Queer Romance Conventions and Tropes: Build a Strong Foundation from the Start
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Romance conventions and tropes are the glue that hold your queer romance mosaic together. Sure, queer romance is accepted and talked about as a subset of the wider romance genre. At the same time (in my totally unbiased eyes), queer romance is a genre all on its own. Queer romance authors are more willing to explore the human condition on levels that tend to be absent from non-queer romance stories.
Though he speaks in the broadest terms, John Truby writes the following:
The Love story is the most profound of all story forms because it shows us that we become our true and best self by forming a community of two.
The Anatomy of Story: How Story Form Explains the Way the World Works
You can put a limitless number and combination of romance conventions and tropes into your story. Nevertheless, weigh both against the story you’re trying to tell, and the inherent theme woven throughout your story’s pages.
First, let’s start with a clear understanding of the difference between queer romance genre conventions and individual story tropes. Next, you want to apply those differences to your plot and character choices.
Before all that, though?
The One Romance Convention You Cannot Break
There aren’t many rules when it comes to writing romance. Yet there is One Rule you aren’t allowed to break—under any circumstances. If your story doesn’t have a happy ending? If your protagonists don’t ultimately overcome every challenge or obstacle they face to fully commit to each other?
In short, you have not written a queer romance story (or any romance story). You have written a queer story with a heavy romantic subplot. If that’s what you’re going for, great. If not, prepare yourself to go back to the drafting board.
Conventions vs. Tropes
Savannah Gilbo defines conventions as “a reasonably well-defined set of roles, settings, events, and values that are specific to a genre.”
On the other side of the story coin, Nisha Tuli writes, “A trope [. . .] is a familiar thematic idea that can be seen in many stories across the genre, but each with their own characters, settings, plot, and spirit.”
If these definitions look the same to you, don’t worry. You’re not alone. Even I sometimes have a hard time distinguishing between the two. You could argue that the two principles work the same. Although this may be true, I propose a different perspective be used.
Queer romance conventions are the high-level genre expectations readers have before they open your book. Those conventions follow the same patterns for the most part.
- Two (or more) people meet.
- Sparks fly.
- One (or both) fights falling in love in ever bigger ways, even as they draw nearer to that same person.
- They accept that they cannot live without this other person and will make that known to them in dramatic fashion.
Tropes, on the other hand, are the specific categories you pull from the Queer Romance Conventions Bucket to populate your story. Need an extreme example? Browse your local e-book device’s store. I swear, if the Billionaire CEO returns to his small hometown (Road Trip) to save his family’s diner, gets to know the down-on-their-luck barista (Wrong Side of the Tracks) in the coffee shop next door (Forced Proximity), and eventually falls in love with them (Fairy Tale) one more time… But I digress.
Queer Romance Plot and Character Tropes
If I had to pick my favorite queer romance character and plot combination, the winner would unquestionably be Grumpy–Sunshine Hurt/Comfort. A close second is a Grumpy–Sunshine Slow Burn. Bonus points are awarded to queer romance plots that have both.
The AllWriteAlright Blog sums up why when they say, “Ultimately, relationship compatibility is about convincing readers that the characters are good for each other.”
However, before you can convince the readers of this, you have to convince the characters. To convince them, you should understand them enough to pick the best character tropes for their internal and external conflicts.
Don’t just stay with the textbook definition of character tropes. Grumpy–Sunshine could otherwise be titled with the Opposites Attract trope. These folx have nothing in common from the outside. In fact, they tend to aggravate the other person with all their *waves generally* them. But their hearts know differently, and when the two goofs stop fighting what’s obvious to every single person around them, the fireworks go off.
Be willing to go beyond superficial strengths and flaws. Avoid cliched representations of queer romance. Above all, as much as your characters will hate you for jamming their relationship through a Michelin-rated pressure cooker, remember that your readers will love every second of it.
Photo by In Lieu & In View Photography on Unsplash
To Sum It All Up
There are countless books and blogs and videos available on writing romance conventions and tropes. Not many of them cover how those conventions and tropes can work together in queer romance. It’s up to the author—yes, you—to understand the foundational principles of creating plausible plot events that happen to complex characters. Conventions and tropes are only the starting point.
Author Alina Khawaja believes, “If you’re writing in a genre with no idea of what the conventions are, then it’s going to be very difficult for you to figure out what works and what doesn’t.”
One of the easiest ways to learn these conventions is to read in your genre. Load up on queer romance novels whenever and wherever you can. Find the common threads between the plot and character tropes that keep pulling you in. Trust your characters to guide you to the conventions and tropes that best represent them.
You’ll find that what you most enjoy reading and who your characters decide they are won’t be too far apart from each other. And once you have that vital information? Get to writing.
Reflecting On Your Story One Word At A Time!
