Beauty and the Beast: Constructing the HEA

To some people it may seem somewhat narrow minded that readers of Romance insist on the Happily Ever After ending.

After all, HEA is so unrealistic, a childish fantasy. Thus people who read Romance must have something wrong with them, which means Romance as a field is not to be taken seriously, which is a topic we've discussed at length in this blog.

I think those readers are missing something important about the novel as an artform. As writers, our job is to explain what they're missing in "show don't tell" technique.

Whatever type of novel you prefer reading, you read it for the satisfaction, the validation of your world view in the artform.

The Romance as an artform is not different, even (or especially) when you cast the Romance plot against an alien background or involve a non-human character in the main plot thread.

The worldview that the Romance HEA validates is something like "No Man Is An Island" or in modern psychological research, that happier, healthier longer lives are lived by those who have firm and dependable Relationships.

Here's a recent report in a long list of such reports on marriage and health:

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-heart-women5-2009mar05,0,5692637.story?track=rss
--------------
Reuters
March 5, 2009
Chicago -- Women in strained marriages are more likely than other wives to have high blood pressure and other risk factors for heart disease, researchers said today.
... and: The researchers found that women in marriages with high levels of strife were more prone to depression and metabolic syndrome, a cluster of symptoms including thick waist, high blood pressure, high cholesterol and abnormal blood sugar that significantly raise the risk of heart disease.
---------------

Oh? HEA is unrealistic, eh?

If a relationship crystallizes solidly, settles into a supportive and low-strife paradigm, then (science is beginning to discover) AS A CONSEQUENCE the future course of the partners lives will be ENHANCED by good health and an assortment of miseries that are absent. That is they will live "happily ever after" because of the formation of this Relationship.

There have been other studies that showed how women are physically healthier than men because of the maintaining of relationships with other women, particularly that of the confidant. Relationships cause consequences -- and good Relationships cause HEA.

Of course, humans being human, while you're living an HEA arc of a life, you will find other reasons to make yourself miserable. You never think of all the diseases and disorders and dysfunctions you DON'T have in your life, so you can't see that you are happy.

People who have this kind of very real misery in their life might want to read horror or tragedy -- soap opera stories of unrelenting misery -- to stay aware of the troubles they don't have, troubles worse than theirs. It's a way of convincing yourself you are happy. And there's nothing wrong with that. It can motivate changes in relationships to raise the odds of an HEA in life. HEA endings can do that too - spark aspiration.

So how does a writer construct an HEA ending?

Well, it's an ENDING.

There are 3 points in The Novel that have to be nailed before you can outline the novel. Beginning. Middle. End. Determine any one of those, and the other two become determined.

If the END must be "happy" - an up-beat ending - then the MIDDLE must be the worst point in the main character's life (utter ruin; total hopelessness; conquered, captured, vanquished, left for dead, stood up at the altar).

With a low Middle and high End -- the Beginning has to be the ORIGIN of the problem that nearly kills the main character in the Middle and which he overcomes to triumph in the end.

Solve this one problem and all his life-troubles are over for good. There's HEA potential in every other genre, even or especially Horror.

Plot is driven by Conflict. To have a conflict, you have to have at least two elements that conflict. This vs. That. An urgent MUST vs an equally formidable CAN'T.

In the Romance, the urgent MUST is provided by the attraction to the other party. Science has revealed why we feel that MUST.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090211/ap_on_sc/sci_love_science

is an article on discoveries about brain chemistry and love. I think I've mentioned that here before, and on goodreads.com in SFRomance.

Add to that the subliminal awareness that our very lives depend on founding solid Relationships, and when a candidate for that Relationship appears it becomes an urgent emergency to "catch" that guy or gal.

Theory has it that it's the reproductive urge that drives us into Relationships. And that certainly seems reasonable -- BUT, if you don't live long enough to have and raise kids, reproduction becomes a moot point. I think we are aware in every cell of our bodies that our minute to minute existence depends on solid Relationships.

Mystically, the First Chakra (staying alive) always trumps the Second Chakra matters of reproduction. Our priorities are ordered for us on that basic a level. This premise lurks far in the background of my Sime~Gen novels.




The brain chemistry study shows us why we have the objective of establishing solid relationships. Relationships protect basic health so that we can reproduce.

