romance, and why it's a pain in the butt

There's an odd conundrum associated with romances in "young adult" fiction. You see, the author can either have the obvious pair get together in the end, or not have them get together in the end. It seems like an easy enough decision - either you choose one, or the other - but there's no way to make either of them really work.

Pick up pretty much any teen read and you can pinpoint the main character and the love interest pretty much right off of the bat. The main character is the one narrating, or the one that the narrator follows; the love interest is nearly always one of the first five important characters of the opposite gender introduced to the story. The rebellious princess we meet in chapter one has a conversation with her old, fatherly tutor and the relatively unimportant filler male character who shines her shoes; has a playful argument with the boy she's known since childhood, who it is explicitly stated she only thinks of as a brother; and then meets the mysterious, brooding stranger who's secretly going to assassinate the princess, whose good looks are described in great detail and who immediately has some sort of confrontation/out-of-the-ordinary encounter with the heroine. I'm guessing you can figure out who will be making out by the end of the book.

The problem with this scenario is that you can figure out who will be making out by the end of the book. Real life isn't that clear cut, and it means that readers already clearly know at least one point of the story. There's no discovery involved, except for the expected discoveries that the characters make about each other to make them fall in love with one another at all. (I.e., oh look how gentle he is with that small, injured animal! He's dangerous and compassionate! Swoon!)

Then you have the stories that understand the First Five Rule, and either scrap it entirely or use it to trick the reader. Though the handsome assassin is described in a drool-worthy fashion and makes the princess feel all weak in the knees, she really ends up falling in love with the stablehand we meet in chapter eleven, because he understands the real her and isn't being paid to murder her. Bet you didn't see that coming, reader!

The problem with this scenario is that you didn't see that coming, reader. Throughout the story, a good reader is making connections between characters and predicting what might happen next. This means that once the reader has decided on the fact that rebellious princess and brooding assassin will be the story's romance, they file it away in a secret, unchangeable part of the brain. If this romance doesn't pan out in the end of the book, it will leave that reader with a little unsatisfied nagging feeling in that part of their mind. Don't get me wrong - some authors pull this off perfectly well. The example that comes to mind is, once again, the book I just read: Fire. At the beginning, I was dead set on the heroine ending with Mr. A; by the end, Kristin Cashore had convinced me that she belonged with Mr. B. But I find, at least personally, the chances that I'll be content with a different pairing than the one I originally wanted are slim. The stablehand could be the nicest guy in the world, and fit with the princess perfectly, but it won't matter to me in the end: he's not The Original Guy, so he's not The Right Guy.

Personally, I prefer the former approach to written romance rather than the latter. 99% of the time I read for entertainment, and I don't want to get to the end of a novel only to be disappointed that the "right" characters didn't fall in love. It's gotten so bad that occasionally I'll flip through the back of the book, just to make sure that there's a happy ending back there in my taste. I have nothing against writers who go with the second approach - a surprising romance is certainly one way to make a story stand out from others. But in my own little world, being cliche (goodness, I feel like that word is batted around too much these days - maybe that will be the subject of my next blog)...anyway, I don't think that being cliche is all that bad. Yes, I can predict that the rebellious princess and the brooding assassin will end up together. Yes, it's a slightly obvious plotline. But, well, it's cliche because it works.

I realize that this is my own opinion - I'm sure there are plenty of people out there who scoff at all that is cliche and much prefer an unexpected coupling. But, heck, this is my blog. If I want the princess and the assassin to live happily ever after, they dang well can.