The R word, or consideration of labels
I had an interesting, amicable discussion with an erotic romance writer tonight about the term "romance," and whether it should be restricted to HEA romances. (The discussion arose after she saw my trailer and Website.) The discussion ended with me deciding to take the term "romance" off the keywords for my trailer. Gay readers are more likely to search on the word "love" (which is in my video description), while slash and yaoi readers can find me through my trailer's other keywords. I don't think there's much hope of me drawing in many RWA-type romance readers since this is the second time I've gotten the "you don't write romance" reaction to my Toughs novels from someone in the romance community. I just hope this isn't a prelude to a whole round of "you have 'shonen ai' in your keywords, so you must not write gay fiction" discussions.

LOL, poor Dusk. Labels abound. Unfortunately, it's true the HEA is expected when you use the word romance to describe a story. At least that's how it is currently in romance reading communities that are found on line. And now I'm going to go off on a big ramble. Personally, I think romance exists even within such a thing as a tragedy, for example, but then I want to see that word tragedy in there, as in tragic romance. This, of course, disobeys the current label rules. But hell, I like a warning with regards to tragedy and perhaps that's where the hard line about HEA came from. The hardliners want to make sure they aren't being tricked, because we're up against people trying to prevent spoilers when it comes to marketing. The hardliners are just fighting against marketing that leads them astray, sends them off to read a downer. Some people don't want to read tragedy. I can't blame them. When you want to be lifted up emotionally, you wanted to be lifted up. You don't want a sudden downer at the end. Hence the labels. I have never read all of Romeo and Juliet for example. I know it's a tragedy. Even in highschool, I cheated and didn't read it. I used what I knew to pass that section of the grade. I didn't, did not, will not, probably will never, read Romeo and Juliet. I don't like tragedies. I get pissed when a Japanese anime cartoon starts very interesting with all sorts of love potential (romance), and passes off another of their \"everybody dies, isn't death beautiful\" endings. I hate that theme. Don't like Norse mythology for the same reason. Haven't watched Brokeback yet. Might never. Brokeback was passed off as romance, if not so much in words but by the way the trailers ran. Back when it first came out, based on suspicion, I asked on ERWF for a spoiler at one time, to get a warning of whether or not the story was in fact a tragedy, and I didn't get a direct answer. Fear of spoilers, see? The marketers want to drag a reader in and they know the word tragedy is a dead end spoiler, but the HEA hardliners are just making sure they don't get depressed. They're fighting the marketers that pass on tragedy disguised as romance. But see, it's not really just romance. It's tragedy with romance. That's the thing. So I guess I'm on the side of hardliners if the word romance is used without any other warnings when disaster is imminent (no idea if I spelled that right) and the disaster leads to no possible romantic recovery. If the warnings had been honestly put there, I'd be less upset with those that marketed Brokeback. I'd have been prepared. I'd have felt there was honesty from the people that made it and pushed it. As it is, I think it's just another example of heterosexuals telling homosexuals that they are doomed to fail romantically. I think the entire movie is dishonest in that respect. I think the tragedy of Brokeback was widely accepted because it pushed the \"homsexuals will fail\" theme. But that's not what the thread is about. It's about using romance without any other warnings. It's about tragedies like Brokeback, about marketing that made the tragedy look appealing, made it look like a couple of guys might be in love and win. That's what the romance equals HEA label is about. It's to avoid the marketing lies. Truly, the label for romances with no bad endings should be HEA novel, but it doesn't look like that's how the labeling will go. Romance has been grabbed, like gay was grabbed. Did you know that in French romance just means a story that's fictional? It has nothing to do with love. It just means fictional story. That's why those old stories about the tales of King Arthur or Charlemagne are still referred to as romances in literature texts. Modern times have changed the meaning of the word. And the meaning is changing again. I think I'm done rambling. ;-)

