How Much Quirk is Too Much?

You want me to talk about what? Quirk versus mainstream? My darlings, I'm a Word Whore and not just any Word Whore. I am the Word Whore who thinks explosions are plot points. Who am I to address writing a mainstream success? It isn't as if I've penned a flock of them. In fact, it's entirely possible I wouldn't know mainstream if it jumped up and whispered an indecent proposal in my ear.

Not to say I wouldn't listen and possibly swoon. . .(no photo of me swooning - the cat will have to do.)

I go so far as to posit that few people know mainstream literature until a book becomes mainstream literature. Which is to say, popular.

At one point, it was Oprah's book club that made a story mainstream. But unless your tale was a major downer guaranteed to send readers dashing for the Prozac, you stood no chance whatsoever. These days, publishers will tell you they're looking for 'the next ________' - you fill in the blank with the bestseller du jour. Harry Potter. 50 Shades of Gray. Twilight. At least tragedy isn't necessarily the prerequisite for mainstream these days.

That said, do you see the problem? Any story following in the footsteps of someone else's is a day late and a dollar short. The wave has already crested. This isn't to say that some authors haven't made a pretty penny writing stories in the vein of whichever bestseller speaks to them. A few have. But I can't name more than one.

As for quirk? Define Harry Potter. Or 50 Shades of Gray for that matter. Twilight had enough quirk that it enraged an entire cross section of vampire fandom. Not bad for a day's work.

Point being, I suggest that quirkiness leads to mainstream success. If shoveling the same old story out the door day after day didn't lead to rapidly diminishing returns for publishing houses, they'd do just that. It is about the all mighty dollar after all, yes? But, alas for publishing's bottom line, readers are so fickle! Jaded book sluts, even, always seeking something new to sate their wicked appetites. Yet at the same time, those readers desire the strangely welcoming and familiar - as if by falling into a new story, the reader had come home to something they'd never seen before. When that happens, new love kindles the light in a reader's heart. That is the stuff that runs a story right up the sales lists, for readers, once in love with a book, DO kiss and tell.

Too quirky? I'm sorry. Was someone just implying that it was possible to be any quirkier than Platform 9 and 3/4? Or Nearly Headless Nick? In fact, it is entirely possible that JK Rowling has taken out a patent on quirk. It is clearly not an impediment to getting sucked into the mainstream.

Now. The difference between literature and genre? Easy. Wagner (opera) is literature. Bugs Bunny is genre. As to which is preferable? Who's singing Wagner in your head right now? Elmer Fudd? "Kill the wabbit, kill the wabbit . . ." Or anyone else on earth who didn't come from an animation cell?

Going Mainstream

by Allison Pang

First off, I just want to apologize for missing last week's post. Things got busy between work and travel plans and I completely forgot all about it. >_<

That being said, this week's topic is a bit of a sore spot with me.

First off, I know some of my fellow word-whores discussed a little bit about literary vs genre. It's fairly common knowledge that genre writing gets no respect in the literary world. Sometimes it feels as though literary writers are basically editorial hipsters. Those of us who write genre have "sold out" for the chance to make a buck.

It might even be true.

My first run in with the literary crowd was in college. I'd taken some creative writing courses to round out my biology degree - and I'd even played around with the idea of becoming a writer. But I quickly learned that I didn't fit in. After being mocked for indicating that Charles de Lint was one of my favorite authors, it was pretty evident that these were not my people.

And I quit writing all together. For nearly twelve years.

Even when I started up the process of figuring out what one had to do to get published, I often found that I had to phrase things carefully around certain people. As one author sniffed at me.... "I don't write fantasy. I write speculative fiction."

Um. Okay. Still sounds like fantasy to me, but whatevs.

I understand the quirky - my entire Abby Sinclair series is full of quirky pop-culture references. What's interesting is watching the reactions of readers. Some of them get it and realize a lot of it is tongue-in-cheek. And others...don't.  Probably something I should watch out for in later books. >_<

Anyway, I'm going to leave this with a bit of a cautionary tale. A number of the other posts this week indicated that you should write the story you love and you'll find an audience. But what happens when your editor asks you to change something fundamental about your story?

Here's the thing - editors are not always the end-all, be-all of your book. As the author, you *can* call the shots as to what gets changed and what doesn't, but it can be a fine line to walk between "I don't want to change this because it's really important to the story that it be here" vs "My writing is perfect and I don't need to change anything."  Pick your battles, as they say.

But when I got my first book deal, I didn't know I could say no, so I went ahead with the changes that were requested, the biggest one being that I needed to add a love triangle to the series. Urban fantasy/PNR books were full of them at the time, so I was told I needed one too, even though I had no plans for such in any of the story lines.

But I trusted my editor that this was the thing to do, so I reworked and reworked and wrapped my brain around the concept and I made it happen. (And let me note, I adored this editor and I still do - so I don't have any issues there - and I think I pulled it off okay. I'm not unhappy with the way the books turned out.)

