Showing posts with label romance. Show all posts
Monday, October 27, 2014
Romancing the Reader
If you write a book what you would like is for the reader to fallen hopelessly in love with your characters and their adventures. Ideally they should be smitten the moment they read the title or catch a glimpse of the book cover.
As a reader, this has probably happened to you at some point. The thing you�re looking for and the thing you find intersect in a wonderful manner and you feel like the universe is tilting in your direction. Hurray!
However, forcing someone to fall in love at first sight is as impossible with books as it is in real life. It happens when it happens and, unless you�re a master hypnotist with no scruples, beyond the control of mere mortals.
But a love affair doesn�t always require an aligning of the stars and planets. Sometimes people take a little time to come around, sometimes they rush in and regret it later. And our relationships with books are no different.
So you do your best, you try to be true to yourself and hope that someone out there will appreciate what you have to offer. Although it doesn�t hurt to present things as polished as possible. You want to make a good first impression. Nobody goes on a first date in their everyday scruffy attire. Sure, later you might relax and let them see you with bed hair and in an old pair of sweats, but initially you dress up and make sure you look your best.
Of course, you can end up trying too hard. Trying to please everyone usually ends up pleasing no one. Doing what everyone else tells you, changing your point of view to suit others, going along with whatever�s in vogue can all seem a bit needy and desperate.
As writers we are bombarded with advice and all of it seems pretty reasonable, but it can end up overwhelming our individuality. And if someone is prepared to fall in love with that, do you really what them to?
Sometimes the answer to that question is yes. In fact often people join in with fashion trends just because everyone else is, and there�s nothing wrong with that. You dress like your peers, listen to the same music as them, hang out at the same places. Can you tell the fashion victims from the people just enjoying themselves? Does it matter?
Whether the flavour of the month is books about vampires or zombies or dystopian love triangles, as long as they make reader hearts beat a little faster, the story is doing its job. In fact it�s during those sudden swells of popularity of a particular genre that love at first sight is at its height. Readers are hungry for more. Will those love affairs last? Probably not, but a short, torrid, passionate fling is no bad thing.
Still, there are those books you feel quite dirty after reading. You feel ashamed and don�t want anyone to know. You try to convince yourself it wasn�t so bad, just a guilty pleasure, but deep down you know it was wrong, wrong, wrong. What you can�t figure out is why it felt so good.
Other times a love affair starts out great. It fulfils your wildest dreams and then some. But slowly the magic fades. The memories keep you hanging in there, well after the spark has gone. You know you should walk away, but you�ve read the first sixteen books in the series and the seventeenth could be a return to form, couldn�t it? Probably not, but hope springs eternal.
And then there are those times we are betrayed. We used to want the same things, held the same values but suddenly our love is headed in a new direction, and we�re expected to follow. Not likely. Even the greatest love affairs end. People drift apart. Bestselling authors start writing big piles of crap. It happens. But then it�s better to have loved and lost...
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Monday, August 5, 2013
Romantic Storytelling
This is not going to be a post about love, marriage, hearts and/or flowers. The kind of romanticism I�m talking about is the kind you find in most fictional stories.
The hero wins, the villain gets what they deserve, good triumphs over evil and love conquers all. This kind of romantic ideal is why we read stories. We have a picture of the way the world should be, but it stubbornly refuses to live up to our expectations. So we create our own worlds where things turn out right.
That said, things can go too far the other way. When everything comes up smelling of roses and all dreams come true it can feel a bit too much like wishful thinking.
However, sometimes we need the good guy to get the girl, save the galaxy, win a medal and take home a lightsaber. And the worse things get in the real world, the more attractive fictional perfection becomes.
So then why write anything other than that? If everyone loves a Hollywood ending, why not just stick to what works?
Mainly, I think, because eventually perfection becomes unconvincing. And then it becomes annoying.
Happily ever after? Really? Just because you hook up with the person you pined after doesn�t guarantee a lifetime of bliss (or even seven minutes in some cases). Killing dragons doesn�t mean it won�t rain tomorrow. Catching a serial killer doesn�t stop the bus stop down the road being vandalised.
In fact the bigger and more all encompassing you make the happy ending, the less believable it feels. We just can�t stop the harsh truths of real life from creeping into our fantasies.
Escapism, it turns out, isn�t quite as satisfying when the hero rides off into the sunset and you�re still sitting on the sofa with bills to pay and dishes to wash. There�s a limited kind of happiness you can get from reading about how it all turned out great for someone who isn�t you.
A really satisfying story, I think, isn�t one where the hero wins it all and loses nothing, it�s one where someone who tries hard gets something out of it. Not necessarily what they were hoping for, or without sacrifice, but something that made it worthwhile.
Because in the end you can work hard and be good and do your best and there�s no guarantee it will work out for you. I think anyone over the age of 12 probably understands that. But there should be hope that it could, that it might, that other people also think it should.
So that while stories where characters get everything they could possibly hope for and an impossibly bright future to boot are fun to read and pleasantly distracting, it�s the stories that have characters who struggle but never give up and end up in a place better than the one where they started, that enable us to go back to our awkward, annoying, exhausting lives with a smile and a belief it can and will get better.
Mind you that�s just how I see it, and I�ve always been a bit of a romantic.
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