"Romance has been grabbed, like gay was grabbed." If RWA owned the word romance, I wouldn't have any problems with this perspective. But the word has been used in the slash and yaoi communities for several decades now to describe the stories being published there. I think they have as much right to determine what is romance as the RWA does. Since the medieval authors aren't likely to come back and claim the word. :) (The medieval scholars still do, though.) The word romance has never entirely disappeared from the gay community either. So I'm not quite as quick to assume that the movie-makers were trying to tap into the enormous het romance market. They may instead have been trying to tap into the substantial gay romance market, which has never had a no-tragedies taboo. Quite the opposite, actually; the first modern gay romances were nearly all tragedies. "As it is, I think it's just another example of heterosexuals telling homosexuals that they are doomed to fail romantically." I won't deny that that has a played a large role in the development of gay literature. As a teen growing up in the seventies, I got tired of reading novel after novel in which the gay character died at the end. But I think this is a matter of overuse, not misuse. Tragedy has played a central role in romantic literature, from classical times forward. Think Helen of Troy. Think Dido and Aeneas. Think Beatrice's death (though Dante managed to turn that into a Comedy). It's only quite recently that romance readers have begun to demand a happy ending. I don't at all mind readers saying what type of literature they prefer . . . but I do very much mind them saying that works which have been described for centuries as romances don't qualify, simply because they don't suit those particular readers' taste. I just did a Web search on "Romeo Juliet romance," and turned up over a million hits. So there seem to remain a fair number of people in the world who don't believe romance and tragedy are mutually exclusive. :) One of the pages I pulled up through that search was this one: http://www.likesbooks.com/hea3.html I thought it was a great discussion. This reader's comment fits my feelings on the topic: "Personally, I have always felt that the ending must fit the body of the work. As long as, at the end of a book, the characters seem to be heading in the 'right' direction, that is acceptable. My personal pleasure certainly increases with each indication that the h/h will stay together." None of that is incompatible with what you said, of course, since the issue isn't what is right for the book, but what is the right label for the book. My perspective on the labelling issue is that having a single label - "romance," "gay fiction" - really isn't going to give you enough information to evaluate whether you're likely to enjoy the story. I've noticed that the sort of problem you describe - of readers/watchers being lured into false expectations - is a lot less likely to happen in the fan fiction community, where authors are more likely to warn if their stories depart from the norm. I think one reason that the ratings descriptions keep expanding so much in most countries (remember when all that we got was a letter or two to describe the movie?) is that people are hankering for the equivalent of fanfic warnings. In the meantime, there are places you can go for this type of information about mainstream works: http://www.nccbuscc.org/movies/b/brokebackmountain.shtml "What gives the film its power is the vividness with which it tells the story of an unresolved (albeit objectively immoral) relationship, which has a crushing impact on the two men and on all who are involved with them and which, it should be noted, ends in tragedy." The Catholic bishops are probably not going to be your folks of choice for movie recs. But I remember that, back when the movie came out, there were plenty of review sites out there that told that Brokeback Mountain was a tragedy - I stumbled across that information without looking for it. So maybe you could search for that next time.

The word romance has never entirely disappeared from the gay community either. So I'm not quite as quick to assume that the movie-makers were trying to tap into the enormous het romance market. They may instead have been trying to tap into the substantial gay romance market, which has never had a no-tragedies taboo. Quite the opposite, actually; the first modern gay romances were nearly all tragedies. Many (possibly most?) of the grea-*test*-('") romances in the history of literature are tragedies, and those are the ones that tend to keep a hold on my mind even long after I read them. I'm a masochist, what can I say? The way a story ends definitely should keep to the way the story's been set up for the reader. A nice, tidy ending after a series of mishaps that are too complicated to fix to the satisfaction of all would irritate me as a reader. If all signs point in the direction of a character's death or a couple's separation, let the story go there (this is me now talking to myself back then when I first wrote fanfiction, and I made sure that my characters all rode off into the sunset, plot be damned :oops: ). Yeah, I've inflicted all sorts of deus ex machina contrivances on my earlier romance stories. My bad. With regard to gay fiction, I wouldn't be surprised if tragedy were overused, given our literary heritage involving romances (plus the real-life tragedies that many gays and lesbians are forced to deal with because of their sexuality). Not sure how gay fiction now compares to gay fiction in the 70s where tragedies are concerned. Oh, gosh, I can't remember which writing book I got this from, but the writer's talking about romance plots and goes off to extol the supreme virtues of unhappy romances over HEAs. Made me scratch my head, mystified.

