Tropes, genres and subgenres all help you categorize your book, so your story can fit into reader’s expectations. This is important, as while it’s good to be original, romance readers often want their stories to follow an accepted path.

For example, if they buy a clean romance, they’ll expect there are no love scenes or swearing in it. If they buy a dark romance, they wouldn’t expect the typical happily ever after.

As there are so many paths to take with romance stories, each romance is typically broken down by subgenre, and then further by the trope.

Book Hierarchy:

The hierarchy is shown here:

Genre > subgenre > trope.

Genre

At the top level, you have the genre. This broadly tells readers what to expect, in this case the genre being ‘romance’. The reader knows that the story will likely involve a couple falling in love; or some variation of that.

Subgenre

Next down, we have the subgenre. This tells readers what kind of romance it is. For example, if it’s a contemporary or historical romance. A sci-fi romance, or a Christian romance.

Trope

Lastly, you have the trope. This is essentially a theme to the story. Tropes can often be used across various romance subgenres, for example:

  • A pregnancy (trope) Christian (subgenre) romance (genre).
  • A romantasy (subgenre) werewolf shifter (trope) romance (genre).
  • An enemies-to-lovers (trope) thriller (subgenre) romance (genre).