Romance novel

Romance novels are fiction in which the main narrative focuses on the development of a romantic relationship between characters, often concluding in an emotionally satisfying ending. The working definition the article relays from the Romance Writers of America: the main plot centers on two people developing romantic love, the conflict and climax tie directly to that relationship, and the book delivers "an emotionally satisfying and optimistic ending". Leslie Gelbman's test is that the romance must be the core of the book, not a subplot; any time period, setting and most subplots are fair game.

A coverage note: the Wikipedia source is the Romance novel article specifically, so this entry describes the novel genre rather than romance across all media. That shelf runs from Samuel Richardson's Pamela (1740) through Pride and Prejudice (1813), which the article names the best romance novel ever written, to Georgette Heyer's Regency line from 1921 and Kathleen E. Woodiwiss's The Flame and the Flower (1972), the first United States single-title original paperback romance. It is one of the largest segments of the global book market, with women buying roughly 90 percent of romance novels.

For web-serial writers the contract is the ending: readers treat the optimistic resolution as the rule, the baseline mapped under HEA/HFN. The crossing shelves are romantasy, paranormal romance and Regency romance. See how to write romance.