Romance Sub-Genres

As we hit the very last day of our week-long sub-genre blitz, our final spot is for romance. Romance is both one of the most straightforward to categorize and one of the most complicated. To identify your romance sub-genre, you first need to classify your novel in terms of heat level.

Heat level in romance refers to how intense and explicit the intimate scenes are. Romance novelist Starla Kaye gives an excellent overview of heat levels in romance at her website, including what publisher lines print them and the classifications given to the various levels by different publishers.

Once you know your heat level, you can pick one of the following . . .

Contemporary Romance – As the name suggests, contemporary romances take place post 1960. This is kind of a catch-all category for romance that doesn’t fit in any of the others.

Historical Romance – The line dividing a historical romance from a contemporary romance is, frankly, a little fuzzy. If your book is set pre-1960, you’re probably safe calling it a historical romance, but my suggestion for this one is to find out what your ideal publisher defines as historical and go with their dividing line.

Western Romance – Set in the American frontier, or in a contemporary “western” setting such as the Canadian prairies or Australian outback, western romance readers expect to experience horses, cowboys, and a simpler way of life (though not a simpler plot line).

Gothic Romance – Gothic romance combines romance and horror and often involves a mystery. The darkness and terror should compliment the sexual tension between your main characters.

Regency Romance – Set in regency-era (circa 1790-1820) Great Britian, it takes more than just a location and time period to make a successful regency romance. Readers expect wit and fast-paced dialogue like that found in Jane Austin’s novels. This sub-genre is less likely to include explicit sex scenes (or even open discussions of sex) than the other sub-genres. Marriages of convenience, false engagements, mistaken identities, and large differences in social class are popular elements.

Romantic Suspense – Romantic suspense is the most plot driven of all romance and usually involves a strong heroine who finds herself in a dangerous situation. The key to a successful romantic suspense is to blend both elements so that neither overwhelms the other.

Paranormal Romance – Paranormal romances usually involve a romantic relationship between a human and a ghost, vampire, shapeshifter, werewolf, or some other non-human or quasi-human being. They can also focus around psychic abilities. Unlike with fantasies, the romance rather than the otherworldly elements is central.

Inspirational Romance – Inspirational romances will always fall to the most conservative end of the heat spectrum. If you want to sell an inspirational romance, don’t try to push the envelop. The envelop isn’t going to budge, and you’re just going to end up with a lot of very painful paper cuts. Inspirational romances always end either in marriage or the very strong potential of marriage, and the characters’ faith journeys need to be central to the plot and their relationship.

Inspirational romance can serve as an umbrella category for the other sub-genres as well. For example, you could be writing a romantic suspense that’s also an inspirational romance because of the faith element to it.

If you missed Lisa’s overview post that started off our series, or my earlier posts on fantasy sub-genres, science fiction sub-genre, thrilled sub-genres, or mystery sub-genres, now’s a great time to go back and read them 🙂

Where does your book fit? What do you love about romance novels? What do you hate?

Marcy

**We’ve moved! Please join us at our new permanent homes. You can find Marcy at her website and Lisa at her website.

Genres and Subgenres Defined

Agents and editors inevitably ask the following 3 questions: Is your book finished? What’s the word count? What genre? The question of genre seems to cause writers perpetual grief. Despite popular opinion that agents are just trying to trip new writers up to laugh at them, this is a perfectly valid question.

What do you mean I have to categorize my work?

Now, I know what you’re thinking. If only agents could get past this genre thing you’re sure they’d love your inspirational paranormal Amish romance. Writers like Ted Dekker or George Martin don’t have to abide by silly genre rules. Well… First, these really big name authors have huge followings that to a certain extent buy books based on their brand. And those writers actually do adhere to genre rules.

Janette Oke didn’t create inspirational fiction, Stephen King wasn’t the first to write horror, Nora Roberts wasn’t the first romance novelist. All of these writers took an old idea and put their own twist on it, but there were still genre rules they had to abide by. If you want to see your book on the shelf at the local bookstore or on Amazon, booksellers have to know where to put your book. Here are a few quick definitions of existing fiction genres:

Romance

Romance must focus on the romantic relationship and love between two people, and according to the Romance Writers of America must have an “emotionally satisfying and optimistic ending.” Period. Those are deal breakers for romance fans. If you kill your hero, your readers are going to hate you.

Subgenres of romance can be divided by time periods – historical (before WW2), contemporary (after WW2), Regency, etc. Other subgenres are defined by content such as erotica, romantica, and inspirational. Other subgenres are defined by sub-plots such as in romantic suspense, or paranormal which would include time travel, futuristic, urban fantasy (werewolves, vampires), etc.

Inspirational

Inspirational stories are written primarily for the evangelical Christian market, and use explicitly Christian themes and are written in combination with a wide variety of other genres. Generally, inspirational novels do not include gratuitous violence, explicit descriptions of sex, promiscuous sexual behavior, swearing, and inherently include the character’s relationship with God.

Science Fiction

Science fiction deals with content that is more or less possible within the current plausibility of our own natural world, or at least, isn’t supernatural. Science fiction includes future settings, plausible science, futuristic technology, extra-sensory or perception abilities, and space travel–alternate realities using rational explanations. Star Trek is one of the most successful science fiction franchises out there. Star Trek writers included futuristic automatic doors on their space ships back when engineers were just beginning to experiment with the idea – and now we encounter them at every Wal-Mart across North America.

Crime

Crime fiction focuses on a crime, and the solving of that crime. The crime plot must be the primary plot. Crime fiction has many subgenres that often blurr the lines between other genres. According to the Crime Writers of Canada, “The field of Crime Writing is a broad category that includes crime, detective, espionage, mystery, suspense, and thriller writing, as well as fictional or factual accounts of criminal doings and crime-themed literary works. Cross-over novels and short stories such as romantic suspense and speculative thrillers are also considered part of the genre.”

