Genre Conventions Pt. 1: Dark Romance
Hi! I’m Ani, a fiction editor specializing in and loving all things romance, fantasy, and lit fic. I’m a cheerleader for indie authors, a writer and poet myself, and a prolific chai drinker. Reach out and let’s talk editing!
I’ve read a lot of dark romance. A lot. Don’t make me pull out receipts. (Please, I might cringe out of existence at some of the ones from 2022. It was a rough time. Don’t judge me.)
Rose in a vase. Photo by Tirza van Dijk on Unsplash
I love dark romance! It’s a genre that allows for the mind to run wild, all the while empowering (empowering! Stick with me!) its readers—primarily, women. In this essay, I want to discuss genre conventions while also touching on how dark romance fits into (and belongs in!) the romance space. Dark romance shouldn’t be talked about in dark (ha!) corners away from the light. It is not a shameful thing to write or to read. I want to use this essay about genre conventions to invite you to reevaluate your take on dark romance, if negative.
Let’s start with why genre conventions matter, first.
Genre conventions are the bread and butter of writing fiction. Without understanding genre conventions, your ability to reach readers and break convention thoughtfully will be impeded. You can’t break a ceiling you don’t even know is there.
Genre expectations are the map for readers to understand the book they’re reading. It gives a certain sense of familiarity to readers, a familiarity that leads to certainty. It’s not needlessly repetitive—it’s managing reader expectations. If your book starts out as a romantic suspense and switches to fantasy halfway through, readers may feel cheated, or deceived, or uncertain, and this makes for a LOT of DNFing—which is what we, as authors, are trying our hardest to prevent.
Genre conventions illuminate our writing.
And breaking genre convention can make for an exciting, intriguing twist in the story. However, if not done carefully—without knowing what the genre’s hard and soft limits are, you cannot effectively break convention without turning the reader off and out. We need a BDSM limits list for each genre and subgenre, basically.
Here is my proposed limits list for dark romance:
Hard limits:
Dark romance MUST have the main character end up with the intended partner(s) in some way.
Romances generally must (!) have a happy ending. If there’s no happy ending, it’s not a romance.
HOWEVER! Dark romances diverge from this. In dark romances, there must be an ending where the girl ends up with the guy(s). It does not have to be happy. It does not even need to be logical, or sane. The woman can be totally cracked, totally broken or beaten down or traumatized. But so long as she ends up with the comfort and support of a partner at the end of the book, all is well per the genre. The way doesn’t matter. Get creative. Get mean. Hurt the characters to your heart’s content.
The intended partners aren’t morally grey. They are conventionally evil (at LEAST!), and they cannot be changed. The main character must be twisted to fit them, rather than the other way around. This is a DARK romance. The romantic partners need to be, well… dark.
Dark romances are always served with a side of horror.
This is where people reject the subgenre. The horror element can be rape, kidnapping, sex trafficking, necrophilia. I mean, there’s books written about having sex with doors? Dunno if that’s exactly a dark romance, but. Point is. Go wild. It doesn’t have to be perpetrated by the intended partners, though it often is. There’s dark romances where the main romantic partners literally eat each other. Kinda wild, ngl. Thanks Timothee Chalamet and Taylor Russell, I def needed that corporealized.
Dark romance leads (main POV character) are traumatized. Full stop. There has to be some way to access their moral compass and twist it, and that involves previous trauma. Any untraumatized person would just walk away the moment things got weird.
This is not PWP! (Fanfiction readers, I’ve summoned you.) There is usually a plot that expands dramatically across the series and involves higher powers pursuing the main characters for some reason. Police, the government, a scorned mobster, etc., etc.
Dark romance leads are pushed to their physical and mental breaking point. And then, they do break.
Soft limits:
Dark romance does not have to involve regular or reverse harems. This is popular, but not required.
Dark romance leads have two options, pretty much. Both are traumatized, but the archetype varies. One (1), naive little flower. Two (2) morally grey wildcat. Both are fighters, however. This envelope can be pushed. These archetypes are absolutely not set in stone.
Dark romance frequently involves BDSM, but not every one does. Rape ≠ BDSM, just for the record. This can be played with.
