How “Romance Novels” Take the Romance out of Romance
As author of a novel called Romance Language, I’m often asked if I’d written a “romance novel.” My instinctive answer was to say “no” -- but I hadn’t actually read any romance fiction for many years so I went to the library and borrowed a stack. I must admit, I was quite surprised at what I read. Here are some general conclusions from my not-very-scientific survey:

1) Most romance novels take place either in a relatively few “historical” periods and venues. The most common are Regency England, featuring clones of Mr. Darcy; medieval England featuring knights in armor; Scotland, with kilted gentlemen growling “aye lassie” at frequent intervals; or contemporary America, usually in rural areas of the South, New England or the Pacific Northwest or in New York and L.A. Not many of these books happen in Reformation Germany or ancient Rome or Brazil or North Dakota for some reason.
2) The female protagonist, who is young, feisty and gorgeous, has been damaged by a childhood trauma such as the tragic loss of her parents. All alone in the world, she is proudly independent but distrustful of others. She longs for love but is also afraid to love.
3) The male protagonist is normally older and full of self-confidence, a prototypical alpha male who doesn’t take ‘no’ for an answer. He’s hunky but haughty. For all his sexual experience, he’ll soon find himself way out of his depth when this chit of a girl awakens feelings he’s never known.
4) The two experience an immediate mutual attraction. But they can’t immediately hook up because of some perceived barrier -- usually based on a misunderstanding.
5) Despite their initial dislike, the two are usually exchanging fluids by around page 60. This involves detailed and highly explicit descriptions of kissing, oral sex, mutual masturbation and full penetration. Both parties experience mind-blowing orgasms, described in excruciating detail.
6) An evil character emerges to threaten the two protagonists and their relationship, through social scheming or actual violence.
7) The hero rescues the heroine (or vice versa) and they engaged in even more mind-blowing sex, resulting in even more cataclysmic climaxes. Marriage and children soon follow and they live happily ever after.

I have nothing against such escapist fiction in principle. But I simply don’t find these books romantic. Let’s compare them for a moment to the grand-mommy of all romantic fiction, Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. In that wonderful book, the two leading characters share a strong physical attraction – but it is scarcely overwhelming or determinative. The real romance takes place in their heads as they change and grow and shape themselves for each other. It is only when Elizabeth Bennett perceives the true moral character of Mr. Darcy that she allows herself to love him. It is only when Darcy understands that he must win Elizabeth through his actions rather than just relying on his social rank that the relationship becomes possible.

I should note here that I don’t do explicit sex in my books. That’s not because I’m squeamish or repressed. Partly, it’s because it’s so easy to write bad sex scenes and so difficult to write good ones. In romance novels, these scenes are pretty much all alike, relying on strained metaphors while indulging in graphic anatomical detail. But mostly, it’s because I’m interested in love rather than in sex – and love takes place in the mind where it has to fight for its existence against all the other challenges presented by life.

In the romance novels I have read, love is expressed through sex and only through sex. The fact that the hero and the heroine can provide each other with tremendous orgasms becomes proof positive of their undeniable love. If the sex is that good, the love must be real. As for the historic settings for these books, they are usually little more than an excuse to dress the characters in period dress that can then be lovingly discarded in the sex scenes.

The true disservice that the “romance” genre does is that it sucks all the oxygen out of the room. It sets up expectations and lays down rules of what “romance” should be. Publishers expect writers to follow these rules. So do readers. Anyone trying to write a “real” love story involving real people grappling with real dilemmas is breaking the rules of the game.

I thought it might be interesting to explore the thought process that goes into creating a novel using as an example my latest book, Romance Language. The novel mostly takes place in Romania, partly in 1989 and partly in 2007. It tells the story of Elizabeth Graham, an American magazine writer assigned to write an exposé of the situation in Romania under Communism early in 1989. She falls in love with a dissident poet, Stefan Petrescu. Their history, climaxing with the revolution of December 1989, is interspersed with the adventures of Elizabeth’s 17-year-old daughter, Petra, who shows up in Bucharest hoping to find the father she has never known.
I use this story as a framework to explore two central themes – the power but also the limitations of love and language. The book portrays and contrasts many different varieties of love. They include: love at first sight; mature love and puppy love; sexual passion and casual sex; maternal and paternal love; love of country and love of an idea; love of religion and love of self. The second theme I wanted to explore had to do with language – hence the title, which itself is a play on words. (Romanian is known as a “romance language” – one of the family of languages descended from ancient Latin that also includes French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese.) The book meditates on some of the uses and misuses of language. The main characters, who are both professional writers, live through language and believe in the power of words. But at crucial moments, they find that language fails them and they are forced to resort to other means of communication.
Free speech is a basic human life, but under Communism and other forms of tyranny, as George Orwell observed, language is perverted to become a tool of the regime. This happened in Romania and I explore some of the false slogans and lies employed by the state to oppress its citizens. I decided to include many different forms of language in the book. So I wrote some chapters using first person narrative and others employing third person narrative; there’s prose but also poetry (I wrote four poems for the book and I also have the characters discuss and analyze two Shakespeare sonnets); there are also letters and emails – and two entire chapters that consist only of dialogue.
Of course, one can read this book purely to enjoy the story without being concerned with, or even aware of, these themes. But I believe as an author that they add a level of complexity and interest that deepens the story and the characters. None of us, after all, lives in a vacuum. We all experience our personal stories against the background of the time and place in which we find ourselves. For me, as for my characters, love is important but so are ideas and so is language. To this extent, I believe Romance Language is a case of art imitating art.