Sothe URGENT MUST part of the conflict: "here is a POTENTIAL PARTNER; I must have this person or die!"

Your very life depends (literally) on reaching out to and securing that person in your life. That is not melodrama, it's science.

For all HEA Romances, that piece of the formula is established by the genre rules. The Urgent Must has to be an attraction to a partner and everything else is "complication" or background.

Now, the writer gets creative and the genre walls disappear into the distance. The writer can explore the universe finding things to prevent the attaining of this objective. What obstacles prevent people from forming partnerships?

The art of the romance novel lies in the variegated CAN'Ts writers have hurled at their characters.

What the CAN'T actually is does not matter as much as that it is just about equal to the MUST. To craft the HEA, there has to be a tangible chance that the Relationship won't gel.

But success has to be plausible, so the CAN'T has to have a "fatal flaw" that makes it believable that the two people do overcome this obstacle.

It is very possible that the low prestige of the Romance Novel (and particularly the Paranormal or SF Romance) comes from the choice of obstacle.

Some people may pick up Romances where the obstacle is fabricated, and in technical parlance, "contrived" so that it can be overcome. The "paper tiger" obstacle.

As a result, casual readers may judge all Romance to be "thin" -- a puppet show where the strings are visible.

Judging an entire genre by one or two novels is fairly common. Have you ever done that?

So, the Romance HEA is crafted from a scientificly verified array of MUSTS vs. artistically invented CAN'Ts. The HEA point is where the MUST overcomes the CAN'T -- i.e. the point where the conflict is resolved.

So tell me why all Romance isn't classed as Science Fiction Romance? If all Romance has the MUST part of the plot formula as a scientific premise, why isn't every Romance considered SFR?
The answer to this puzzle may be found by reading something outside the genre.

I have here a novel, a police procedural which raised the question of the HEA requirement again.




FLIPPING OUT by Marshall Karp. It's an April 2009 book I got from the amazon.com VINE program in ARC. It's copyright is held by a film company. I already posted my (4 star) review on amazon.

The intriguing premise is that a famous mystery writer is in a scheme to buy a run-down house, fix it up, write a murder mystery set in the house, then sell the house at auction on the day the book launches (complete with fictional murder victim's outline in tape on the bedroom floor).

It's set against the background of Hollywood. HUGE amount of money involved in the house flipping scheme -- very interesting background, like Columbo, a glimpse of the rich and famous.

It is a pretty good cut and dried, well turned and well written police procedural mystery with a nice clue-trail.

You can solve the mystery before the detectives do, but not TOO MUCH before, and the ending comes with a nice tricky TWIST shocker-scene, after which you get told what the detectives knew before you knew it. It's a good twist ending and provides a nice film moment for the climax. It's a good book.

Ah, BUT!!! There are many buts I didn't mention in my amazon review.

Reading this novel right in the midst of reading a sequence of fairly good fantasy novels, I found the contrast striking.

The mystery formula also requires an HEA ending. The mystery has to be SOLVED, and the reader has to feel satisfied that they could solve it as well or better than the detectives (but not a lot better because then it's too easy).

So while I'm thinking about the HEA reader requirement in Romance, I'm reading this mystery and second-guessing the detectives.

And I realized WHAT'S MISSING from FLIPPING OUT. It's a factor that I find very satisfying in say, Faye Kellerman's Peter Decker and Rina Lazarus series. And that is characterization. It's a reason I like Columbo and Murder She Wrote, too. The mystery and its solution hinge entirely on the psychology and relationships of the victims, suspects AND the detectives!!

FLIPPING OUT provides a huge, stark, high relief contrast to the psychological drama type mysteries that I love. The stringent absence of the psychology dimension makes for a dry, clean, stark, and austere reading experience (very much like old fashioned neck-up science fiction, I discussed last week) that is, no doubt, very satisfying to the reader looking for that simple puzzle without any psychological tangles.

FLIPPING OUT puts the emotional lives of the bereaved, terrified and frustrated characters in the background while the foreground focuses on the puzzle itself. That's what this genre is supposed to do.

So this book is perfect of its kind, but unsatisfying to me. Yet it has the perfect ending for a mystery. The detectives solve the case which is equivalent to the HEA where the gal gets her guy and vice-versa.

