Darkness and Desire in PNR
#booktok, genre expectations and the healing power of paranormal romance
Paranormal romance on #booktok
He’s safety with sharp edges. Not passive. Not distracted. He sees everything and makes it his job to protect what he loves. That’s not just romantic. It’s reparative. —19 Questions That Revealed Way Too Much, Kestrel Caim
I watched a bunch of paranormal romance #booktok videos last night on TikTok.
TikTok isn’t for everyone, but I find the PNR recommendations helpful. Most of the books are on Kindle Unlimited. While some are not a good fit, others are written by authors I’ll come back to again. Even though my own writing is very different from theirs.
Darkness in the PNR genre
In contrast to many popular paranormal romance novels, my stories are not super steamy. For a lot of people, spice is the heart of the genre and while most #booktok reviews attest to that fact, I still consider my writing PNR.
There is desire. There are paranormal elements. There is darkness. And there are other paranormal romance elements.
In contemporary PNR, Dracula is rarely completely evil. Often, there is more of a gray zone between right and wrong than you’ll find in traditional Gothic lit. Personal trauma and trauma related themes may be clear and highly significant to the story.
Or at least this is true of my writing.
Trauma and trauma adjacent behaviors are themes in most of my books. This is one way that my writing aligns with that of other PNR writers.
It is also is one of the reasons I've found general writers groups difficult. Feedback from people who don't read in the genre can be especially challenging. Which brings me back to #boktok.
Of Triggers and Transformation
It’s easy to lose track of videos when you’re on TikTok and I have lost track of this one, but I remember the content.
It featured a paranormal romance #booktok creator who had been accused of recommending books that were demeaning to women.
The creator was offended. She agreed that some of her recommendation could be triggering but she felt that reading about trauma might actually help people process. She even believed that it could be healing.
Up to that point, I'd only thought of dark fiction as healing for writers. Now I saw it through the eyes of a reader. While I’m not sure if healing is quite the right word for what happens on the reader side, there are time when knowing other people get it is close enough.
Oddly, for someone who read Sharp Objects twice, this was a completely new idea. But it did make sense. Turning away from things is easy. Facing them is something else— in writing and reading and life.
To me this was an important realization. And it made my stories seem just a little bit bigger than they had before.
One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. — Carl Jung
It never occurred to me that the current iteration of vampires, werewolves, and paranormal romance in general was about facing and processing trauma. That's very interesting. And it makes me look at my own WIP a little differently, too.
That's very interesting, Barbara. There are so many boxes to be put in by others. I think you should keep on writing in your own beautiful way.