Romancing the Plot: Fairy Tales are Forever

If you've been reading romance novels for a few months—or in my case, decades—you've probably realized by now that these stories are nothing but a retelling of the fairy tales we read as a child.

Any romance writer and romance writing teacher will admit to it, too. Now, whether they will do so freely or silently is a toss up, but the standard fairy tales that our parents read to us at bedtime are being retold over and over again—in one form or another—in our favorite romances.

Let's review the more popular happily-ever-afters we've encountered as children and see where and how they've been used.

Cinderella

The plot to Cinderella is simple: poor girl meets wealthy prince, they fall in love, girl's relations put spanners in the works, but love conquers everything.

Cinderella stories has many variations and iterations, but at the heart of the romance is the rags-to-riches story. I've seen some romances incorporating other Romanceland tropes: marriage of convenience, secret or accidental pregnancies, heroine as nanny/governess, etc.

The thing is, because a lot of Romanceland's heroes are uber wealthy and the heroine's often one of the masses, I believe there's something Cinderellaesque in most of the romances I've read.

Why We Love, Why We Cheat by Helen Fisher [Video]

I think, us romance readers all agree with renowned anthropologist Helen Fisher when she says, “There's magic to love!” And, her and us, we should know. Ms. Fisher, because she's spent over 30 years studying sex, romantic love and attachment. And us, because we've spent decades reading these same things in our romance novels.

Anyways, I found this TED Talk that Ms. Fisher gave on the evolution, biology, biochemical underpinnings and importance of romantic love. While she talked, I was reminded of what we read over and over again in countless romances that we've consumed: that there's a difference between the three brain systems—sex, romantic love, and attachment, that we can experience them separately for three different people at one time, but that when all three come together, then the world becomes beautiful and amazing!

What Ms. Fisher says confirms what we already know from our romance novels. It goes to show that we learn a lot about life and the real world from what others belittle as “thrasy books.”

Disclaimer: The video below runs for about 23 minutes. I've included the transcript, courtesy of TED.com. All copyrights to the talk and the transcript belongs to TED Conferences LLC and are used here out of the goodness of their heart. (Thank you, TED!)

(By the way, all the emphases in the transcript are mine, just to mark out what were important bits of knowing for me. Feel free to agree or disagree, hee.)