At the halfway point, the darkest hour, the detectives think they solved it -- everyone above them thinks it's solved. The perp was the last person in the world they'd suspect. They're crushed. Then they discover they're wrong, and the perp is actually someone even more last-person-in-the-world than they'd expect.

FLIPPING OUT is likely to be a best seller, very popular, might even make a movie. The author's other novels have garnered serious respect, the sort we'd love to see SFR get as a genre.
What does FLIPPING OUT have that Science Fiction Romance doesn't?

Could it lie in the CAN'T rather than in the MUST part of the conflict formula?

One really great Romance that did make it onto TV as a series is BEAUTY AND THE BEAST.



This series spawned a plethora of fanfic on paper on on the web, and some really great fan novels, too. It grabbed the imagination of the SFR type reader-fan. But why did it fail on TV?

The premise stalled the plot.

The premise was that the couple could NEVER get together. That's not bad in itself. The CAN'T has to be formidable.

But the characters accepted the CAN'T. They didn't fight it. They didn't try scheme after scheme (like I LOVE LUCY plots). They didn't attempt to go public. They didn't plan to run away. Neither was willing to sacrifice to go live in the other's world.

Neither of the main characters was HEROIC about overcoming the plot premise CAN'T. And in the end, the writers tried to salvage that, change and evolve the premise by revealing that one of the characters was actually of non-human (alien from outer space) blood -- but by then the audience was losing interest.

They hadn't sold the BEAUTY AND THE BEAST series as SFR so the audience deserted them when they tried to turn it into SFR, making the problem solvable.

Why did the audience lose interest? Because the MUST didn't show any progress toward overcoming the CAN'T. The conflict was not moving to a resolution without breaking the original premise.

There couldn't be an HEA unless you changed the premise - which is of course what the fanfic writers did.

So contrast and compare FLIPPING OUT with BEAUTY AND THE BEAST and think about it. Too little psychology and the actions and reactions don't seem plausible enough to make a story interesting even if the plot is fascinating. Too much psychology and the story stalls dead in its tracks because there isn't the gumption to pay the price for conflict resolution.

To create the HEA effect (in any genre), the trick is matching the MUST (and its motives, conscious and subconscious) with the CAN'T (and its motives, conscious and subconscious), in such a way as to challenge each of the characters to overcome some internal barrier, to CHANGE (or ARC in screenwriting parlance) in a way that opens the opportunity for the MUST to overcome the CAN'T.

In the Murder Mystery Police Procedural the Must, Can't and HEA in the foreground is the whole, logical why-done-it puzzle. It's who knows whom and follow the money for motivation. The angst, grieving widowers, and fear of discovery are all way in the background, told rather than shown.

In the Alien Science Fiction Romance, the affairs of state, plot puzzles, science and logic of brain biochemistry are in the background, told rather than shown, while the angst, grief, fears, hopes, dreams, and fantasies are in the foreground, shown rather than told.

What is in the foreground and what is in the background very often determines the audience that will most appreciate the work of art.

Or the fanfic writers will reverse foreground and background to tell each other new stories.

For more on those psychological and spiritual internal barriers and how to construct them for your characters out of the material inside your reader's mind see my blog post:

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2009/02/paradigm-shift.html

For a writing exercise related to setting up foreground and background and "worldbuilding" the background see my blog entry writing assignment and read the exercise posted as comments on

http://editingcircle.blogspot.com/2009/03/worldbuilding-trunk-ated.html

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://www.slantedconcept.com

The Assumption of Ever After

What differentiates a romance-genre book from, say, a woman’s fiction novel or a mystery novel is—according to industry pundits—the requirement in a romance-genre novel of the HEA. The Happily Ever After. This, like a lot of terms in publishing, is shorthand for a style and a series of events that will leave the reader with a positive feeling a book’s end, rather than puzzlement, depression, horror or whatever you’d like to tack on.

That’s why strictly speaking neither Gone With The Wind nor Romeo and Juliet qualify as romance-genre fiction. They don’t end with a positive (happy) commitment between the two lead characters.

Interestingly, what seems to twist the anti-grav panties of the SF set is this very same thing: the HEA. The Happily Ever After. This seems to be a kicking-point when speculative fiction is combined with romance.

What I’ve found interesting, though, is that the non-romance reading set in SF seems to layer a deeper assumption of EVER AFTER on to that HAPPILY than many of the authors—myself included—intend.

