Romance Authors in Here?

[stickygirl]

Yeah,

I'm kinda boring vanilla.

I don't do the incest, BDSM, or non consensual.

Like one of my other favorite authors says.

I like Hallmark with sex.

Any other boring authors like me here?

Writing from the heart is the only way I can do it - anything else feels fake and would probably read fake too. There is SO much choice at Lit and there will always be room for romance. To make someone laugh or cry is far more memorable than just getting their rocks off.
Some of my better stories still make me well up in a positive way!

 

[SouthernCrossfire]

Wondering about the number, I just counted mine. About 30 of 42 published works (some published as separate chapters) fall in the Romance category and about half of the others could have gone into Romance rather than the category in which they were published. Most of the rest have at least a romantic focus to them though there's not always an HEA.

To me, stickygirl is really right about the laugh or cry element of Romance, too. I have scenes in at least two of my stories that I still can't read without getting misty-eyed and I'm always glad to get positive "tears" comments from readers in various works.

 

[Emilymcplugger]

Yeah,

I'm kinda boring vanilla.

I don't do the incest, BDSM, or non consensual.

Like one of my other favorite authors says.

I like Hallmark with sex.

Any other boring authors like me here?

Whilst I submit almost exclusively to Group my classification of “Deviant but Romantic” bears true of my stories hopefully (although the last one did feature BDSM).

I think many stories on here have a romantic bent and it tends to make the stories better. Romance creates stakes and stakes lead to dramatic possibility.

 

[onehitwanda]

Romance isn't boring. Love is the most complex, nuanced, volatile, wounding thing that you can experience. Romance is a window onto the most fragile bits of us.

Romance and Love are this:

For sale: baby shoes, never worn

or this:

O happy dagger! This is thy sheath; there rust, and let me die.

or this (and yes it's not Romance and fuck you I will fight you until the stars burn out because these two men loved one another so much)

I hope I can make it across the border. I hope to see my friend, and shake his hand. I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams. I hope.

 

[Emotional]

Most of my stories are romances (whether they're in the Romance category, Mature, or whatever) and they're generally well-received. However, one possible concern for some writers may be that some readers don't venture into the Romance category very often. That may make it a little more difficult to pick up large numbers of followers in comparison to writers who focus on a wider selection of more popular categories.

Good luck!

I have read and enjoyed many of your stories.

 

[AwkwardlySet]

Well, I don't do incest and non con, and my femdom is (con)sensual and loving.
I must admit that I find pure romance stories somewhat boring. Maybe because I'm a guy. Maybe for some other reasons as well. But one thing I'll say is that any story, erotic or non-erotic, without at least a hint of romance in it, I find much poorer for it.
So for me, romance on its own isn't enough, but it is also an essential ingredient for stories of any type. Well, at least for the ones I like reading and writing.

 

[gunhilltrain]

I've mentioned before that Romance readers have trouble with breakup scenes, which are often the way to end a series. But it's not 1920 any longer, and the end of a romance is as important as the beginning.

The long-lasting marriages of earlier eras were, in the long run, often practical rather than emotional. For previous generations, "being good" was a priority, which is not the same as our idea of "being happy."

 

[John_Vandermeer]

I've mentioned before that Romance readers have trouble with breakup scenes, which are often the way to end a series. But it's not 1920 any longer, and the end of a romance is as important as the beginning.

The long-lasting marriages of earlier eras were, in the long run, often practical rather than emotional. For previous generations, "being good" was a priority, which is not the same as our idea of "being happy."

Readers outside of Romance seem to have problems with breakup endings too

 

[PeytonMirabelle]

Yeah,

I'm kinda boring vanilla.

I don't do the incest, BDSM, or non consensual.

Like one of my other favorite authors says.

I like Hallmark with sex.

Any other boring authors like me here?

My stories are across the spectrum but Romance is my favorite one to read and write in, and most of mine have some element therein.

You're not boring. You do you, and keep being awesome.

I've mentioned before that Romance readers have trouble with breakup scenes, which are often the way to end a series. But it's not 1920 any longer, and the end of a romance is as important as the beginning.

The long-lasting marriages of earlier eras were, in the long run, often practical rather than emotional. For previous generations, "being good" was a priority, which is not the same as our idea of "being happy."

In general storytelling terms, I think that can work. However, Romance readers as a whole tend to want the HEA/HFN endings, so ending on a breakup in that category is going to be a hard sell. Not impossible but going against the tide.

 

[stickygirl]

I watched Little Women ( again ) recently and remember the publisher's advice to Jo "Make sure the woman is either married or dead by the end.... or it won't sell".

Romance thread or not, this is the AH and there'll be a fight before it's done
I'll be watching

 

[AwkwardlySet]

I watched Little Women ( again ) recently and remember the publisher's advice to Jo "Make sure the woman is either married or dead by the end.... or it won't sell".

