Historical Romance Cliches 101

March 14, 2011January 29, 2017Leave a comment

Usually, I prefer fantasy or sci-fi novels, but for the last couple of months I’ve been on a historical romance kick. Georgette Heyer is by far the reigning queen of the genre, and also the foundation for most of the writers that come later, so her stuff might seem cliche when it was kind of like the grandmother.

Anyway, I’ve decided to list some of the cliches I use to screen what I’m in the mood to read:

1) Married by force — The hero and heroine are forced to get married because of extenuating circumstances (betrothals, monetary situations, alliances, revenge, social faux pas). Usually, this is really common but if the author does it right, it’s a pretty fun read.

2) Kids the hero doesn’t know about — While highly realistic that most heroes who sleep around will have kids, how they’re handled in story can make or break it. One cliche I really really hate is when the heroine shows up with his baby and acts like its hers, when it’s not. a) What kind of jackass is he that he doesn’t remember who he slept with? b) How pathetic is she to try something that ridiculous? I’m not a fan of hearing that they conceive kids after only one encounter. Really?

Have We Met Before?

March 6, 2011Leave a comment

One of my hugest pet peeves is when characters who have supposedly known each other for years, or they’ve had a very close person in common, that don’t seem to know know each other. This seems to happen a lot with male characters who end up with their best friend’s sister or female characters who end up with their best friend’s brother. It’s not the same to just make them fall in love with each other the moment they see one another out of the blue, because they’re already used to the sight. Something needs to have changed in order for them to reassess the way they look.

What you need to make the past work in the relationship:

Shared memories of a few past events AND how they felt about each other at that point in time. Did one like the other while the other didn’t notice? Were they antagonistic toward one another?
When did each of them start feeling differently? If there wasn’t a direct cause, then when did they realize the change happened?
The characters have to know the general modus operandi of their long time loves, e.g., bad habits new or old, tendencies toward certain actions/activities, etc. But it’s also really refreshing when either these things are seen in a new light, or the characters discover something new about each other.
The characters should seem familiar with each other. I’m not quite sure how to elaborate this, but until you establish their feelings about each other and the history of it, it would seem odd to have the characters not seem like they normally belong where they are.

Tessa Dare handled it well in Goddess of the Hunt, when the characters weren’t originally interested in each other but it was quite obvious they knew each other for years, understanding how to manipulate each other and what they wanted. They were aware how they felt about each other then, and as the story progressed so did their feelings.

Tracy Anne Warren’s Wicked Delights of a Bridal Bed (it’s title doesn’t do it much justice, but that’s another peeve for another time) was also a good example. The hero was friends with the heroine’s brother for years, and he’d been in love with her for that long and she had a crush on him too, but circumstances weren’t ideal. But when the story opens, many things have changed that allow them their chance.

Writer Age Stamp Part Deux

March 3, 2011Leave a comment

While reading Sarah Dessen’s This Lullaby, I felt like the teenagers were older than they were. I liked the book, and Remy especially but she sounded more like someone in her twenties than late teens. Even after the early college Psychology and Sociology classes given to us in high school, we were psychoanalyzing each other pretty often. But high schoolers don’t often dwell on the way their behaviors are habits the way Remy does.

Teens are less hampered by trying to analyze long-standing behaviors or to treat something they did for two years as a long-standing behavior. They’re still trying out new things and most don’t feel bogged down by the past in that way. Remy’s reflectiveness felt a little beyond her years, particularly the way she is about sex, drinking and smoking. She seems weary of it though only eighteen, and I haven’t really heard folks sound like that until they hit their quarter life crisis. She reminds me more of people’s reactions to graduating college. Graduating from high school, there are still so many open doors and opportunities waiting, but at the end of college, you’ve made your bed and have to lie in it. Remy’s lack of seeing college as a new beginning was the primary reason I got that vibe. It seemed like she had too much experience for the very narrow time frame she had been in her party girl phase. Even if she was a serial dater for about a year, she still couldn’t have had enough boyfriends and relationships to really draw the conclusions she’s coming to.

There was too much “finality” with Remy’s descriptions to seem like she was still a teen.

How Writers Age Stamp Themselves

February 28, 2011Leave a comment

I loved the book Anna and the French Kiss by Stephanie Perkins. It was an amazing story with deep and rich characters, and I fell in love with Etienne and Anna over and over again on each page. That said, the one and only thing that bothered me about the book was the use of technology. Or lack thereof.

