Genre Exploitation or Unreasonable Reader Expectations?
Letters of Opiniongenre critique / genre definition / reader expectations / Romance52 Comments
Last week I linked to an essay by Remittance Girl for the DA news, in which she argued extensively against the Clean Reader application, which replaces so-called “dirty” words with “clean” versions. Remittance Girl’s post covers a great deal of terrain, from the moral rights of authors to her frustration with what she sees as the crass commercialization of fiction, which has prompted her to pull her books from the commercial market. Among her concerns is her belief that Romance readers are penalizing erotic fiction for not providing “a formulaic recipe that can be repeated over and over again with minor changes.” She goes on to essentially equate that formula with “buying a manufactured product” akin to fast food:
Before we lay all the blame at the door of publishers and retailers, consider that some genres of writing, like Regency Romance or Post-Apocalyptic Zombie novels abound with such precise conventions and tropes that, for many writers, they are essentially a formulaic recipe that can be repeated over and over again, with minor changes. Readers of this sort of work not only like this, they expect it, they demand it. They are the customer and have been taught to believe the customer is always right. More recently, with the massive popularity of the Fifty Shades of Grey series, sold as erotica, readers consistently punish erotica writers with scathing comments and one star reviews when they do not provide a central romantic plot and a happy ending, because those readers believe they are buying a manufactured product that will offer them the predictable experience they might assume from a Big Mac or a Skinny, Venti, Caramel Latte from Starbucks.
While I respect Remittance Girl’s decision to refuse participation in a market she finds detrimental to her creative agency, I find her equation of genre formulae with crass commercialism and fast food to be deeply and offensively unfair. Generic formula do not amount to a lack of quality or creativity; in fact, anyone who writes or appreciates reading sonnets understands the extent to which formal limitations provide a challenge that can yield some daring and ingenious expressions of creativity.
Her post does raise the question of how genre expectations shape reader response, though, and how reader response, in turn, can shape genre expressions. Romance, in particular, is subject to these questions, in part because it is so profitable that many authors want access to its very loyal and enthusiastic reader base. We saw this not too long ago, when an author unfamiliar with the genre was touting his book as revolutionary, even though a cursory examination of the genre undermined the claim.
But we’ve also seen the case where an author who has historically drawn her fans from Romance writes a book that violates a fundamental aspect of the genre’s definition. While I do not want to offer spoilers, you can read more about the book, J.R. Ward’s The Shadows, at this Goodreads discussion featuring Ward’s comments about how she writes her books by listening to her characters:
So, I know I’ve said it before, but I have no control over the stories. They are what they are, they do what they’re going to do, and if I try to change anything, the pictures in my head shut and I got nothing.
So where Remittance Girl is interested in complete creative agency over her work, Ward claims she has no control over what she writes, except as a scribe of sorts. Stil both authors conceptualize readers as an economic force. In Ward’s case, she notes that “when it comes to the BDBs, there’s usually something in the book that is controversial, and I always worry about the market response.” Not the reader response, but the market response. Does that mean sales? Is that the worry? Or is it reader expectation? Or both?
Ward’s case is complicated by the question of how The Shadows is tagged. While the book appears to be structured around two romantic relationships, I cannot tell if it is actually tagged as Romance. And while Ward has clearly relied on Romance and on Romance readers to build the popularity of the Black Dagger Brotherhood, I don’t know whether the book has been actively marketed as Romance.
Still, there is a perception among readers that The Shadows is exploiting the loyalty and purchasing power of Romance and its readers on a book that not only defies the genre’s basic elements, but does so in a way that makes many readers feel tricked and betrayed. And then disclaiming creative responsibility for the book’s outcome.
I had to admit that I lost trust in the Black Dagger Brotherhood series quite a few books ago, so I was not particularly surprised at this particular turn of events. In fact, my cynicism made me wonder why there was so much surprise at The Shadows. However, I have heard more reader complaints lately that authors not writing actual Romance are tagging their books as Romance, which is interesting to consider in light of Remittance Girl’s perception that readers are often confused about genre expectations.
Part of the problem, I think, is that there are some areas in which reader expectations do not necessarily reflect genre requirements. Like with the HEA v. the HFN, for example. I have yet to see any codified rule that says a Romance must end with an HEA. In fact, the RWA definition is careful to avoid this language, and as a reader who doesn’t always find an HEA convincing, I appreciate that. I think it’s important to have formal boundaries that are firm enough to promote some formalistic consistency but that are still flexible enough to allow for some stretching.
Formal boundaries allow readers to have a general sense of the kind of story they will get. Why this is denigrated when it comes to Romance but not, say, horror, SFF, or mystery, is a persistent frustration, but the different standards ironically support the argument against viewing genre fiction as inferior in form and quality.
At the same time, genre tropes are often self-referential in terms of their significance and legitimacy. Jodi McAlister recorded a very interesting discussion among a number of Romance authors and readers about the status of the HEA.
Part of her argument is that the popularity of serials and the rise of the HFN have altered the conditions under which an HEA can and perhaps even should be expected. Boundaries flexible enough to stretch without breaking. However, I think this aspect of her argument is less straightforward:
Point the First: History. I am a historian, and so when books and genres are treated ahistorically, it bugs the hell out of me. If we look at what has been called the “romance” over its history, happy endings have not been mandatory. This is because the way we culturally perceive romantic love has changed substantially.
