They Like Me! They Really Like Me!
Regular readers of this blog know that the conventions of writing genre fiction are endlessly fascinating to me. I always find my time well spent trying to understand them, since they directly affect the likelihood of me placing any given story with an editor. And maybe my musings will be helpful to other writers.
I’ll have some fun announcements here in a week or so, and one of the stories I’ll be talking about – and that will be available to read free online – is an erotic tale called “The Ninth Wave.” Writing that story and my initial attempt at marketing it (to an editor who objected to an absence of sympathetic characters) led me to think about a factor in genre writing that I really had not considered before – the likeability of characters.
Since I came to erotica from a background of reading romances, most of my early
stories featured “nice” protagonists. Writing my novel, Woman of the Mountain, I struggled constantly with making my heroes as interesting as my villains. Reading more erotica and drawing more on other traditions of genre literature – horror and noir fiction in particular -- has given me more comfort in writing about characters who are not good people at all, but it sometimes creates clashes with the editorial vision of desired markets.
Characters should of course be “interesting,” but there is no more subjective a word in the English language. Conventional dramatic theory also holds that, in a properly constructed tale, a character will undergo a change in the course of the telling. In classic literature, change often takes the form of moral reform – a flawed man who learns the virtues of heroism, a weak woman who discovers strength through love – and this trajectory is still common in many modern works, especially romance. There is nothing whatsoever wrong with this value system, if the story can still be told with a fresh voice or viewpoint.
The values that make a character “good” or at least that make a character one a reader can identify with, become even more complicated in erotica. For example, the narrator of “Pet Door” in Girls Who Bite is extremely submissive. Whether a particular reader finds her likeable is likely to be directly related to the reader’s own attitude toward submissiveness. A reader without an empathic understanding of submission may find her weak or even creepy, while a submissive reader may identify with her, and a dominant reader may find her an object of desire.
Increasingly, as I hope my readers know, I am writing stories that are unconcerned with genre and I am facing the fact that selling them is going to be harder (though I am certainly pleased with recent successes!). Being mindful of the likeability of my characters is another checkpoint now when I populate a story. It is always worth asking myself the questions, “Who will like this man?” “Why will a reader care about this woman?” “What’s useful about the flawed parts of her nature?””How important is it that she improve her flaws over the course of the narrative?”
My answers to these questions will flesh out the characters I create. More fully dimensioned characters will certainly improve my stories, no matter what other genre conventions I’m violating.
After all, a good character can make any transgression just that much more attractive…
I’ll have some fun announcements here in a week or so, and one of the stories I’ll be talking about – and that will be available to read free online – is an erotic tale called “The Ninth Wave.” Writing that story and my initial attempt at marketing it (to an editor who objected to an absence of sympathetic characters) led me to think about a factor in genre writing that I really had not considered before – the likeability of characters.
Since I came to erotica from a background of reading romances, most of my early
stories featured “nice” protagonists. Writing my novel, Woman of the Mountain, I struggled constantly with making my heroes as interesting as my villains. Reading more erotica and drawing more on other traditions of genre literature – horror and noir fiction in particular -- has given me more comfort in writing about characters who are not good people at all, but it sometimes creates clashes with the editorial vision of desired markets.Characters should of course be “interesting,” but there is no more subjective a word in the English language. Conventional dramatic theory also holds that, in a properly constructed tale, a character will undergo a change in the course of the telling. In classic literature, change often takes the form of moral reform – a flawed man who learns the virtues of heroism, a weak woman who discovers strength through love – and this trajectory is still common in many modern works, especially romance. There is nothing whatsoever wrong with this value system, if the story can still be told with a fresh voice or viewpoint.
The values that make a character “good” or at least that make a character one a reader can identify with, become even more complicated in erotica. For example, the narrator of “Pet Door” in Girls Who Bite is extremely submissive. Whether a particular reader finds her likeable is likely to be directly related to the reader’s own attitude toward submissiveness. A reader without an empathic understanding of submission may find her weak or even creepy, while a submissive reader may identify with her, and a dominant reader may find her an object of desire.Increasingly, as I hope my readers know, I am writing stories that are unconcerned with genre and I am facing the fact that selling them is going to be harder (though I am certainly pleased with recent successes!). Being mindful of the likeability of my characters is another checkpoint now when I populate a story. It is always worth asking myself the questions, “Who will like this man?” “Why will a reader care about this woman?” “What’s useful about the flawed parts of her nature?””How important is it that she improve her flaws over the course of the narrative?”
My answers to these questions will flesh out the characters I create. More fully dimensioned characters will certainly improve my stories, no matter what other genre conventions I’m violating.
After all, a good character can make any transgression just that much more attractive…
Posted by Angela Caperton at 1/19/2012 9:21 PM 
Categories: Lesbian, Vampires, Angela Caperton, Woman of the Mountain, Erotica, Cleis
Tags: Angela Caperton Erotica eXtasy Cleis Vampires Woman of the Mountain
Categories: Lesbian, Vampires, Angela Caperton, Woman of the Mountain, Erotica, Cleis
Tags: Angela Caperton Erotica eXtasy Cleis Vampires Woman of the Mountain
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