Romance Requirements

I'm going to choose the foggiest of the four requirements of romance to blog about, since it is probably the most obscure part of a story for me - and that is the revelation, the remembrance, the recognition or the apocalypse, whichever label you prefer.

Frye, on page 54, writes of the cyclical nature of romance, how romances begin with the idyllic world, or very close to it, and end right back at that same spot - the happy ending. This is a fairly simple concept - two people start at point A and end at point B. It is what happens in the middle - the fun stuff - that builds up to the revelation. The revelation is closely associated with the climax in each story, as the action builds to a crescendo and, ultimately, the path that the protagonists are destined to take is revealed. I guess I just kind of said it in the previous sentence. Everything is "revealed" and this allows the characters to make the "right" choice, the one that will lead to happy endings for the just and probably less than happy endings for the unjust.

The revelation can take many forms. There can be an epiphany, as in the case of The King and the Corpse. It can take the shape of chance encounters or recognition, such as in An Ephesian Tale. Or there can be a discovery of noble birth, as in Daphnis and Chloe.

In The King and the Corpse, describing the revelation of the King, Campbell quotes Novalis' observation that "the moment one impossible thing becomes possible, simultaneously another impossible thing becomes unexpectedly possible: the hero overcoming himself simultaneously overcomes nature." In romance, the revelation can be even more spectacular than in other genres, which makes the revelation even more fun. In the end, the corpse, or the ego, becomes the King's savior, the only one who can "save us from the magic circle of our own self-created evil" (229). At least in this story, the revelation even comes with a lesson. But not all revelations have to teach us something.

Whatever it is that creates the so called turn in the plot, what remains is the resolution of the story, where all the struggles, the quests and/or the apparent deaths are laid bare for all to see, as is the path that the characters must now embark upon. Only, now the path must be static. It must not contain uncertainty or danger. In this way, the revelation must not only contain a resolution for the past aspects of the story, but a future in which all uncertainty is eliminated, at least on the surface.

Not being a spinner of fiction, I have no real experience in weaving such a complicated web. I've always wondered how authors come to such complex climaxes, seemingly ending their stories with all the answers. I suppose that's the subject for another blog, but I would like to know how the writing process for romance works. I've heard of authors starting with the revelation and working backwards, building the plot and characters around the story's climax. If this is true, could we then call the revelation the cornerstone on which the rest of the story is built? Is it the most important block in the wall? Or is the quest or the happy ending the true climax, in terms of writing process? Or does it matter? Do all of these have to synch in order for the story to be "good?"