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[jeriendhal]

Which led me to wonder in turn if that's one of the salient differences between men's adventure fiction and women's romance fiction. In an adventure tale, the most important relationship is between the hero/ine and the villain (or antagonist, in the case of villain-less conflicts such as man-against-nature); in a romance, the most important relationship is between the heroine and the hero. Combining the two story types can lead to a sort of hierarchy-of-values problem. If two characters struggling for their very lives stop in the middle to smooch, it risks looking not romantic, but stupid. And villains have their ways of insisting that everyone pay attention to them
-Lois McMaster Bujold

I think this explains a lot about some of the trouble I'm having with "Unforseen Consequences" the direct sequel to "Unexpected Diversions" (as opposed to all the side-tracks I've written). UD was basically a romantic story. It was all about Tez and Maria feeling each other out, trying to get into each other's heads to understand who they were facing. UC is more a of straight adventure, with Tez and Maria facing a definitey villian and trying to solve a problem. But my two tragic romantics are still getting into each other's heads, which distracts from the villian's plot and leaves both halves of the story weaker, or at least not as enjoyable for me to write.

Hmmmm...

Comments

[chaypeta.livejournal.com]

And the other problem, I think, is having set a precedence of what type of story you've written before hand you set up an expectation for the theme of future stories. I love Bjold's work, as you know, but I find that her leaps from a strictly romantic tale in one book (with just a little background plot to colour it) to a book that has only a token of romance wedged into a political type plot rather jarring. The jump in focus doesn't work for me.

I think it can be done all in one novel though. I've just read 'The Dark Mirror' (set in 5th century Scotland) and while it is primarily a romance there is a big and very interesting political plot that works well just on it's own. Not easy though. The trick is to keep everything logical. It helps when the characters take over the writing themselves but painful when they decide to be mute and uncooperative. And then there's striking the right balance between the two so one plot doesn't drown the other (something I'm afraid Mercedes Lackey falls over with.)

With Terinu I try to stick to the main story and if the characters decide to form relationships while I'm writing then I just have them do whatever responses would be logical given their personalities. But then I never intended to write romance (this current page not withstanding... *rolls eyes* oh yes... and then that later scene this chapter lol.)

Sorry... this is no help at all. I hope you find a satisfactory middle ground... or do what i do and just wing it and hope for the bext.