Breaking the Romance rules
Oct. 31st, 2010 09:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
valarltdRules of Romance from someone who reads and observes.
How do I break them? Let me count the ways.
1) Characters so broke they manage to save $12 in two months of actively scrimping. (Shell-Shocked)
2) hmmm, kinda went for that: settle down marry the nice girl who loves you or run away with the circus and the incredibly dashing, completely insane Pain-King? My hero took the latter. (Alive on the Inside) Or, do your jail time, then keep your quiet job, your gray apartment and live as a drone or be swept away by the handsomest man in the world as a protege... (Nikolai)
3) Black vampire. Cherokee trucker. Barbados and Morocaan pirates. Werewolves of actual Rom descent. Greeks and Israeli and African characters as well. My books have gotten whiter in recent years. Get burned often enough and you quit taking chances.
4) My minorities are the protagonists sometimes. They do fall for white characters though... Oops. At least they angst about it.
5) Ooops. Did that twice. Little John and Bess (Marion's servant) were a sweet side romance in HEart of a Forest, but they absolutely got it on on-page. Paul and Aunt Prudence in "Cherry Tart" adhered to this, because of wordcount issues. The whole "Paul and Ulysses (our hero) have been screwing for 10 years" storyline got cut for the same reason.
6) Beautiful women do come in all shapes, sizes and AGES in my world. A late-thirties drag-king, a set of conjoined twins, a big butch trucker, an XY girl, a one-eye airship pirate, a mama-bear anthro, Medusa herself, they're all beautiful. Especially to the men and women who love them.
7) My men come in all shapes and sizes too. I like tall men, because I am tall. Flowing hair is a pain, but some of my men do wear it long. But I have men who are under 5'6" and get their loving too.
8) Female assage almost never happens in my books. My women tend to be supremely self-confident or utterly careless of their appearances.
9) Guilty.
10) Don't even start. I don't do "200 pages of smouldering tension as foreplay." I have stories that start with the line "Swallow it, boy." But yes, I have read the "smolder, sizzle, sizzle" and gone "Steak already dammit!"
11) Everyone's a pervert in my world. 8)
How do I break them? Let me count the ways.
1) Characters so broke they manage to save $12 in two months of actively scrimping. (Shell-Shocked)
2) hmmm, kinda went for that: settle down marry the nice girl who loves you or run away with the circus and the incredibly dashing, completely insane Pain-King? My hero took the latter. (Alive on the Inside) Or, do your jail time, then keep your quiet job, your gray apartment and live as a drone or be swept away by the handsomest man in the world as a protege... (Nikolai)
3) Black vampire. Cherokee trucker. Barbados and Morocaan pirates. Werewolves of actual Rom descent. Greeks and Israeli and African characters as well. My books have gotten whiter in recent years. Get burned often enough and you quit taking chances.
4) My minorities are the protagonists sometimes. They do fall for white characters though... Oops. At least they angst about it.
5) Ooops. Did that twice. Little John and Bess (Marion's servant) were a sweet side romance in HEart of a Forest, but they absolutely got it on on-page. Paul and Aunt Prudence in "Cherry Tart" adhered to this, because of wordcount issues. The whole "Paul and Ulysses (our hero) have been screwing for 10 years" storyline got cut for the same reason.
6) Beautiful women do come in all shapes, sizes and AGES in my world. A late-thirties drag-king, a set of conjoined twins, a big butch trucker, an XY girl, a one-eye airship pirate, a mama-bear anthro, Medusa herself, they're all beautiful. Especially to the men and women who love them.
7) My men come in all shapes and sizes too. I like tall men, because I am tall. Flowing hair is a pain, but some of my men do wear it long. But I have men who are under 5'6" and get their loving too.
8) Female assage almost never happens in my books. My women tend to be supremely self-confident or utterly careless of their appearances.
9) Guilty.
10) Don't even start. I don't do "200 pages of smouldering tension as foreplay." I have stories that start with the line "Swallow it, boy." But yes, I have read the "smolder, sizzle, sizzle" and gone "Steak already dammit!"
11) Everyone's a pervert in my world. 8)
