The Gay BFF Test

The Gay BFF Test

If there’s one thing that drives me crazy, it’s trying to decide if my stories are romantic urban fantasy or paranormal romance. The line is tiny and weaves drunkenly back and forth and, as far as I know, no two people have posted the exact same definition. A lot of people fall back on the Porn Check… They know it when they see it.

But I don’t know it when I see it, which means I need my own check. The best advice I’ve ever gotten is to try to ascertain if the romance is the main story arc or not. But sometimes even that gets blurry, because the romance and the action can be so entwined that it’s hard to tell what motivates the characters. You can’t just take the hero or heroine out and try to figure out if it would be the same story, because obviously it wouldn’t be. If I have an entire character who can be removed without changing the plot, I’ve got bigger problems then genre categorization.

Last week I finally developed a test that might just save my sanity. I call it the Gay BFF Test. It’s very simple to implement. Take your story, and imagine that the hero is not a romantic interest, but rather the heroine’s gay best friend. (If you’re writing gay fiction, try the Straight BFF test.) This way you still have your characters, with a very real motivation to help each other. But not a romantic motivation.

If the plot wouldn’t change much…then the romance isn’t the main arc of the story.

Hey, it may not be a perfect test, but it’s the best one I’ve come up with.

How do you tell the difference? Or do you?