Guest post written by author Karelia Stetz-Waters
Karelia Stetz-Waters writes happily-ever-afters for women who love women. Whether it’s romance or thriller, her characters get the epic wins they deserve and more. She lives her own happily-ever-after in Oregon with her wife of 20+ years. Behind the Scenes is out now.
I took a risk.
Everyone who reads romance knows that before the happily-ever-after, the couple should break up for a few anguished weeks. It might be a misunderstanding. Bad decision making. They can’t bring themselves to say, “I love you.” Or maybe they just have a fight.
This sets us up for the reunion. We long for it. As the poet Katha Pollitt writes “O let the last bus bring love to lover.” In the reunion scenes, our longing for love and our fear that the world will never be set right is assuaged by a wave of pathos and catharsis. I am not poking fun. I love that scene. It is the cherry-filled center. It is the edible glitter on top of the icing on top of the cake. It is the winning touchdown when you thought the game was lost. I love it.
But as I was writing my most recent romance, Behind the Scenes, I kept writing “add break-up here” in the outline and then skipping the scene.
I didn’t want to write a fully developed all-is-lost moment for Ash and Rose. Ash has already been through the ringer. A bad car crash put her career as a film director on hold…long enough that her wife and producer divorced her. Now her body is scarred and the emotional fallout from the crash has left her unable to experience sexual pleasure. She’s cool AF but she’s vulnerable. She can’t take another emotional hit.
Rose’s sister, Gigi, jokes that Rose will die alone and be eaten by her pugs and it’s funny…except not really. When Rose’s parents died, she took on the role of responsible provider to her three sisters. Now her life is so boring, she doesn’t even know what she’d do if she could follow her dreams. Then this smart, passionate film director comes into her life. Ash thinks Rose is interesting and sexy and believes in Rose’s dreams when Rose is afraid to even have dreams. Yanking that away from Rose just felt mean.
Plus, Rose is 38 and Ash is 40. They have fears and weaknesses like everyone, but they’re mature. They know how to communicate, and they’re empathetic even when they’re upset.
None of the all-is-lost devices fit. So, I asked myself: Could I give my readers the longing, pathos, and catharsis they’d come for without the anguished breakup?
Does the catharsis have to come from the lovers realizing they have not, in fact, betrayed each other?
Could the longing for love be as powerful when the lover is there, understanding and comforting, than when the lover has left in a fit of anger?
Could the pathos come from realizing how precious and fragile love is even when you don’t f*** it up? Could I create that catharsis and relief without the trauma?
I think I did. And even though I haven’t provided the expected break-up, I haven’t gone against the spirit of the romance novel.
My creative writing students sometimes ask me, “Can I write a romance with a sad ending?” I say you can write a book with a sad ending, but if it ends badly, it’s not a romance. No other genre convention is as set in stone as romance’s happy ending.
And I know what the romance-detractors are thinking. How formulaic. Where’s the surprise? Here’s the surprise: A forty-year-old woman suffering from sexual dysfunction is the sexy lead. And she really is hot! And a queer couple gets a fairytale ending.
The past few years have seen a blossoming of diverse characters in romance–LGBTQ+ characters, characters with disabilities, neurodivergent characters, characters of color–it’s powerful. Take Alyssa Cole’s How to Find a Princess where the love interest is a neurodivergent, lesbian woman from Africa. Or Alison Cochran’s The Charm Offensive about two gay men, both of whom suffer from sometimes debilitating mental health issues.
These aren’t the characters who get fairytale endings in the collective consciousness of American society. They’re disposable side characters or–if they’re lucky–the focus of tragic documentaries. Romance doesn’t just give them relatively happy endings; we give them the winning touchdown.
When I was a teenager in the 1990s, I read every book I could that had queer characters, but I read them with my stomach clenched. Would this be another book where the lesbian died? Would the “happy” ending be that she drove off into the sunset alone? When we give diverse characters happy endings, we shake things up. We claim the leading role for everyone. We challenge preconceived ideas about who is desirable. We give young people a vision of their future that isn’t a tragic documentary. We give readers a place to rest their hearts, knowing that everything will work out. And let’s face it; we all fall into at least one demographic society deems not-sexy-lead material. That’s because we’re human.
When I write romance, I’m sending my good wishes into the world, hoping all my readers will get their own happily-ever-after however that looks to them. In Behind the Scenes, I just made that HEA a little sweeter.
