Why are HEAs necessary?

It's primarily category romance that demands an HEA ending. These publishers and writers seem to own the word "romance" now, but there is no doubt that many romance stories outside of category romance publishers do not have an HEA ending. They are not tragedies, they are romance stories, but no HEA.

Romeo & Juliet is a tragedy. It contains romance, but most tragedies do. So do most westerns and mysteries, for that matter.

If you want to write a romance that doesn't have an HEA, and that isn't a tragedy, just don't try to sell it to a category romance publisher.

You can write any sort of love story you want. You just can't plunk it down in the Romance section, and expect it to sell.
And there are a lot of stories that end HEA/HFN that are in no way "romance novels". Genre has its rules. You don't have to follow them. But don't write a sonnet, and try to market it as haiku.

ElleMason said:

RWA actually defines a romance novel as "having an emotionally satisfying ending." It's a bit more vague than a straight up Happily Ever After. One reaches the end of the book and feels optimistic about the ending.

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It has to be more than just an optimistic ending, though. It has to be a happy ending with the couple together.

I had a major awakening on all of this a short while ago and was educated on this topic here at AW. I had never really read romance, but the first book I ever wrote happened to be one. Even still, I didn't understand the HEA thing. So I wrote a second book that I had planned to pitch to the same publisher, and I was luckily alerted to the fact that this second book, despite being ultra romantic, is not a romance. It's similar to The Fault in our Stars--a beautiful love story that ends after the male half of the couple dies. I thought it could still be a romance because it had an emotionally satisfying ending. Despite the sadness, her life was forever changed by knowing him, and she is pregnant with his child, so he will "live on" in some sense. Thankfully, I realized that this is just a love story, not a romance, and I saved myself from stupidly pitching it to a publisher who clearly wouldn't want it.

frimble3 said:

But I'll bet that no book with an 'emotionally satisfying ending' that involves the MC ditching the relationship for a new life and a career of her own, no matter how optimistic she feels, is going to be published as a Romance novel.

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Nope. Wish badly that it could be, because I have a better chance of selling romance than anything else at this point, but a publisher isn't going to break the rules of an entire genre just for me, no matter how awesome a story I might have.

NaeimGiladisLegacy said:

So either Romeo & Juliet wasn't romance, or it wasn't good... Hm. Please.

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It's great, but it's not a romance. I had a hard time wrapping my head around this at first also... It seemed baffling to me that a story like R&J could not be a romance.

andiwrite said:

It's great, but it's not a romance. I had a hard time wrapping my head around this at first also... It seemed baffling to me that a story like R&J could not be a romance.

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Am I the only one who has never seen Romeo and Juliet as any form of romance?
I always saw as sort of a tragedy-morality-satire of the idea of love at first sight and the foolishness of dumb children.

roseangel said:

Am I the only one who has never seen Romeo and Juliet as any form of romance?
I always saw as sort of a tragedy-morality-satire of the idea of love at first sight and the foolishness of dumb children.

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No, I never found it even vaguely romantic. Some beautiful language, but the story itself is ridiculous, if intended to be a story of true love.

roseangel said:

Am I the only one who has never seen Romeo and Juliet as any form of romance?
I always saw as sort of a tragedy-morality-satire of the idea of love at first sight and the foolishness of dumb children.

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I see it the same way. Especially how Romeo goes instantly from pining for Rosaline to "Rosaline who?" and pining for Juliet.

roseangel said:

Am I the only one who has never seen Romeo and Juliet as any form of romance?
I always saw as sort of a tragedy-morality-satire of the idea of love at first sight and the foolishness of dumb children.

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Nope. Romantic Tradgedy? Sure, it certainly qualifys as one imo. But just because the tradgedy centers around a romance, doesn't make it a Romance with an upper case R. There is something bewitching in the idea of one's happiness depending entirely on one person, and that person being willing to die for you. But even understanding that, I'm always shocked people think of it as a Romance. And this is with it being my favorite of his plays.

Marian Perera said:

I see it the same way. Especially how Romeo goes instantly from pining for Rosaline to "Rosaline who?" and pining for Juliet.

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My 9th grade niece thought Romeo was ridiculous for just that reason, before she got halfway through the play.


Of course, the word "romance" has been used to refer to other older genres of literature that didn't necessarily include any love stories at all, which might lead to confusion in some contexts.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romance

RackinRocky said:

If I want a nice read, I don't want to be depressed by an unhappy ending.

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That sums it up in one succinct line.

You're exactly right. It's all about giving readers what they want. Sometimes there are complaints about the happy-ever-after ending of romance being boring or predictable, but to me, it's like going to Baskin Robbins because I want a scoop of chocolate mousse royale. That's why I go to Baskin Robbins. Not so the cashier can say "Surprise!" and give me a green salad (even if I enjoy green salad and the cashier feels this is more healthy for me).

People agree with me? Wow! I am so happy!
Thank you soooooooooo much.
Anyone I ever mention R&J to are like, epic romance!!!!!! While I'm all "ehhh?"

Some of us apparently have a very unhealthy definition of love. Lol

andiwrite said:

Some of us apparently have a very unhealthy definition of love. Lol

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*checks manuscript* Yep.

Cathy C said:

So publishers in America split the category. A romance shelved in the genre of Romance would now be happy, and a love story, shelved in General Fiction would be bittersweet, therefore satisfying both types of readers.

