Bad Romance

I love YA books. I gobble them up like there's no tomorrow. But what really annoys me are bad romances. They just...what? No. This post isn't about the Lady Gaga song. Jeez, you don't have to yell. I'm sorry I misled you, but no, I'm not talking about Lady AttentionGrabber. (Don't let that fool you. I listen to Lady Gaga's music all the time.) I'm talking about those romances that leave you going, "Oh, you've got to be kidding me."

There are several types of bad romances out there.

Let's take a look at some of them, shall we?

"I've loved you since the first moment I laid eyes on you...even if that was only, like, five minutes ago. Let's get married and have a million babies!"

--Romances that blossom overnight irk me. The MC meets their love interest and falls "unconditionally and irrevocably" in love with them after a week or so of hanging out. Love at first sight is only fun if it's one-sided. The other person comes around eventually, but it needs to take time. The relationship needs to have some TENSION before the characters hook up or it's boring. Remember, lovelies, TENSION. It's important.

"I love you more."

"No, I love you more."

"No, I love you more."

"No..."

--No one likes to read fifteen pages of the MC and the love interest being cutesy with one another. If you have a "romantic chapter/particularly long scene" that doesn't do anything but show us the MC and their partner staring deeply into one another's eyes while the MC goes on and on and on about how handsome/beautiful/amazing/God-like their partner is, CHANGE IT! Just because it's supposed to be a slow romance scene doesn't mean you have to bore the readers to death. Use those scenes for something--do some character building, slip in some hints of what's to come, anything!

"Without you, my loveliest of love-y loves, I would surely perish, for even the thought of facing a life without your love to warm my heart is be too much to bear and blah, blah, blah..."

--Here's a two-for-one special for you. Wordy Love and Obsessive Love.

Wordy Love bugs me to no end. Whenever the love interest appears in a scene, nine times out of ten a bombardment of pretty words describing how mushy they make the MC feel ensues. I also notice in a lot of YA work that the MC's actual voice flies out the window and is replaced by someone with a very flowery vocabulary from the mid-nineteenth century every time one of these descriptions takes place.

Obsessive Love annoys me even more than Wordy Love. This is when either the MC or the love interest is so "in love" with the other, that they're obsessed to the point of blatant stalking. (I'm looking at you, Edward.) It doesn't always go that far, but I'm sure you've seen it. If the MC isn't with their partner, they're thinking about their partner. And if they're not with their partner or thinking about their partner, they're probably not alive anymore. Even if you're writing a romance novel, their needs to be some sort of pressure on the MC outside of their Obsessive Love--y'know, a little something called a plot. Maybe you've heard of it before.*

*(Exception: The pressure on the MC is Obsessive Love. Perhaps she's trying to get out of a relationship with the overbearing, stalking douche she calls her lover so she can get with the nice guy she met at Starbucks. Or perhaps they're the one with the problem and they're doing the stalking. Actually...I wanna read that. Someone go write that.)

"Even though you're a self-centered ass with no real redeemable qualities, I seem to have inexplicably fallen in love with you! Let's kiss with tongues!"

--Yeah. When I find one of these, there's a good chance I'll put the book down and walk away. When an MC falls for a guy (or girl, though I haven't seen many of these) that treats them like crap, it makes them look weak. I mean, I like a smart-assed bad boy as much as the next girl, but there's a thin line between charmingly sarcastic and complete jackass. Once you cross that line, the reader stops rooting for the relationship.

"I'm a supernatural creature and you're mortal--we can never be together. It's dangerous and no one would accept our relationship."

"But my parents like you, your parents like me, and all our friends are happy for us."

"THE WORLD WON'T ACCEPT IT!"

--Pseudo-dangerous relationships. Yeees, I'm talking about TWILIGHT again. So, sue me. I seem to remember Charlie having a slight problem with Edward, but it wasn't anything that really affected the relationship. There was also the danger of Edward being all into Bella's blood but...that never really affected anything either. When he had to suck the vampire venom from Bella, he didn't end up losing control and turning her into a Bella Smoothie. Sooo...yeah, I didn't buy the "we're in a dangerous relationship" angle with TWILIGHT.

If one of them has the strong urge to kill the other, you can't just tell us about it and expect us to believe it. Show, don't tell, remember? They should lose a tiny bit of control at least once. They don't even have to attack the other person, just scare them a little. Then comes the SUPER EPIC MAKE UP (because normal make ups don't work after you tried to turn the other person into a smoothie) and inner conflict of trying to control those urges/learning to look passed what their instincts could make them and love them for who they really are.

"I'm a good girl, but you're a bad boy. We shouldn't be together."

"I know. Can I see you naked?"

"Well...okay."

--Yeah, I went there. It's the biggest cliche in the book, I'm afraid. Now, I'm not gonna say I don't enjoy a romance involving a goody-goody chick and her badass potential boyfriend, but it's still technically a cliche. (Yeah, I've put on my Cliche Police badge.) It's been done to death. We need some new material on the market.

"You don't have much of a personality, but you're teh hawtness, so I'm in love with you anyway!"

--Shallow Love...ugh. Just ugh. I hate it when the only factor in the relationship is that the love interest is the sexiest thing to walk on two legs. It's not even really romance at that point--it's just one character lusting after another one. There needs to be something else between them besides the fact that one (or both) of them is a sex bomb.

What are some things about romance that annoy you?

What are some elements of romance you enjoy?

Which YA romances irk you the most?

What's your favorite?

HAPPY WRITING, LOVELIES!