave a comment on Roni's blog for a chance at one of her terrific books, including a new release!