I read this recent article in Book Riot with amusement. Honestly, I found it a bit simplistic and, well, a bit silly. First of all the idea that a swath of fiction, or all fiction, can be reduced to a set number of plots seems restrictive. Secondly, the titles here–Let’s Work Together, Let’s Fight, etc…–are so non-descriptive that they verge on useless.
That said, it did get me thinking. If I had to list common plots in romance, what might some of them be? And yes, of course I thought of the usual suspects: Enemies to Lovers, Friends to Lovers, Marriage of Convenience, Forced Proximity, Second Chance Romance, etc… but I wanted to come up with some less formulaic ones.
Here are a few:
I’ve never had sex in my life and I’ve decided it’s time.
I’m supposed to be with this guy/girl but, damn, his/her sibling/best friend is hot as hell.
We were caught in the library late at night and were forced to marry. It turns out sex is a real plus for the wedded.
I am suddenly in charge of a giant corporation/estate/set of children and I need some help ASAP.
There are only two people in the world who can save the world/solve the crime/defeat these cretins/fix this community and, despite the fact that we hate each other, we must be a team.
It was only supposed to be that ONE time….
What about you? What plots do you see in romance? And, if you’ve got examples, share ’em!
I don’t know if this falls under the “I’m supposed to be with this guy/girl but, damn, his/her sibling/best friend is hot as hell.” but, there’s also the
“I’m convinced we’ll be perfect for each other so I’m doing everything possible to get noticed by this guy/girl but damn, his/her sibling/cousin/best friend/neighbour/enemy is hot as hell”
Oh no, my father / mother / king / other person of power forces me to wed this person. I’ll just marry the next random dude / girl instead.
Variations of this:
I have to marry to secure my inheritance, but I’ll be damned, if I marry the one they chose for me. Any stranger will do nicely.
My true love rejected me, so I shall marry her cousin / his best friend to show them all
One Example for the last one: Lord Sherry by Georgette Heyer
Sherry in Friday’s Child doesn’t even marry the cousin/best friend – he just sets out to marry the next young woman he sees! Who happens to be someone he’s known for years, but not a cousin or bestie.
I have this really thought out revenge plot
and I can’t care about innocent bystanders / pawns / relatives of my foe that might be injured by the plot,
even though I have come to care for them
Another Georgette Heyer (These Old Shades) or Distant Magic by Mary Jo Putney
Nope, there’s wayy more than that!
I think the point was that everything else is a derivative of the plot listed. So under Let’s Work Together, you find: enemies to lovers, opposites attract, grumpy/sunshine, friends to lovers, Forbidden love, arranged marriage. Those novels themselves would have derivatives such as enemies to lovers could be actual enemies such as in Farrah Rochon’s The Hookup Plan, hostile exes such as in Rochon’s Pugs and Kisses, or caught up in political rivalry such as in Rose in Chains by julie Soto or Radiance by Grace Draven. i don’t see archetypls as automatically bad.
Me neither.
Sure, all romance novels can be reduced to six plots, if the plots are sufficiently vague so as to describe basically anything. In fact, all books in all places, and in fact all of both human and physical history, can be described in two words: Stuff happens. The question is not whether it’s possible, but whether it’s useful or illuminating to describe things that way. Analyzing plots and tropes is a way to help writers craft books and to help readers understand what they like in books. I doubt a six storyline scheme is useful for either of those.
Yes–this is overall the point I was making.
And I do think it’s useful to think about the universality of stories. But in genre fiction, if the summations are as vague as I felt these are, I’m not sure what we learn from those categorizations.
But the BR list consists of tropes, not plots You may have a friends-to-lovers trope but the plot would be how the protagonists get from one to the other – isn’t it?
Which brings me to the point I wanted to make which is that it seems that right now, every romance novel is being reduced to its tropes. It feels as though almost every book blurb I read ends with a list of the tropes that are used. Which is, in some cases, spoilery and which I can work out for myself when I read it.
Great point!!!!
Tropes can be vaguely helpful if it’s one I particularly dislike, so I can avoid it. 🙂 But too often they aren’t. Take something like “enemies to lovers,” which seems to mean anything from “they are literally on different sides of a war” (Shards of Honor- Bujold), to they got off on the wrong foot and it’s dealt with in the first couple of chapters. It’s usually not much help and you’d have to read some reviews to see if it’s really about enemies becoming lovers, or just a misunderstanding that is easily cleared up.
Tropes, like so many of the labels people like to apply, ignore the wonderful,complexity
How about: “I am really just like Claire Fraser: I come from the future so I know that even here in the 18th century, I should behave like it’s 2025 – I’ll sort everything that’s wrong out – that’ll show ’em!”
Lol