In a word: yes. Yes, they do.
If you’re writing for the genre called romance, that is categorized as romance on a sales distribution site like Amazon or Kobo or similar, or that might be shelved in a book and mortar bookstore… then YES. You absolutely, positively must have a happy ending.
It doesn’t have to be with a man and a woman (see: LGBTQA+ romance.)
It can be with several people. (There is a whole subgenre of polyamory in romance.)
It can involve sex, or not. It can involve marriage, or not. It can be anything from sweet to unsettling to everything in between.
But it must have an ending where the people in love somehow stay in love, and are happy about this. It could be happy for now, or happy forever… but happy is compulsory. It must end with a happy romantic relationship.
“But I’ve read very romantic books that end unhappily!”
I’m sure you have. Trust me, you wouldn’t be the first to bring up this argument.
Please note, though, that I didn’t say romantic.
You can write work that is “romantic” or has “elements of romance” in any genre or subgenre. There are plenty of tragedies that are “romantic” to people.
What I said was: if you’re writing for the genre called romance.
This isn’t about the writing craft, or the general ethos, or moments in an otherwise poignant tale.
It’s about marketing.
This is a very, very crucial distinction… one that I find authors ignore at their own peril, no matter what genre they write in.
Sometimes, people push the point, determined to prove that you can write a romantic book that doesn’t “end happily.”
Whether someone continuing to make the argument is being deliberately obtuse or willfully pedantic, they are only displaying a profound misunderstanding, not of writing, but of selling. They may be so focused on the mechanics of the novel that they ignore everything that happens after publication.
Frankly, in my experience, people who want to continue this argument don’t sell a lot of their own books.
Worse, a subset of them blame the market, or readers, or anybody but themselves for that reality.
“Happy ending” is the reader expectation.
Last week, we talked about reader expectation.
Every genre has certain guidelines that the reader expects to fulfill the psychic itch that only fiction can scratch. For romance, one of those expectations is the happy ending.
Some authors try to break out in romance (usually as a cash grab) by writing a “new twist” or some kind of “brave reinterpretation.”
“You’ve never read a romance like this!” they cry, thinking of movies like The English Patient or even drawing on Romeo and Juliet, thinking that they’re tapping into the ultimate “romantic” experiences.
Romance readers then tear them apart, if they find the book at all.
(Romancelandia, as it’s dubbed, is a more extreme readership, admittedly, after years of being belittled as a genre, the butt of jokes every Valentine’s Day, the bastard stepchild of the industry. The fact that they also account for the bulk of publishing’s profit is an interesting inconvenient fact as well, but I’m on enough of a soapbox today.)
Ultimately, the readers don’t appreciate their desires and requirements being ignored. They see it as patronizing , a “this is better for you” approach, whether that’s the author’s intention or not.
This is the ultimate “you had one job to do” moment… and if you ignore it, you flubbed it.
“I’m not writing romance, so why should I care?”
This is going to sound glib, and I don’t mean it to be.
I want you to ask yourself this question:
Do you want to sell books?
Seriously. That isn’t a judgment, or a drill sergeant-esque demand.
If you want to write for pleasure, for your own creative outlet, I wholeheartedly appreciate and support that. Never let anyone tell you that you have to make this a side hustle, or “bring in six figures” or do anything you don’t want to do.
But if you do want to sell books… then you need to face the realities of the business side of our world.
One of the realities is knowing how to find your audience, or more importantly perhaps, how to make it easiest for your audience to find you.
That’s why you should care, incidentally. Because deliberately misunderstanding why romance authors are so adamant about the one delineation of the genre is, to me, akin to saying you’d rather not know how to sell your own work, no matter where it falls.
Which — you do you, as the kids say. No one’s stopping you.
But there is also an older saying: “you’re shooting yourself in the foot.”
“So how do I connect with my audience?”
1) Choose the proper genre. If you’re a mismatch, or you’re market chasing/trend chasing to make money, you may eke out some cash, but you won’t break out. It’s hard to build the rabid readership that ultimately helps maintain a writing career at this point. Instead, you’ll be constantly scrabbling for Constant Readers and trying to make it up in volume. That becomes a speed-writing prospect. It can work, sort of. But it’s not efficient or effective, and the risk of burnout is real.
2) Appreciate the genre you’re writing in, so you know all the expectations of the reader experience. Ideally, you’ll write in a genre that you love, so you can absorb these nuances in your very bones.
3) Show your readers how you have what they’re looking for and what they expect. You can showcase reader expectation in marketing — that’s really all tropes are.
Whether you write romance, or horror, or Westerns, or cozy mystery… whatever the genre, you must nail the expectation if you want to get the readership.
“What if I write cross-genre, though? Where it really doesn’t fit?”
Don’t panic.
I’ve worked with people who like to write cross-genre. I think that a lot of interesting and potentially successful work can happen at the intersections: sci fi romance, or women’s fiction the up-and-coming cozy horror (yes, it’s a thing), etc. I will say that you’ll want to emphasize or target one genre over the other in a genre, though.
Using romance as a genre (yet again!) there is a rising subgenre that TikTok calls Romantasy. It is, you guessed it, a cross between romance and fantasy. That said, romance is the primary genre, and every reader knows it. It may be dark, violent, have taboo or controversial content, but it still upholds the tenets.
So if you’re writing cross-genre, just make sure you identify which audience would be most accepting, and make sure their primary experience is covered. Romance readers tend to read voraciously and across genre, for example, so as long as you had the happy ending, they’ll be open to it. Hard core cyberpunk or hard tech space sci fi? Not as accepting of romantic elements, if that’s your cross genre.