Romance thread or not, this is the AH and there'll be a fight before it's done
I'll be watching

I seriously doubt that. I don't think there is anybody who outright hates romances, even in AH This simply isn't an inflaming topic.
AH shows its horns mostly on political topics and of course the legendary topics such as those about ratings and story quality, all borderline categories like noncon and such. If you want to try to pick a fight, you will have to add some of the flammability I mentioned. You could claim that romances represent stories of better quality than other categories, or something like that

 

[Emilymcplugger]

Romance isn't boring. Love is the most complex, nuanced, volatile, wounding thing that you can experience. Romance is a window onto the most fragile bits of us.

Romance and Love are this:

or this:

or this (and yes it's not Romance and fuck you I will fight you until the stars burn out because these two men loved one another so much)

Jesus, that first one hits like a punch to the stomach. I can’t even remember what it’s from but it is SUCH a blow.

More recently of course love is Laundry…and taxes.

 

[stickygirl]

Jesus, that first one hits like a punch to the stomach. I can’t even remember what it’s from but it is SUCH a blow.

More recently of course love is Laundry…and taxes.

Agreed - I gulped, then tried to think of all the innocent reasons behind it to make me feel better.

 

[onehitwanda]

Jesus, that first one hits like a punch to the stomach. I can’t even remember what it’s from but it is SUCH a blow.

More recently of course love is Laundry…and taxes.

It's Hemmingway. And it's the worst of the reasons - he wrote it having seen a longer advert in a local paper advertising clothing for a child who no longer needed them.

and every time I read it my eyes water and I have to bite my tongue and go do something else.

 

[Zootonius]

Agreed - I gulped, then tried to think of all the innocent reasons behind it to make me feel better.

The most chilling scene I ever saw in a movie, was one where nothing horrifying happens. The movie was 'M' and the scene was mothers in a neighborhood calling their children home to eat until there's just one mother calling, her voice becoming more and more alarmed.

I could never watch that movie again.

 

[BobbyBrandt]

Any other boring authors like me here?

You're in good company here.

Most of my stories here are romantic adventures with only implied sexual activities, if any. I am fine with a PG rating on my stories here, and my scores haven't suffered.

Literotica is only one site where your stories might find an audience, and some of the others will be more restrictive to content. Keeping yourself "vanilla" could work to your advantage, so don't apologize for it.

 

[Bramblethorn]

I write in several genre but most of my stories have some element of romance. The reason for that is that up until the advent of social media, romance was the typical way people became close enough to willingly engage in sex. Girls were taught by their mothers to save their virginity for that one "right" man, and boys were taught by their fathers to respect women. By the time sex was actively discussed, both knew enough about each other to form the bonds of love and trust. That didn't always mean marriage, but it usually did.

That's a somewhat rose-tinted view. From the National Survey of Family Growth: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1802108/

In the same vein, there is a common popular perception that most or all of those who came of age before the “sexual revolution” of the 1960s and 1970s waited until they married to have sex, and that it is necessary to revert to the behaviors of that earlier time in order to eliminate the problems of unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases. However, research has questioned whether such a chaste period ever existed.

...

Among [US women] turning 15 between 1954 and 1963, 82% had had premarital sex by age 30, and 88% had done so by age 44.

[For that cohort, "age 44" would be no later than 1992.]

This piece discusses England up to the 19th century: https://medium.com/@mimicofmodes/yes-they-did-premarital-sex-in-english-history-99dd43f02f0f

At the end of the sixteenth century, a full quarter of the brides in certain rural English parishes went to the altar already pregnant. The percentage dipped during the Civil Wars and Interregnum (possibly because of issues with record-keeping rather than an actual change in practice), and came back up to about a fifth in the first decades of the eighteenth century, increasing to about forty percent by the end of it and into the nineteenth. And these are just the women whose premarital sex resulted in a pregnancy! More than that number were actually having it.

I know there were men who were always on the lookout for a willing woman, and the 60's convinced women that sex was not only OK, but it could be really great. Still, the "free love" people were a minor part of that generation. Most people dated until they found the right person, and they found that right person because of romance. It's the same for older people today. It's fun to think about grandmas and grandpas getting it on in the assisted living community, but most of them are still following what they learned from their parents.

Possibly most, but "most" is a long way from "all". Sexuality in nursing homes is enough of an issue that managers are having to consider policies for managing things like STI prevention and consent where one of the participants has dementia, : https://www.nowtolove.com.au/health/sex/the-truth-about-sex-and-stis-in-nursing-homes-17361

 

[JaxRhapsody]

Most of what I write is romance, or has romance in it, and it's somewhat of a coping mechanism. I just don't do a lot of it here. Speaking on incest; you could say the way I'm writing One Loving Mother is a budding romance, because it isn't your typical "mom catches son jacking off", "in the shower", or "fucking somebody" story... she'd just a little crazy about trying to be with him, and it's not just about sex, and she just wants him to come around and ignore they're related and love her like she wants to be. His reluctance actually makes it harder to write, to get him to come around.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Romance isn't boring. Love is the most complex, nuanced, volatile, wounding thing that you can experience. Romance is a window onto the most fragile bits of us.

