August 25th is Kiss and Make Up Day. How could I possibly let that one go by?
Apparently, the day is intended to encourage people who have fallen out with friends or relatives to forgive each other, make peace, and move on. Which is all very worthy and mature.
But this is a romance writer’s blog. You say Kiss and Make Up Day, I’m going somewhere completely different.
I’m thinking about those romance novels. You know the ones. The hero sees the heroine talking to another man. Or she overhears half a conversation. Or somebody says something that could have two possible meanings, and naturally the protagonist chooses the catastrophic one. Or there is some perfectly innocent event which, if explained, would take perhaps thirty seconds to clear up.
And then…
They Don’t Talk About It.
For the next two hundred pages.
The Five-Minute Problem
I used to run into this plot all the time in category romances—Harlequins, Mills & Boons and their cousins. I haven’t read category romances for a very long time, so perhaps they’ve changed.
In fact, that’s partly why I’m writing this post. I want to know if readers still encounter this particular form of romantic torture. Because it used to drive me insane.
Not all misunderstandings in fiction are stupid. Far from it. Human beings misunderstand each other constantly. We hear what we expect to hear. We leap to conclusions. We avoid asking questions when we’re afraid of the answers. We conceal things because we’re embarrassed, ashamed, frightened, stubborn, or trying to protect someone.
That is fertile territory for fiction.
But there’s another sort of misunderstanding. It’s the one where I’m sitting there thinking: Ask him.
Three chapters later: FOR GOD’S SAKE, ASK HIM.
Another fifty pages: YOU ARE BOTH IN THE SAME ROOM. USE WORDS!!!
Because if either character behaved like a reasonably functional adult and said, “Wait. What exactly did you mean by that?”, the entire romantic conflict would vanish.
Which presents the author with a rather serious problem.
So the characters can’t ask. They can’t explain. They can’t compare notes. They can’t accidentally acquire useful information from anyone else.
Sometimes they can’t even finish a sentence without the other person storming from the room. Because if they actually sat down and hashed everything out for five minutes, the novel would collapse like a soufflé when someone slams the oven door.
Conflict That Exists Because Nobody Is Allowed to Fix It
I think that’s what bothers me about this particular plot. It isn’t the misunderstanding itself. It’s when I can see the author’s hand holding the characters apart.
The conflict doesn’t grow naturally out of who these people are. It survives because the story requires them not to discover the truth yet. And once I notice that, I’m no longer inside the story.
I’m watching the machinery, instead. That’s generally fatal for me as a reader. Especially because romantic conflict can be so much more interesting than that.
Two people can love each other desperately and still have genuinely incompatible goals. They can have obligations pulling them in opposite directions. They can disagree about something that matters enormously to both of them. They can be carrying old wounds that make trust difficult. They can both be completely honest and still have no idea how they’re going to make a relationship work.
That’s conflict.
“She thinks he’s engaged because she saw him hug his sister and has refused to speak to him since Chapter Two” is…
Well.
Kiss and make up already.
But Do These Books Still Exist?
Here’s where I run out of current information. I stopped reading category romances a long time ago. And now that I think about it, I can’t remember the last time I read a recently published romance in which the entire romantic conflict rested upon one stupid misunderstanding that could have been cleared up over a cup of coffee.
Maybe romance readers stopped tolerating it. Maybe editors stopped buying it. Maybe writers became better at making the misunderstanding itself psychologically convincing.
Or maybe those books are still everywhere and I’ve simply managed to avoid them.
So now I’m curious.
Have you read a romance recently where the entire plot depended upon the hero and heroine simply refusing to have one sensible conversation?
And, more importantly:
How long do you give them?
Do you keep reading in the hope there’s a deeper reason for the misunderstanding?
Do you make it to the halfway point?
Or the second you realize, Oh, no. This whole book could be solved with one conversation… Do you close it and go looking for something else?
I strongly suspect my tolerance these days would be about five pages. Possibly three. After all, life is short.
And August 25th is Kiss and Make Up Day.
They’ve been warned.
Now available for preorder:
Scandalous Sirens Omnibus
Latest releases:
Camlann
Even More Time Kissed Moments
Before, After, Always