First Times vs Established Relationships
Aug. 21st, 2005 02:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethFirst of all, that vs in the title doesn't seem right to me.
I've seen a couple people talking about it and what it felt like was they hadn't recognised what the actual genre difference is. See First Times are your classic Romance, but Established Relationship stories don't have to be.
To make a story you have a situation, a problem, and a resolution.
Romance, situation is you have (at least) two people, problem is they aren't together, resolution is they get together.
*or* you get something that is what draws me to the Giles/Ethan stories - *getting* together isn't the problem, *staying* together may well involve altering ones fundamental perceptions of the universe.
In a sense, almost all Giles/Ethan stories are established relationship stories. A few of them flash back to the first time Ripper and Ethan get together. I find that infinitely less involving than later stories, when they have such a weight of history, a relationship that has become so twisted. Trying to turn it into a happy relationship, that's the big problem.
But a lot of established relationship stories simply aren't romance. They have a romantic relationship between two characters as part of the givens of the story, the emotion between them can even be the focus of the story, but it is neither the plot nor the character development focus for the day. It exists, but other stuff is what happens.
In a PWP the problem is they're horny and the solution is naked and slippery. Fair enough, all very pretty, but not the same sort of weight as a first time, where all kinds of other getting-to-know-you or whatever obstacles are involved.
In a domestic fic the problem can be... well, I've heard the reference 'curtain fic'. They don't own curtains, they buy curtains. The end. Or maybe its a coming out story, and the problem is how to tell people and how they will react. Or maybe the story has an actual plot, and our happy couple are more B/A before the crash, staking vampires and getting together between scenes. Or the romance just adds to the tension when someone gets kidnapped. Something.
Established relationships can be a whole lot of genres, not just romance. If you're looking for romance, you need a story where the actual plot (or significant subplot, something with decent screen time) is something about the relationship, how they get together, how they work some emotional issue out between them.
Situation - together, Problem - not happy, Resolution - something to make relationship happy. That's an established relationship romance. Any story that lacks that isn't going to have the same kind of good stuff as a first time story, because not the same genre.
Okay, having written all that, I'm not sure its even worth saying, but its 0217 and I'm surely not going to write anything better tonight. I'll post it and hope its vaguely coherent.
I've seen a couple people talking about it and what it felt like was they hadn't recognised what the actual genre difference is. See First Times are your classic Romance, but Established Relationship stories don't have to be.
To make a story you have a situation, a problem, and a resolution.
Romance, situation is you have (at least) two people, problem is they aren't together, resolution is they get together.
*or* you get something that is what draws me to the Giles/Ethan stories - *getting* together isn't the problem, *staying* together may well involve altering ones fundamental perceptions of the universe.
In a sense, almost all Giles/Ethan stories are established relationship stories. A few of them flash back to the first time Ripper and Ethan get together. I find that infinitely less involving than later stories, when they have such a weight of history, a relationship that has become so twisted. Trying to turn it into a happy relationship, that's the big problem.
But a lot of established relationship stories simply aren't romance. They have a romantic relationship between two characters as part of the givens of the story, the emotion between them can even be the focus of the story, but it is neither the plot nor the character development focus for the day. It exists, but other stuff is what happens.
In a PWP the problem is they're horny and the solution is naked and slippery. Fair enough, all very pretty, but not the same sort of weight as a first time, where all kinds of other getting-to-know-you or whatever obstacles are involved.
In a domestic fic the problem can be... well, I've heard the reference 'curtain fic'. They don't own curtains, they buy curtains. The end. Or maybe its a coming out story, and the problem is how to tell people and how they will react. Or maybe the story has an actual plot, and our happy couple are more B/A before the crash, staking vampires and getting together between scenes. Or the romance just adds to the tension when someone gets kidnapped. Something.
Established relationships can be a whole lot of genres, not just romance. If you're looking for romance, you need a story where the actual plot (or significant subplot, something with decent screen time) is something about the relationship, how they get together, how they work some emotional issue out between them.
Situation - together, Problem - not happy, Resolution - something to make relationship happy. That's an established relationship romance. Any story that lacks that isn't going to have the same kind of good stuff as a first time story, because not the same genre.
Okay, having written all that, I'm not sure its even worth saying, but its 0217 and I'm surely not going to write anything better tonight. I'll post it and hope its vaguely coherent.