Schweet Writes

I think part of it might go down to time? Today, there is a very specific style that I associate with romance novels. Perspectives are alternated. A series of modern tropes are hit. Sex is had, and even before sex is had, a lot of emphasis is put on bodies. I would say that, purely in terms of writing style, a lot of romance novels I have read are the same as modern fanfiction.

I want to be clear that I say all this with love and admiration. I'm a big romance novel fan. I'm a big fanfiction fan. I will eat up those tropes that some would call cliched over and over and over again. I think writing a good romance novel is an art, one that I have tried my hand at but certainly not mastered, and I have the utmost respect for those who have mastered it.

At the same time, at this point in time I would not consider the works of either Jane Austen or L. M. Montgomery romance novels. I think it's very possible that they were considered such when they first came out, but today, now, I would say that they are works in a different genre, written in a different style.

A romance is a love story that has an emotionally satisfying, optimistic ending.

(Here is Jennifer Crusie's essay from 2001 about how they reached that definition, including the deliberate choice to steer away from gendered language.)

According to the romance novel database Romance.io, a romance novel must follow these conditions:

1) The plot must be heavily feature a couple/triad/poly group in love, or about to fall in love. 2) Romance readers expect a Happily Ever After (HEA!) so we try to avoid books in which the main love story ends tragically or prematurely. If the story develops over several books, that's fine, of course as long as the over-arching plot ends with people happily in love.

(I should also note that "happily for now" counts as an HEA--for example, a romance novel that ends with some questions unanswered but the main characters have reached some level of contentment.)

Styles and trends change, and there are always differences with taste which will tweak your experiences, but style doesn't define a genre.

I read a lot of indie paranormal romance and kink-centric queer romance, so a lot of the trends I see are probably different from the ones you see if you read primarily (say) historical M/F romance or contemporary romcoms. Some people like my mom read exclusively closed door romances (no sex at all!) which will show different tendencies with regards to sex and bodies compared to what you or I might read. I've read a lot of single-POV romance as well as dual-POV (or more for some polyam books). So I would be careful using any specific trends or tropes to define romance in the modern age.

For example, the reason romantasy is considered separate from romance genre wise is that, in theory, the romance and fantasy plots share equal weight, in practice to my experience this usually means that the conventions of both genres are executed poorly with not enough time to properly develop either.

do they actually move toward what they desire? how far are they willing to go for it? do they pursue their desires directly or indirectly? do they acquire what they desire through force, trickery, or negotiation? do they tell themselves they aren't supposed to feel desire and suppress it? does the suppressed desire wither away and die, or does it mutate and grow even stronger? is the initially expressed desire actually an inadequate and poorly translated different desire that they lack language for? does the desire change once the language has been updated, or when new experiences outline the desire more clearly? do they want something else once they have better words for it, or once they know that they definitely don't want something they thought they wanted before?

how does the world accommodate those desires? what does the world present to your character and in what order to update and clarify their desires? how does your magic system or sci-fi device correspond to those desires and the pursuit of them?

This is the best advice anybody can give you, but it's not fun and it's shitty to execute: the only way to get better at writing is to write a lot.

I'm not going to say that there aren't people who have a better intuitive capability at writing than others, but no matter how much innate talent someone may have, nothing will ever take the place of the journeyman grind of writing hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of pages. From the first story I ever wrote to the last one I churned out, the difference is immense -- and while yes, I've grown in experience, vocabulary, literary reference and maturity, the only way I was able to deploy those new tools and refinements was by continuously throwing myself bloody against the brick wall of writing yet another story.

The best way to be a good writer is to be a bad writer for a very long time, in essence, and to be able to grit your teeth through that process. That last part, the endurance sport of it, that's the thing a lot of people can't do; even once you're a quote-unquote good writer, writing doesn't get much easier, because you hold yourself to a higher standard, and chipping blood out of the rock of your frontal lobe so your story can have a climax is the same agonizing process it's ever been -- regardless of how you avoid thesaurus abuse these days.

Re: the realism and atmosphere, I regret to send you to Elon Musk's twitter, but I wrote a long thread about my process there years ago, which now I'm thinking I should probably transcribe into Tumblr at some point.

For example, your travelers might know that they're near civilization when they start finding trees in the woods that have been tapped, for pitch or for sap. They might find a forester's trap line and trace it back to his hut to get medical care. Maybe they retrace the passage of a peasant and his pig out hunting for truffles. If they're coming along a coast, maybe your travelers come across the pools where sea water is dried down to salt, or the furnaces where bog iron ore is smelted.

