Is It Romance or Women’s Fiction? The overlap between romance and women’s fiction is a juicy territory. It’s where characters grow deeper, learn more about why love is important, and develop into better human beings. The story may show how they plunge off a looming cliff of disaster but grow wings as they fall. In the overlap between romance and women’s fiction, a story involves the main character’s growth as a person.
I bought Time After Time by Lisa Grunwald because it was listed on Amazon under Time Travel Romance. I’d say Amazon should invent a new category: Magical Realism Romance. This captivating love story, set in a meticulously detailed historic Grand Central Station, itself an otherworldly but actual setting, is in a class by itself. Nora and Joe live two decades apart. Following a train accident, Nora exists in a liminal realm, but they meet through…
Magical realism in women’s fiction gives the reader and writer a broader canvas of possibilities. When you’re reading about women and their relationships (the broad definition of women’s fiction), elements of magic provide visual ways to describe a character’s feelings, frame internal events, and create adventures. Magical realism in women’s fiction can be small touches or big events, such as time travel. I used two magical realism elements in my novel The Renaissance Club ,…
Writing Tips from Jane Austen? Yes, please! Virginia Woolf observed about Austen, “Of all great writers she is the most difficult to catch in the act of greatness”, and that made me study Jane Austen for writing tips. I’m a devoted Austenite (for example. I have upstairs and a downstairs complete sets of her work). I’m writing a book whose characters are based on the Dashwood sisters from Sense and Sensibility. I’m not the first…