Fiction writing fits most easily into a variety of well-known genres, but what happens when you find yourself juggling more than one?
You could certainly write an adventure story without any serious romance in it. but I think the best of them tend to include motivations and back stories that presuppose romantic relationships of some sort. And romance stories could operate in a vacuum, absorbed in relationships but low on adventure. But what’s the fun in that, sometimes, other than titillation, perhaps? They can seem awfully flat.
In the current publishing world, however, I think some things have gotten out of balance, primarily on the romance side of things. It seems to me that a lot of romance is concentrating on the varieties of sexual relationships, perhaps in a hope of snagging particular specific reader kinks (um, I mean “interests”). In the process, they seem to scant the actual “adventure” story that the rest of the plot could depend on, much the way that the outright Victorian porn used to do (butler, meet inexperienced new maid). At best, what adventure is in some of their plots is just an engine to pose against.
On the adventure side, romance makes a great motivation for all sorts of story lines — we all love it when the hero wins the lady (or vice versa). But so many of the romance stories I’ve been suckered into reading lately have little weight at all — it’s like eating empty calories, where the flavored bits are just sprinkled on top.
Makes me think I’ve got to go read some more adventure books to get my proper dose of romance instead.
What’s your take on where a lot of romance is going, all by itself, sometimes? How do you keep it from being clinical, instead of wondrous, a foundation for a long term relationship? What warns you away when you read a blurb?
14 responses to “Romance vs Adventure – A Tangled Crossing”
I’ve found it easiest just to write the kind of “people falling in love while having adventures” that I like and ignore what’s hot on either side of the adventure/romance divide.
The advantage of that is that it gives you a free hand with the characterization. Well, more free. There are still constraints. But romance insists that the couple have internal obstacles to their union, so you are boxed in.
Warning signs? When they are supposed to be enemies and fall in love. That means “spicy and lots of arguing.” Certain kinds of romance (paranormal, Mafia, Russian Mafia, dark romantasy) seem to be centered on the physical bits with a bit of other genres tossed in.
I prefer Romances, adventures with character development that happen to have love, or at least growing affection (series book) in them. Or straight-up adventure, because for a while I got burned by “guys have adventure for gal who has less spine than a jellyfish” books.
“How do you keep it from being clinical, instead of wondrous, a foundation for a long term relationship?”
Robot girlfriends. ~:D And lately, fantasy elements. Maybe a bit of tsundere, girls telling the main characters off is always a giggle.
Basically, anything crazy and not romantic. Current WIP, I’m creating a charming little romance between a giant combat spider the size of a Harley and a Goth artist. Because why can’t we have some fun with things?
“What warns you away when you read a blurb?”
Pronouns. Girl-bosses. Evil corporation. Published after 2010. TOR for a publisher…
That sounds like a concept that needs to be made into a comic book.
I’ve been fiddling with AI a little. A comic book might actually be possible these days. We shall see.
I liked the series with the “Shopping – with Explosions” book. I need to go find it because there are probably more by now. That’s not enough for Amazon search. Goodreads will remember it.
Ah! A Perfect Day, With Explosions. Combined Operations is the series. There are four and I’ve already got all of them.
I usually like Lindsey Buroker’s series. The Ruby Lionsdrake (same person but anagram-ed) series are usually more fun.
“What warns you away when you read a blurb?”
mpreg – it’s idiotic and far more common than it should be in shifter romance (>1 is more than it should be).
cultivation – the characters are always awful; if not the intrepid hero, everyone around him.
The Pam Uphoff books (Chronicles of the Fall and Fall of the Alliance series) are a great combination of romance and adventure. The hero and heroine using their smarts to overcome obstacles and recognizing/admiring each other’s strong points, against the background of a tyrannical culture, is a terrific combination.
Romance — as the current day marketing category, or at any rate, the pre-porn category — means a love story where the obstacles to the love are internal to the main couple. So I don’t write romances, I write love stories.
(If you are interested in why I was so hair-splitting above, you might like this:
https://writingandreflections.substack.com/p/reclaiming-romance
)
Any kind of harem setup. I once wrote a long rant on Crossover’s blog about how unrealistic that is, but WordPress doesn’t offer a “search comments I’ve made in the past” feature so I can’t find it now. But the really short version is, most women do not want to share a man. The ones that do end up sharing a man are usually either tricked or coerced into it. So any story where the male protagonist ends up in a relationship with more than one woman, who know about each other and are perfectly fine with the idea, is pure wish-fulfillment fantasy. It just doesn’t work like that in real life, and humans not acting like humans is one of the things that makes me wall a book Real Fast.
… Still haven’t found my comment, but Crossover has blogged on the subject a couple of times. https://crossoverqueen.wordpress.com/2025/02/10/stray-thoughts-harems-yikes/ is perhaps the best one.
I meant to add, “… and that’s probably why so many books hide the fact that they have a harem setup.” Crossover wrote another post (or rant) about that one, too: https://crossoverqueen.wordpress.com/2025/11/17/harems-and-truth-in-advertising/
And the reverse doesn’t work either. I ended up reading one once (Baen monthly bundle), and decided I wasn’t going to continue, mostly because it became really obvious that the male main characters were basically going to be the FMC’s emotional support male genitalia and that them all knowing each other beforehand was purely a plot device to try and make them sharing her not wildly implausible.
After way too long, I’ve started writing again, and am playing in exactly this space.
I’m coming down hard on the Adventure side. There is a ton of romance, maybe even more than there is adventure, but I’m violating Romance genre conventions with wanton abandon. They’re married by the end of Chapter 3, both completely Ride-or-Die, and they’re going to survive this together. That they admire each other, are vulnerable to each other, and enjoy being around each other along the way, would not stop me from being lynched if I marketed it as Romance.
(Besides, it’s PG-13, even if it sometimes gets quite suggestive.)
That’s a story style I’ve always enjoyed. Go get ’em!