Happy Valentine’s Day, squiders! No one got me anything, although the smaller, mobile one gave me a leftover Valentine that was extra from her school set.
(It had candy. It was pretty good.)
In honor of the celebration of love, I thought I’d do the WriYe prompt for the month, which is:
Is This a Kissing Book? Romance as a main genre vs. subplot.
I’m pretty sure I’ve posted about this exact topic somewhere in the past (somewhere in the last twelve years)–I can recall mentioning I’d read two similar books, one of which was categorized as a mystery with romance, and the other of which was categorized as a romance with mystery, despite the actual make-up of the books being near identical. I, too, posed the question of what got to be considered the main genre, and why.
(I think my determination was that one author primarily wrote romance, and the other primarily wrote mystery, and so they got categorized due to that when the going got tough.)
Now, being older and wiser, I would say that it’s romance as the main genre if the major plot points of the story are driven by the romance elements. Like, if the main story question is whether or not two characters will get together, or how they will surmount the things keeping them apart.
If the main story revolves around other plot points–a mystery to be solved, an adventure to be had–then it’s a subplot.
But I do think it gets muddled in the middle of the spectrum. I always plot my stories with an external, an internal, and a relational arc, and romance tends to involve internal arcs more than external ones (excepting, of course, something actively trying to keep characters apart). So if you have a romance-based internal arc, and a, say, mystery-based external arc, and you give both arcs equal or about equal story weight, then it’s not clear if it’s a romance or whatever the other genre is.
And then we get into subjective territory, which is surprisingly common when it comes to genre.
Personally, I tend to use romance as a subplot, though arguably with Shards the romance could be considered to be the main thing driving the plot (though it doesn’t particularly follow Romance beats).
What do you think, squiders? Thoughts on romance in stories in general?