A month or so back, in a shameless and blatant effort to get a buzz going for my February 24, 2009 release, Hope’s Folly, I offered electronic ARCS (Advance Reader Copies) to a handful of book bloggers. Most had read me before. Most were chosen because they’d read me before. Stacking the deck, Linnea? Sure. But Folly is book three in the Gabriel’s Ghost/Dock Five universe (both monikers are floating around out there.) I’m not out there to get bloggers to go WTF? as they try to catch up with the storyline.

But as happens with electronic copies, they get passed around to other bloggers (and I’m fine with that). So I was interested to find a blog comment on Hope’s Folly on a blog (Oct. 16, 2008) I’d not specifically sent the ARC to. The comment was decently positive except it raised the issue I’ve started to raise above. The assumption of EVER AFTER.

To wit: “I'm not a romance reader; I'm very much a sf/f reader. Perhaps it's not so surprising, then, that I really enjoyed the sf parts and was mildly appalled at the romance parts. I can't buy True Love between characters who've known each other a week. That's infatuation. That is not a good foundation for a lasting relationship. *sigh*”

Things like this make me want to pound my head on my desk, more than I usually do.

**SPOILER**

Here’s a direct quote from the Folly manuscript where the main character is giving some very realistic appraisal to his impromptu and admittedly foolish marriage to the other main character:

“So, how’s our second week of dating going so far?” he asked. Most people dated first, then got married, but that wasn’t how their life had worked out. Marrying her had been an impulsive move. But it was a move he wanted to be permanent.

So did Rya. The fact that she now had her M-R-S degree, as she called it, was no guarantee of permanency. A real marriage took work. Commitment. Patience and respect.

And that took time.

So now they were dating. Married but dating. Philip rather liked the idea.

Am I—via the character—not saying exactly that? People in real life and in books get married for all sorts of reasons, many of them not the wisest or best. They either make it or they don’t but they do—in fiction and in real life—have the option of trying.

At book’s end—and this is really the last two pages—that’s all my characters are doing: realizing the situation they’re in is not the easiest and asserting that they’re willing to at least try.

Since when does TRY equate LASTING?

In the minds of SF readers who read romance, that’s when. I’ve seen this corollary far too often in blogs and reviews from SF-ers dabbling into SFR.

They assume—ASSUME—that because the two main characters are in a compatible situation on the last page that it’s white picket fence and roses forever.

None of my books promise that. None.

It’s an OPTION. It’s never a GIVEN.

My books end—as most of my readers know—at a point where the two main characters in the romantic relationship have either overcome or ignored whatever major conflicts separated them and are willing now to give their relationship the biggest, bestest try they can. That’s all. It’s a potential of a future together but it is not a guarantee of a future together.

Now, for romance readers who want to envision a FOREVER for my characters, that’s fine. Again, it’s an option. Not a given. But at least the romance readers aren’t damning me for it. Or—to take what I would see to be the opposite side of the coin—they don’t write in blogs that I haven’t shown the two main characters breathing their lasts breaths together at age ninety-nine and then going on to be buried side-by-side in graveyard plots marked Mr. and Mrs.. That, to me, is as much of an off-base interpretation of a science fiction romance novel as it is to assume that the characters have, at book’s end, a perfect and forever after relationship simply because they’ve decided to HAVE a relationship.

Let’s parse that blogger’s comment:

“I can't buy True Love between characters who've known each other a week. That's infatuation. “

Of course it’s infatuation. Every relationship one week in is highly based on infatuation. Physical (and other) attraction. But without infatuation, without physical (and other) attraction, the relationship would never start. That is where relationships start and from there the infatuation matures and the physical attraction matures and the relationship matures.

Moreover, in Folly, both character are very aware this attraction is nuts, too soon and at the wrong time. And they spend a lot of book-time realizing that:

Rya stayed by the ladderway, alternately damning herself and calling herself an idiot. She now had a ridiculous, full-blown crush going on Admiral Philip Guthrie, and every time she thought she’d managed to get hold of her emotions and shake some sense into her head, he’d lean against her or look at her with those damned magnificent eyes, and her toes would curl and she was lost.

Again.

This was just so very much not like Rya Taylor Bennton. She did not get crushes on guys—not since she was ten years old, anyway. Rya Taylor Bennton found hard-bodies who amused her and bedded them. Sex was fun, great exercise, super stress relief. Nothing more.

