Can SF and romance successfully combine?

[NDHansen-Hill]

It's a weird leap from science fiction to romance. I've been writing SF, fantasy, and horror for years, but only branched off into romance during the last year and a half. It was much more difficult to make that leap than I'd thought.

Like many mainstream or genre types, I have to admit that I thought writing the romantic word would be easy. But I hadn't reckoned on the transition between action- and crisis-driven storylines (my SF fantasy horror) versus character-driven (with the focus on only 2 characters!). When I received the brief from the publisher, it was to write a suspenseful novel with no paranormal elements and with the 2 protagonists occupying most of the space. Dear God, I griped silently. No problem, I said to the publisher.

It WAS a problem. I was accustomed to having numerous characters in the thick of the action, and frankly, limiting it to 2 people seemed...well, boring. So, my first romantic endeavor ended up with 2 couples instead, crypts, mausoleums, buried treasure, etc.

I have only admiration now for many of those romance writers. This stuff is darn hard to write, but maybe that was just me, because I refused to let go of any of my customary heavy-duty research (and I don't mean into the romance side of things!). Frankly, those historical authors know their stuff, though, and really work at it. No wonder many of them have such huge readerships!

Which brings me to why I ventured into romance in the first place: to challenge myself (even though I didn't realize it at first), and to expand my readership. Well, and also because some people didn't think I could write romance, since I was a SF person. So, of course, in the way of things, I had to prove them wrong .

Now, to SF romance:
My first SF fantasy/romance novel was released last week. It's my 23rd published book, but my first SF romance. It's spec fiction all the way - SF research, fantasy lands, but it also has a trace of eroticism. Apparently, romance readers are embracing this kind of book which crosses genres, as long as there's a enticing or heated romance and a good storyline involved. But whether, in science fiction fantasy circles, books like this are well received is open to question. I do review edits for 3 major sites and let me tell you, there are 100's of books like this out there - with the focus on romance, but with strong SF fantasy connections.

In my opinion, fantasy readers might venture into a few of these, but seldom SF readers. The ridicule factor for romance is too dominant. It would be interesting to see what other people think. All snobbery aside, can these 2 genres combine into something interesting to read? Or will the romance "elements" be too distracting from the story?

Just interested in your thoughts.

Cheers,
ND

 

[ctg]

I know what you mean, and trying to do that for a couple of years, to make my characters to fall in love, and having a relationship, while still pushing the action around. It's easier to say then do, then again, you need to have a romance with only two characters in the play. What else can you do but have a deep research to just in those characters? I mean rest is just the atmosphere. You can even do that to first person POV and never pop-in your other character head. Do that with multiple characters around, and you should grown yourself as a king.

Note to moderators: I think this thread belongs to aspiring writers, or workshop.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

Harlequin seems to be enjoying some success with its Luna line. I haven't read any of the books, but I do know they combine SF/Fantasy with romance, and many, if not all of them seem to be written by writers already established in the SFF field.

Tor, in a less overt way, also produces a lot of fantasy aimed at female readers, where the romance element is very much present but by no means the focus of the stories.

My own fantasy -- well, up until the present series -- has always featured a strong element of romantic tension between principle characters, although again not the main focus of the stories.

Lois McMaster Bujold has long combined science fiction and romance in her stories -- and still boasts a legion of male readers -- while the fantasy series she is in the middle of right now is very romantic indeed (while still including plenty of action and a fascinating fantasy premise).

So, yes, the combination can and does work.


ctg -- I think you are right. I'll move it to Aspiring Writers.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

Oh, and welcome to the Chronicles, NDHansen-Hill. Your book sounds very interesting. However, I am very glad you didn't mention the title of it, because then I would have been required by the rules of this site to remove your thread as self-promotion by a new member. We do prefer that people settle in before they start advertising their books, although we are very supportive of the careers of established members. Stay with us a while, let us get to know you, and I am sure you will find that this is true.

(Just a friendly word to prevent you from making mistake.)

 

[Pyan]

Lois McMaster Bujold has long combined science fiction and romance in her stories -- and still boasts a legion of male readers

Including me, Teresa...and I consider her an object lesson in how to combine the two genres successfully.

It's odd though; it seems to be considered easy enough to combine Romance and Fantasy, but not Romance and SF.
Is it the perceived "hardness" of SF that makes the difference, or a hangover from the old "SF is for boys" attitude?

 

[ctg]

It's hard to build a relationship, when you're doing your best on trying to stay in the SF world, then again it's not just that, as the romance is a character play. So things clicks, and a romance flares up between two individuals ... and rest is history. It is up to the writer to spice it up.

We all have had our relationships, so why not to use them as a basis for the story.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

It's odd though; it seems to be considered easy enough to combine Romance and Fantasy, but not Romance and SF.

Oh, not so easy as all that, pyan. There is still resistance among a lot of readers, particularly as Fantasy has become more and more like the boy's club that SF used to be.

But I should have mentioned Kate Elliott as a writer who has made the combination work, both in SF and Fantasy.

 

[Lilmizflashythang]

It's quite possible. People seem to not be able to get enough of either sex or violence. (You'd be amazed at how many sci-fi movies use sex to sell them.) Personally, it's not my cup of tea, but everyone is different. I'm a bit squeamish, and the only romance I like in books is stuff that's just glossed over. I don't want to go into detail.

