A Good Story, My Way

Molly O'Keefe's post on Drunk Writer Talk the other day started an interesting discussion.

But reading Anne Stuart I realized, sure it helps to be Anne Stuart - but editors are dying for different. Readers are dying for different - the envelope is DYING to be pushed. And ANYONE can do it. Any one of us.

and

I know there are so many writers out there thinking - I write totally different heroines and no one will buy my books but e-press or small press or no one and I'm totally pissed off and disillusioned. My answer to you is -- write better. Be better.

Her point is that you can't give yourself excuses for not writing something challenging because you've heard "the market" won't like it. She's right.

First off, though, the rules are different for historical writers. There are certain eras we just can't publish, no matter how good we are. I thought I was crazy until I read Amanda Elyot's comment on another blog post:

I love the French Revolution and every time I've proposed setting a story there, my agent (who personally loves France, and the period) throws up her hands and tells me that it's not commercial and that American readers hate the French.

and

The ancient world is underrepresented in general (Asia, Greece, Rome), and editors will insist it's because there isn't a market for it, unless you're writing about someone insanely famous, a household name such as Helen of Troy..

and

Some editors will tell you, "I just want a good story!" but they don't really mean that. What they really mean is "I just want a good story -- set in a commercially marketable era."

(And because I used so much of her comment, I'll give her linkage: Amanda Elyot's next book is called All For Love and will be out Feb. 5 according to Amazon.)

I think the equivalent for a contemporary writer would be a novel that brings 9/11 into it in any way, shape, or form. I think even Anne Stuart's editor would say, "I like it, but cut out the 9/11 bits." The only romance I've ever read that made mention of 9/11 at all - Deborah Smith's Crossroads Cafe - was published by a small press.

"But look at paranormals - they weren't big a few years ago," we say to each other. "It only takes one." But what was the big paranormal book that broke the mold? Can't think of it, right? Interview with a Vampire was published way back in 1980, so we don't owe it to Anne Rice.

I'll tell you what happened - Buffy the Vampire Slayer happened. A TV show. It's never a book, alone, that changes the trend - and don't say the word Potter because we all know that's a once-a-century occurrence. We got Buffy and then we got Buffy-like books. And Buffy went but we still have Supernatural and all of that feeds into the movies that get made and the books that get published.

By this logic, should Rome mean we get lots of ancient-period romances and Deadwood mean we get Westerns? No, because crap on a stick, those stories are dark. Buffy had cute guys and sexual tension and all that stuff that makes a good romance.

When you're looking at trends in books, you can't just be looking at books. You have to look at all of it - TV, film, because the big trends happen in all of them together. Which is funny, 'cos now that there's a writer's strike, where's the next big trend going to come from? Reruns of Family Ties? Golf?

Or, for once, that book you're writing?