Romance Recap: San Diego Comic-Con 2023
Last week was my fifth trip to San Diego Comic-Con (SDCC), but it was everyone’s first during a simultaneous screenwriters and actors’ strike.
Because the studios refused to meet the WGA and SAG-AFTRA’s justifiable demands, the convention was left scrambling, with just a few days to replace panels with non-union members like local academics, shift the focus from cast interviews to content sneak peeks, or cancel them altogether.
While I lament this year’s less-than-ideal experience, I completely support creators fighting to be paid fairly for their work and protected against exploitation.
That said, even though I chose not to cosplay in solidarity, there were so many authors and artists still left to celebrate. I attended four panels related to either romance books specifically or writing more generally.
Keep reading for my recap of SDCC 2023, and learn more about how to support the strike as a fan of the popular arts.
Queens of Lust and Lore: A Live Romantasy Author Panel
Moderated by Stephanie Carr (Literary Hype Woman) and featuring Piper J. Drake (Wings Once Cursed and Bound), Kate Dramis (The Curse of Saints), Claire Legrand (A Crown of Ivy and Glass), and Ann Aguirre (the Fix-It Witches series)
This panel was proof that some of the best sessions take place at the library across the street. These authors were worth the walk, and you could tell they were having a ball.
Romantasy, as Piper J. Drake put it, is the perfect blend of chocolate and peanut butter. It offers the sweeping, epic escapism of Fantasy and the strong, central love story of Romance.
Ideally, a romantasy should be equally balanced, with both elements essential to the book, but Ann Aguirre defined the technical aspects succinctly: if the happily-ever-after (HEA) is the most important aspect, it’s a fantasy romance, but if it’s saving the world, it’s a romantic fantasy.
Whether you’re writing an epic fantasy or a midwestern cozy, there are a few keys to making a great romantasy, according to the panelists: understand your magic system inside and out, do the heavy worldbuilding as early as possible, and ground the story with relatable characters and complex relationships full of chemistry.
Fun factoids:
Weirdest things they’ve Googled: funniest ways people have died, how to stab someone without killing them, snake mating coil, and spotted hyena genitalia
Most useful tool for book metadata: Fanfiction tags on Archive of Our Own (AO3)
Favorite tropes: Grumpy/sunshine, enemies to lovers, second chance romance
Funniest quote: “I’m a Why Choose kind of girl” ~ Piper on picking between vampires, gods, witches, or chosen ones
A Different Type of Romance
Moderated by Meg Mardian (freelance editor) and featuring Rachel Smythe (Lore Olympus), Holly Black (The Cruel Prince), Becky Cloonan (first woman comic artist to draw Batman for DC Comics), Linda Sejic (Blood Stain, Punderworld), and Stjepan Sejic (Sunstone, Witchblade)
This eclectic panel of authors and comic artists may create a wide variety of projects, but they agreed that romance is one of the most challenging parts of a story to get right.
Stjepan Sejic was right when he said, “Everyone who’s ever lived has been a bit of a mess.” Oftentimes, the romance itself is the obstacle between characters, whether it’s self-destructive due to their fatal flaws or simply UST (unresolved sexual tension).
Writing romance is never a one-to-one translation of how you’d act in real life, according to Rachel Smythe, but the panelists agreed that emotions are discussed differently in fantasy. After all, as Holly Black said, “You don’t tell a werewolf ‘Why don’t you calm down?’”
Fun factoids:
How they get started on a project: dreaming about their characters, thinking about the ending first, listening to Boyz II Men and Celine Dion
Most sincere quote: “The most romantic thing is to see and be seen” ~ Holly on writing relationships
Funniest quote: “I just give them another book” ~ Stjepan on how to write secondary characters
Love in All the Fantastic Places
Moderated by Dr. Jenni Marchisotto (Mysterious Galaxy, UCSD) and Haydee Smith (UCSD), and featuring Mia Tsai (Bitter Medicine), Laura Thalassa (Bewitched), Piper J. Drake (Wings Once Cursed and Bound), Jacqueline Carey (Cassiel’s Servant), and Olivie Blake (One for My Enemy)
Most panels at SDCC cover a breadth of topics, but this one went deep on two. The first half was dedicated to the role of sensuality.