Why is it so hard to write about love?

When I told my agent I wanted to write an old-fashioned love story that also explored serious historical themes, he was appalled. “There’s no market for that; stick to thrillers,” he told me. He explained that publishers were reluctant to bring out love stories that were not part of the “romance novel” genre – a category with its own strict rules of procedure. In fact, publishing nowadays is as strictly divided into “genres” as the old Indian caste system. There are so-called “literary novels” usually about unhappy people becoming more unhappy, there’s science fiction and fantasy, there are thrillers and mysteries, westerns and romance, gay lit, chick lit, mommy lit and of course innumerable memoirs about unhappy, abusive childhoods. Readers seem to want to know before buying a book what they’re getting. They don’t want to be confused.
Author Carol Shields writes in her novel, Republic of Love (Penguin 1993): "Love is not, anywhere, taken seriously. It's not respected. It's the one thing that everyone in the world wants but for some reason people are obliged to pretend that love is trifling and foolish. Work is important. Living arrangements are important. Wars and good sex and race relations and the environment are important, and so are health and fitness. Even minor shifts of faith or political intention are given a weight that is not accorded love. We turn our heads and pretend it's not there, the thunderous passions that enter a life and alter its course. Love belongs in an amateur operetta, on the inside of a jokey greeting card or in the annals of an old-fashioned poetry society. Moon and June and spoon and soon ... It's womanish, it's embarrassing, something jeer at, something for jerks."
Rachel Kadish, in her novel Tolstoy Lied: A Love Story (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2006) bravely declared her aim of writing a book that takes happiness and love seriously. Her heroine, Tracy Farber, speaks for the author: "It's as if our whole literary tradition, which has been unsparing on the subjects of death, war, poverty, et cetera, has agreed to keep the gloves on where happiness is concerned. And no-one has addressed it. I mean, shame on us all -- readers, critics, writers. Anyone who tries to take happiness seriously is belittled. The writers who pen happy endings risk getting labeled 'regionalists' which is like a paternal pat on the head and a nudge back to the children's table. Or worse, they're called 'romance writers' -- the literary world's worst insult."
I’m proud to be following these two courageous women and others like Audrey Niffenegger with my novel Romance Language. But my literary inspiration goes back even further to books I loved as a youth like Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms and Erich Maria Remarque’s Three Comrades. In these great novels, and in my modest offering, brave, intelligent and sympathetic protagonists struggle to sustain their great loves against the crushing weight of historical events they cannot control. In the case of my novel, it is the tumultuous revolutions that swept Eastern Europe in 1989. I try to explore different kinds of love and its overwhelming power – but also its limitations in the real world. Surely my agent was wrong. Surely there is a market for that.

I received a nice write-up today in the Romanian Times. You can find it here:

Following is a partial text:
Alan Elsner recalls 1989 Romanian revolution in his latest book
Anca Enoiu