Maybe they see a column of smoke and follow it to the house-sized kilns of a potter's yard where men work making bricks or roof tiles. From miles away they could smell the unmistakeable odor of pine sap being rendered down into pitch, and follow that to a village. Or they hear the flute playing of a shepherd boy whiling away the hours in the high pasture.

They could find the clearing where the charcoal burners recently broke down an earth kiln, and follow the hoof prints and drag marks of their horse and sledge as they hauled the charcoal back to civilization. Or follow the sound of metal on stone to a quarry or gravel pit. Maybe they know they're nearly to town when they come across a clay bank with signs of recent clay gathering.

Of course around every town and city there will be farms, more densely packed the closer you are. But don't just think of fields of grains or vegetables. Think of managed woodlands, like maybe trees coppiced-- cut and then regrown--to customize the shape or size of the branches. Cows being grazed in a communal green. Waiting as a huge flock of ducks is driven across the road. Orchards in bloom.

If they're approaching by road, there will be things best done out of town. The threshing floor where grain is beaten with flails or run through crushing wheels to separate the grain from its casing, and then winnowed, using the wind to carry away the chaff. Laundresses working in the river, their linens bleaching on the grass at the drying yard. The stench of the tanners, barred from town for stinking so badly. The rushing wheel-race and great creaking wheel of the flour mill.

If it's a larger town, there might be a livestock market outside the gates, with goats milling in woven willow pens or chickens in wooden cages. Or a line of horses for the wealthier buyer or your desperate travelers. There might be a red light district, escaping the regulations of the city proper, or plain old slums. More industrial yards, like the yards where fabric is dyed (these might also smell quite bad, like rotting plant material, or urine).

Title: close to you By: @schweetheart Gift for: Crayon Rating: Teen and Up Word Count/Medium: 6525 words Warning(s): None Creator Notes (Optional):

Dear Crayon,

When I originally agreed to pinch-hit for this prompt, I thought I’d be writing something fun but short—something that I could complete in time for the deadline. Instead, it just kept getting longer and longer, consumed my every waking thought for four days straight, and went in a totally different direction than I was expecting. I hope you enjoy the finished product! 💝

With thanks to diaryofatrekker once again for the stellar beta work, and for encouraging me to keep making things better. You’re a star ⭐️

Summary:

In the months since Arthur became king, he has repealed the ban on magic, appointed Merlin as his Court Sorcerer, and made peace with the Druids. The Golden Age of Albion must surely be at hand—if only he and Merlin could stop arguing long enough to enjoy it.

Or: Merlin and Arthur fall foul of a proximity curse. What could possibly go wrong?

they: i dont understand

me: *explains in detail the difference between a fantasy setting w no misogyny n a fantasy setting where the creator just added women to the warrior class n put no further thought into it whatsoever*

they: *laugh* its a good fantasy setting, sir

A lot of fantasy worlds carry structural misogyny that mirrors our own world, that many readers take for granted, because we are not necessarily used to using the fictional space to imagine radically different worlds and consider what “no misogyny” looks like.

So for instance, even in worlds that an author might textually tell us “treat women equally”, and they prove it by having a woman be a warrior (“see? Women can do any job a man can do!”). But, if there’s no particularly different structure to society to handle domestic labour and childcare, then much like our modern world, it places a high burden on women to occupy dual roles in society. They must often be both carer and breadwinner (and also Hot, let’s not forget these settings always want all women to be Hot, and all “ugly” women are evil), while male protagonists are simply “themselves”. They are not truly equal with women because actually, they can look however they want, and also care work is not expected of them. It is rarely a constant passive part of their lives (when it is present, it is a very active part of their narrative, distinguishing them from the “norm” of the world). Women continue to occupy invisible roles in these narratives as the stay-at-home parents, the cooks in the kitchens, the hags, whose stories are unimportant to the narrative because they aren’t considered full and real people with rich interiority. The work of caring itself dehumanises them. The closest we typically get to valuing “carer roles” in fantasy is to create archetypes for the Healer, which are invariably very femme-coded and often tied to damsel-in-distress stories. (The Healer must often then distinguish herself from the devalued image of association with care work and femininity by becoming a warrior as well.)

And then, of course, there’s the uncritical reproduction of systems of violence and war that typically impacts women and other marginalised groups more than anyone else… because “fantasy”…

but the point isn’t to create an ever-moving bar here, because we could talk about all the ways in which this stuff shows up til the cows come home, but to talk about what it means to exercise the attempt to imagine what “no misogyny” looks like. Exploring the possibilities that open up when you ask, “what if childcare was structured communally instead of by individual families and how would that shape our heroes?” and “what if this society assigned gender roles differently/at a different age?” And “would a history in a different world full of female leaders conceive of territoriality differently compared to the Westphalian notion of the nation state as demarcated by men?”

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