Sex and Romance

6424 Views 51 Replies 26 Participants Last post by CoraBuhlert, Jan 19, 2013

philstern

Discussion Starter · Jan 18, 2013

How much sex does a book have to have to be classified Romance?

I have a Science Fiction book coming out (Sci-Fi Adventure will be it's main category). But there's a lot of romance, and a lot of flirtation, and even some vague sex. But no rocking, he did this, she did that, they both banged in detail, blah blah blah stuff.

Does that count as Romance these days? Or does lack of X-rated material mean no Romance?

1 - 20 of 52 Posts

Mathew Reuther

· #2 · Jan 18, 2013

"...the main plot of a romance novel must revolve around the two people as they develop romantic love for each other and work to build a relationship together. Both the conflict and the climax of the novel should be directly related to that core theme of developing a romantic relationship..."

That said, I write cross genre. By strict conventions, the second magic happens in any of my novels they are fantasy period.

I still call them police procedural as well.

dalya

· #3 · Jan 18, 2013

It's not a romance. I don't think you can write a romance by accident. Sounds like a story with a romance plot line within it.

There are guidelines! No, there doesn't have to be sex, but the romance has to drive the events of the story, and there should be a HFN or HEA ending. If it's just people falling in love while fighting aliens or whatever, it's not a romance.

Pnjw

· #4 · Jan 18, 2013

philstern said:
How much sex does a book have to have to be classified Romance?

Romance is not defined by sex. There are plenty of sweet romances with no sex at all and plenty of erotic romances that fill the pages with lots in between.

philstern

Discussion Starter · #5 · Jan 18, 2013

Dalya said:
...and there should be a HFN or HEA ending.

What be HFN or HEA?

Mathew Reuther

· #6 · Jan 18, 2013

Michael Hicks had his In Her Name trilogy classified as Romance for a while at least. It's not, by that definition. There is a fairly heavy line of the story which involves falling in love with an alien. It's the most major sub plot, but it's not the MAIN plot.

Mathew Reuther

· #7 · Jan 18, 2013

philstern said:
What be HFN or HEA?

Happy For Now or Happily Ever After.

philstern

Discussion Starter · #8 · Jan 18, 2013

Deanna Chase said:
Romance is not defined by sex. There are plenty of sweet romances with no sex at all and plenty of erotic romances that fill the pages with lots in between.

Fair enough. Help me out then. What would be the best category for something with a core relationship, and some erotic stuff, but no hardcore banging?

telracs

· #9 · Jan 18, 2013

None. If sex is the main story, it's not a romance, it's erotica. As people have already said, "romance" has a specific genre definition and sex is not part of the definition.

Mathew Reuther

· #10 · Jan 18, 2013

tipsy telstar said:
None. If sex is the main story, it's not a romance, it's erotica. As people have already said, "romance" has a specific genre definition and sex is not part of the definition.

Romance with sex in it isn't strictly classified as erotica though.

If the sex is the entire point, it's erotica. If the sex is an extension of the romance, it's a romance.

You can have a relatively graphic sex scene in a romance novel. But since the relationship is the issue, you're not going to be packing it full of them. In erotica you would.

dalya

· #11 · Jan 18, 2013

philstern said:
What be HFN or HEA?

This is how I know you didn't write a romance.

(respectful ribbing)

Happy For Now
Happily Ever After

CoraBuhlert

· #12 · Jan 18, 2013

philstern said:
How much sex does a book have to have to be classified Romance?

None. There are whole subgenres of romance (Christian or inspirational romance, so-called sweet romances, some traditional regency romances) without any sex whatsoever.

The important question to ask yourself is whether the romance is the main focus of your novel or at least as important as the SF plot. And does the romance plot end happily, i.e. with both partners alive and together in a committed relationship? And does none of the partners sleep with someone else after they got together with each other? Then you can classify it as an SF or futuristic romance.

HEA means "happily ever after" as in "I love you, let's get married and have babies and stay together forever." HFN means "happy for now" as in "I think I like you and the sex was really hot, so let's give this thing between the two of us a shot." If your ending is something like this and you don't plan on writing a sequel where you break up the happy couple, then it counts as a romance.

PS: If the romantic plot involves three or more participants which end up in a stable relationship, then it's menage, which is usually classified as erotic romance or erotica, though it's possible to write a non-erotic menage story IMO.

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telracs

· #13 · Jan 18, 2013

Mathew Reuther said:
Romance with sex in it isn't strictly classified as erotica though.

If the sex is the entire point, it's erotica. If the sex is an extension of the romance, it's a romance.

You can have a relatively graphic sex scene in a romance novel. But since the relationship is the issue, you're not going to be packing it full of them. In erotica you would.

Notice I said "main story". If a relationship is secondary to the sex, it may be an erotic romance, but that's a whole different kettle of fish.

Mathew Reuther

· #14 · Jan 18, 2013

Dalya said:
This is how I know you didn't write a romance. (respectful ribbing)

I would imagine that you could, by accident, write a romance.

It would be unlikely that as an author you would do so without already being familiar with the genre, but it could happen.

I think the biggest issue with people searching for a "second" genre to list their book under is that they do not really HAVE a second genre.

A lot of books are written "straight" and if they are, they don;t have a sub genre to speak of.

tipsy telstar said:
Notice I said "main story". If a relationship is secondary to the sex, it may be an erotic romance, but that's a whole different kettle of fish.

Fair enough.

philstern

Discussion Starter · #15 · Jan 18, 2013

All right. You've all convinced me. I've written a Romance.

Betsy the Quilter

· #16 · Jan 18, 2013

If you take out the relationship, will there still be a story?

Betsy

Mathew Reuther

· #17 · Jan 18, 2013

Now I totally want to read the "oops I wrote a romance" novel . . .

AndreSanThomas

· #18 · Jan 18, 2013

It doesn't sound like Erotica either. The goal of erotica is to be titilating. Sounds like just sci-fi adventure to me.

thebookcoverdesigner

· #19 · Jan 18, 2013

philstern said:
All right. You've all convinced me. I've written a Romance.

I would put it under self-help. That's my go-to shelf when I'm not sure (I volunteer in a book shop).

philstern

Discussion Starter · #20 · Jan 18, 2013

Betsy the Quilter said:
If you take out the relationship, will there still be a story?

Betsy

Kind of. There's two stories, the romance and the sci-fi storyline, but they are integral to one another.

1 - 20 of 52 Posts

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