Romance Level: The Most Misread Signal in Cross-Genre Fiction

Is it a subplot, or is it the story? And have you communicated that correctly?

If you have spent any time on the rest of this site, you have probably picked up that this is my biggest pet peeve as a reader. Epic fantasy is one of my favorite genres, but even before romantasy exploded as a category, I kept running into books that had all the trappings of epic fantasy and turned out to be romances, sometimes steamy ones, dressed in fantasy marketing. Worse, because romance readers are the largest audience in fiction, they dominate the bestseller charts. Nothing against romance readers. The system is the problem.

Every reader has a romance level they are willing to accept in a book, and, coming from the other direction, a minimum level they require. This is not to be confused with heat, which is a separate dimension. Both kinds of readers need to know they are going to get what they came for.

What Romance Level Measures

Romance Level does not measure whether romantic feelings exist in a book. It measures how central the romantic relationship is to the story’s structure: is it driving the plot, or is it along for the ride?

There is an important difference between a story where characters happen to fall in love and a story where the events of the plot are caused by or resolved through that relationship. In the first case, romance is a thread. In the second, it is the engine. There are readers who are specifically looking for one of those, and readers who will actively reject the other.

“There is a romance in this book” is not actionable information for readers. Neither is “fantasy with romantic elements.” What matters is how much of the story is driven by the romance.

The Spectrum in Practice

• 1. No romance. The Martian by Andy Weir scores here. Mark Watney is trying not to die on Mars. There is a passing reference to a woman he knows back on Earth, but it plays no role in the story. The plot is entirely about survival and problem-solving. A reader who does not want any romantic content can read this without concern. A reader who is unsatisfied by a lack of romance should steer clear.
• 2. Romantic interest or subtext. Characters notice each other. There may be tension or attraction, but it does not develop into a subplot with its own arc. The characters’ feelings may motivate some of their decisions, but the romance is present in the background without driving anything.
• 3. Romantic subplot. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows lands here. Ron and Hermione finally get together. Harry and Ginny are in a relationship. Readers care about those outcomes and would notice if they were removed. But the story is about defeating Voldemort. If you removed the romantic threads entirely, the story would still be the same story.
• 4. Major subplot. The romance is a significant driver of events. Some plot developments happen because of it. The ending is shaped by it. But the book is not only about the romance.
• 5. Central romance plot. Outlander by Diana Gabaldon scores here. The series has time travel, Jacobite history, war, and political intrigue. It is a rich world. But the story is about Jamie and Claire. Every major plot event is either caused by their relationship, shaped by its impact on them, or defined by what it costs them to be together. A reader who buys this series for the historical setting, without realizing how central the romance is, will spend eight hundred pages slightly off-balance.

The Cross-Genre Confusion Problem

Fantasy, science fiction, and thriller all contain books across the entire romance spectrum. The cover and marketing signal genre. They do not signal romance level. “Romantasy” as a category label helps, but it is still imprecise: is the romance thirty percent of the story or ninety? The label tells you it is present but not how much.

The problem runs in both directions. The reader who comes for the fantasy and is surprised by the romance is one version. The reader who comes for the romance and discovers it is a subplot is the other. BookSignal makes sure both readers can find what they are actually looking for.

Slow Burn and Series Considerations

A slow burn romance, where the relationship does not resolve until late in the story or deep into a series, creates a specific challenge for Romance Level scoring. Volume one of a four-book series where the romance does not resolve until book three will score relatively low on Romance Level in terms of current story structure, even if the relationship tension is present throughout. Later books in the series might score much higher once the other plot threads wrap up.

One of my favorite fantasy authors, Lindsay Buroker, does this in many of her series. I am one of those “get your romance out of the way of the plot” readers, but by the time I reach the end of a Buroker series, I am usually invested enough in the characters that I can appreciate a book that focuses on their relationship.

This is where the Tropes dimension (Dimension 18) works alongside Romance Level. A book that scores 2 or 3 on Romance Level but carries a “slow burn” trope tag is giving readers a different signal: the romance is building, even if it has not arrived yet. Those two pieces of information together let a romance-focused reader decide whether to commit to the series knowing the payoff is coming.

The Author Blind Spot

As authors, we have our own preferences for how much romance we want in fiction. I think I have made mine reasonably clear. But I find the more common blind spot runs in the other direction: authors who genuinely love strong romantic subplots, or romance that takes over the plot, often do not consider that some readers will not want that, and so do not flag it. That produces a lot of DNFs.

The question is not how central the romance feels to you. The question is how much of the story’s structure it is actually driving and how readers will experience it.

The scene count test is blunt but useful: in how many scenes is the primary focus the relationship, versus something else? If the answer is less than a third of the book, and you have been describing your work as romance-forward, BookSignal may give you a 2 when you expected a 4.

The reverse also happens. An author in a fantasy writing community where romance is uncommon might genuinely think their significant romantic subplot is just a small thread, because they are calibrated against a community baseline that often has zero romance. Their readers, coming from outside that community, may experience the same subplot as quite central.

How BookSignal Reads Romance Level

BookSignal evaluates how much of the story’s structure is driven by the romantic relationship. It looks at whether major plot events are caused by or resolved through the relationship, what proportion of the narrative centers on the romantic arc versus other elements, and whether the ending is defined by the relationship’s outcome or by other factors.

The algorithm distinguishes between books where romance is present, even significantly, and books where romance is the engine. A fantasy novel where the protagonist saves the world but also falls in love scores differently from one where saving the world and keeping the relationship together are the same challenge.

How Romance Level Connects to Other Dimensions

Relationship Heat (Dimension 7) is the dimension that works most closely alongside Romance Level, but they measure completely different things. Romance Level describes how central the relationship is to the story structure. Heat describes how explicit the physical component of that relationship is. A book can have a very central romance that is entirely non-explicit. A book can have very explicit content in a romance that is only a subplot. Readers need both signals to make an informed choice, and getting one without the other is only half the picture.

Ending Type (Dimension 3) and Romance Level form one of the most important pairings in the system. Romance readers have strong genre-specific expectations about how their books end: Happily Ever After or Happy For Now are not optional extras, they are the product. A high Romance Level score paired with a tragic or open ending is one of the most volatile combinations in the catalog. It is the pairing most likely to produce forceful reviews from readers who felt blindsided, because the expectation for that genre is so clear and so widely understood.

Tropes (Dimension 18) works alongside Romance Level to give readers a more complete picture of the relationship arc. Slow burn, enemies-to-lovers, and fake dating are signals that describe how the romance develops, not just whether it is present. A reader who knows the romance level and the trope has a much more accurate picture of what to expect before they start.