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12/4/16 20:39![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
owlectomyI read far too much YA, but most of it's good YA; and when I read science fiction or fantasy or mainstream fiction, it's usually something that's been hyped so much that it's something I can find interesting or admirable even if it's not my thing.
And YA, even when it's not great, at least tends to have the virtue of concision.
(We shall overlook Cassandra Clare for the moment.)
Anyway, I started reading a popular genre romance with a view to outlining it and seeing how to construct a popular genre romance.
And I start yelling as I read: "This scene is nothing but backstory!"
"This scene is entirely limp, it's not story, it's just this happened and then this happened and then this happened!"
"This scene can be totally deleted, it's nothing but transportation and logistics!"
Sometimes I worry about how short my books are, and I would like to write books that are more intricately plotted; but some long books don't have more plot, they just have more padding.
I do realize that probably one of this author's great virtues, to her fans, is all the pleasant and inconsequential moments, this small town she's constructed where everybody's pretty nice to everybody else, and too concerned with each other's love lives; I'm just thinking "I guess I'd be pretty bad at writing romance."
There's also the thing where they've only just met and both characters are thinking, "This person sure is distractingly hot!" I realize that I'm at the far end of the bell curve on this one, but I almost never think a person is distractingly hot unless I've known them for at least a year or so. For all that people make fun of bad YA romances -- and for all that I easily get burned out on bad YA romances -- most of them really do make an effort to show the two love interests as people who get each other, who suit each other, who like each other. I'm not trying to say that one way is better than the other; but YA romances are less likely to make me feel like a weirdo.
(Rest assured that I am NOT making sweeping judgments about romances based just on one blah example! I've read a few romances that I liked. However, they were either funny or historical, which may not be examples I can emulate.)
And YA, even when it's not great, at least tends to have the virtue of concision.
(We shall overlook Cassandra Clare for the moment.)
Anyway, I started reading a popular genre romance with a view to outlining it and seeing how to construct a popular genre romance.
And I start yelling as I read: "This scene is nothing but backstory!"
"This scene is entirely limp, it's not story, it's just this happened and then this happened and then this happened!"
"This scene can be totally deleted, it's nothing but transportation and logistics!"
Sometimes I worry about how short my books are, and I would like to write books that are more intricately plotted; but some long books don't have more plot, they just have more padding.
I do realize that probably one of this author's great virtues, to her fans, is all the pleasant and inconsequential moments, this small town she's constructed where everybody's pretty nice to everybody else, and too concerned with each other's love lives; I'm just thinking "I guess I'd be pretty bad at writing romance."
There's also the thing where they've only just met and both characters are thinking, "This person sure is distractingly hot!" I realize that I'm at the far end of the bell curve on this one, but I almost never think a person is distractingly hot unless I've known them for at least a year or so. For all that people make fun of bad YA romances -- and for all that I easily get burned out on bad YA romances -- most of them really do make an effort to show the two love interests as people who get each other, who suit each other, who like each other. I'm not trying to say that one way is better than the other; but YA romances are less likely to make me feel like a weirdo.
(Rest assured that I am NOT making sweeping judgments about romances based just on one blah example! I've read a few romances that I liked. However, they were either funny or historical, which may not be examples I can emulate.)
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11/6/16 01:47 (UTC)(no subject)
11/6/16 02:00 (UTC)(no subject)
11/6/16 02:25 (UTC)