However, it was a bit rough at times to read reviews with readers lamenting that I'd jumped the on the love triangle bandwagon and OMFG do we have to do this *again.* But here's the thing - after my first book, my editor left the publishing house and I was orphaned.

The problem with this is that often an author gets thrust upon another editor who isn't as invested in your work as maybe the previous one was. Which is what happened to me. My second editor didn't give two shits if I lived or died. Didn't edit my book. (At all. In fact, my first editor did it on the sly as a favor to me because I wasn't getting any sort feedback from this new one.) Ignored my emails. Mocked my writing to my face. So, you can bet she didn't have any sort of direction when it came to love triangles or where my series was going and I was left trying to figure it out on my own.

Only to be orphaned again when editor number two also left the publisher and I had to start the entire process all over again.

So I guess what I'm trying to say here is that sometimes it is worth considering what may be popular in mainstream writing today may not be so popular tomorrow. The publishing road can be very rocky, so make sure the story you are working with is one you can live with, regardless of *who* you're working with.

Embrace the Quirkiness

When I asked Google what mainstream fiction was, that lying, prevarication-inventing Google told
me it was "non-genre fiction."

Bullshit.

To me, "non-genre fiction" is a term in the thesaurus along side words like "boring" and "stale."

Books are all categorical. They all fit somewhere. Where "Romance" tells you "there's kissing and stuff in here," and "Sci-fi" says "dude, it takes place in space," the term "Mainstream" is just a catch-all term synonymous with "it's selling like hotcakes**."

**I work at a VFW. On Monday mornings, I wait tables. We do not sell that many hotcakes. I do not understand this particular phrase.

When I read the subterfuge Google was touting, I cocked my head at the screen in that classic "puppy heard a new sound" pose. The mainstream books I can think of, and those mentioned on the blog this week, all have an obvious genre to me...but, and this is key, they were adored by lots and lots of people traditionally outside that genre market.


Harry Potter, YA. Hunger Games, YA. Sookie Stackhouse Books, UF. Twilight, UF/R/YA. Fifty Shades of Gray, Erotica. Inferno, Thriller. A Game of Thrones, Fantasy. World War Z, Apocalyptic Horror.

Each genre of fiction has it's own tropes, themes, and styles. A genre novel that breaks out and goes Mainstream --admittedly usually and/or arguably-- minimizes those unique facets while maximizing the character and broadening the scope of the plot.

RWA will tell you that their romances must have a Happily Ever After, an HEA...in certain categories. Even the grand RWA recognizes that such fairy tale endings are not the right ending every time, and that it is not always believable in this modern world where traditional marriage isn't always the lovers' goal. RWA has adopted the Happily For Now ending allowable for some categories. The stories are changing because our lives are changing.

Let it be known:

Paranormal Romance is Urban Fantasy where the hero and heroine save the world, then make love. (A generalization, I know, but roll with it.) Urban Fantasy may or may not have romance in it, but if it does, the hero and heroine do it before they save the world. (Another generalization, I know, but roll with it.) Sci-Fi often has world-building that reflects a current social concern taken to an extreme and shown to work/tear down an alien society. Hard Sci-Fi has cutting edge technology, pushed farther, faster, and often looks at the worst-case scenario ramifications of that technology. Horror can be haunted and ghostly, it can be horrible monsters, or can be us at our worst.

Think about that.

Mainstream has many examples of all of those. Yes, each genre novel that experiences a Mainstream Breakout has embraced it's quirks...but if you want to give the mainstream market a genre idea, you have to make it rapidly understandable without overpowering the story or stopping all the action to give the reader a lesson in how to understand the world. It seems to me that the writer must make the characters big and sympathetic. And they must have crafted a plot that is so big, so important, that the big, sympathetic character he or she created truly struggles to surmount it, a plot so rich with emotional impact for the character that he/she learns deep lessons about himself/herself in the process. Think of it like a recipe. Reduce the "genre aspects" so that they feel like the natural setting for the character and plot. Then double the character, and triple the plot. Yield: Story with broad (read: mainstream) impact and appeal.

Too Quirky? Impossible.

What makes a work too quirky to be a mainstream hit?

~blink, blink~

That's like asking me when I stopped beating my brother.
A) "Beating" can be interpreted as the physical act of abuse or as the consistent winner in eating contests.
B) I don't have a brother.

Being quirky and being a hit in the mainstream aren't mutually exclusive. Quirky is subjective. Mainstream hits are influenced by too many factors to be forecast.  Time and taste are fluid. One generation's dreck is another's beloved epitome of literary genius. 

Hitchhiker's Guide is batshit cray-cray to some people. Fear & Loathing is so non-mainstream that it moved the friggin' stream to become a hit to a generation not even born in the time it was published.