Here’s the thing: can anyone name a Historical Romance that isn’t ahistorical in at least one significant aspect? Precisely because genre Romance is built on the post-Enlightenment Western European concept of romantic love, myriad historical eras and locations are subsumed under that concept to be considered genre Romance, as opposed to, say, historical fiction. Which is not to say that the genre cannot and should not expand to incorporate more diverse experiences of love. But maybe we need to take a long, hard look at how we’re defining historical accuracy and authenticity in a genre that stubbornly continues to subject history to an interpretive lens that is both modern and Anglo-centric.
I absolutely agree that Historical Romance does not require this derangement, but how much Historical Romance truly challenges it, let alone subverts it, and to what degree have reader expectations been elided with generic elements, such that many things are accepted as “true” simply because readers have been conditioned to accept them as such? For example, Heyer is often seen as the historical gold standard, and yet she “invented” much of the world her books depicted. Can this myth ever be unmade, or are authors and readers simply too invested in its alleged veracity?
Which brings me back to the question I used to frame this post: where is the line between exploiting a genre’s definition to participate in its success and challenging reader expectations from inside the genre? The genre seems to be facing a dilemma brought on, in part, by its immense popularity, both for readers and authors trying to enter the genre and the market. So are we seeing a weakening of the genre through books that don’t fit the definition but are still being marketed as Romance, or are we just witnessing reader resistance to the genre’s evolution? Or maybe it’s a little bit of both?
If I read something labelled romance I want a happy ending. Anything else is a novel, or chicklit/women’s fiction or whatever other sub-genre it may belong to accordingly.
I don’t read Ward and I’m not an author, but the whole “my characters made me do it” excuse seems very childish to me. She’s the author and the one with her name on the cover, she should own her decisions.
That said, I’m with Fiona, if I’m reading a book labelled/marketed as a “romance” I want a HEA or at least a HFN. There are a gazillion ways for the author to take the characters from point A to point Z with stops along the way, so I don’t buy the whole “romances are all the same” argument. Killing off a character, having the main characters end up with other people, or all of these so-called genre bending ideas do not redefine romance (or make it not my mother’s romance). They make the book NOT a romance. /rant
Oops, hit send too soon. I checked Kobo and Google Play and The Shadows is labeled as a romance, paranormal romance. So it looks like it is being marketed as such.
I don’t even think that Ward is the best example for this topic (just most recent one) because you can’t look at reader’s expectation of hea in The Shadows, without context – without taking in consideration that those expectations were based on long running series that’s following a formula. A formula and world she herself established. It’s not just : this is not romance- it’s also: this is not BDB book I am used to.
“…where is the line between exploiting a genre’s definition to participate in its success and challenging reader expectations from inside the genre? ”
I rewrote my answer to this question several times because I found myself tumbling these words in my head which is actually an answer in itself:
I think that definition of romance is challenged and reader’s expectations were exploited in examples you mentioned.
I am with library addict and Fiona on this: if book is marketed as romance, I expect hea/hfn.
Crusie has essay online that goes deeper into RWA definition: http://www.jennycrusie.com/for-writers/essays/i-know-what-it-is-when-i-read-it-defining-the-romance-genre/
For Pantser authors (or at least ones like me, from what I’ve read), the process often does feel less like one is “in control” of character actions. Most of the personalities come from “black box” mental constructs, and attempting to consciously guide them overly much can make them feel flat, “stop talking,” or with the dire feeling that you’ve just handed them the Idiot Ball (term from TVTropes; I am not responsible for anyone’s lost time if they go looking). There’s only so much one can do to control one’s Process, sometimes; sounds mystical, authors often hate the lack of control, but it’s not always paint by numbers. More’s the accursed pity!
That said, if one writes like that, the conscious mind does eventually get to make a stand on things like, “What genre is this going to be marketed as? And how am I going to signal that?” (Which is then complicated by “…this is in a series that is mostly romance, argh,” publisher marketing concerns if you’re not self-publishing, figuring out what will/won’t “look professional” if you are self-publishing, etc.) Or possibly editing to try to stuff more genre-content into the thing, though that only works if the bones of the thing will support it.
(I’ve been trying to signal with title fonts, myself. If the font looks kind of scary and non-cursive, it’s at best romantic fantasy, and quite possibly just plain fantasy, as opposed to Deep Fantasy Tropes + doing my best to have a romance plot. Lack of visible tagging on Amazon is annoying, though; I’d like to flat-out label things but haven’t figured out how to make it look non-ugly.)
Must run and get the kid to the bus stop. I beg forgiveness for pre-caffination awkwardness.
@library addict: While I can’t name any other examples, I’ve seen numerous authors over the years explain their creative process in similar terms to the ones Ward is using.
I suspect a more accurate description is “once my subconscious has made decisions on how the story is going to go, trying to alter the course gives me a massive case of writer’s block.”
(Apologies if this shows up twice. I got an error message the first time I hit tried to post.)
Ward’s blog post is just…awful : it’s obvious she doesn’t care about her readers. They are FICTIONAL CHARACTERS, you can make them do what you want.
If you don’t want to write a happy ending, write a women’s fiction and don’t link to a romance suite of novels where it’s expected every couple ends up together at the end of the book!
I really hope her book fails horribly, will teach her a lesson about deceiving her audience.
She should go read the Amazon reviews, they’re pretty self-explanatory about what she did to her readers.