The characters have computers and email, but the technology felt very 1990s. Anna was solely dependent on phone calls and occasional email to communicate with her friends and family back in America. I’m part of the first generation to grow up with Facebook, Twitter and everyone in class having a cell phone, so I immediately was confused by the lack of communication. In college, students abroad felt like they were still at school with us through pictures and status updates and instant messaging and Skype. My best friend and I went to high school together, but 80% of our relationship was online based. I spend hours chatting with friends on messenger services. My cousins that live internationally send pictures and messages from their BlackBerry Messenger service so there are no fees. While reading, the emails were entirely text based and there were no mentions of any of the technology that is pretty standard in this day and age.

Did this make a difference in the overall story? Well, yes and no. The characters and the story were still amazing, but it’s anachronistic. How we send and receive information does have an impact on how things play out.

1) Pictures — Anna doesn’t take pictures with her new friends, no one is taking pictures. These days, if you go to Paris (or even the corner market) someone is always snapping pictures of everything and somehow they end up online. Senior year of high school, we took as many pictures and video-taped as much as we could with anyone we could. If Anna went to Paris recently, she would be photographing and uploading like crazy, as would her friend Bridgette. Also, this would have alerted Anna immediately to the fact that Toph and Bridgette were dating or something was going on.

2) Phone calls/email — I mentioned this earlier. My friend joked that I did have a valid gripe with the whole phone call thing once in a blue moon notion, and that today your phone can probably make coffee (hey, there’s probably an app for that somewhere). Also, even though cell phones get mentioned, they’re not as pervasive in the story as in real life. I know people in third world countries with better technology than the novel explored. Anna would have Skyped with her little brother if she missed him so much. The occasional emails would have still occurred, but it being the majority of her communication with her best friend seemed odd. Toph wouldn’t have called her, he would be posting on her wall and commenting on everything she posted. There would have been a greater chance of them staying connected while she was away as well, and I know people who have made their entire relationship digital while the other had to be away and stayed together through the other person’s return. That’s the power of communication today — you don’t have to be there to be there.

3) No Social Network — It didn’t need to be Facebook, but anyone in school in the last few years has an account there. Even when I was in high school, we had Friendster and Xanga and LiveJournal that people used. I can’t imagine a world where you’re not blogging or updating, and the amount of high school drama that caused. Again, this would have changed Bridgette and Anna’s relationship because it wouldn’t have been as disconnected, and Anna would have a clearer idea what was going on back home. She would be spending time looking at profile pictures to remember her friends and relationship status is kind of a dead giveaway. Also, she would have friended her new friends at school and learned more about them that way rather than talking. This is a huge thing that changed the social dynamic of the modern world and how people get acquainted and stay in contact. People don’t ask if you’re seeing someone anymore, they check your profile status. Also, all bands these days keep website or host a web page. To not see Anna fussing over a guy’s website or profile was odd.

Not every current YA story needs to have mentions of technology, but in this particular instance it really dated the book and its author because a subplot was a breakdown in communication due to technological limitations. Basic utilities of daily life were unavailable, and that’s something that makes writing YA difficult these days. The speed of change in the way we communicate rapidly and rabidly changed in a span of less than ten years. I think the college interns should get a peek at these manuscripts to make sure that loose ends like this don’t fray the story.

Why are Historical Romances written today so bland?

February 26, 2011January 29, 2017Leave a comment

Historical romances have to be one of the most cliche and white bread variety of all fiction genres. Historical romance writers play it safe, the characters are always virtuous to some end. But novels printed in bygone eras weren’t all Jane Eyre and Jane Austen. Georgette Heyer played close to the vest in her imitation of Austen’s novels, but she was from a conservative era as well. For some reason, the media likes to paint the past as this idyllic and overly intelligent time bygone.

Guess what? People don’t change that much and they’re as fun and flawed and ferocious as they’ve ever been.

So here are some literary novels that will knock your socks off and have yet to be banned from the public:

1) Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe (1722) – Prostitution, incest, illegitimate children galore can be found in one of the earliest English novels.

2) Les Liaisons dangereuses (Dangerous Liaisons) by Choderlos de Laclos (1782) – Better known to Gen Y as Cruel Intentions and Gen X as Dangerous Liasions, two former lovers plot the downfall of innocent misses.