Laura Thalassa protested against the puritanical approach to sex in media, even though there never seems to be an issue with brutal violence on the page. All of the panelists agreed sex is about communication, sensitivity, trust, and power—and definitely not a distraction from the plot.
The latter half of the conversation was about the emphasis on language and naming. It included an excellent critique of the biased italicization of “foreign” words, even though made-up words are common to the fantasy genre and aren’t treated as “exotic.”
Each panelist expanded on their experiences with “othering” language. When editors assume the default audience is white and want to italicize musubi but not croissant, that’s a type of copyediting violence. In other words, Piper J. Drake explained, if readers can learn how to spell Daenerys Targaryen, they can learn Asian names, for goodness’ sake!
Fun factoids:
Formative fantasy authors: Melanie Rawn, Anne McCaffery, R.L. Stine, Anne Rice, Terry Brooks, Tamora Pierce, and Marion Zimmer Bradley
Most sincere quote: “You are our people” ~ Olivie Blake on the “horny” enthusiasm in the room
Funniest quote: “I just went straight to tentacle porn” ~ Jacqueline Carey on the spice factor in her books
Authors on the Best Advice I Ever Got
Moderated by Megan Tripp (Penguin Random House) and featuring Silvia Moreno-Garcia (Silver Nitrate), Genevieve Gornichec (The Weaver and the Witch Queen), Lauren J.A. Bear (Medusa’s Sisters), Emily Skrutskie (The Salvation Gambit), and Evelyn Skye (The Hundred Loves of Juliet)
While this panel wasn’t focused on any specific genre, it was a wonderful discussion of the best and worst advice that authors have been given in their careers.
As for the best advice, passion and nimbleness were the keys to success. Genevieve Gornichec asserted to write what you love because during the solitary stage of drafting, “you’re your only fan.”
While ideally, writers would all have hours of uninterrupted deep work, Silvia Moreno-Garcia warned against having rigid writing rituals. Instead, she recommended they “exercise the muscle of working under adverse conditions.” That may mean writing only a few sentences on a busy day, jotting down notes in the back of an Uber, or—as Emily Skrutskie finds useful—bribing yourself with snacks.
The worst advice the panelists received ranged from small subjective preferences, like avoiding prologues or using the word “said,” to egregious acts of discrimination, such as Silvia being told to change her name and not talk about Mexico.
What I found most refreshing was the rejection of the NaNoWriMo mindset of cranking out a novel as fast as you can. Evelyn Skye may produce at an enviable pace, but she doesn’t write every day and believes in taking sabbaticals to live an interesting life for her stories.
If these authors could travel back in time and advise their childhood selves, they all agreed on these words of wisdom: keep going. Being an author isn’t glamorous, and it may take a day job or a variety of projects to cobble together enough money to make a living.
Silvia explained that writing is a “Darwinian race” because most people only have one book in them, but some of these authors didn’t land their literary agents or book deals until their fourth or even ninth manuscript. Lauren J.A. Bear put it best: “The difference between an amateur and a professional is grit.”
Fun factoids:
Best foods to pair with their books: Popcorn, stew, French fries, Nutella pastries, dolmas, and ouzo on ice
Favorite rules to break: Using adverbs and em dashes, starting sentences with “and” or “but”
Beloved books from childhood: The Little Prince, Dealing With Dragons, the Artemis Fowl series, and Edgar Allen Poe’s Tales of Mystery & Imagination
Literary inspirations: Poetry, short story anthologies, academic texts for sci-fi research, foreign language translations, and Korean crime fiction
Writing craft resources: Hooked by Les Edgerton, Save the Cat! Writes a Novel by Jessica Brody, Romancing the Beat by Gwen Hayes, On Writing by Stephen King, Conversations on Writing by Ursula K. Le Guin, writing groups like Crime Writers of Color, and industry discourse on Twitter
What’s Next
Want to know how I spent Comic-Con when I wasn’t listening intently to these panelists? Subscribe now, because tomorrow I’ll be sending a special SDCC edition and sharing more highlights from the event—including my review of the Barbie movie and how I handled the Airbnb host from hell.
As for what’s next, convention season isn’t over yet. Next month I’ll be attending Steamy Lit Con in Anaheim. Can’t wait for two whole days dedicated to celebrating diversity in romance. Stay tuned for my experiences behind the scenes!