Re: Romantic Fantasy
I've had a chance to read a few short stories from Mercedes Lackey in the Valdemar line. And a few other authors, like Melanie Rawn, etc.
And I read the bluerose rpg. It seems interesting (both mechanically and its setting).
From what I gather about Romantic Fantasy so far, there seem to be some common rules, but like all fiction writing it's not etched in stone (may be it's better to call them guidelines):
1. Strong Protagonist. Usually female. And they are good-hearted, but not in a square 2-dimensional way. Feisty, but a nice guy or gal basially. And usually they have a background/origin of personal obstacles (family, peers), but some catalyst that changes or shows they are special in some way. (ie., special animal finding them and revealing their special power, etc.)
2. Characters tends to be more realistic in the sense the characters even the bad ones are grayer (though not a really gritty sort of way). There are generally no sauron absolute evil type characters. The villains tend to have motives more realistic and less black-heart villain types.
3. May be it's contradicting when looking at 2., but the world itself tends to be black and white, if that's the right description. That the countries or nations or kingdoms that the main protagonist is usually aligned with are considered more intelligent, reasonable, and sensitive and their enemies are usually the opposite of that in some degree.
4. At least Valdemar, animal companions that are intelligent.
5. Lot more focus on internal emotional struggles with the main protagonist, than external ones. It seems like the external ones aren't paramount as the internal ones.
6. And I don't know the writing style tends to be different. More flowery? I don't know. I can't put my finger on it. I just feel RF writng sets itself apart from say Tolkien or Terry Brooks in the High Fantasy.
7. RF have more focus on social interactions and relationships in whatever person, tribe, society, etc. via more description like the history, mythology, etc. and usually have some relevant part of the main plot/story.
8. Though there is often a romance between characters, there's lot of RF stories that don't have a romance between characters, but still is RF.
Like I said that's what I got so far. And may be I'm way off, but that's what I'm getting so far.
