Me, My Trope and I...

I know I'm the one being blamed credited with the Topic of the Week this week at WordWranglers. For better or for worse, I actually am the one who said, 'hey, lets write about tropes this week'! In my defense I was coming off the high of an all-writing-weekend with some of my favorite writer people in the world. And I did have a head cold. Nyquil was involved. Maybe a little too much of it.

But the damage is done. It's now Wednesday morning, my day to post and I'm staring at my computer screen wondering what the heck I have to say about tropes that is the least little bit interesting.

Somewhere I read that there are eleven romance tropes - I'm thinking there are more like eleventy-billion, but there isn't enough space here to list eleventy-billion, so I'll stick with a few of my favorites:

1) I'm a sucker for the Cinderella trope, especially if Cinderella isn't just sweeping up the floor and waiting for her prince to come. I like a Cinderella who is actively working to change her station in life!

2) Reunion romances make me cry. I love watching the play of past feelings mingling with new, the personal drama that sets off and the way people who think they just can't go on together actually find those little things they hated or didn't understand about the other...they now do. Because, as Liz said on Monday, don't we all go through those times when we have to find one another all over again?

3) Friends to Lovers. Like reunions, friends to lovers make me a squishy inside. Seeing a friendship grow to more than either person thought it ever could? So rewarding! As flamboyant as the love at first sight story can be, for me the fireworks of a friends to lovers story burns brighter and longer...because there is so much to lose. If love-at-first-sight doesn't work out? You still have your friends...if you take a chance on love and lost a friendship? That sets off little explosions throughout the characters' worlds.

But my favorite trope in the romance genre isn't technically a trope at all - because the trope is the beginning. The thing that brings the hero and heroine together for the first time. But I like to think the ending is a trope, at least in romance, too. The ending is my favorite part. I love to watch the hero and heroine riding or walking or driving into the sunset, together. In my imagination, they're holding hands and as they move farther away from me, they're getting smaller, growing older...but they're still holding hands. Because don't we all want to be holding hands with someone that special as we grow older?

So, that about you? What's your favorite part of the romance novel?