I don’t know why this makes me so angry, but it does.
I wonder if anyone is arguing about creativity in the mystery genre. What if a well-known mystery writer decided to just not solve the crime at the end? The characters made me do it. That is not a mystery then. It is, at best, suspense. We all have expectations in all sorts of genres and the fact authors try to slip in some major change and say “evolution, creativity, or the characters made me do it” is a level of insanity I’m not cool with.
It would be like turning a show like “Scandal” into “Friends”. They are two separate genres and no amount of explanation can justify a major change to the fans.
I stopped reading BDB back around book four. I always intended to continue the series at some point but now I feel I might read through the main BDB books and stop at a certain point. It’s sad she’s shedding loyal fans so quickly but I’ve read a lot of BDB break-up posts the past few days. It reminds me of Charlaine Harris ending the Sookie Stackhouse series or Veronica Roth and the Divergent series. People were upset and they made it clear. A lot of people said they were done with the author because trust was broken. At least those were not actually romances so the sad or unfortunate endings were more justifiable to the genre readers.
For me romance is HEA or HFN at minimum. If neither of those happens I make it clear it is not a romance. I read one the other day that ended up being way more women’s fiction with almost no romance to speak of. I reviewed it and told the publisher straight up I would not continue the series as it had been mismarketed. If an author wants to change genres then they need to say so and hope their fans follow them.
The problem with the argument Jodi McAlister is presenting is that it’s fatally flawed at its core. She’s conflating “romance” (as in the literary romance or tragedy) with “genre romance” which is a modern genre of fiction. You see this a LOT around the edges of Romancelandia and it never fails to elicit an eye roll from me. It’s just a bunch of disingenuous hogwash. She goes on to split the hair of HEA/HFN (I find the HEA purists who insist that the “ever after” part of HEA be taken literally ridiculous) and emerge triumphant in her own view because HFN isn’t HEA (except for the vast majority of readers, it absolutely is; we just get to mentally write our own HEA just as when you have a wedding you get to mentally write the rest of their life together). And then she goes on to bleat about serials. Does she not grasp the fact that the very name is the tip off? Of course you don’t have to have an HEA/HFN at the end of every section. IT’S A FRAKING SERIAL! It’s not a complete work. It’s dependent on all its parts.
Ugh. Just ugh.
I think JR Ward is a good example.
Her hit series may always be the legacy version of the BDB, though its clear that she wants to branch out into other genres. But legacy BDB and what she writing now are at odds for some fans who want more romance (and a focus on the main couple) instead of so many couples and story lines, some of which get dropped (Murder as a ghost, for instance).
When some vocal fans wanted less of the Lessors, I noticed their presence diminished. But since part of the draw of the BDB is the action, the Lessors (Lash especially are sorely missed imho).
In a sense Ward did challenge the established conventions of Paranormal Romance. Her vampires siphoned off urban lingo (I’m not talking about Ward’s made up street slang, but in her earlier novels it was clear that she decided Rap music and a bit more grittiness in the Brother’s speech that would differentiate her vamps from other PR books). At one time she even had a number of readers questioning whether the Brothers were white. Ward played coy for a number of years with this, until enough readers wanted answers.
If anything, I think Ward checks out the internet for what’s being stated about her books. Ward realized that a number of fans were disappointed in V’s book (Vicious) so there was a “revisiting” of sorts in another character’s book. While the BDB is no longer an autobuy for me, I hope her publisher will put up a better cover on The Shadows book. They need to stop fooling around with thinking the public won’t buy Ward simply because a black man is on the cover. Most of her fans already know the Shadows are supposed to be black men. This book sticks out like a sore thumb, especially since showing a representation of Ward’s characters has become routine on her latest covers (Torment, Pain, Revenge, Quinn). So why does this one have a man (who could be white with a tan) with his back facing the camera . . . and yeah, he’s in the “Shadows”?
I give Ward credit for at least diversifying her Paranormal world. True, I wasn’t crazy about how Trez and iAm were used at first, as it bordered on stereotype (glorified servants for the Rev, carrying food and carrying Rev), but she had the writing skill and clout to devote a hard cover book to a minority PR character, who may wind up being #1 on the NY Times best seller list.
Maybe this will encourage other major authors and their publishers to follow suit.
I’ve noticed that many authors seem to want to put as many tags on their work as possible. It’s a romance, sci-fi, mystery, thriller, historical, etc. I wouldn’t be surprised if a fair number of books with only the slimmest hint of Romance (like, for example, the hints of Romance in the LotR movies) get labelled as Romance.
If the search engines would make it easier to exclude stuff, maybe authors would focus more on accurate categories, rather than maximizing the categories they are in.
@wikkidsexycool:
Sentence should read “But legacy BDB and what she’s writing now are at odds for some fans who want more romance (and a focus on the main couple) instead of so many couples and story lines, some of which get dropped (Murder as a ghost, for instance).
@Isobel Carr: This. A thousand times, this.
As for Ward, I used to be a fan. I drank the Kool-Aid and loved it when she ‘channeled’ the characters when answering reader questions. It’s a marketing gimmick. That’s fine. All she had to do this time was go, ‘Yo peeps! this book, well, it’s not a romance. It has romantic elements, but it’s not a romance. It just worked out that way. It’s not a romance. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.” Instead of being upfront about it though, she did that pearl clutching, as god is my witness, it’s not ma fault, the characters made me write it this way.
