Writing Romance Subgenres Is Tough

Let me first explain what I mean by romance sub-genres. I think it is important to get this out of the way before we talk about those difficulties. 

When I talk about sub-genres, we are looking at stories such as romantic suspense, romantic mysteries, inspirational romances, and yes, I would throw in historical romances. All of these genres have once major thing in common. The central story line is the romance. It is the building of the romance from essentially nothing to that happily every after. For the most part, this is the easiest part. When we think of a basic story, it would look like this.

In this case the line represents the romance.

But now the difficulty comes in. Adding the subgenre to the storyline. I am going to talk about all but historical romance for a moment here. 

For many authors, they seem to think that the subgenre becomes, sort of, a second line running through the story. While it is (again sort of) the reality is that this is not a parallel storyline structure. The subgenre portion is more of an overlay, or a guiding force that motivates and drives the romantic relationship.

Consider inspirational romances. In this case, these are stories where one (or both) of the characters are coming from a place with no faith, and finding that path to light. For example, maybe the hero has lost faith in God because, while he came from a strong family of faith, he saw everything lost one year (I am thinking the Book of Job here). And yet, the heroine comes into the story and guides him to that faith. If we leave it here, the story is only inspirational. But to make it an inspirational romance, it will be the romance portion of the story that takes the center stage. It just happens that the "plot" of the story is the guiding of the hero back to faith.

We can see the same thing in the case of a romantic suspense. The suspense element is the plot and the romance element is not just an add on, but the driving force that brings the two characters together, not just romantically, but in a way to solve the suspense element of the story.

Where many people run into problems is that they let the subgenre take complete charge. Inspirational romances focus so heavily on the "inspiration piece" and about 80% of the way through the story, the author throws in a scene "Oh by the way, I am now in love." We never saw any of this building of the relationship or romance. It is just an after thought. The same thing happens with romantic suspense. The two characters are running from the bad guys, the hero (most likely named something like Duke and is an ex special ops soldier) constantly is protecting the hero. And then, they find themselves sitting waiting for the next bad thing to happen and they become attracted to each other - "BAM! We're in love!"

Historical romances do the same thing. Too many authors spend so much time with the world building elements of the story, adding all of the great research they stumbled across prepping the book, they forget to really show a building romance. Again, they get to this point in the story when they realize that the characters have to find a reason the be in love. 

Essentially, the romance cannot be an after-thought. 

Remember, if it is a romance, the romance element is the thing that takes the central story arc.