Thriller

With a thriller, the main protagonist must foil the antagonist more than solve a crime. So the hero may be the detective assigned to a serial killer case, but the focus isn’t on the crime committed, but in catching the killer. Often the hero is put in imminent and potentially fatal danger, and the scope of the crime is much larger than with a crime novel. The hero isn’t searching to solve the disappearance of Joe the Mechanic, but the man who’s raped and murdered 13 children and now has targeted the hero’s daughter. Think big – like Jack Ryan big: assassinations, government coos, etc.

Subgenres include psychological thrillers, and suspense thrillers. Mysterynet.com says, “the suspense thriller has been loosely defined as a story in which the audience is waiting for something significant to happen. The protagonist’s job is to prevent the speeding bus from exploding, or the aliens from eating the crew. The reader experiences a vicarious thrill by identifying with the hero and the danger he faces, becoming a participant in the chase.”

Horror

When I think modern horror, I think Freddie Krueger or Scream. But horror has its roots with Bram Stoker, Mary Shelley or Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. According to the Horror Writers Association, “horror can deal with the mundane or the supernatural, with the fantastic or the normal. It doesn’t have to be full of ghosts, ghouls, and things to go bump in the night. Its only true requirement is that it elicit an emotional reaction that includes some aspect of fear or dread.”

Fantasy

Fantasy, obviously, deals with some aspect of an alternate reality, an alternate world, and often encompasses myths, folklore and legend. Here is a really great post that outlines the major subgenres of fantasy. The Science Fiction and Fantasy writers association is one of the best writer resources out there, even for those who write outside this genre so be sure to check it out.

What is your favorite genre? What genre are you writing right now?

Lisa

**We’ve moved! Please join us at our new permanent homes. You can find Marcy at her website and Lisa at her website.

Interview With Mags Storey

Thanks to everyone we met from Write! Toronto. We had a blast, and we hope you learned a few things about freelancing for a faith-based market.

A few months ago, I had the privilege of interviewing Mags Storey about her debut novel. We chatted for over an hour while she made pb&j sandwiches for her kids, and I wondered… was that really an earthquake (yes, I was doing an interview during Ontario’s ‘was that an earthquake?’ tremor). If Only You Knew won 3 awards at the 2010 Canadian Christian Writing Awards.

LW: When did know that you wanted to be a writer?
MS: I’ve always wanted to be a writer. It’s always been my main goal and my main dream. It’s a stressful goal and dream to have because it’s a hard industry to break into. I felt very foolish and silly for a very long time. I didn’t tell a lot of people I was writing, it was a secret.

LW: Which life experiences and people from your past did you draw on to write If Only You Knew?
MS: Each of the characters is based on four or five people including myself. Lots of bits from ex-boyfriends were woven in, hopefully in well disguised ways. The great thing about writing is you can take all your failures and all your mistakes and all of the things you did wrong; you get to take these moments and recreate them and turn them into art—into something wonderful and something funny and creative, and it touches people’s lives.

LW: Why a Christian YA novel?
MS: You write what you know, and you write what springs out of who you are. I started writing this book when I was in my early 20’s. This was the most natural extension of who I was as a person. I decided to keep the characters at the ages they are because that’s the stage of life where you really get freedom to find out who you are, what you believe, what you want to believe, where you fit, who you want to be in your life. So the characters are at this cusp of just beginning to get freedom. They’re trying to decide who they want to be, and that’s a really exciting stage of life to write about.

The book raises a lot of questions because of what the characters are going through, and the book gives you some answers, but not all the answers. At least the characters don’t find all the answers. If they did, it wouldn’t be real life.

LW: Tell me about your characters.
MS: I like these characters, they are real people. Jo and Sam are the kind of people who often don’t feel like they get a fair shake in our churches. Lisa is the kind of person who feels like in order to fit in she has to put on a mask and play a role. Nate is the kind of person who is struggling with a real and genuine faith, but is finding that very difficult to walk through and live, and to be.

LW: Who is your book written for?
MS: My book is for the girl who gets up in the morning and looks in the mirror and thinks:

• I’m ugly
• The guy I think is best in the entire world doesn’t want me
• The girl who I thought was my friend has now turned out to be a gossiping witch behind my back
• And I’m supposed to now believe God loves me?
• And because God loves me that is supposed to make everything better?

We don’t have a lot of books for people who look at themselves in the mirror and don’t like themselves. We don’t have books with heroines who find themselves unattractive. We don’t have romance novels about people who fall madly in love with someone who doesn’t like you back. This book is for people where that’s their reality.

LW: You break a few conventions that are fairly standard to Christian fiction and romance novels.
MS: I thought I had written the unpublishable novel. I never thought I would win any awards. In the past year, there have been book stores who wouldn’t let me have book signings. I remember when I was trying to get this book out, one church leader who I really respect said only silly people read books like that? Why would you write a book for silly people? I said then who is going to write good books for the silly people?

LW: What does winning the inaugural Grace Irwin award mean to you?
MS: It validates what I’m trying to do. It’s not just exciting for me—see that’s what I like. It’s exciting for people who like books like mine, and people who are going to be touched through books like mine.
It matters to me that I won this award because of the kind of book this is, because of what this book says, and what this book did. It matters so much to me.

Read my earlier review of If Only You Knew and about the inaugural Grace Irwin Award.

The entries are open for the 2011 Canadian Christian Writing Awards. For more information, check out the awards sponsors: The Word Guild.