That’s why it feels so disingenuous and why so many feel betrayed.
I think for me, after reading her blog post. The *yawn* she made about writing a HEA. That was a slap in the face.
Then kill your character the same way you would put down a dog/cat. It was so bizzare. You can’t have any kind of dialogue with her fans because anything she does is golden, I’m guessing that’s how her Editor views her as well.
I think she was disrespectful to her readers and the romance genre, I don’t care how well written the book was.
“Ward claims she has no control over what she writes, except as a scribe of sorts.”
I’m not a fan of Ward’s and haven’t read any of her work, but in regard to the issue of having “no control” over your work, I think this is being a little misinterpreted. I’m going to step out on a limb and assume Ward means it the same why I’d mean it (if I said it.)
I don’t think writers intend to give you the idea that they have no control over the process of writing a story. When you come up with a story idea and know it’s the story you want to write, it’s simply going to be what it is. You’re not taking your idea and hammering it into a shape that will fit a particular genre (at least I hope not.) You’re just telling the story as it was meant to be told. The writer has no control in the larger sense because she’s being true to the story she knows in her heart she wants to write.
For example, I had an idea for a story set in a certain milieu in a specific time period and I realized that the main character I’d come up with didn’t belong in that story. It required an entirely different character in order for the story to be strong and really shine in all its facets and themes. So I changed the character, though that meant the story would be more difficult to write. It would be impossible for me to now go back to the original character I’d dreamed up and tell that story. In that sense, I have no control over the story. But in an overall sense, I have total control, because I’m telling the story I need to write.
Ward told the story she needed to write. She couldn’t (and shouldn’t) change that to suit what readers may want. But I do think she should’ve made clear in her marketing that the book isn’t genre romance.
Readers, though, should understand that writers need to change and grow in their work, just as people in other professions change and grow in theirs. As our understanding of how to write a good story improves with practice, our desire to explore wider-ranging possibilities grows with it.
@Tamara: Thanks! The way you described it totally made sense. And absolutely, I also agree that if the writer needs to grow and change, thats a process they need to go through. Some fans will follow them to the new genre, some won’t, but then new audience will find them if thats what they now want to write. Just market your work accordingly and I doubt readers will be upset for that reason.
While I’m pretty meh on people talking about how little control they have over their characters (seriously, we’re not thirteen year olds on FFN anymore, lady), I think it’s hard to make a case for exploitation given that it was what she felt was best for the characters. “Exploit” implies a certain level of knowing intent to take advantage of readers – considering that she’s been writing the series for some time, I’d file it under an attempt to challenge rather than exploit, her use of the term “market” notwithstanding.
The combination of Heyer’s Regency world being much more like Edwardian England and Heyer’s Regency world being held up as accurate is what’s kept me from enjoying her books, and I burned out on more recent historical romances because of the rampant modern mindsets. I would *love* see some challenging on that score, if anyone has any recommendations!
To me, the HEA or at least HFN ending utterly defines romance and distinguishes it from other forms of fiction. Cliff-hangers are an exception to this rule that also raise reader ire, esp. when authors/publishers don’t make clear in the marketing of a book that it is part of series.
Genre expectations that I’m over:
–pregnancy or babies in the epilogue
–virginal heroines (we’ve thankfully seen genre books lighten up in this perceived requirement)
–slut-shaming, usually of minor characters and used as a plot device
–1950s attitudes about alcoholic beverages that female characters are allowed to drink. Why is wine–or a fruity cocktail–the only acceptable drink? Women in genre romance apparently apparently don’t like beer, liquor, or mixed drinks. Fantasy and PNR *maybe* but not in contemporary genre.
I think Ward summed up what part of the problem may be in her Goodreads piece:
“One of the issues with the Chosen is that, as they have been emerging from their cult-like upbringing, there isn’t a lot of personality to them. They’re just blank slates- and given that I suck at writing women to begin with, that is a big problem for an author with my specific set of weaknesses.”
I’m surprised that she acknowledged how Phury and Cormia were a snoozefest in the same piece. In truth, I really liked Phury’s character before she coupled him with Cormia. The same with Torment before Autumn. All three women are members of the Chosen.
Anyway, It’s great that she’s honest about it.
I haven’t read her latest book, but from what i understand there’s controversy yet again as some readers object to iAm’s love interest’s ahem . . . line of work/label of her work in the book, though I’ve been told that there is a “twist.”
I’m thinking a black female character will be introduced in the BDB world pretty soon. If I had to guess, she’ll be a knockoff of Cookie from Empire :)
@Cassidy: I should note that “more recent” is not very recent, and my tendency to get books from the library book sale rather than looking for specific series/authors is absolutely a factor.
@wikkidsexycool:
Correction. Cormia and Selena are part of The Chosen. Autumn/No’ one (don’t recall how its spelled) wasn’t.
“Ward told the story she needed to write. She couldn’t (and shouldn’t) change that to suit what readers may want. But I do think she should’ve made clear in her marketing that the book isn’t genre romance.”
An author can write what ever they want. True. I would have had more respect if that blog post came out before the book. That way romance readers could have made the decision to purchase that book or not. Sometimes as a reader I feel the romance community is used and abused. Make a name for yourself in the romance genre, then go write something else. I as a reader am tired of that crap.
