#romance-tropes

#romance-tropes

On the page, we have total control - we see what's happening inside the character's mind, the narrative is designed to have a safe outcome, and there are no real-world repercussions. This allows us to safely explore strong emotions such as danger, obsession, or dominance. Often, these scenarios present these actions with emotional intensity, vulnerability, or chemistry, which can make them feel incredibly exciting and romantically charged, even though intellectually, we understand that these scenarios would not be appropriate.

Tropes, as these bullet-point ideas have come to be known, have taken over romance. Those who write, market and read romantic fiction use them to pinpoint exactly what to expect before the first page is turned. On Instagram, Amazon and bookshop posters you'll find covers annotated with arrows and faux-handwritten labels reading slow-burn or home-town boy/new girl in town. Turn over any romance title and they'll be there listed in the blurb.

With its title stylised in quotation marks, and a director's statement that it's intended to capture her experience of reading the book aged 14, it uses the guise of interpretation to gut one of the most impassioned, emotionally violent novels ever written, and then toss its flayed skin over whatever romance tropes seem most marketable. Adaptation or not, it's an astonishingly hollow work.

Arranged marriages generate real feelings. A human falls in love with a high lord of the fae. These are just a few of the plots readers can find in modern romance novels, which vary in tone, setting, and characters but are united by one key characteristic: a central love story that culminates in the all-important HEA (happily ever after, for the uninitiated). Everything leading up to that-the meet-cute, the first kiss, the third-act breakup-is left to the author.