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Romance Fiction
This American Life recently had an entertaining piece by Robin Epstein in which she attends the annual convention of the Romance Writers of America. (Listen here; the piece starts at roughly the 5:50 mark.) I particularly love the editor who says "I was put on the planet to reject books."
Also interesting was the RWA's romance novel guidelines: a) at the beginning of the book there should be a conflict that keeps the prospective lovers apart; b) by the last page of the book there's a happy ending. Says Epstein: "This is what the RWA guidelines call Emotional Justice: Good is rewarded, evil is punished, everyone gets what they deserve."
It's precisely this sort of formulaic adherence that drives me far away from genre fiction, whether it's romance, sci-fi, detective or whatever. Give me literary fiction and its unpredictability and occasional sad endings, any day.
February 11, 2005 in Books | Permalink
Comments
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I gotta say that if this is what you like in fiction, you're missing out by lumping the genre stuff into a big category of samey and templated. Sure, that exists, but there's also some of the most unpredictable fiction being written today, with some shattering endings. And guess what? Quite a bit of it would probably pass for literary fiction were different marketing decisions made.
Love the site.
Posted by: gwenda at Feb 14, 2005 9:01:00 AM
Are you really going to list sci-fi when I have tried to explain good sci-fi to you over and over. And the thing is, I haven't ever seen you read any sci-fi! I gotta call you on this one.
Posted by: Julie at Feb 14, 2005 10:16:18 AM
Apologies, especially to The Missus. Consider me "called." Hindsight being 20-20, I should have just omitted that last paragraph. I'm sure there's plenty of high quality, non-formulaic sci-fi out there that I simply haven't had the time to read. The romance publishers represented at the conference in the radio piece were clearly after the formulaic tried-and-true, and I regret lumping good sci-fi in with the likes of Harlequin.
Posted by: Pete at Feb 14, 2005 10:49:35 AM
Well, that's better.
Posted by: Julie at Feb 14, 2005 11:08:38 AM