Don't let marketing and sales decide what you should and shouldn't write. In the era of the self-publishing, there is no such thing as "too quirky." Write the best damn stories you can and make them accessible. Your audience will find their way to you.


image: http://www.clipartheaven.com

How to Write a Mainstream Success - or Not

Have to throw out one more plug for the Thunder on the Battlefield: Sword & Sorcery volumes! Sister Whore Marcella has a story in Sword and I have one in Sorcery. Marcella did an amusing post on Friday comparing us to Donny and Marie Osmond. The two-volume anthology was edited by former Whore James R. Tuck and is available in digital as below. Print editions should follow soon.

Thunder on the Battlefield: Sword Kindle version Nook version
Thunder on the Battlefield: Sorcery Kindle version Nook version 

Onward!

It's a brand-new week here in the bordello. The Whores are sitting around in various level of dishabille, recovering from all that outrageous marketing last week, clutching their coffees and reading to discuss this week's topic: What makes a story 'too quirky' vs a mainstream hit?

Ah, the elusive mainstream hit. 

Who wouldn't love to have one? A mainstream hit can make a writer's career - or very nearly so - both with income and fame. A good example of the latter, when Robert Galbraith was outed as being the pen name of J.K. Rowling, "on Amazon.com, sales soared more than 507,000%." Note that that is a comma, not a period. Not 507%, but 507 THOUSAND percent, on name recognition alone.

Every time there's a phenom, like Fifty Shades of Grey or Twilight or Harry Potter or The Hunger Games, or even break-out hits from authors who unexpectedly become all the rage, it's easy to gaze upon their blazing success and blow out a little sigh of envy. Sometimes we might even comment to friends and family, wow, I'd love to have a hit like that.

But, would we?

Sure - on our own terms. We'd love for something we wrote and loved and labored over to hit it big. But there are other, sometimes hidden, costs.

Let's look at a couple of examples.

In The Hunger Games, Suzanne Collins set up a fascinating post-apocalyptic world. The book can be read as a savvy allegory for much of our current political climate, which is partly why it's so effective. Collins sets up rules about how the tribute system works, how the lottery draws two contestants from each district to fight in the games and then how the survivor/winner of the games can bring special benefits to their home district. These world-building rules are important, because they drive almost all of the motivation in the book. This system, and how everyone deals with it, is what the story is about. The book was a hit and she wrote two more. Because... of course you write two more! But in book 2, Catching Fire, and this could be a spoiler, so take note, the book opens with all the rules being thrown away. How do you write a sequel when the heroine is out of peril and she's won a permanent victory, after all? By changing the world rules - and making it so she has to go back and fight again.

Now, clearly, a lot of readers didn't mind this. The trilogy went on to rule the bestseller lists, more movies are coming. Much love and praise. But that beginning to the sequel offended me so much that I stopped reading right there. To me there are few greater sins a storyteller can make than violating the rules of their own world, especially just to preserve success.

And this may be a problem for me - because that's a hidden cost I would be unlikely to pay.

Another good example is Charlaine Harris' Sookie Stackhouse series, which the greater non-reading public knows as the HBO True Blood series. The final book in that series, #13, just released in May. A couple of things happened there. One, Harris continued to write the books long after she felt "done" with them. She came out and said so. This came as no surprise to all the readers who remarked on how the quality had fallen off over time. I read up through book 6, myself, before I grew tired of it. So, why did Harris keep writing when she didn't want to? That kind of money is hard to walk away from. When it comes to weighing artistic considerations against millions of dollars - how would we each decide?

Further to her story, when the final book released this spring, fans were so unhappy with the conclusion to Sookie's story that Harris received death threats. Literally. Quite a bit of the anger stemmed from strong feelings about the characters as portrayed in the TV series, something that I wondered if Harris took into account. When a story becomes that much a part of popular culture, in many ways the author ceases to exclusively own it.

Another hidden cost.

Yesterday, in the monthly meeting of my local chapter of RWA, the Land of Enchantment Romance Authors (LERA), we got into an extended discussion of self-publishing versus traditional publishing. One multi-published (traditional publishing) author with a 20-year career said that she writes the books she does in order to target commercial success. The self-published books that do tremendously well tend to be tailored this way, to be mainstream hits. She noted that she has all kinds of quirky ideas for books that she's never written, because she knows they're too quirky - and they wouldn't sell well as self-published either. But, if she did self-publish, it would be for the joy of writing that quirky story and she wouldn't care how well it sold.

I'm not sure it's fair to put artistic choices on one of the scale and commercial success on the other. I do think it's possible to follow one's own creative demands and still be successful. In fact, I think it could be argued that every one of my examples started out that way. None of those authors likely anticipated the kind of success they'd eventually enjoy.

It's those later choices that get thorny.

I'd be willing to tackle them. ;-)