TotallyHuman
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Part 1: introduction
This thread is a mix of a rant, a blog, and an immature analysis of a cliche.
Reading a few light and web novels in the past few days that had romance subplots for either the main character or a side character, I came to the realisation of why despite me generally hating romance in stories, I am a lover of the genre itself.
Though these conclusions might seem obvious to another reader, I hope they will come in useful to some.
Part 2: examples
First, I'll describe an experience I had with the most recent novel I read.
I will not name the novels to avoid drawing ire and discuss only the important points about them vaguely enough that it won't really point out any particular story.
The first novel was a good adventure, fantasy, slice of life story. It had interesting characters with strong motivations and good arcs, they felt real, to an extent, which is very rare. The author clearly put much love and effort into crafting this story and as a reader I enjoyed it very much.
There was a supporting character from the main supporting cast who had a lot of screen time, and he was clearly in love with the main character. It was from the start, but it was treated like a background plot for a future time. The main character themselves were rather ignorant of feelings of others, though they were aware of how the supporting character felt. It feels justified that the supporting character finally gets an arc to clarify their feelings and progress at last, right?
Wrong! As I said, the main character was dense and not mature enough emotionally to start a romance arc. "But they could grow through such an arc and mature emotionally", I hear you object. Again, not really. The main character was immature but there was not a single instant, not a single episode, not a single hint that their denseness(density? I feel "denseness" fits better because "density" is an actual word used for other things) dragged anybody ever, the supporting character included, down. Much more than that, the romance subplot began in the middle of another plot that WAS actually important, dulling down the waters and feeling out of place and hastily-crafted.
EVEN WORSE, the author took another character and made them a love rival. They were a childhood friend of the main character and were in love with them for many years but had move to another city, but now came back, yadayada, most of us read the same cliche a bunch of times already. It was quickly slapped on, and the, god forbid, the shoujo-esque love triangle with a dense protagonist and two handsome men vying for their love, began. Like invasion of Poland, it came quick, came unexpected, ruined much and did no good to anybody. At that point, I had to stop reading despite previously having loved the novel.
What lesson is there to take? One I took was not to start a romance arc when it will not benefit the plot.
Another example is an ACTUAL ROMANCE novel, that had an awful romance subplot.
The story went like this: main character and their boss get together. Main character has a friend (an actual friend, no secret crushes or such) who's neither minor nor important to the story. The appeared every now and again and were pretty cool and had their own thing going.
That friend was the unfortunate victim of a romance subplot.
There was another character that was introduced earlier. They were less important to the plot than the friend character but they were there and whatever.
The unimportant character had a broken heart, so they ended up almost having a one-night stand with the friend character and then they were reintroduced to the friend character and fell in love.
I stopped reading a few chapters in, as I watched the agonising subplot in the background.
I won't be describing it, I'll just get to the problems I have with it.
This romance subplot doesn't fall into the issues the first case had: the friend character was mature and, more so, open to the idea of starting a relationship. The plot line doesn't get in the way of the main arc as it doesn't take up too much space nor does it interrupt anything.
I have a small problem with the entire drunken one-night stand thing, since it was not necessary but I'll give it to the author as it isn't important and doesn't get in the way of the story. Gotta make the pairing feel fated I guess?
What bugs and budgers me about it is that the friend character began acting unlike they previously did. I guess it was to create tension and drama, as the side characters going "Hey, wanna date?" "OK!" would be too uneventful, but that came at the expense of the characters.
Because they were mature and had their own thing going, and there was no real problem romance would solve nor was there any easy to understand and immediately cash in on value in the friend character starting a relationship.
Thus it made little sense in the context of the story to have them pursue the unimportant character. It could be solved by writing up a few additional details but then this plot line - this plot line about not too important side characters - would drag on. The author did the next logical thing and had the unimportant character do the pursuit.
Now, the one with a problem to solve would be the unimportant character. If you remember, they had a broken heart. Were the friend character their usual self, the difference in their respective values to each other would make the unimportant character seem like they were patronised and taken pity upon from a superior position - which couldn't happen, of course.
So there had to be created artificial value for the unimportant character to the friend character, which is why the friend character had to be dragged down a notch. Now, while heartbroken, the unimportant character looked more experienced and mature and the scales even out. But the plot line became shit, in my opinion.
