Fic Talk > General Discussion
The romantic debate
RokofAges75:
You both bring up great points about sequels. Like Mare said, I think it's easy to get attached to characters, especially in a romance where, like SakaSteph said, it's all about that interpersonal relationship. You really come to know and care about the characters, both as people and as a couple, and it's tempting to want to continue writing about them and their life beyond the original story.
I think what writers sometimes forget is that stories are meant to be more exciting than real life. It's one thing to have a story and its characters be realistic... but that doesn't mean the story plays out exactly like real life. Most people's day to day lives are not that interesting, whereas a good story is interesting because it stems from conflict.
I feel like when you take a story past its natural conclusion, where the main conflict is resolved, either by drawing the story out longer or by writing a sequel, it starts to get boring, and the "solution" is to throw a bunch of new problems at the characters to create drama. Then it switches from boring/too much like real life to over-the-top melodramatic/too much like a soap opera. I think that's what happens with some (SOME, certainly not all) sequels, especially in romance.
And like Darby said, sometimes it ends up ruining the characters. Speaking from my own experience, when you have to really reach to invent some kind of conflict to build a sequel around, you end up with your beloved characters acting in ways that totally go against the way you originally developed them. Better to leave them with their self-respect and let the story end when the real conflict ends.
myconfession:
--- Quote from: mare on July 08, 2011, 06:21:11 AM ---Oh and yay for actually debating this!! Like you said Mel, if you like it read it, if not don't. The only reason we're talking about it is because most of us said we thought it was over-rated. I thought this would be a fun one to discuss. I think in general romance is a popular genre. As a writer trying to get published, if you write romance there are soo many more options for you than if you write anything else. I have been so tempted to write a romance but I can't do it. I'm not the romance type lmao
Like I said in that other thread that Julie made, I think it's easy to be over critical of romance because it's all over the place. Just like people tend to over analyze everything Nick does but Howie can kill someone and it would go unnoticed...Un less he kills Nick, which might happen one day LOL
--- End quote ---
Would it be bad if you have Nick kill himself in two of your stories? Granted, they are 10 years apart but LMFAO!
People were fucking PISSED at that. LMFAO!
mare:
Nick killing himself or being killed by someone else is something that also makes a lot of people happy lol See, you mention that to suspense/angst people and they might be tempted to read.
RokofAges75:
^ Yep! If you recommend a romance to me with the promise that someone's going to die at the end, I'm automatically more interested in reading it, because at least that means it has the promise of drama and angst and something interesting happening.
I'm the reader that used to click on random chapters near the end of stories to see if there was any sign of tragedy before I decided whether or not to read them all the way through LOL. I don't do that anymore, but I sure did back then, especially with romance. Usually I'd read the first few chapters, but if nothing interesting had happened by that point, I'd click ahead to see if anything interesting ever did. If not... eh, not worth my time. LOL
Carter-Orange:
I'm quite happy to read stories where characters are killed off or something else tragic. I've written a couple of short romance stories where I've either killed the girl off or killed them both off at the end (they're Take That stories though).
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