Saturday Story Building - Genres and sub-genres/Romance

Now, I'm not a huge romance reader. I've read some Regencies, a few paranormal romances, and lately a friend's BDSM erotica series. I've never really been into the bodice rippers from Harlequin, though I've read a few of those as well. Most of the romances I've read, as I said in the beginning, are Regency era romances. They have a plot, interesting characters, and aren't all about the sex. In fact, in most Regencies that I've read sex doesn't even come into it.

But a lot of people read romances. The dashing hero and the fair heroine must overcome some kind of obstacle to their love. Sometimes there's sex. Sometimes there's not. Sometimes the heroine doesn't end up with the man she originally wanted, though she's no less in love with the second man she gets. In arranged marriage stories, she usually falls in love eventually with her husband. There are so many tropes that show up in romance stories, but that's half the fun of reading them.

There are a lot of fantasy and science fiction books out there with an element of romance in them. I've read a lot of those. A romantic interest in stories adds depth to the character and can lead to some interesting problems as you go through the story.

One of the consistent things about romance novels is the HEA - Happily Ever After. You have to resolve the issues and bring your hero and heroine together in the end so they can ride off into the sunset or whatever you have them doing. But you have to have the HEA or it's not a romance novel.

What are your favorite romance novels? Who are your favorite authors?

Saturday Story Building - Genre and sub-genre/Fantasy

This week I want to talk a little bit about genres and sub-genres. Specifically, I want to talk about the fantasy genre and its myriad of sub-genres. If you want the complete list, you can go here. I'm just going to focus on a few of the many sub-genres here today.

Let's talk one that's gotten a lot of attention over the past few years: urban fantasy. Urban fantasy and its cousin paranormal romance are sub-genres of fantasy that focus fantasy elements on an urban setting. Usually it's a hero or heroine trying to deal with magical or supernatural forests in a city. Now the definition on that site shows that it can be past, present, or future. I contend that what we know as UF/PR is set in modern day. That fantasy set in the past is something different while UF/PR set in the future is better placed under the sci fi genre. The Forever Girl by Rebecca Hamilton, Greywalker by Kat Richardson, and the Black Dagger Brotherhood books by J.R. Ward are prime examples of UF/PR.

Then there's epic/high fantasy. This is more what I write. In epic fantasy, you have sweeping story arcs and grand adventures. Your characters are very well developed and you see them grow and change over the course of the story. Setting plays as much a key role in these stories as the actual characters do. The Lord of the Rings trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien and The Song of Ice and Fire books by George R.R. Martin are fine examples of epic/high fantasy.

The list goes on and on and I could talk forever about the different variations on fantasy. But I'm going to stop there and let you investigate the list yourself. What is your favorite sub-genre of fantasy? Do you like all of them? What are some of your favorite books and where do they fall in the fantasy genre?