What Defines a Romance Novel?
'Happily Ever After' Ending Is Just One Element of Romantic Fiction
Romance fiction embraces a wide array of characters, time periods and plot lines, but focuses on the love at the heart of each couple's tale.
And they lived happily ever after… almost every fairy tale concludes with those words, but does that ending belong in a novel about and for adults?
Happily Ever After?
There has been much controversy in the romance fiction world in the last few years about one specific romantic convention, the HEA, or ‘Happily Ever After’ ending, that's been used to separate ‘romance fiction’ from ‘women’s fiction’. The online romance review and forum site All About Romance has devoted several columns and articles to that very question.
Romance Genre Defined
Does saying that a romance novel must have a ‘happily ever after’ ending define the romance genre, or does it limit it? That’s a question that will undoubtedly be discussed for years to come, but for the time being it appears that a required HEA is what separates a romance novel from other fiction with a love story in it. The Romance Writers of America explains it this way: “Two basic elements comprise every romance novel: a central love story and an emotionally-satisfying and optimistic ending.”
When stated baldly, it does seem a limiting stricture to place on an entire genre, but proponents of the ‘happy ending’ argue that every genre has its conventions. How many murder mystery novels end with the murderer uncaught? If the perpetrator remains at large or unpunished at the end of the novel, it becomes something other than a murder mystery: a thriller, suspense novel or crime fiction.
But romance authors and publishers also agree that though the ‘happy ending’ is a vital component, a romance novel must include other elements to be publishable.
Vital Elements of Romance Fiction:
- Conflict – Without some central conflict that divides the lovers, there is no story. The conflict should rely on issues between the lovers that divide them, and not external forces ONLY to keep them apart for much of the book.
- Growth – Characters who don’t grow throughout the novel are unsatisfying to the reader.
- Resolution – Problems between the two at the heart of the novel need to be resolved for readers to believe in that Happily Ever After, but the reader won't be satisfied if he or she doesn’t believe that the resolution to the lovers' central conflict is permanent and deep.
Channeling the Story
So, though it may seem that having 'rules', among them a happy ending, stultifies creativity, in truth it merely channels it, offering a framework or structure upon which a powerful, moving story can be constructed. Critics point to the requirement for a happy ending in romance as formulaic, but beyond that, the definition of 'formula' is arguable; some publishers have strict requirements as to length, amount of sensuality, etc., but others leave it very much to the discretion of the writer. As long as people bring differing views and expectations to the genre, the argument will continue, but for now the RWA definition requiring an optimistic ending holds for romance writers and publishers.
Diversity in Romance Fiction
Increasingly, the romance genre is welcoming stories that include couples of the same gender, different cultures, and even – in the case of paranormal and science fiction romance – different species. Apart from arguments about genre definitions, readers and writers of romance fiction agree on one thing; no matter who the lovers are, ultimately, in an uncertain world, it is that satisfying ending, the sense that the people at the heart of the story have found their true love, that brings readers back to the romance genre time after time.