3) The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer (1380s) – Though this isn’t a novel, it is a collection of some of the bawdiest tales to grace English ears. Chaucer is considered by many to be the Father of English Literature, all thanks to a sex-starved college student and a dangerous old cougar.

Top 5 Overused Names in Historical Romance Novels

February 26, 2011Leave a comment

While reading several Regency novels, I’ve noticed a certain pattern to the names of characters.

Ladies:

Lily/Lillian – I’ve actually lost count how many times I’ve seen this name come up. Somehow, every Lily is a naive hoyden on the run from someone. As someone who used to find it adorable, I could do without seeing it in a Regency story ever again.
Isabella/Isabel/Isabelle/Belle/Bella – This name was gaining popularity even before the Twilight books came out, but can just one of them not be clumsy?
Molly – The favored name of chambermaids and street rats.
Grace – Too often used as the joke, “Grace/Your Grace”
Charity, Chasity, Patience, Passion, Prudence – I know virtue names were a thing at one point, but sometimes they come off far too Mary Sue in trying to make the character from the actual virtue.

Names that get a pass because they’re historically accurate in their usage: Jane, Elizabeth, Anne, Joan, Mary, Marie, Julia, Emma, Lydia, Sophia, Kate, Catherine, Charlotte. Overall, the overuse of female names happens less often than it does with male names.

Gentlemen:

Sebastian – The arrogant noble guy who always ends doing the right thing, in spite of himself. Self-righteous to the bone.
Jack – The ideal name for the rogue, misunderstood younger son of some nobleman. Also known as “the black sheep” of the family.
Rafe – Pretty much the self-made man with an ignoble yet slightly noble background.
Tristan – This is one of my favorite male names and I’ve used it in Regency, but I’m a little weary of seeing it now. Often he’s the good, not twisted hero with more whimsy in his character than most other heroes.
Gabriel – This name often emphasizes the avenging angelic nature of the hero.

Names that get a pass because they’re historically accurate in their proliferate usage: Edward, Henry, Richard, Michael, John.

It’s not the common usage of names that’s obnoxious (in real life it happens all the time), it’s that the names have become stock characters.

Character Descriptions that Need to be Dropped Like a Bad Habit

February 26, 2011Leave a comment

1) Stop describing the hero as a Greek statue or Adonis

2) Stop describing the hero as a cat or cat-like, which includes but isn’t limited to lynxes, lions, tigers or leopards

3) Stop describing the heroine as a kitten or mouse or mousy

4) Stop writing that the hero “would never force himself on a woman”

5) No more flaming red hair, there are far too many characters that remind me of Little Orphan Annie all grown up

6) I know even when you’re in love in real life, it’s easy to drop the “perfect” word around a lot, but it gets old fast on paper

The Next Big Thing

February 25, 2011Leave a comment

When I was at NYC Comic Con last October, most of the science fiction and fantasy titles announced involved shifters. A few years before that, vampires were a bigger deal due to the Twilight craze (I think Team Jacob spurred the shifter trend) which has been winding its way back down.

I think I was lucky to spend my childhood in the late 90s, when it was a bigger, darker scene for sci-fi and fantasy. The teen horror, sci-fi, and fantasy realms were run by R.L. Stine, Christopher Pike, Tamora Pierce, K.A. Applegate and quite a few other awesome people I can’t recall at the moment. Nickelodeon aired “Are You Afraid of the Dark?” while Disney Channel had “So Weird.” Dark stories for teens like The Hunger Games weren’t as uncommon, they were actually closer to the norm for children’s books at the time.

The first time I picked up on SFF trends, it was when Buffy hit the scene. Suddenly, it was vampires everywhere. It was at the tail end of that when Harry Potter became popular. There was also a bit of alien/space opera still lingering from The X-Files and Firefly. The witch trend was next, which had Harry Potter and Charmed and some other book series I can’t quite recall. During college I kind of lost track of most media, but I think the it was the Twilight vampire bandwagon again, then followed by few fey stories were big those years. Shifters/paranormal romance have now overtaken the scene but I feel like that’s winding down.

While I was meandering around the Regency era (I usually didn’t care for historical romance before), I started noticing that more historical paranormal and steampunk novels have been coming out. Then looking at the Nebula Awards Nominees, there were more than two entries that fall into that category. For an obscure sub-genre like historical paranormal to have that many entrants is peculiar. I think that will be the next genre to get major print, especially after Supernatural’s Wild West episode airs, that might just be it’s shotgun to the race.