A Love Hate Relationship With Love Stories

Firstly I should say that I don’t like love stories. I find them to usually be so unbelievable that I just can’t take them seriously. And I write about dragons.

I read books for escapism, to be able to take my mind away from what it’s often supposed to be thinking about and give it a rest. But I can’t help it when I come across love stories in books I’m reading, that I start shouting at the page in the same way that some people shout at the television screen when a football match is on. There’s often much muttering of phrases like “No way would that happen” or “Yeah, because he’d really say that” along with the shouts of “Have you ever been on a date?!”

I think the problem with them is that they’re written from imagination, of what the author dreams about happening, rather than anything they’ve experienced. It’s that whole “she looked into his eyes and swooned” rubbish. She looked into his eyes and swooned? Seriously? Let’s take that clichéd phrase and put it into a real life situation and see exactly how ridiculous it actually is. Imagine two people out on a date, they’re sitting across a small the table from each other at a restaurant. They’ve had their main course, a couple of drinks and the table still has the dirty dishes on it. They’re now at the stage where they’re trying to decide if they want a dessert or just coffee, small talk abounds (and don’t get me started on small talk) she stares across the table and looks into his eyes and swoons… what happens then? He doesn’t sweep her up into his arms, he starts freaking out is what happens. No doubt knocking things over, putting his elbow into a plate of gravy and left over food, shouting for the waiters, calling an ambulance and generally behaving like any real person would in that sort of situation, he’s panicking. Let’s face it, the girl he’s on a date with has, for all his knowledge, just collapsed and may be dead. How’s he going to explain that to the police?

And I think that all the clichéd situations in the typical love stories are exactly the same. They either don’t happen at all, or never happen in the way that the authors have put on to the page. Now, that’s okay if your escapism fix means you need something so totally incredulous as that, do read these types of books because a lot of them are actually hiding some nice stories in them. But I personally can’t suspend my disbelief that much. And as I said, I write about dragons.

That’s the hate part of my relationship with romance stories, what about the love part? Well, there are books out there that I do really enjoy. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve read About A Boy for instance. Yes, there’s some things in there I think are very unlikely, but it does keep a grounding in reality. It doesn’t have a happy ending, well not the one Mills and Boon would write, but it does have an ending you can believe. It doesn’t have any swooning in it either, but it does have collapsing and freaking out. In short, it’s believable.

And that’s the sort of romance that I do actually like, one that adds to the overall story and you can imagine actually happening in the real world. And that’s what I’m trying to bear in mind as I write about a half-banshee dating a manticore.

2 thoughts on “A Love Hate Relationship With Love Stories

  1. Milla

    Perhaps I should actually *read* About A Boy. I mean, I like the movie, the depressed mum is perhaps my favourite. And the kid ain’t bad either.

    I suppose I don’t read many love stories, oddly enough. I wonder why?

    Reply
    1. Pastey Post author

      It’s a good book. A fair few people I know don’t like it, but I do. It’s strangely believable even with the mad situations. And the book is (unsurprisingly) more believable than the film.

      Reply

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