Seconded. I maintain that romance and horror are siblings. They're both made of vulnerability, physicality, and fear of the unknown, although the ingredients are assembled differently.

Even when there's not much happening in the sense of exploding helicopters, dramatic unmaskings, or horseback elopements, there's enough in the complicated interaction between two people trying to Make It Work to keep me occupied for a novel's worth, if it's done well. One of my recent favourites (Courtney Milan's "When The Devil Comes Calling") is about two people who have virtually no drama going on between them; it's "just" a portrait of how two damaged people complement one another and give one another the strength to deal with the things they couldn't cope with on their own.

I've written about four stories here that might qualify as romance, though they're all F-F and most of them mix in other genres. My first, "A Stringed Instrument", is a fairly conventional modern-day romance aside from the queer content; I think there's a very slight aspect of affectionate BDSM but it's not a major ingredient. "Riddle of the Copper Coin" is half contemporary romance, half fantasy romance. "Magnum Innominandum" is more "weird tale with a tragic romance involved". "Loss Function" is the only one I actually posted in Romance and it's done well there, even though it deals with some rather sad themes and opens at the funeral of the love interest.

"Red Scarf" caused some readers difficulty, because the opening is one that could have been a romance premise a la Pretty Woman, but it was never intended to be a romance and it didn't end like one.

 

[MelissaBaby]

I don't write just Romance, but I've written a fair amount of it.

I put my feelings about writing it in the mouth of my character Rachel, in Chapter 35 of Mary and Alvin.

"My writing all comes from my fascination with the great paradox of love. And that is that love is the most incredible miracle in the world, but it surrounds us every moment of our lives. It is the most precious thing in the world, but it is one of the most common."

 

[gunhilltrain]

In general storytelling terms, I think that can work. However, Romance readers as a whole tend to want the HEA/HFN endings, so ending on a breakup in that category is going to be a hard sell. Not impossible but going against the tide.

I'm partially basing this on what I saw and heard from older relatives, and relatives of friends I knew. Back around 1920 or so, I'm not sure the term "dating" was even used. My grandparents might call it "keeping company," perhaps. Not all of these resulted in marriages, but that was the main point of it anyway. I think the marriage rate has dropped considerably since then, and the average age of getting married has gone up quite a bit. And once in a marriage, it was difficult to get out. Neither of my grandmothers had a paying job after marriage (around 1925 or so). Both passed quite a bit earlier than their husbands.

Someone like Gloria Swanson (born in 1899 like my maternal grandfather) could get away with being married six times, but that was unthinkable for the average person.

 

[ronde]

That's a somewhat rose-tinted view. From the National Survey of Family Growth: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1802108/



[For that cohort, "age 44" would be no later than 1992.]

This piece discusses England up to the 19th century: https://medium.com/@mimicofmodes/yes-they-did-premarital-sex-in-english-history-99dd43f02f0f





Possibly most, but "most" is a long way from "all". Sexuality in nursing homes is enough of an issue that managers are having to consider policies for managing things like STI prevention and consent where one of the participants has dementia, : https://www.nowtolove.com.au/health/sex/the-truth-about-sex-and-stis-in-nursing-homes-17361

Not attempting to start an argument, but I never said couples waited until they were married to have sex. What I said was girls were told to save themselves for marriage, not that they did. My point was that prior to social media, sex was usually the result of some period of romance. There have probably always been one night stands, but they weren't nearly as common as they are today.

 

[YDB95]

Romance is among my specialties, too. It's attracted my fair share of trolls who whine about how vanilla my style is, but hey, I like what I like.

 

[JaxRhapsody]

Romance is among my specialties, too. It's attracted my fair share of trolls who whine about how vanilla my style is, but hey, I like what I like.

Even most of us freaks have vanilla sex most of the time.

 

[stickygirl]

Not attempting to start an argument, but I never said couples waited until they were married to have sex. What I said was girls were told to save themselves for marriage, not that they did. My point was that prior to social media, sex was usually the result of some period of romance. There have probably always been one night stands, but they weren't nearly as common as they are today.

I used to think the Victorians were sex-phobic and subsequently never had sex, but have discovered that's a smoke screen. Of course they did and yes, they had one-nighters. It's tempting to see the past through a lens of 'We more advanced so of course they acted differently, out of ignorance' ( apologies - this probably isn't what you meant ). I prefer to think of our ancestors as pretty sophisticated - they simply lacked the knowledge and technology. Technology has only been around for a few hundred years.

There have been whispering in the media that Z-gens are preserving their virginity and their grandparents applaud their apparent moral correctness. If young girls are abstaining from sex, it's not through morals but fear and social media is the driver to that fear.