Over at livejournal, there are a couple of interesting posts about reading/writing mainstream and science fiction. I thought it offered some insight into the some differences between contemporary and paranormal romances, although the parallels are not perfect. Still, interesting posts.
First Janni says:
Sometimes, when I read a mainstream book, I find myself muttering things at the characters along the lines of, “Yes, your petty problems are all fine and well, but I’d really find you more interesting if you’d forget all that and just go save the world, or do something else useful with yourself.”
Then papersky says:
When one reads something, anything, the characters have problems. Maybe the problems are boring and have been seen before — and this applies just as much to the space cadet who keeps getting bullied because he’s the only human in the starship school — but in SF there’s always the interesting possibility of the world surprising you. Even when it doesn’t, even if the answers all turn out to be predictable, the SF reader has still had a good experience because there was always the possibility of being surprised… and if the worst comes to the worst, at least they saved the world.
Everything, really, is about the human condition. SF lets you talk about the human condition more widely and from different angles by contrasting it with the alien condition and the AI condition and the android condition, but really, the readers and writers are human.
I think, whether it’s sf or paranormal, that the possibility, if the book works, of being taken to another world, even if it’s urban fantasy romance and lots is still recognizable, is another definite attraction to those of us who enjoy paranormals.
