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lagilmanBeen working all day and brain may not be all that, but I promised to address the following question from (edited) comments in an earlier thread:
Basically, I've put in a proposal that has both romantic elements, and dark gritty urban elements and it seems to straddle the line too much...So what I'm trying to figure out is what to do before we go forward. There is a dark quality to these chapters--violence, swearing, torture. And then there is a certain amount of the romance element combined with shifting into both male and female protagonists' points of view.
What I'm wondering is this. Is this more likely to go if I make the romance clearly secondary, keep the darkness (because I want it) and switch into my female protagonists point of view only (because I like her) and go forward with the story?...
The following, btw, is only my own long-term observations as author and genre editor, and not endorsed by any official organization or persons...
The essential question in all of this, I suspect, is twofold:
1. which aspect will get this project sold/do well in the marketplace?
2. how far can you push the envelope on either side?
Both of them are more cold-blooded business questions than heat-of-writing questions, so I'm going to approach them from that direction.
At the risk of being accused of selling out or otherwise overly commercial, IMO the romance market is the one to target. It's simply, bluntly, a larger audience, and while there are many who only read One True Flavor, there are many who will read anything that looks interesting, and be damned the genre, so long as it satisfied the emotional aspect as well. And because of that, there are more slots available because there are more readers. So keeping the romance first and foremost, and making it a mainly female POV will probably open up the salability of the project.
However, romance asks for/demands HEA (happily ever after). Because of that HEA requirement, there are limits to what you can get away with in romance -- killing the hero is pretty much Right Out for most series, and the level of darkness has to be balanced with the HEA. The darkness you mention (in terms of violence, etc) isn't a problem so long as there the heroine/hero are scarred in interesting/overcomable ways. Romance readers, contrary to the sugar-and-flowers image held by non-romance readers, can not only handle the dark, they like it. Hurt/comfort is a traditional romance trope. Really. It all leads to the emotional interation of the leads, so....
All that said, HAE is probably the greatest stumbling block for any fantasy/sf writer moving sideways into romantic fiction, because we Just Don't Get It, instinctively. SF/F can have a happy ending but it's secondary to the INCIDENT resolution. In romance, it's first and last and must be served by the story.* In fantasy, we tend to want to get into the meat of the worldbuilding, the action, and the ripple repercussions, more than the satisfaction of the emotional connection.
So if you want to aim at the larger, more lucrative market, you have to keep the structure in mind. If your darkness leads naturally to a HEA (or at least HFN -- happily for now), then you can keep the male/female leads even (romance readers seem to like getting the male POV, actually), and be pretty dark, and still draw the readers in.
If, however, the story calls for damage that can't be repaired, or there is an ending that does not result in hero and heroine together, then odds are a romance editor is not going to snatch it up, because a large percentage of readers will reject it. If that's the case, then putting the romance into a secondary position and focusing on the incident/action is probably the better way to go. And any gender POV is fair game, there. Although any sort of romance, even secondary, probably is going to fall toward the female or male/female mix POV.
um. Did that help? Did I muddy the water more?
*(I, clearly, do not write romance, at least not as LAG. This has caused me some trouble as Luna readers came looking at first for The Romance. Thankfully, they seem to be staying for The Relationship. The sales force still occasionally stumbles on it, alas...)
Basically, I've put in a proposal that has both romantic elements, and dark gritty urban elements and it seems to straddle the line too much...So what I'm trying to figure out is what to do before we go forward. There is a dark quality to these chapters--violence, swearing, torture. And then there is a certain amount of the romance element combined with shifting into both male and female protagonists' points of view.
What I'm wondering is this. Is this more likely to go if I make the romance clearly secondary, keep the darkness (because I want it) and switch into my female protagonists point of view only (because I like her) and go forward with the story?...
The following, btw, is only my own long-term observations as author and genre editor, and not endorsed by any official organization or persons...
The essential question in all of this, I suspect, is twofold:
1. which aspect will get this project sold/do well in the marketplace?
2. how far can you push the envelope on either side?
Both of them are more cold-blooded business questions than heat-of-writing questions, so I'm going to approach them from that direction.
At the risk of being accused of selling out or otherwise overly commercial, IMO the romance market is the one to target. It's simply, bluntly, a larger audience, and while there are many who only read One True Flavor, there are many who will read anything that looks interesting, and be damned the genre, so long as it satisfied the emotional aspect as well. And because of that, there are more slots available because there are more readers. So keeping the romance first and foremost, and making it a mainly female POV will probably open up the salability of the project.