I think genre romance people have lost sight of the broader meaning of the term. But to me unless the context clearly shows 'romance ' is meant as a genre and shelving convention, then it just means 'love story'.

I think genre romance people lost the broader meaning of romance as well. And I do think they've grabbed the word. It'll be interesting to see if they can actually keep it. But like I said earlier, I don't want to be marketed a book that's a tragedy. I'm not at all into them, so I can't blame the HEA faction for digging into the trenches. I'm not with them with regards to taking over the meaning of the word romance, but I'm with them that no one should pawn a tragedy on a reader without due notice. The world is tragic enough. I don't want my fiction entertainment to be about it.

Can someone define (industy standard definition, please) \"happy ending\" for me? Does that mean anyone romantically involved in the story stays romantically involved at the end? Or does that mean the hero/heroine wins at love AND life? Essentially, can the world fall to ruin, but the characters remain together, alive and romantically connected AND the book still be have a \"happy ending?\"

Can they both die? To me that could still be romance. There are romantic deaths in literature in abundance.

As I'm sure I don't need to tell some of you, the fanfic world generally requires a warning for stories that include the death of a major character (and there are ways to hide those warnings so that your story can be spoiler-free). I think the equivalent of that in professional fiction is readers checking the last page of the book to see whether everyone's still alive. :) (Image of Peter Cook as the Devil, tearing out the last page of Agatha Christie mysteries.) However, if you go beyond that, you get into muddied waters. My stories - as I don't need to tell you, Karen :) - are usually mixtures of happy and sad endings. How in the world does one warn for that? Here's the best I've been able to do: http://duskpeterson.com/master/ My general feeling is that, if the reader has any squicks, the onus is on him to research authors to see whether they are likely to write about such squicky topics. It's certainly nice when the author provides such information themselves, but it's usually easy enough to find out on the Internet whether a particular book is a tragedy.

I never expect less from you than a good lesson packed in an interesting plot, so I don't worry too much about reading your stories, Dusk. ;-) I don't go into reading them thinking romance, to be perfectly honest. I never do. I go into them thinking, \"What lesson is hidden in this one?\" Since I'm prepared, I'm ok. It's marketing that pushes the romance idea and then the story totals the characters (all or some) that irritate the shit out of me. If the word romance is used at all in the description, then it should be a secondary description to whatever imparts the main intent of the story. Your site gives adequate clues to expect other than HEA type endings (which are a form of fantasy, imo). I'm not entirely into purely HEA stories. I'm into reasonable outcomes that have potential for happiness. I just don't like getting a complete bummer palmed off on me, is all. Your stories have never bummed me out. I knew what I was getting into.

I see that James Buchanan, ever quick on the mark, has discovered the new YouTube promotions group for romantic fiction book videos that fall outside the RWA conventions. Romance Without Limits Book Trailers http://www.youtube.com/group/romanceWOL You weren't by any chance the other author who originally applied to Romance Book Trailers, were you? :) Because the tale behind this is that both I and another author applied for Romance Book Trailers (which turned out to be a YouTube group for RWA-style romance book videos) at the same moment. The poor moderator who ended up with this dilemma is the one I mentioned talking to at the beginning of this thread. (The fact that the novels that the trailer advertised were gayfic wasn't the sticking point, as she made clear in her letter - it was that the video was so gritty that it looked as though the novels weren't an RWA-style romance, as indeed they aren't.) Rather than simply wash our hands of us, she decided to start a new group for non-RWA romantic fiction book videos. (By the way, I gave her the link to this thread last night, so she may eventually pop over here.) I find this to be a wonderfully inclusive attitude and exactly the approach I would have chosen if I'd been in her position. There ought to be a place where people can find just RWA-style romance book videos, but there ought also to be a place where they can find other types of romantic fiction book videos. Thanks to the kindness of the moderator, both places now exist. I've posted (with her permission) the moderator's videos at my booktrailers community blog: http://community.livejournal.com/booktrailers/624.html Rather than start a separate thread about this, I'll ask here: For those of you on dial-up, does it take longer to access pages that have embedded videos, as in this case? I'm trying to decide whether to add a community rule that embedded videos should be placed behind lj-cuts.

It takes forever to access a page with embedded video. It's horrific. A ten minute video, for example, takes over half an hour to load sometimes.