There are a couple of different places in blog land talking about rules.  Over at Dear Author, Jane raises some valid opinions about things like rape in romances, abuse, and infidelity.

PBW has another John and Marcia post up…  ;o) if you read PBW’s blog much, you’ll get an idea of what she thinks about rules.

Several authors and readers have apparently done some blogging about the rules of romanceland.  This is always an interesting topic to me…for several reasons.  It can be (usually at the same time) eye opening and entertaining to read the various viewpoints.  I think that I could have somebody summarize some of the blogs and I could tell you whether it was an author that wrote it, or a reader, just by the tone.

Authors don’t want to be told what to write.  (Nope, can’t say I blame them)

Readers don’t want to have surprises in their romances.  By surprises, I mean things like the hero sleeping around, the heroine sleeping around, the heroine getting raped, some sort of infidelity taking place.  (Can’t blame them either…there are certain things that I absolutely hate to read).

My reading time is valuable.  When I pick up a book, I want to enjoy it.  I don’t want to read something that icks me out, or just plain bothers me.  What bothers me may not bother others.  What bothers others may not bother me.

My writing is mine.  (I’d like to say I control it, but I don’t.  The characters do.)  But because the characters control the story, I don’t want to be told that I shouldn’t have written this, or that I shouldn’t have written that for this reason, or for that reason.

Basically everybody has opinions on it, but some of the blogs I skimmed (and nope, I’m not mentioning those…it’s late, I’m tired and I don’t feel like hunting all of them down) some of these blogs were all but forcing their opinions on others, This is what I think/feel/believe and if you don’t like it/believe it/think it/feel it, too, then you’re a great big stupid head.

You know why so many blog wars erupt?  People don’t value the opinions of others.  Each of the blogs I read was mostly opinion.  But far too often the general tone of somebody’s post or reply was that this was how they felt and you had better like it.  Granted, it’s not always easy to read somebody’s tone online, but it was pretty clear in some of them that you either had to like the person’s viewpoint, whatever it may be, or you were a great big stupidhead.

We all have things we like in a romance.  We all have things we don’t like.  These aren’t going to be the same from one reader to another, or one writer to another, and you know what?  They shouldn’t be.  The wide variety in viewpoints is one of the reasons we have such a wide variety of reading material.  If we all felt one way, then chances are we’d all write one way and editors would all buy one way, and man wouldn’t that be boring?

Yes, I think there are certain rules that have to be followed in a romance.  They may not be the same rules that others go by, but these are what I expect from my romances.

• The Hero and the Heroine are going to fall in love.  They don’t have to get married and have 2.3 kids by the end of the book, but I want to know that HEA is coming.  That means they end up together at the end.
• The H&H need to respect each other.  They may not start out that way, but they have to start moving that way before the end of the book.
• There is just a H&H for me.  I’m sorry but I just want my hero and my heroine.  Gay/bi/lesbian doesn’t do anything for me so I don’t read them.  I also want to just a hero and heroine.  I don’t want the heroine, the hero and the other hero.  There are a very few select authors that can write the story line of hero+heroine+hero and I’ll enjoy the storyline, but a very few.
• The H&H are basically decent people.  This doesn’t mean one of them can’t be a bad guy who is redeemable.  Those can be some of the best storylines.  But if the characters don’t have some internal code of honor, I’m not interested.  I don’t want to read about scumbags. 
• Adultery.  I don’t want to read a book about a married woman getting bored with her life and up and falling for somebody else.  This isn’t to say that there’s not a book or two that features adultery that didn’t work for me.  That’s not to say I’ve never written one.  I actually did, and I’ll be honest, the whole story bothered me because adultery is my hot spot.  I hate it.  I despise it.  If a friend of mine is sleeping around on his/her spouse, I lose a hell of a lot of respect for them and I generally can’t be friends with people I dont’ respect.  That’s how I feel about it, so when a story came to me that involved a single man and a married woman, I had a hard time writing it. However, the story wouldn’t shut up.  It’s not a fling novel.  It has a guy who’s done a lot of bad things trying to catch the man that killed his sister years ago.  He ends up falling in love with the bad guy’s wife, who is a trophy wife/punching bag.  Even under those circumstances, it bothered me but there was no other way to tell to the story.
• Stuff thrown in for shock value.  Please don’t do this.  I love a well written erotic romance, but a well written erotic romance can’t have a million and one things thrown in just to sell the book.  If the voyeurism or the menage isn’t important to the story, if it doesn’t add to it and it was written in just to make the story hotter…don’t bother.  Because it can be as hot as lava, but if the story sucks…you lose a reader.
• Know and love what you write. Lately there’s a huge amount of paranormal/vampire/bdsm books on the market and it seems to me that some of them were written just because the author heard it was selling well. A lot of books lately have bored the hell out of me and I think it’s because the author wrote it just because that’s the big thing.  

Jane at Dear Author had some good opinions.

 But I ask those authors, with each scene that you propose, ask yourself whether it belongs in the story. Does having your character rape or abuse the heroine make for a stronger, more emotional read or can the same story could be told without those devices. To each author who wants to write the infidelity scene, ask yourself what you are trying to prove?

Some excellent advice and that’s my opinion as both a reader and a writer.