J.R. Ward wrote a popular PNR and romance readers and bloggers pimped those books out. Word of mouth is very powerful. If I have to respect an author’s craft and how her fickle muse works (in this case only when she knows there will be backlash) then I expect to be respected as well. I want the choice to either read the depressing book or to walk away. Some people don’t like spoilers and many were blindsided by this, is that too dramatic? Maybe. But, romance is built on emotion. I felt toyed with. I can’t speak for anyone else. Just what I took from that blog post and the book. Reader trust was broken for me. I just won’t be pre-ordering her books. Let me be perfectly clear, she can write what she wants, just be honest upfront about the change in genres. That way no hard feelings and good luck to you.
I’m a longtime fan of Ward’s BDB books – I just adored the first four. I have The Shadows, but haven’t had time to read it yet. I just want to say that J.R. isn’t the only author who says that she writes the characters and stories as they come to her. I’m a fan of Joanna Wylde’s Reaper series and a couple months ago on her Facebook page she was discussing an upcoming book where the heroine is 20 and hero is really young too and I made a comment about it. She was quick to reply that she can only “write the stories that come to her,” and has no “control” over the age of her characters. Is age different from a characters’ actions? Sure, but I’ve seen other authors take this approach of “I write what comes to me.” J.R. isn’t the only one – although she may have the most sales.
Authors don’t owe readers a certain book. I feel they should write the book they want to write. Readers have the right to buy them or not buy them. They should be correctly labelled. I think Ward should have marketed her latest as paranormal or urban fantasy. When I hear the term being disrespectful to their readers I think of stalking or harassing.
@Courtney:
I agree the characters can direct the book but I think you can write a story and tell your fans up front it is really different. I know Kristen Ashley said something about Tack’s book (I think) where she wrote a bunch and it just didn’t work right so she went back and tried something different.
If J.R. Ward wants to try something different then that is fine but then give people the heads up. “I set out to write a romance and the characters decided to go a different route. So this is a book with romantic elements but doesn’t follow the traditional romance format.”
I think the issue of author/reader communication and interaction is an interesting one and I always wonder how much authors can/are encouraged to share/disclose about books before they’re published – particularly bestselling authors who routinely hit the NYT. If an author’s livelihood is dependent on book sales and she knows sales will be down if her latest book isn’t a “traditional romance,” does she “owe” her readers that notification in advance? I don’t think so. (And I also think J.R. could likely live on her royalties for a long time in the future without producing new books). How much is the publisher responsible for the marketing of a new book? Of exploiting readers’ expectations?
“When I hear the term being disrespectful to their readers I think of stalking or harassing. ”
Since I wrote: I find the change of genre to be disrespectful to her romance readers (without a btw before the book was out), you’re saying I am a stalker and harassing the author? I find that to be laughable. I neither stalk or harassed any author, ever. You may not like my opinion, but I don’t think it’s on par with stalking or harassing. Maybe I am missing something?
No I meant when I hear authors being disrespectful to their readers I think of authors like Anne Rice who stalk or harass their readers. Or the one who posted a blog about tracking down a reader who gave her a bad review.
No I meant what I think rises to the level of being disrespectful to readers are those authors who do stalk and harass readers. Like Anne Rice who promotes STGB, and that author who wrote a blog post about tracking down a reader/blogger who wrote a critical review.
Gotcha.
I think being disrespectful comes in all colors and sizes.
I want to elaborate just a little: The disrespectful thing I am referring to, is for the entire genre not just the readers, but the authors as well. It’s not easy for authors to write a believable HEA. NAL/Signet is a romance imprint. Maybe I am the only person who thinks these things, won’t be the first time. I just know how I personally feel about it.
“readers consistently punish erotica writers with scathing comments and one star reviews when they do not provide a central romantic plot and a happy ending”
I just glanced through while at work so haven’t read everything thoroughly. This jumped out at me though. I’ve long complained about the way some people use “erotica” and “erotic romance” interchangeably. They’re separate genres. It looks like confusing the labels has affected erotica writers. I’m not sure where the confusion started, but it’s that confusion that’s hurting writers not readers’ expectations that they’re “buying a manufactured product that will offer them the predictable experience.” Readers think they’re buying Romance, Erotic Romance, which has very different conventions from Erotica.
I have no issue with Ward writing the end of the story the way she “needed” to. My issue is with her then saying the characters made her do it and still marketing the books as a romance. She could have said the story went in a different direction than she’d originally planned and took ownership of that fact rather than the whole “woe is me, I have NO control” routine.
There are plenty of writers I like who started writing romance and left the genre to write straight suspense (Sandra Brown, Tami Hoag, Alicia Scott/Lisa Gardner, etc). And that’s fine. I totally understand an author wanting to explore other avenues. If Ward wants to go the UF route, more power to her. But be upfront about it. Don’t blame it on your characters.
I’ve heard Gone with the Wind referred to as a romance. Frankly my dear, I think not. If there’s no happy ending for the couple it’s not a romance. A love story maybe, but not a romance, not as the genre is currently defined.
I’m blanking on the name of the punk rock star who complained that punk rock fans were too rigid, but I think this is an issue you find across genres and artistic mediums.
@wikkidsexycool: a possible twist for a possibly black female character in a Ward book would be that she’d be fashioned after Cookie from “Empire?” For the love of God, no. Maybe Lee Daniels could run an intervention to halt that round of appropriation.