Reuters journalist Alan Elsner’s latest book, "Romance Language", takes a step back in time and deals with the Romanian revolution of 1989 that ended the dictatorship of Nicolae Ceausescu.
In an interview with Romanian Times, Elsner said his decision to place the plot of the book in Romania had been the result of his visits to it.
Elsner was US State Department correspondent for Reuters News Service in 1989. He travelled with US Secretary of State James Baker to Berlin, Prague, Moscow and Bucharest and was present during tense negotiations and dramatic street events.
In 2007, Elsner was a Knight International Journalism Fellow in Romania, where he
promoted free media in an emerging democracy.
Elsner told the Romanian Times: "I was transfixed by the events of 1989 and greatly admired the courage of the Romanian people."
"When I had a chance to go to Romania to teach journalism, I thought it would be the perfect time to explore the subject in a novel."
"My idea was to relate a love affair between a Romanian poet and an American journalist – and also to have part of the plot take part in 2007. That way, I would be able to contrast the old Romania to the new."
Elsner taught journalism courses in Romania from October 2006 to the end of summer 2007 in eight cities, including capital Bucharest.
During that time, he interviewed scores of people – "almost everyone I met "– about their lives under Communism and their experiences during the revolution.
For foreign readers, the book is a good opportunity to find out about daily life under Communism.
Alan Elsner explains: "Daily life under Communism meant life in cold, unheated apartments, endless lines for food, constant surveillance by the Securitate, TV under Ceausescu, posters and propaganda and Kent cigarettes used as money."
"Almost all the anecdotes I described really happened. The climax of the book is the revolution, and I worked very hard to create a meticulous and accurate picture of events."
The author remembers his first impression in visiting Bucharest in 1989: "My first impression in Bucharest was seeing the massive Palace of the People and the boulevard leading to it (Bulevardul Unirii) – which in those days had almost no traffic and almost no trees."
"I learned the dictator had ordered a large part of the historic city to be destroyed to accommodate his crazy dream of constructing the largest building on earth."
"Seeing that building still has a powerful impact on me – it is a monument to human folly, cruelty and self-importance."
His presence in Romania also featured some bad experiences. Elsner said: "I was bitten by a dog – which was not a pleasant experience. I had to seek emergency medical care and have rabies shots. I also had my computer and personal effects stolen from my office in Bucharest."
Back to Romania in 2006-2007 to teach journalism, the changes in the former Communist country were obvious.
"All the new construction, the terrible traffic jams and lack of parking, the casinos, the sex stores, the fancy stores and many restaurants and cafes. The city is very lively with a vibrant youth scene."
" The young people I met no longer lived in fear. But of course, there were new problems – corruption, pollution, crime and so on."
The experienced Reuters journalist says Romania has changed a lot since the Communist period: "I believe Romanian democracy is secure and the country has a bright future, but there is still a psychological legacy from the past, especially among older people."
Still, more changes are needed: "Fight corruption, restructure the economy so that the inefficient agricultural sector moves into the 21st century and invest in education and new technologies to create jobs for the future.
"Politically, the country should sort out its confusing constitution and more clearly define the powers of the president vis-à-vis parliament."

I received this message from a Romanian-American reader:
Thank you for writing such a wonderful book about Romania. You wrote it with so much love as if you were Romanian as well.It is hard to believe that you have only spent nine months in the post-communist Romania and you have been able to understand it so clearly and to describe the life before and during the revolution. It was extremely hard for each of us to make sense of the chaotic way in which events took place.

You did understand what is particular about the way we think and feel, and behave. The parallel description of the two love stories were so captivating and I recognize my daughter in Petra in every aspect, from her dorkiness to her unexpected (from an american ) timidity.

The intellectual humor, the verses from Eminescu, the translation of Shakespeare's sonnets, make me feel that I am in the presence of a great writer!

I just hope that I will be able to reach a lot of Romanians and other readers who would appreciate this exceptionally well written book.

I'm sometimes asked what it's like to write a novel. It's like running a marathon.
I began my latest effort just about a year ago and I've now completed 100,000 words. I guess I have maybe another 10,000 to go but it's hard to say. I've got the end worked out in my mind but I can't tell how many words it will take until I've written them. A whole year of work; I can hardly believe it.
People have asked if I have the whole plot figured out before I begin. Some novelists may work like that but I can't. I started with a vague idea and two characters. The characters were strongly etched in my mind but the plot was nothing more than a shadow. It's come more and more into focus as I'v gone along. I keep changing it. Even now, I'm changing the ending in my head.
It's a thriller which revolves around the State Department press corps (which I was a member of for five years). I tried to include as many details as I could remember about what it's like to travel with the Secretary of State, what kind of food do they serve aboard the plane, what are the onboard briefings like etc etc. I hope this lends the book authenticity and interest.
How do you get to 100,000 words? I try to write something every day. Sometimes I can't manage but most days I do. I've written in the office, at airports, on planes, in cafes and restaurants, in hotels -- wherever. I tend to work in short bursts. I write a couple of hundred words, then stop to think about them, try to imagine the scene more fully, speak the dialogue. I edit myself incessantly. Sometimes I go over the same short passage a dozen times. I write a lot in the middle of the book, going back to add details.
I said I began with two characters in my head -- my protagonist and the villain. Since then, a whole cast of lesser characters have sprung to life in my imagination. It's miraculous to look back on all those words, all the scenes and incidents I've created. I've brought characters to life and then ruthlessly killed them, then decided to let them live after all.
When you're writing a book like this, you think of little else. I carry around a notebook with me in which I jot down ideas, phrases, descriptions. I imagine conversations between characters and with them. I'm at least half thinking about my book almost all the time. I fall asleep most nights thinking about it.
Soon I'll finish the first draft. It's been hard but I know I'll miss the daily writing. Next comes the hard part. I'll send it to friends and colleagues to read and criticize. The first draft is followed by a second and then a third. My agent will have comments. Eventually it will go out to publishers. And then maybe, with God's help, you will be able to read it too.