 

[chopper]

i think there's a big difference between romance and gratuitously explicit sex, lilmiz, if that's what you mean. unfortunately, the "boy's club" SF seems to veer towards the gratuitous elements, (which i'm quite happy to skim or leave to get back to the real story) rather than dealing with the more human (or non-human) relationships.

on the fantasy vs science fiction side of it, one of the most common elements in fantasy fiction as i see it is the relationship between the nominal hero & heroine - you don't actually see a lot of that in male-written science fiction (or at least it's rarely as prominent as the science/ideas portion of the plot).

romance is a subject i've not really attempted in my own writing yet, but the New Project is turning out to have quite a romantic/tragedic theme - its going to be an interesting challenge!

 

[Lilmizflashythang]

Good point Chopper, I guess that's why I don't read Harlequinn books. Come to think of it I don't read much of Danielle Steel either.

 

[Toby Frost]

I think with SF, there's much more of a tradition of stories where the characterisation is simple and the emotional content very low. Take Asimov's robot stories, for instance, where most characters are male scientists, and each story is about solving a finite problem. The stories themselves are often sophisticated, but the characters are only cyphers to make the story work. And romance surely relies on character.

I think this is slightly less true with fantasy. True, there are vast numbers of stereotypes in fantasy, but there is also the tradition of romance in legends (King Arthur springs to mind but there are surely others) from which fantasy often draws.

Of course, both use sex to sell, especially in films/games rather than books. (The future suffers from a strange proliferation of PVC fighting suits, often with high heels). But this is different to credible romance. Anyhow, I hope it works out. It is always good to see genres looking to do new things.

 

[Lith]

Funny how it's only when you switch genres that you learn how involved those other genres are, isn't it? I ran into that in the last year, switching from fantasy to westerns. I thought everyone knew what a western was, simple enough, right? NO! It's got all its own conventions, the well-known ones, and a whole lot of others that no one realizes are there until you start outlining exactly what you are trying to do. Needless to say, I feel like little more than a baby even after a year of working on it.

SF and Romance? Possibly not the easiest task, but certainly not impossible. It would make for an interesting read. SF has a reputation of being rather unemotional, and even authors that delve into psychology rather than the hard sciences aren't quite fully accepted, though some of the best work in the field has been in this area.

And if I may make a (possible useless) recommendation, try and intertwine your romance and your plot as absolutely tightly as possible, like making a couple at odds with each other over some scientific problem, both proposing good solutions to a big problem, and make them rivals, which would pull them together and apart at the same time, nice and angsty. Or have two characters that want to get together, but they are closely related (family or co-workers) to a couple (of scientists) in the middle of a divorce, and the divorce is interrupting the pursuit of a needful goal, interrupting, corrupting real scientific pursuit as they argue over their vast estate...

 

[chopper]

i suppose, as you point out, it helps to know exactly what the conventions and formulae are in SF writing so that you can intertwine them with the romance. personally i wouldn't have the foggiest how to write science fiction (as opposed to fantasy).

s

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

The best romances, so far as I am concerned, are the ones where circumstances are working to drive two people apart and they themselves are trying very hard to come together. Science fiction and Fantasy offer far more opportunities for that than typical Romance plots, where the characters tend to create a lot of their own problems.

 

[Triceratops]

There are quite a few publishers taking a serious look at this sub-genre, many of them opening their doors to such tales. I think its gaining respectable ground, and I'm kind of glad to see it. I've been a die-hard SF writer for over twenty years and have always included heavy romantic elements in my stories--just to make them interesting. I have yet to write the real SF/Romance book, mainly because I'm under the impression that the romance element has to reveal itself in at least 50% of the plot. Don't know if this is true or not, but heh.

The answer: I definitely think there is room for this genre. I do hope it expands. It's already prompted some romance-reading females to jump the fence and explore love in future world/space settings.

Tri

 

[Anthony G Williams]

Catherine Asaro is another very successful author who combines SF and romance, in her Skolian Empire space opera series.

Just speaking for myself, I greatly enjoy both her stories and LMB's, although Asaro also writes other fiction - fantasy and mainstream - in which the romance dominates and I lose interest...

 

[Robsia]

I guess mine would be classed as an SF romance. It's not hard core SF as in, no aliens or space battles, but it is set in the future so I imagine it classes as SF. It's not fantasy as there is no magic or fantastic animals e.g. unicorns. Aliens do exist in my reality but they don't come in until the next book in the series which as yet only exists in my head.

But the romance, while not the whole of the plot, is the ultimate aim of the book - to bring the two characters together against all odds. And boy do they have some odds against them!

I just dug it out to edit it, and re-reading the first chapter for the first time in about a year - it made me cry. So it must be good!

 

[Anthony G Williams]

I just dug it out to edit it, and re-reading the first chapter for the first time in about a year - it made me cry. So it must be good!

The acid test is whether it makes a random selection of readers cry...

 

[edott]

They seem to do it in the movies all the time. Any great Scifi movie has a romantic sub-plot. actually some of the biggest money making movies are sci-fi movies with a romantic sub-plot.

 

[Robsia]

The acid test is whether it makes a random selection of readers cry...

True.

When I've finished this round of edits, I'm going to ask a friend to read it through who I think will give me an honest opinion.

My parents read it when I first wrote it and said it was good - but can you trust parents to be objective? They swore they weren't just saying it, but it could be subconscious.

What I need is to get some total strangers to read it who I can trust not to run off with my ideas!