However, romance asks for/demands HEA (happily ever after). Because of that HEA requirement, there are limits to what you can get away with in romance -- killing the hero is pretty much Right Out for most series, and the level of darkness has to be balanced with the HEA. The darkness you mention (in terms of violence, etc) isn't a problem so long as there the heroine/hero are scarred in interesting/overcomable ways. Romance readers, contrary to the sugar-and-flowers image held by non-romance readers, can not only handle the dark, they like it. Hurt/comfort is a traditional romance trope. Really. It all leads to the emotional interation of the leads, so....
All that said, HAE is probably the greatest stumbling block for any fantasy/sf writer moving sideways into romantic fiction, because we Just Don't Get It, instinctively. SF/F can have a happy ending but it's secondary to the INCIDENT resolution. In romance, it's first and last and must be served by the story.* In fantasy, we tend to want to get into the meat of the worldbuilding, the action, and the ripple repercussions, more than the satisfaction of the emotional connection.
So if you want to aim at the larger, more lucrative market, you have to keep the structure in mind. If your darkness leads naturally to a HEA (or at least HFN -- happily for now), then you can keep the male/female leads even (romance readers seem to like getting the male POV, actually), and be pretty dark, and still draw the readers in.
If, however, the story calls for damage that can't be repaired, or there is an ending that does not result in hero and heroine together, then odds are a romance editor is not going to snatch it up, because a large percentage of readers will reject it. If that's the case, then putting the romance into a secondary position and focusing on the incident/action is probably the better way to go. And any gender POV is fair game, there. Although any sort of romance, even secondary, probably is going to fall toward the female or male/female mix POV.
um. Did that help? Did I muddy the water more?
*(I, clearly, do not write romance, at least not as LAG. This has caused me some trouble as Luna readers came looking at first for The Romance. Thankfully, they seem to be staying for The Relationship. The sales force still occasionally stumbles on it, alas...)
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no subject
Date: 2007-10-16 12:56 am (UTC)Also, romance readers love the male POV but until the last decade, it wasn't acceptable in romance fiction. All the early Harlequin series were single POV only, female.
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Date: 2007-10-16 01:45 am (UTC)But in going back to work on this particular proposal, I've decided to head out into singular pov, to stay in the female, and to focus on her journey, both in coming to terms with her issues, and also in developing the relationship, ending in an HEA. Keeping the urban fantasy stronger in the beginning. I have a feeling I have to prove myself before I can have my cake and eat it too (and talk about dumb dumb dumb cliche sayings). So that's what I'm doing. But I want my cake and I want to eat it and I want it to be turtle cheesecake. Triple chocolate cheesecake. Death by chocolate cake.
But I want to move that direction a lot, so I s'pose perseverence is the thing. And a good story. I'm hoping to go more in the direction you have--i.e. world and relationship rather than HEA. But with the romance there in at least part.
Sigh.
Is that confusing?
no subject
Date: 2007-10-16 02:26 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-10-16 04:27 am (UTC)The question applies to something I'm working on -- this will help me market the manuscript.
Again, thanks!
no subject
Date: 2007-10-16 06:12 pm (UTC)Nora Robers, as I've said again and again, is no great shakes as a stylist. As a storyteller and an entertainer, she is a major shakes. Even if I do want to throw many of her books across the room for plot-bunny-clone disease...
no subject
Date: 2007-10-16 06:14 pm (UTC)Endlessly. But I understand the wanting to eat your cake and have it too. The only advice I can give is advice you've heard and memorized already, and that flies a bit in the face of what I just said:
write the book you need to write.
no subject
Date: 2007-10-16 06:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-10-16 06:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-10-16 09:23 pm (UTC)Speaking of which, I think I need some chocolate. It's also raining. I think Kahlua and Irish Cream would be a good idea just now too . . . And a crackling fire . . . .
Di
no subject
Date: 2007-10-17 08:42 pm (UTC)This thing I've been mulling over ends up with 4 POV, 1 female, 1 hetero male, two other males who are what we'd now call pansexuals, and two HFN resolutions to the romances.
I know there is a market for it. I will write it, well, and see what my agent can do with it. And after this and Allie's next is done, then we decide if we can make a living at it....
no subject
Date: 2007-10-18 03:52 pm (UTC)