This is a big topic. From the publisher’s viewpoint is a topic that comes up time and time again. I get a lot of scripts that confuse the genre and I think it is worth talking about this subject. Let me start by saying this is my opinion and other publisher’s views might well differ wildly from this. There are no hard and fast rules, but there are some really good guidelines you can follow.
In romance, it is all about the emotion and the relationship. two people get together and through the twists and turns of the story, they finally get together with a happy ever after. What I look for in romance scripts is emotions, believable characters, an interesting plot, a considered amount of tension. For example, if two people get together on page one and throughout the book, they never have a crossword it is going to make for a very dull read. You want an element of will they won’t they in there. We all know they will, but the story is about an interesting journey. For sex levels in romance, it can vary from a peck on the cheek and a cuddle, to really quite graphic relative vanilla sex.
For an erotic romance, all of the above as regards to the storyline with the additions that the story can be a lot more challenging in terms of content, topics may include domination and submission, domestic discipline, threesomes, foursomes, and moresomes. I would expect the sex scenes to be more graphic, even challenging people’s ideas of what is normal in a relationship. That said essentially it is still basically a romance and it is all about the emotion and the relationship.
Ok on to the juicy one, erotica and the genre we don’t publish. Though that said we have a sister label that considers erotica, so contact me if that is your genre. In essence, erotica is about the act of sex with a thin veneer of storyline taking you from one sex scene to another. In a nutshell, you have it. There is not a necessity to have too much emotion, deep characterization or plot, though it is nice to have those elements. It is all about sex. I don’t want to sound snooty about it I read a lot of erotica and I enjoy well-written erotic stories. There is a lot of very badly written, cliché, tat out there too tough. For some of the best stories I have found are aimed at women, an example would be the Herotica series, but there are loads of great stories out there.
I hope that you found my definitions interesting and as always, I would love to hear your thoughts and comments on the blog, Facebook, or twitter.