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The problem is that the genre isn't split into two genres, Romance and Love Story. Anything without an HEA gets exiled to the wasteland of General Fiction.

morngnstar said:

The problem is that the genre isn't split into two genres, Romance and Love Story. Anything without an HEA gets exiled to the wasteland of General Fiction.

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I disagree. Anything with a love story goes to its home genre. There are love stories in science fiction, literary, western, YA and almost every genre And there are mainstream fiction like stories like those by Nicholas Sparks who do anything but suffer from his complete rejection of the genre romance categorization.

If anything what has happened is that the love story is so (nearly) all pervasive that it is genuinely without value as a categorization in its own right and has simply become a universal theme. 50% of all fiction released already is within the genre romance subset. If anything else went in there genre romance would simply absorb the majority fiction publishing like the Blob and "genre" would cease to have any meaning.

IMHO the "problem" is that the benefits of being within the romance category (such as they are, it is very very competitive in there) belong to those writing genre romance.

morngnstar said:

The problem is that the genre isn't split into two genres, Romance and Love Story. Anything without an HEA gets exiled to the wasteland of General Fiction.

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Nope. And I would venture so far as to say that calling it a problem is disingenuous. Romance is not just any love story, or any story where love in all its forms is central to things. Romance has certain parameters as a genre, the HEA is one of them.

Related thread that I started a while back: http://www.absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=299575

veinglory said:

I disagree. Anything with a love story goes to its home genre. There are love stories in science fiction, literary, western, YA and almost every genre

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We're not talking about books "with" a love story, we're talking about books that are a love story. If you have a sci-fi about an mad scientist trying to destroy the universe with a doomsday device, oh, and by the way the hero has a girlfriend, that's not a love story. If you have a book that takes place in virtual reality, but it's mainly about the issues in a romantic relationship when you don't know the true physical identity of your lover, that would be a sci-fi romance. Unless it didn't have a happy ending. But then it would still be a different kind of story than the one with the doomsday device, and it might be nice to have at least a sub-genre for that.

Try to imagine if you had these kind of inflexible rules in other genres. What if fantasy said you can't have any technology invented after 1700, but I get creative with my worldbuilding and my world has swords and dragons and wizards but also airplanes? My book has no genre then? Or maybe I can put it in mystery, if I add a subplot where the king gets turned to stone and the heroes have to find the wizard whodunnit? That book should be solid fantasy. Some readers will prefer fantasy that doesn't have modern technology, but others will be fine with it. Those that aren't can read reviews before they buy. At most it should be a sub genre. It doesn't get exiled to total genrelessness.

And there are mainstream fiction like stories like those by Nicholas Sparks who do anything but suffer from his complete rejection of the genre romance categorization.

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So some people exiled to the wasteland are so hardy that they come back and conquer the world. But most just die.

My personal point of view as a writer is that I prefer to write love stories with happy endings. But as a reader I don't mind a book with a sad ending, and I certainly never mind being in suspense about how it will turn out.

morngnstar said:

We're not talking about books "with" a love story, we're talking about books that are a love story.

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Yes! This is my concern. My love story has some mild paranormal elements, but they are really mild and in no way major enough to call it a paranormal story.

How do you pitch a book that falls into this genre-less category? I rarely see agents asking for "love stories." It's always romance, mystery, or some other specific genre. Maybe I'm not looking in the right place. Am I wrong in my perception that it's more difficult to find a publisher for general fiction than something with a genre?

I'd compare my book to The Fault in Our Stars, but that can be classified as YA. What do you call a book like that but features characters in their 30s and 40s? Just "mainstream?" Or is "tragedy" a genre on its own?

Also, can a book be a tragedy if it has an uplifting ending? Is TFIOS a tragedy?

Depending on the setting, maybe it would be contemporary, mainstream, or commercial fiction. Could be women's fiction too, if it's focused on tragic love from a female perspective or female life experiences in particular (note, I sort of dislike the designation "women's fiction," because there's really no corresponding category for stories centered on male perspectives, and it implies that women's life experiences and perspectives are only interesting to women, but it is a marketing category, and it includes many mainstream novels).

Depending on the writing style, it might even be "upmarket," fiction too. These categories are so darned confusing.

morngnstar said:

The problem is that the genre isn't split into two genres, Romance and Love Story. Anything without an HEA gets exiled to the wasteland of General Fiction.

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Why do you feel "mainstream" or "general" fiction is a wasteland? Do only genre books sell these days?

There's a old saying that knowledge is the awareness that tomatoes are fruit. Wisdom is not putting them in a fruit salad. If you want to take your story with a tragic or bittersweet ending and slap a "Genre: Romance" label on it, you can do it, and argue with logic that it's entirely correct. The question is, will you be willing to smile at the blizzard of reviews on Amazon and Goodreads growling, "This romance stinks! It's not what I wanted to read! Too sad! And why is there diced tomato in my fruit salad?"

I think a huge percentage of the novels being sold today are under the category of general fiction. Would that I could pitch my fantasy novel that way. I'd have twice as many agents I could query. You'd be amazed at how many well-regarded agents don't look at SFF (and how many agencies don't even have a single agent who looks at speculative fiction), or romance, or other popular genres. I assume they can afford to shun genre fiction because mainstream or general fiction sells better.

I'm not an industry expert. My purely intuitive opinion is that if you ask someone, "What kind of book do you want to read today?" not many will say, "General Fiction".

I checked out the current NYT best seller list. Seems to have lots of "general fiction" on it.