Then Philip had walked—well, limped—back into her life, amid guns blazing and punches flying. And in two, three short hours her life changed.

Further, I never said it was True Love. The characters never say it’s True Love. Rya sees it as a ridiculous crush.

As for Philip:

He was certifiably insane. He was sure of it. These past few months, the physical damage his body had taken, the stresses of losing one command and gaining another, the deaths of friends and crew—it had all taken a toll. That was the only explanation he could come up with as to why he was so emotionally vulnerable to—and fixated on—Cory Bennton’s twenty-nine year old daughter.

This had to stop. But when the lights had failed again and he’d almost found her in his lap, and then when all means to escape the ready room were exhausted and she was again those few tantalizing inches away from him, and he had the damned stupidity to make the flippant comment that if he’d been ten years younger...

Hell’s fat ass. He was certifiably insane.

She was twenty-nine. She was Cory’s daughter. She had some young buck named Matt hot for her back on Calth 9. She was not for Philip Guthrie, divorced, jaded, and limping around like some ancient—yeah, Welford had deemed him so—relic.

Plus, he had a ship to refit and a war to get under way.

But when he was around Rya... he just wanted to keep being around Rya.

This was not good.

Both realize AND TELL THE READER they’re not at the point to experience True Love. They can, however, experience the beginnings of an attraction that can lead to love and can, legitimately, share that they feel that way. Just like in real life.

What I feel I’m seeing here and in other blog comments like this is an unwitting-or-otherwise filling in of the blanks: This is a romance so this must be about True Love. (Side Note: I don’t think one can define True Love and I wouldn’t attempt to.) There is an assumption that an HEA ending also means Perfection. No more problems, ever. (Tell that to Dallas and Roarke in JD Robb’s IN DEATH series.)

Maybe at one time in romance novels, the Ever After in the HEA acronym did mean an unequivocal forever. But looking at romance fiction today, I don’t think that’s true anymore. I don’t think romance readers buy into “Perfect.” I think romance readers do relate to and respect characters who TRY. Who care enough to TRY.

Moreso in SFR, where there are so many other variables, I think a white-lace-and-roses perfect romance ending would be unrealistic. I don’t write them. That’s why I’m so surprised when some readers take it upon themselves to insert them—and then damn me for it.

I don’t see the same SF readers assuming every one of the antagonists or every one of the political problems is completely vanquished at the end of an Honor Harrington book or the end of a Cherryh book. Cherryh’s FOREIGNER series is, what, eight, ten+ books in? And Bren Cameron still has a lot of work to do. I can’t think of one SF or Fantasy novel I’ve ever read where I felt that Life Was Perfect from thereon in for the characters. Even if the bad guy was shredded, the princess rescued the prince, and the evil empire was in disarray.

I don’t know why some readers cement the assumption of an unequivocal Ever After onto many romance novel endings when they clearly don’t depict that. They DO detail it is possible. They do NOT detail it is absolute.

One more note on the “one week” comment and “That is not a good foundation for a lasting relationship.”

I know this gal who picked up this guy in a bar in New Jersey back in February of 1979. End of February, to be exact. It was strictly on physical attraction: he was a 6’4”, green-eyed, blonde-haired hunk. They didn’t see each other nearly as much as Rya and Philip do. There was no daily basis thing. There also wasn’t the chance to see each other under fire, working, striving and surviving, which I think adds a different dimension to how and when a relationship progresses. But even given the normal weekend dating kind of thing, and the nightly telephone calls, this guy moved in with this gal after three weeks. He gave her an engagement ring shortly thereafter.

This guy and this gal will hit their 29th wedding anniversary in October of 2009.

Okay, this guy and this gal didn’t know True Love in one week. It took three weeks. And almost thirty years later, it’s still there.

I love you, Robert.

~Linnea

HOPE’S FOLLY, Book 3 in the Gabriel’s Ghost universe, coming Feb. 2009 from RITA award-winning author, Linnea Sinclair, and Bantam Books: http://www.linneasinclair.com/

It's an impossible mission on a derelict ship called HOPE'S FOLLY. A man who feels he can't love. A woman who believes she's unlovable. And an enemy who will stop at nothing to crush them both.