Cheat Codes for Love Language
Photo by Michael Prewett on Unsplash
Planet romance novel is a strange and wonderful place with its own language. There are rules.
Going from my dreary life as a non-romance reader to one who inhaled the stuff like kettle corn, I had to skip merrily up the learning curve that seasoned readers of the genre already know so well. There are rules with these books, people! Guidelines! Customs, and yes, acronyms. If you’re newish here, I think these are helpful.
HEA: Happily ever after. Romance novels are here to deliver you that sweet, gushy stuff by the end. An engagement, a wedding, a baby…some heart-squeezing forever stuff. Give it to us! Hooray!
HFN: Happy for now. By the end the couple is committed, satisfied, and definitely off all the dating Apps. Maybe they’re talking about moving in together. Or biking at sunset while holding hands. Whatever it is, it’s definitely together.
Great idea!
Photo by Everton Vila on Unsplash
DNF: Did Not Finish. I quit reading books ALL THE TIME. I used to never do this. I thought I owed the story or the author something. I thought I was proving to my parents I could finish things. But, nah. Life’s too short to read books you don’t love, or at least don’t keep your interest. Taking guidance from Ariana Grande, “Thank you…next!”
H/h: Out there in romance review-landia, I came across this and didn’t know what it was at first. The letters stand for Hero (capitlized) and heroine (lowercase). You can see right away how problematic this is. Women are already “lowercase” in so many ways, so why do this to each other, dear Readers? Just stop it already! Also, it assumes heterosexual partnership, and that’s simply not reflective of the wide world we life in. There are so many queer romances to love, and many with throuples and groups, if that’s your thing. In Romancing the Beat (paid link), a story structure book for romance novels, Gwen Hayes proposes H1 and H2 instead, depending on who you meet first in the book, and for the sake of what I read—stories mostly with two lovers—that works much, much better.
Meet cute: It’s not always cute, but however it happens it’s the moment the couple meets. I had never heard this term before I started reading romances because was busy reading exclusively literary fiction and news under my miserable rock. Now I am different. I watch romcoms and read all the romance. Things are definitely looking up.
Photo from actual “meet cute” when I met my husband!
Just kidding. (Photo by Akram Huseyn on Unsplash)
POV: Point of view. Many romances go back and forth between the two characters. Sometimes this is an even split, sometimes you get more of one character than the other—often its the heroine in the straight romances, probably appealing to the hordes of women readers out there. Occasionally you’ll get a single POV, and those can be just as satisfying.
The tropes: Romance novels story arcs are like recipes, and there are quite a few to choose from. Friends to lovers, second chance romance and enemies to lovers are just a few from the list.
Heat factor/spiciness: There are varying degrees of sexiness in romance novels. It’s not always clear what you’re going to get when you start reading. This can be very confusing! Sometimes the cover is like those breadcrumbs in the forest, you know the trail…it’s the one that leads to the sex castle with the naughty wizard? Or not. Sometimes the breadcrumbs lead you to a fun-loving picnic in a field with iced tea and talks of hopes and dreams. What’s a reader to do? I have more to say about that here.
Low angst: This is less a code and more of a warning to the reader. If you see this phrase in the book’s description means ‘no story arc,’ unless you count beginning-middle-end as a plot arc. That’s according to my limited experience thus far. It is not to be confused with erotica, in which case sex is used as a primary device to tell the story.
Spoiler Alert! I do spoil books sometimes in my reviews, and sometimes I’ll do it without warning. Sorry, not sorry. Here’s the part where you can consider yourself warned if you sign yourself up as an HEAsforDays blog reader.
Note that all of the above is filtered through Max’s rosé-colored contact lenses. (Which makes interactions at the grocery store kind of weird, but also strangely satisfying.)
