[Watch the video interview on YouTube here]
Film Courage: What are the tropes a romance novel needs to have?
Lux Raven, Watty-winning Romance Author / Wattpad Creator: I feel like there’s no trope that a romance novel necessarily needs to have other than like a happy ending, which is not necessarily a trope, it is more one of the defining traits of the genre.
I do think that tropes are not necessarily essential but valuable in romance because I think what a lot of people enjoy about romance is that it feels easy to read, to get invested in. It doesn’t require a lot of huge intellectual investment to understand, to be a part of a story and to relate to the characters.
Tropes are great shorthand for communicating ideas and getting people on board a little bit faster, a little bit easier with what it is you’re trying to say. I think there’s no individual trope that’s important or you need to have.
I think using tropes well is something that’s powerful especially in romance because it allows the reader to connect quickly and efficiently and you find that you can communicate so much with very little by using these little bite-sized bits of information that we all recognize and understand.
When we have these patterns that we have in romantic tropes, I think it’s both comforting and it allows you to immediately invest yourself in the story to be familiar with the language, to be familiar with the situation. If I say enemies to lovers, everybody knows what that means, everybody can immediately go this is an enemies to lovers story. I know a ton about that already. I know how that works.
Some people argue that Romeo and Juliet is not enemies to lovers, that it’s actually star-crossed lovers or their families are actually the enemies sort of thing. It gives you that sense of these people don’t relate to each other at first. They learn to love each other over time, they grow emotionally attached and then this passion that once was negative becomes positive. You can say that in a very short amount of time. When someone recognizes that trope in a book and sees I see where this is going, they’re on board, they’re immediately that much further in than they would have been and you can bring them in quicker and not spend a ton of time on details especially in the modern era where…(Watch the video interview on YouTube here).
About:
Lux Raven is a Watty-winning romance author and Wattpad Creator based in Los Angeles, California. Her paranormal series, Siren’s Mark, has amassed over 2.5 million reads online. She’s currently working on her fifth book, Arrow to the Heart, with new chapters dropping weekly on Wattpad.
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