I’m fairly new to Romance as a genre (my loss!), and with Nalini Singh as one of my first Romance reads, I remember burning through Visions of Heat and thinking to myself, at the very end (spoiler, but this is 8 years old) would have been okay with Faith dying, because the book itself had wrapped up well for me.
If that happened now, four years later? I’d be tossing the book across the room.
So definitely, genre expectations shape my reading, and I am really happy that way. In my experience, most people are somewhat omnivorous readers and enjoy some genres/subgenres and really dislike others. I’m not a huge Romantic Suspense fan, for example, and can rarely make my way through Mystery (not for lack of trying), but I will read Historical, Paranormal and SFF Romance by the bucketful, as well as UF, “hard” SF, and that’s just fiction. Brushing me off as someone who wants a “Big Mac” experience because of ONE genre that I read and appreciate the expectations of isn’t just snide, it’s wildly unrealistic.
I think that’s part of it, too. I really appreciate the expectations of genres. I expect excellent world-building in my fantasy, either plausible hard science or really pushing the edge speculative fiction in my SF, rich characters in capital-F Fiction, and a believable happy ending from Romance.
I love it when tropes are played with, inverted, turned upside-down, but I am really unhappy if a SF book is full of “SCIENCE DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY” or a fantasy book starts violating its own rules of magic. As far as I’m concerned, if you’re genre writing and futz with the core expectations, it’s poor writing — like writing a essay about llamas when you were asked to make a powerpoint on accounting software. It’s missing the mark entirely. The whole point of suspension of disbelief is that we’re fine going along with things that normally we would not be, but killing off a protagonist in a Romance book would be like Batman whipping out a gun and shooting the villain.
Before I found Romance, I left post-it notes in the covers of my books reminding myself if something was a happy ending or not. Now I can choose more easily what I want to read based on my mood but also knowing that there is a great big genre out there that isn’t going to Nicholas Sparks the ending, which lets me make myself a lot more emotionally vulnerable when I’m reading. Sarah from SBTB once said to me that reading romance is an exercise in empathy, and that’s really resonated — and I can’t open myself up that much if I have to be constantly wary of “Gotcha!” endings. My emotional armour is on when I’m reading SFF (although the Malazan series makes me cry repeatedly!). It’s stripped away quite a bit for Romance, and I feel taken advantage of if that’s specifically targeted as a gimmick for the book.
(As an aside, I didn’t like the BDB despite trying to read the first few books — they’re not my jam. But I would be feeling just as hurt if say, the next Psy/Changeling book broke up Lucas and Sascha, because it’s not just unexpected, it feels like a betrayal of the trust that author’s built with me over the course of many, many books.)
@Lindsay
Yes, to everything you just typed. Thank you for expressing what I am feeling much more eloquently.
@Isobel Carr: I just wanted to put some context on Jodi’s post, given that I was debating the other side of the argument for that event. She basically took one for the team and argued with the non-HEA side purely to balance out the numbers. So that post deliberately manipulates the arguments for the sake of the debate, and I’m not sure they actually reflect Jodi’s personal opinions. I’d say they probably represent some of the broader arguments in favour of the non-HEA love story, though.
@Lindsay: I like what you say about the emotional armor, how you put it on or take it off depending on genre/your expectations of that genre. Very true.
Robin, I don’t think the genre is diluted at all. I think there has always been a tension between romance with HEA and romantic fiction more broadly. (I myself didn’t realise romance was supposed to have an HEA until I started reading blogs, and I had been reading romance for 20 years by then.) I think what has always segregated genre romance from general fiction romance are the publishing imprints, and what’s causing confusion is the disruption in the traditional publishing model that kept those imprints (mostly) very clearly labelled and separate from general fiction. I’m seeing a lot of reader-run romance author signings that include a long list of authors whose books either don’t have the HEA contained in one book (ie series), or who don’t conform to familiar structures in romance (eg rural romance), or who tackle scenarios that would be anathema in romance (eg blatant infidelity, unresolved love triangles, death of h/h). I think some kind of branding around the HEA is still going to be very important because I do feel there will always be a significant (and passionate) audience for happy endings.
As for Ward, it’s fine that she needs to write what her imagination brings to her. But that book should have gone through an editing process that would have picked up the fact that the non-HEA couple was too prominent in the story and would therefore violate romance reader expectations, and the story could have been adjusted to accommodate both Ward’s vision for her story, and the parameters around which her books are being marketed.
I could go along with the argument about the story being a particular way and just marketed wrong except for the example that Ward herself has set. In a previous book, she killed off the heroine and in order to gain the HEA, Jane came back as a ghost. (Now, I didn’t love it, but at least she wasn’t gone forever dead, just ghost-dead). Mary was dying of cancer but the Scribe Virgin healed her and gave her immortality so that she could have her HEA with produce-loving Rhage (my favourite book of the series actually). I haven’t read the latest book but I’ve read some spoilerific reviews and I understand there was plenty of page time about efforts to find a cure for the heroine (of The Shadows)’s disease. So it wouldn’t have taken a lot to tweak the ending would it? I mean, if she can make Jane a ghost, surely she can write in a character coming up with a cure or a gift from the Scribe Virgin or something. She’s got form on this so I think that makes the betrayal worse.
@wikkidsexycool: The UK/Aus cover has a black man on the cover. https://www.hachette.com.au/Books/detail.page?isbn=9780749959623
@Kaetrin:
Thanks for the info Kaetrin.
