This past Saturday, I got to participate in the Social Distance Book Fest. This virtual conference brought together over 80 of authors, publishers, and readers to talk about books (plus hosted giveaways and virtual signings).
There were three panels dedicated to romance (including the one I was on), so you know I was very excited!
Here’s where to watch the romance panels from the Social Distance Book Fest:
All three sessions tackled different facets of the romance genre. While my session focused specifically on historical romance, the other two panels brought together authors of contemporary, historical, and paranormal. Each session is worth its own listen, but one main theme that stood out across all three is how writing authentic characters makes for a great Happily Ever After.
Why the Happily Ever After (HEA) Matters in Romance
According to romance genre gatekeepers like the Romance Writers Association, by definition, a romance ends with a happily ever after (or “an emotionally satisfying and optimistic ending”) for the main couple.
Why? Because romance readers are there for an escape. We want to trust our novels to take us to a happy universe where we can trust that the protagonists - for whom the author has made us truly care - will be okay even once the book is closed.
In the panel on Diversifying Romance, each of the panelists articulated how powerful it was when they finally saw a HEA for a character who looks or feels more like them, aka non-heteronormative, non-cis, and/or non-white. When they were reading only about straight, white couples, they felt that happily ever after was for someone else. That’s why writing about diverse people and diverse kinds of love is so important. (As a cis white person myself, I want to promote this topic without speaking for anybody, and they did a really great job on the panel, so I recommend listening to their conversation if you want to learn more about this perspective.)
Why Authenticity Matters to the HEA
In all three panels, we touched on the importance of authenticity. In the historical romance panel, we talked about what makes for a happily ever after, and my fellow panelists did a great job articulating how you need to have a full character journey in order to feel fulfilled by the HEA. Two characters can end up in love together, but if you haven’t witnessed their growth and started to care about them, as a reader, the ending will feel hollow.
The panel on Gender, Consent, and Toxic Masculinity did a great job of sussing out how to create character journeys that are authentic. A lot of traditional historical romance is steeped in hierarchical patriarchal power structures, where the woman doesn’t know what’s good for her so an alpha male needs to step up and make the decisions for her. While we have moved away from that, too often we are still limited by gender norms.
For example, the male romance heroes (in heteronormative romance, at least) are often expected to be either an Alpha male or a Beta (sometimes called a Cinnamon Roll). Check out this podcast to really dive into what those labels mean, but generally: alpha males take control of the situation while beta/cinnamon rolls are happy to let someone else lead. Yet as the panel pointed out, it is impossible for any person to fall neatly into one category, and it is unrealistic to expect our male heroes to be one of two types.
Meanwhile, we ascribe “feminine” or “masculine” traits to our female heroes to mark them as following gender norms or bucking them, when really the human experience can’t be bucketed into those two categories. (That’s when the panel started advocating for a witch’s cauldron of human traits that can be brewed to produce a character.)
Several authors pointed out that when they do write outside the lines of Alpha Male or White Heroine, they get pushback from editors, publishers, or readers who say they can’t connect with the characters because they are outside their own experience. Yet millions of readers have connected on a deep level with vampires and werewolves.
That’s when it comes down to the author to write an authentic character who will resonate as a human being, not as a Label Label Label Person. And it comes down to the publishers and readers to question their prejudice against trying out books with Label Label Label Person. (If you’re a reader looking for some help getting out of your reading ruts, check out the BookRiot Read Harder challenge.)
My Takeaway on Authentic HEAs
As a cis, white, straight romance author, I worry a lot about how to make my stories more inclusive. When writing The Ideal Countess, my goal was to find out if I could even do the genre at all. As I move forward, I want to find ways to reflect a diverse world, without appropriating anyone’s story in the process. I’m inspired by Vanessa Riley to investigate how people in the Regency era experienced diversity - in all that it means - and by all the authors we heard from on Saturday to interrogate my own prejudices that I bring to the page, so that I can make sure that no matter what, my characters are authentic to themselves.