The main character is usually a woman, but I’m all for breaking this one! (Personal bias.)
The trauma the main character has is usually related to sex, but this also doesn’t have to remain.
Dark romances are often written as a series (particularly if it involves a reverse harem).
Feel free to disagree with this! I’m always open to learning more, and I absolutely could be wrong. Run to the comments if you have counter arguments 🏃🏻♂️.
On to the second half of this discussion.
How exactly could dark romance EVER be empowering for readers?
Let’s dive into it.
Anyone heard of Nancy Friday?
Nancy Friday wrote an incredibly controversial book called “My Secret Garden” in 1973. It sold millions of copies around the world, and Nancy Friday became the “talk of the ‘ton,” so to speak. The book was a compilation of women’s sexual fantasies from across the United States. At that point, contemporary thought held that women didn’t masturbate, didn’t have sexual fantasies—it was held that women ONLY had maternal desires, and that sex for women was entirely based around wanting one man to procreate with. Their lust was obviously conservatively delineated. (https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2023/feb/01/the-fantasies-are-vivid-even-lush-the-radical-sexuality-of-nancy-fridays-my-secret-garden)
Nancy Friday was a turning point, however. She led the way into the sex-positive movement that defined the ’70s. More than defying contemporary thought, however, the main element of the book that inspired the controversy was that a number of the fantasies were violent, humiliating, even taboo in nature. Rape fantasies were present, as were fantasies of incest, zoophilia, sadism & masochism, etc. For the time, this was extraordinary. Women admitted to having these fantasies!
This enabled women to begin accepting their sexuality for what it was: wildly varied, and wildly exciting!
However, the question remained: Did women’s sexual fantasies indicate their desired sexual realities?
Critelli and Bivona (2008) say not! I read the entire paper, I swear. I didn’t steal from the conclusion. They argue that, based on an analysis of the literature, the idea that women actually want to be raped based on their having rape fantasies is entirely unsupported. Some researchers in the ’40s suggested that women’s rape fantasies were a result of an inherent masochism, which, obviously, if you’re reading this, let’s do a collective eye roll. Critelli and Bivona find this explanation extraordinarily lacking. Interestingly enough, however, they also find the explanation that women use rape fantasies to escape the guilt they have over having sex in the first place (lust is not feminine, women shouldn’t enjoy sex, etc.) lacking as well. They run through a number of possibilities contributing to the rape fantasy: sexual openness, desirability, male rape culture (eye roll #2), biological predispositions to surrender (yet another eye roll), sexual arousal being heightened by anxiety and fear, even the idea that women wants to capture the heart of the rapist.
All of this, and they didn’t even bother to just… ask women. Men. Tracks.
If they had asked women, I suspect the answer would have been surprisingly consistent.
Rape fantasies allow women to experience taboo, exciting sexual events without (1) having to feel guilty, (2) having to be hurt in any way, (3) and having to worry about a fumbling sexual partner. In this scenario, the rapist takes over the woman and does exactly what she wants to her. No fumbling for the cl*t. No weird dirty talk. No icks!! Just good sex. And sex that is 100% in her control. Given the orgasm gap and the number of sexually unsatisfied women, I suspect the fantasy revolves around the ideal sexual experience that she doesn’t have to guide.
I absolutely could be wrong about that! Again, hop in the comments (weird thing to have to comment on in a public forum, I guess, but there’s no shame here!).
ANYways.
Dark romance takes all of these taboo fantasies, and similarly, puts them in the control of the reader. The taboo, the horror, the excitement—all theirs, now. They can stop at any time. I’m equating it in my head to the research that says that people with PTSD often watch more horror movies than other people. It’s about control, power, consent. Maybe this applies here?
Thanks for sticking with me to the end.
TL;DR
Dark romance has genre boundaries, which you should know before breaking them. Dark romance also has taboo and horrifying elements in it, but this tracks with millennia of women having sexual fantasies that don’t correspond with what they want in real life. Instead, people are using these fantasies as a way to control and improve their sexual experiences.
See ya next time!
Ani :)
