Unfortunately I didn’t copy the date Eric wrote this, but he hadn’t published 1634: The Baltic War yet, so it’s been a while. With our writers looking toward Issue 15 of Eric Flint’s 1632 & Beyond, which has romance as a theme, and our next Salon call focused on romance, it’s timely content to share.
In the many years since he wrote this, romance in all it’s glorious varieties has continued to be a strong part of 1632. Marla and Franz’ relationship is one of the most thoroughly fleshed out romances, but it’s far from the only one. In my own writing, my personal favorite relationship is between two octogenarians in my forthcoming Baen e-book release Red Shield. But I am looking forward to hearing more about Andrew Mackey and Julie Sims and their romance. And Eddie Cantrell and his bride. And… Well, you get the idea. The 1632verse isn’t just about battles and technological developments. It’s about people, and people have romances.
Enjoy some insights from Eric!
– Bethanne
Romance
RULE NUMBER ONE. What really keeps readers alert and on the qui vive, romance wise, are NEW romances. Old familiar ones are fine, of course, and you want to keep them simmering nicely on the pot or your fans will get grumpy. But you need a new romance to really liven things up.
This can get tricky, mind you, in a long series, because after a while how many damn romances can you keep piling up? Still, while it’s a challenge, it can usually be done. One gimmick, of course, is to draaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaawwww out the romance across several books. I used this gimmick shamelessly in the Belisarius series, starting the Rao-Shakuntala romance in the first novel and not concluding it until the fourth.
There are lots of ways to draw it out. Two excellent staples are:
a) The simplest is an age problem, created by the fact that one of the romantic partners is simply too young still. I milked this shamelessly in the Belisarius series with the romance between Photius and Tahmina, and Misty and Dave Freer and I milked it just as shamelessly in WIZARD OF KARRES. (Which, be assured, Dave and I will continue to do in SORCERESS OF KARRES.) And I will be milking it again in the course of the 1632 series, starting at the end of BALTIC WAR.
This one’s rather tricky, since you can easily skirt the edge of pedophilia if you’re not careful. But you’re okay as long as you keep any actual physical contact to a respectable minimum.
b) An interruption in the expected course of romantic events. I think of this as the Monopoly Option. (As in, “Go To Jail Immediately, Do Not Collect $200.”)
Dave Freer and I used this trick in Rats, Bats & the Ugly, by immediately separating Chip and Ginny at the beginning of the novel. In a sense, the romance that looked to be concluded at the end of the prequel has to start over again.
There are many variations on this trick. The Great Misunderstanding. The Past Comes Back to Haunt. Evil Forces Intervene. Whatever. Regardless of the specific device, you’re doing the same thing: breaking up what looked to be a foregone conclusion, at least for a time.
Furthermore, “new” romance has a lot of variations. The “new” romance in DANCE OF TIME is that of a couple who are already married when the story starts — Calopodius and Anna — but the marriage had no life to it.
You can fudge this rule a little, in a long series, but you don’t want to fudge it much.
RULE NUMBER TWO. The prospective lovers MUST have crossed stars of some sort or another. There has GOT to be some impediment to their romance, or there’s no tension at all — and tension is the key to making romance work.
This one’s critical, folks. Captain of the Football Team woos and wins Head Cheerleader is boring boring boring boring — at least, unless you can insert some unusual ingredient in the mix. On the other hand, Shy and Awkward Geek woos and wins — stumbling time after time — Head Cheerleader is almost a guaranteed winner. (Or the observe.)
RULE NUMBER THREE. At least one of the two partners has to be disreputable, in some way or another. Or, at the very least, a clear underdog. This overlaps Rule Two, of course, but it’s still distinct. It’s not quite as critical as the first two rules, because there are more exceptions. You violate the first two Rules at your peril. This one you can get away with violating, although I don’t recommend it.
I’m appending below an episode from much later in the novel that makes this quite explicit, by the way. All of Chapter 34, in fact, since I don’t think we’ll get that far in the snippeting before the book comes, so what the hell. (And it will pretty much quell any remaining doubts anyone might have as to whether betting against Paul’s prediction is a good idea.)
Fair warning! This chapter contains a number of spoilers. None of them really major, in my opinion — or, at least, the major one should have been a foregone conclusion — but they’re still spoilers. So if that bothers you, don’t read it.
[Chapter Omitted]
Virginia DeeMarce:
In fact, Eric insists on the romances.
When I outlined The Bavarian Crisis, it only had Fernando and Maria Anna, which is not exactly The Romance of the Century. The most one can say is that as important royal marriage go, it may turn out better, from a personal perspective, than any of them had any real reason to hope.
Presto: he ordered me to create the characters who turned into Marc and Susanna, who are (1) too young by down-time standards, though not so young to cause problems to the readers; and (2) separated by what Roman Catholic canon law calls “disparity of cult,” which is a real obstacle for conscientious down-timers, though modern readers may become a bit impatient with it.
One comforting thing about coming up with romantic interests in this series is that because it involves so many characters, we’re not faced with the Captain Kirk challenge of perpetually coming up with new interests for the very few individuals who have the perpetual focus during new episodes (see also James Bond). I think that Andrew might do that with Harry Lefferts if Eric lets him.