What lessons are to be taken here? I took this lesson: always prepare some sort of value that could be uncovered from a romance in a subplot.
Part 3: conclusions
Those who bothered to read through this long long tirade surely noticed how I stressed words like "importance", "value" etc. It's not hard to notice that these subplots could be easily taken out of the story and it would, if not benefit the plot, at the very least not affect it.
That is the first flaw of most romantic subplots I've read. The authors seemed to have slapped the romance subplots because, maybe, they had no ideas on what to write so they needed to fill the space, or maybe because readers forced them with ships(that ever happens?) or they just felt like doing it. There was no previously established need for such a plot to begin, and the chain of cause and effect of the narrative suffered.
The second flaw is one I've already mentioned. At least one character in each subplot didn't have any need for a relationship and had nothing to gain from it. The writer makes a character engage in a romantic relationship because the readers dig it, even if it has nothing to do with these characters' character arcs.
It's like there's some kind of need for a character to have some kind of romantic entanglement for a story to be complete, even if it has no fitting place to accommodate a romantic subplot.
It gets worse with side characters, since readers rarely care about them, and their romantic developments bring no value to the story and are just there to be there, like an item on a checklist. Though it is also often a problem with the protagonists too, as stories usually focus on only certain aspects of them, and rarely on the characters in their entirety. The hero gets the beauty but I don't feel like it matters as I only know the hero as the hero, as the badass who climbed into the heart of a huge robot with only a crowbar and a knife to save the planet, not as a person who has a life outside all the robot-crawling and crowbar-swinging, and the consequences of them getting the beauty are not important to me. Again, it's just an item on a checklist. One that doesn't really have a good fitting place in the story. Often time they make me frustrated instead. That happens when I get attached to a character and they get forced into a romance subplot. It's almost like watching your friend get forced into an arranged marriage, but they also get hypnotised into liking this idea.
I'm not saying all romance in fiction is bad. Novels with plots motivated by romance can be a treat, and novels where romance is motivated by the plot can be a treat too.
The title of this thread is "Romance subplots and why I'd never write them", so I'm not saying that you shouldn't write them. Its just that I would personally not do that, as writing a novel with a good romance subplot is much harder than writing a good romance novel with subplots about other things.
This thread is a mix of a rant, a blog, and an immature analysis of a cliche.
Reading a few light and web novels in the past few days that had romance subplots for either the main character or a side character, I came to the realisation of why despite me generally hating romance in stories, I am a lover of the genre itself.
Though these conclusions might seem obvious to another reader, I hope they will come in useful to some.
Part 2: examples
First, I'll describe an experience I had with the most recent novel I read.
I will not name the novels to avoid drawing ire and discuss only the important points about them vaguely enough that it won't really point out any particular story.
The first novel was a good adventure, fantasy, slice of life story. It had interesting characters with strong motivations and good arcs, they felt real, to an extent, which is very rare. The author clearly put much love and effort into crafting this story and as a reader I enjoyed it very much.
There was a supporting character from the main supporting cast who had a lot of screen time, and he was clearly in love with the main character. It was from the start, but it was treated like a background plot for a future time. The main character themselves were rather ignorant of feelings of others, though they were aware of how the supporting character felt. It feels justified that the supporting character finally gets an arc to clarify their feelings and progress at last, right?
Wrong! As I said, the main character was dense and not mature enough emotionally to start a romance arc. "But they could grow through such an arc and mature emotionally", I hear you object. Again, not really. The main character was immature but there was not a single instant, not a single episode, not a single hint that their denseness(density? I feel "denseness" fits better because "density" is an actual word used for other things) dragged anybody ever, the supporting character included, down. Much more than that, the romance subplot began in the middle of another plot that WAS actually important, dulling down the waters and feeling out of place and hastily-crafted.
EVEN WORSE, the author took another character and made them a love rival. They were a childhood friend of the main character and were in love with them for many years but had move to another city, but now came back, yadayada, most of us read the same cliche a bunch of times already. It was quickly slapped on, and the, god forbid, the shoujo-esque love triangle with a dense protagonist and two handsome men vying for their love, began. Like invasion of Poland, it came quick, came unexpected, ruined much and did no good to anybody. At that point, I had to stop reading despite previously having loved the novel.
What lesson is there to take? One I took was not to start a romance arc when it will not benefit the plot.
