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Joined: 6/14/2012
Posts: 194
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Yeah.
I would add, for those who don't like a subgenre, or a trope, there's an easy way out: just don't read it. There are genres and subgenres I don't enjoy...and I just don't read them. Others like them; why should I spoil someone else's fun? (Since I was told when I started reading science fiction and fantasy that they were "trash" and "stupid" and also totally unsuitable for girls, I'm really wary of dumping on someone else's favorite reading. And I've seen the bad effect on kids, who are told they shouldn't read what they like...especially if the kid is dyslexic and has trouble reading anyway. Teachers and (alas) some librarians should back off on the complaints about "He reads only X' or "She reads only Y" and be glad they're reading happily.
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Joined: 10/31/2015
Posts: 13
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What will never be old is Gothic Horror and you will see Christians writing grittier and darker subject matter; that's something that's changing the game with Mike Duran, myself, and Jeremy Robinson (his first novel is a Christmas gift.) I want to see an anthology of short stories get into a Wal-Mart where the language is as strong as N.W.A.'s biopic or The Decline Of Western Civilization. I am getting sick and tired of seeing 50 Shades Of Shit in Wal-Mart. I want to edit that anthology that's dark as hell and gets into Wal-Mart as there is a novel going around that quoted Philip K. Dick. I will say this much the 2000s saw the re-emergence of anthology stories; and 2010s how do you see the anthology in print form as the guys of Bookcountry and Booktango (as I am published with both on here with the mid-to-higher-middle-range. Short stories. I call the mid-range 4800-6800 word short stories. The 8800 word beasts always have a hard time getting placed sometimes.) I wrote Blackened Horror Reality which addresses how fan novels are more celebrated than the original work. Weird Fiction is getting an emergence in the mainstream but then again ti's always been an underground thing (ie: Bizarro Central) I write cult literature myself and do have a small cult following here and there. Narrative Nonfiction is seeing a rise where it's played up like Gothic Horror as something I am prone to pull off in a cool way.
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Joined: 7/21/2015
Posts: 92
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Elizabeth Moon wrote:
New readers enter the wide-open fields of fiction every day. Some young, some old, from all kinds of backgrounds. What is a tired old trope to you may be a new WOW! to a reader who's never met it before. If lucky, they'll run into it first in a really good book. If not, they may have to read their way up from one of the lesser works and (if really unlucky) by the time they read the great one, they'll be burned out on the trope and may even think the great writer just plagiarized the bad one.
And within experienced readers, not all are looking for the same kind of payoff for reading a book. So what you're tired of, or think badly done, may be someone else's cuppa, including predictable plots. (I still read murder mysteries. Is there any more predictable plot than a detective going after a killer?) I knew someone who loved books about the superrich, especially women. She didn't care what they were doing (were they gold-diggers with sugar daddies, businesswomen who had carved out their own empire, rich widows, heiresses? Didn't matter.) What she wanted was the ambiance, the setting of wealth--she wanted to read about fancy dinners, expensive gowns, fabulous jewelry, expensive cars with chauffeurs, vacations in exotic places. She wanted the brand names, the specifics of these things; she enjoyed fantasizing about being one of those women with the Givenchy gown, the Rolls, the mansion here and the "cottage" there, lovingly described in expensive detail. Her disdain for the books I liked were based on the dearth of extreme wealth and luxury in them. (Spaceships and exotic planets were not good enough.)
So I'd caution that one's own preferences are not a guide to what's good or bad in any real sense, though they ARE a good guide about what to write (and write better than the shoddy stuff you don't like.) Write what you want to write, and write it better, and better, and better. What's written with passion and increasing skill will eventually find its readership.
I want to say thank you for this. Since reading it I gave into writing about what I enjoy and I have been having so much more fun. As I write what I like I draw more like minded people in. Thank you for this post.
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Joined: 4/12/2016
Posts: 7
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I'm generally supernice when it comes to books. When the Twilight series came out, I wasn't in the target demographic, but I did understand why said demographic would enjoy it. Hell, if it had come out when I was a teenager, I would have eaten it up with a spoon, because obsessive love sounds romantic when you're young and stupid; it takes a few years to learn otherwise. Besides, I'm a firm believer in the "Get them reading, dammit!" philosophy. Because schools do everything they can to make kids hate reading, so it's important to counteract that. Get them reading and once they are reading, once they see, "hey this is kind of fun and not some grueling chore," then maybe a wise adult can steer them towards some better books. Be like, "Yeah, you liked teen books about vampires. How about The Silver Kiss by Annette Klaus?" or something.
But I admit I do want to see some tweaking of clichés. I am an absolute sucker for Young Adult dystopian, but I keep waiting for a series where the plucky young rebels overthrow the horrible dictatorship, only to wind up paving the way for an even worse one. That seems the depressingly common outcome in the real world: overthrow the tyranny of the Czar, only to pave the way for Stalin later on. Because trying to create a democracy in a country that has known nothing but despots, usually results in a very short-lived democracy and an even worse tyranny with a whole lot more suffering later on.
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