Eric has been flexible for my stories. I’ve gotten away with couples who don’t fit into traditional models for various reasons, such as age (Wes Jenkins and Clara Bachmeierin). Not to mention Martin Wackernagel and his off-stage wives.
I may have given the wrong impression by some comments earlier, which were at least partly intended to be jocular. The fact is that while I always keep an eye out for any chance to introduce one of the Classic Romances into a novel, I also cheerfully include just about every other variation imaginable. Such as:
Middle-aged/somewhat elderly couples. (Indira and Julius in MOTHER OF DEMONS; Melissa and James Nichols in 1632.) Neither of those romances had many of the characteristics of the classic Romeo & Juliet “formula,” after all.
May-December romances, going either way in terms of gender. (Rao and Shakuntala in the Belisarius series; Helen and A.J. in BOUNDARY; Ruy and Sharon in the 1632 series.) These pose a different challenge.
Romances of convenience or necessity. I do a lot of these, and they’re usually where the very young partner comes into play, as with Photius and Tahmina in the Belisarius series. There are many examples of this sort of relationship all through my books, especially those set in an historical period when such marriages were typical. Another example from the Belisarius series is both of Rukaiya’s marriages, first to Eon and then to Ousanas. For that matter, the marriage between Rana Sanga and his wife, or the marriages at the end between Dadadi’s daughters and Valentinian and Anastasius. NONE of those relationships start off as “romances.” Instead, the romantic elements emerge as time goes on.
The romance developing between Sheff Parker and Imogene Johnson in the Houston series is another example, at least in part. At the beginning, outside of pure hormones, most of Sheff’s interest in Imogene is driven more by ambition than what you could call “true love.” The challenge, for me as a writer, was depicting that interest undergoing a transformation as the story progresses. Which, by the way, is exactly what the greatest romance novelist of all time, Jane Austen, does in almost all of her stories.
What you get — what I aim for, at least — is a panoply of romantic relationships that corresponds to much of what people encounter in their lives. And I’m guided by my own life’s experience on this subject, which is this:
For every person who REALLY worries and frets and gets ecstatic over his firearm collection and/or his video action movies, there are a thousand people — half of them male — who REALLY worry and fret and get ecstatic over whatever romantic elements exist in their lives.
That’s what happens in the real world. Including to people who swear they don’t like to read romances. 🙂 But they sure don’t mind living it, now do they?
The trick is to bring that real life feeling into the story, so the romances don’t seem to be something happening up on a stage somewhere.
**
You also have to ask just what a romance is. The marriage between Count Ludwig Guenther of Schwarzburg-Rudolstadt and Countess Emelie of Oldenburg-Delmenhorst was historically real, although it took place several years later. For the 1632-series, I butterflied to having it arranged in the spring of 1633 (The Rudolstadt Colloquy). Eric’s Chapter 34 of TBW [1634: The Baltic War] incorporated this background.
Was it a romance? Probably not in any traditional sense. The only “romance” book I can think of that even approximates it would be Georgette Heyer’s A Civil Contract, which is still controversial among romance readers.
The count was 33 years older than his wife and a devout Lutheran who seems, on the basis of all available documentation, to have been celibate until his marriage. However, all the historical documentation indicates that the marriage was happy. The count was intelligent, kind, honorable, and sober. Emelie, who was also a devout Lutheran, knew perfectly well that if political necessity had demanded it, her family might have matched her with a man who was not only 33 years older than she was, but was dumb, mean, dishonest, and a sot. For the time, place, and circumstances, she had a happy outcome, if a long widowhood, during which she presided over a very pious and respectable court and served as a capable regent for their minor son.
Two of their daughters and their daughter-in-law became rather well-known as writers of Lutheran hymns (still in use in the hymnals).
So “romances” don’t have to come out as “one size fits all” by any means. Eric shows her attitudes as changing, but is preserving the historically harmonious aspect of the match.
Thoughts on how Uncle Louis L’Amour handled the romantic stuff:
8 May 2002:
Hmph. I will have you know that The Great L’Amour was one of the Supreme Masters of this trick [the handling of romance] of the trade. The heart of almost EVERY L’Amour novel has nothing to do with whether the good guy is going to plug the bad guy in the end — of course he is, it’s obvious from page 2 — but whether or not He Will Get The Girl.
9 May 2002:
As a rule, L’Amour followed the most common variant in westerns, which is what you might call the “Shane gambit.” The hero is established almost immediately as a very dangerous man, but one who hides his light under a bushel. (Basically for moral reasons.) So far as violence goes, the tension is really not whether he can handle the bad guy, it’s whether or not he’ll finally take off the gloves and do so. It’s a moral and emotional tension, in other words, not a combat tension.
The same is not true with the question of whether or not he’ll get the girl. That is not established as something which is a given. There really is a question of whether he can do it, period, not simply whether he’ll decide to do it. Usually, in fact, the decision is not really his anyway, but the woman’s. And it usually involves her coming to grips with a new reality and learning to separate what’s important from what isn’t.
Moral: See if you can get a relationship going in a story. IIRC, in Uncle Louis’ short stories the girl didn’t always get the guy.