Perhaps a little later on the US branch of the publisher will realize how silly they’re acting by pretending as if US readers can’t handle a paranormal black male on the cover. It begs the question, if representations of male demons, dragons, vampires, were creatures, and the like can go on covers, what’s up with the US publishers of Ward’s book?
Robin,
I feel you have mischaracterized what I said in my post.
“I find her equation of genre formulae with crass commercialism and fast food to be deeply and offensively unfair. Generic formula do not amount to a lack of quality or creativity”
I was very careful to specify ‘for many writers’. I did not say all genre writers, or most genre writers. There have been extraordinarily fresh, original and outstanding writing within, for instance, the Regency Romance genre and in the post-apocalyptic Zombie genre, but I feel it takes a very talented writer to turn those constraints into a benefit.
Yes, there are literally millions of sonnets and millions of haikus and thank GOD most of them aren’t turning up self-published on Amazon, because the vast majority of them are badly written, cliched and awash in conformity. My idea of hell is getting stuck in a room for eternity having to read the vast majority of attempts at sonnet writing.
As much as I am sure you’d like to paint me as anti-genre or anti-romance, this is not true. I’m just fucking picky.
I’m fascinated by this post and all of your comments.
@MaryK: I didn’t realize “erotic romance” and “erotica” were different genres, but it makes complete sense now that you’ve pointed it out to me.
As an author, a part of my job is making sure a reader picks up my stories with the right expectations. It is a product, and I want readers to get what they paid for. That said, Amazon makes it so hard!
While writing this, I’d tried to see how well I could drill down into certain eBook categories. I had only heard about Amazon burying “erotica”, but now I’m seeing it. Clicking on “Kindle eBooks” got me a genre list on the left side that didn’t include “Erotica” at all. I manually typed “erotica” into the search bar, and below it appeared “Kindle Store : Kindle eBooks : Literature & Fiction : Erotica”. I clicked the Back button, and “Erotica” suddenly appears in the genre list.
Putting that aside, Amazon says its categorization is based on the BISAC subject headings. BISAC pulls Erotica out into its own genre separate from Romance, and Amazon does the same.
Let’s say an erotic horror story contains explicit sex and monsters killing characters—no romance or HEA/HFN. BISAC doesn’t have an Erotica > Horror subgenre, but Amazon does. Although, as before, navigating to it was tricky without having searched “erotica” first to unlock the browsing of that category.
What if a potential reader wants a scary, sexually explicit story and, because they’ll use the search bar (they’ll HAVE to) instead of genre-browsing, they may not immediately know that they’re NOT in romance-land. After all, Romance>Erotica exists. They might be hoping for a couple to survive to the end.
I’d definitely give most readers the benefit of the doubt when it comes to knowing that they’re in territory potentially without happy endings, but a minority very well may get confused.
Could I get anyone’s opinion on how the product listing might help them know beforehand that they might not get a happy ending? Would you prefer a straight-up italicized warning in the book description? What would be a sufficient warning without giving away the ending?
@Ruby Duvall: for me all it has to say that the book is not a Romance. That tells me right there that the book does not have the only requirement that a lot of readers think genre Romance has. No need to specify the absence of HEA/HFN. If I make an assumption of such after I read that book is not a Romance, it is on me.
@wikkidsexycool: I was thinking about the temporary absence of the Lessers when I was writing this post. And the moment in the books where the female characters got together and talked about how people may think they’re weak, but really they’re strong. Or how Ward said she’d never write m/m until m/m became really profitable, and voila, an m/m BDB book. IMO it’s difficult to maintain the ‘I go wherever my characters lead me’ story when the series seems awfully responsive to certain common complaints and market changes.
Given what happens to Trez in this book, along with the fact that she writes both his and his brother’s story in the same book (with unequal attention to both), I’m less likely to give her an A for effort on the diversity front. But then I got off the BDB train for good after Xhex’s book, which I felt doubly victimized Xhex in the way it seemed to indulge in sexual violence against her character. Between that and the racial appropriation that never felt ironized or subverted, and the general issues with the female characters, the problems outweighed the ironically appealing, over the top WTFery for me.
Re. the covers, though, your comment had me pursuing the Shelly Laurenston Pride series covers. I’m an unmitigated fan of that series, and I have the books in print, digital, and audio, in most cases. And I noticed that while Kensington has definitely whitewashed the cover of, say, Beast Behaving Badly (Blayne is black), and hidden the heroine on The Beast in Him (which seems to have three covers, one on Amazon, one on Laurenston’s site, and one one Audible), the audiobook cover neither whitewashes nor hides the female representing Jessica Ward: http://www.audible.com/pd/Romance/The-Beast-in-Him-Audiobook/B00DC2DRUI/ref=a_search_c4_1_1_srTtl?qid=1428615290&sr=1-1.
And, of course, anyone who reads Laurenston’s books knows her cast of characters is multiracial, so the false advertising seems both stupid and disrespectful to me. Also, why the audiobook reveals what the other covers does not is a mystery to me, but I’d love to know if it has affected sales of the book at all, and in what direction.
@Tamara: Even though I don’t write fiction, I could apply much of what you say to the kind of writing I do, in that I believe that there is, somewhere in my subconscious mind, a fully developed and integrated argument, and I just have to figure out how to articulate it. Which I don’t always do well. And I have no objection to authors who talk about their muses or their creative inspirations or any of that, because I think there are many ways in which the creative process can be a mystery to the creator.