Another example is an ACTUAL ROMANCE novel, that had an awful romance subplot.
The story went like this: main character and their boss get together. Main character has a friend (an actual friend, no secret crushes or such) who's neither minor nor important to the story. The appeared every now and again and were pretty cool and had their own thing going.
That friend was the unfortunate victim of a romance subplot.
There was another character that was introduced earlier. They were less important to the plot than the friend character but they were there and whatever.
The unimportant character had a broken heart, so they ended up almost having a one-night stand with the friend character and then they were reintroduced to the friend character and fell in love.
I stopped reading a few chapters in, as I watched the agonising subplot in the background.
I won't be describing it, I'll just get to the problems I have with it.
This romance subplot doesn't fall into the issues the first case had: the friend character was mature and, more so, open to the idea of starting a relationship. The plot line doesn't get in the way of the main arc as it doesn't take up too much space nor does it interrupt anything.
I have a small problem with the entire drunken one-night stand thing, since it was not necessary but I'll give it to the author as it isn't important and doesn't get in the way of the story. Gotta make the pairing feel fated I guess?
What bugs and budgers me about it is that the friend character began acting unlike they previously did. I guess it was to create tension and drama, as the side characters going "Hey, wanna date?" "OK!" would be too uneventful, but that came at the expense of the characters.
Because they were mature and had their own thing going, and there was no real problem romance would solve nor was there any easy to understand and immediately cash in on value in the friend character starting a relationship.
Thus it made little sense in the context of the story to have them pursue the unimportant character. It could be solved by writing up a few additional details but then this plot line - this plot line about not too important side characters - would drag on. The author did the next logical thing and had the unimportant character do the pursuit.
Now, the one with a problem to solve would be the unimportant character. If you remember, they had a broken heart. Were the friend character their usual self, the difference in their respective values to each other would make the unimportant character seem like they were patronised and taken pity upon from a superior position - which couldn't happen, of course.
So there had to be created artificial value for the unimportant character to the friend character, which is why the friend character had to be dragged down a notch. Now, while heartbroken, the unimportant character looked more experienced and mature and the scales even out. But the plot line became shit, in my opinion.
What lessons are to be taken here? I took this lesson: always prepare some sort of value that could be uncovered from a romance in a subplot.
Part 3: conclusions
Those who bothered to read through this long long tirade surely noticed how I stressed words like "importance", "value" etc. It's not hard to notice that these subplots could be easily taken out of the story and it would, if not benefit the plot, at the very least not affect it.
That is the first flaw of most romantic subplots I've read. The authors seemed to have slapped the romance subplots because, maybe, they had no ideas on what to write so they needed to fill the space, or maybe because readers forced them with ships(that ever happens?) or they just felt like doing it. There was no previously established need for such a plot to begin, and the chain of cause and effect of the narrative suffered.
The second flaw is one I've already mentioned. At least one character in each subplot didn't have any need for a relationship and had nothing to gain from it. The writer makes a character engage in a romantic relationship because the readers dig it, even if it has nothing to do with these characters' character arcs.
It's like there's some kind of need for a character to have some kind of romantic entanglement for a story to be complete, even if it has no fitting place to accommodate a romantic subplot.
It gets worse with side characters, since readers rarely care about them, and their romantic developments bring no value to the story and are just there to be there, like an item on a checklist. Though it is also often a problem with the protagonists too, as stories usually focus on only certain aspects of them, and rarely on the characters in their entirety. The hero gets the beauty but I don't feel like it matters as I only know the hero as the hero, as the badass who climbed into the heart of a huge robot with only a crowbar and a knife to save the planet, not as a person who has a life outside all the robot-crawling and crowbar-swinging, and the consequences of them getting the beauty are not important to me. Again, it's just an item on a checklist. One that doesn't really have a good fitting place in the story. Often time they make me frustrated instead. That happens when I get attached to a character and they get forced into a romance subplot. It's almost like watching your friend get forced into an arranged marriage, but they also get hypnotised into liking this idea.
I'm not saying all romance in fiction is bad. Novels with plots motivated by romance can be a treat, and novels where romance is motivated by the plot can be a treat too.
The title of this thread is "Romance subplots and why I'd never write them", so I'm not saying that you shouldn't write them. Its just that I would personally not do that, as writing a novel with a good romance subplot is much harder than writing a good romance novel with subplots about other things.