But I also think Ward goes way past that, doing interviews with her characters, having them converse with her fans, etc. And then the post I linked to in which she talks about how they took over the writing of this book. And maybe that’s really her experience. But it can also come off as disclaiming responsibility for reader reaction. In other words, it’s not like she’s saying that she wrote the story that needed to be written for the sake of the story; she’s saying she had no choice, she hated what happened to, she hated galleys and edits, and she will never read the book again because it’s too painful, aka she’s a victim of the story, too. And frankly, I have major issues with that, in part because it erases all of the editing, production, and marketing decisions that went into the book, and also because it IMO undermines artistic agency and responsibility.
Still, though, if the book is not marketed as Romance, that may mitigate some reader expectations. Although because Ward and her publisher are aware of the enthusiasm of her fan base, I wonder if anything was done to signal to them that this was a very different book, and that it should not be read like the other BDB books. That, it seems to me, is crucial for deciding whether there was an attempt to exploit the loyalty and market strength of Romance or not. I don’t know the answer to that question, because I wasn’t paying attention to the marketing for this book, but from reader reactions, it sounds like maybe there wasn’t so much by way of a warning.
@Kat: I tend to be more inclusive in regard to what constitutes genre Romance than some other readers, I think, especially in the HFN v HEA debate, where I often prefer the HFN. But in the midst of this whole Ward controversy and the Remittance Girl post, I saw a tweet from Angela James that she felt that some authors were trying to take advantage of the genre by marketing books as Romance that were not Romance. And she followed up by indicating that Ward was not the only example she had in mind. I didn’t push her on it, because I figured she’d give examples if she wanted to, but it definitely made me wonder, because she obviously reads a lot more books than I do, and, well, we’ve seen these assertions made before (I still remember when Juno Books got a lot of flak for marketing books as PNR that many people did not think fit the Romance definition). Also, I’m wondering now if it’s largely the ending where we see these conflicts, because there are a number of elements that could make a book diverge from genre Romance.
@Remittance Girl: Actually, I have no interest in ‘painting you as anti-genre or anti-Romance,’ nor was I really objecting to the formulaic reference in your comment. What I found unfair was your equation of formulaic fiction to a “manufactured product” like fast food. I’ve read and enjoyed your work, and as I note in the post, I appreciate that you value and are willing to stand up for artistic agency and integrity. But I still think the terms in which you characterize the experience of readers who do like formula is as unfairly reductive and disrespectful as you claim these readers of formulaic works to be.
I did see The Shadows in a book shop the other day and the cover did have “A novel of The Black Dagger Brotherhood” which in the light of this conversation should be some kind of alert. Unless that is on all of them.
@Ruby Duvall: Put the genre in the blurb – or, like Sirius said, make it clear in the blurb that the story is not genre romance. Then it’s caveat emptor.
@Janet: ‘Also, I’m wondering now if it’s largely the ending where we see these conflicts, because there are a number of elements that could make a book diverge from genre Romance.’
I don’t think it’s just the happy ending. In Australian rural romance, the — and I’m not sure how else to describe this — feel of the book can be very different. ‘Rural romance’ has evolved into something that I don’t feel is really within the romance genre anymore, though I think it’s certainly still valid as a genre on its own, given that it seems to have found a significant and loyal readership. Many of these books have romantic elements that end happily, but they often don’t align to the structure of genre romance, and I feel they’re closer to general fiction (or, let’s face it, what would be labelled women’s fiction). Is that just me projecting what I feel a ‘good’ romance should be? Maybe. I think more broadly maybe romance in Australia is going this way, because I see it in books from local romance imprints, too. We have a similar issue with romantic suspense. Crime is such a popular genre in Australia, and romantic suspense in Australia is really a very different kind of book than the romantic suspense that romance readers would normally expect.
The murky line between erotica and erotic romance is also interesting. Because erotica essentially explore the boundaries of sexuality, any time romance intersects at those edges, I think it’s always going to challenge genre expectations, particularly those that originate from readers’ sense of, I guess, moral behaviour. But the market for romance is too great a temptation, in my opinion, and so when we get intersection from the other direction (erotica with romantic elements), there’s little to lose if an author or publisher brands the book as romance. And as was discussed upthread, not everyone makes a distinction between erotic romance, erotica and, I would argue, porn.
@Samantha:
Like Karen Marie Moning did when she abandoned the Highlanders and was going to publish DARK FEVER. She posted on her blog how she needed a change from romance and wanted to write something else. She perfectly warned her readers that the fever series was going to be something else, that even it having an overarchig love story with a HEA at the end, it wasn´t PRN.
I loved her sincerity, jumped on he new train and loved it. I would have loved for Ward to have shown the same courtesy to her readers
Of course the author is god in their universe and they can absolutly write whatever they want, but a change in the labeling or categorizing of the genre should be expected. She would have safed herself a lot of headaches right now if she had done that, instead of feeding her fanbase whatever she felt like and then almost insinuating, in the end it doesn´t matter, because it won´t make a difference in the sales.
@MaryK:
Exactly, taht is why labeling or categorizing the genre is so important. The writer writes what he wants, the readers knows what he is getting and in the end everyone is satisfyied.