Writing By The Rules

I’m not sure whether you have the same scenario in your country but around here - South Australia - they’re desperately trying to get people to use self-checkouts in supermarkets. Clearly a bid to save money by not having to employ staff to help their customers through a checkout.

Unsurprisingly, there’s a lot of resistance to this idea. In fact Woolworths claim that around three-quarters of people express their irritation at self-service checkouts by stealing a couple of items each time they use them. Woolies estimate they’re losing, depending on the store’s location, between 7% to 20% of their revenue because of this mild form of protest.

Apparently there’s a phenomenon known as “psychological reactivity” which is when you try to enforce rules that people don’t like, the effort makes them break the law on purpose, just to show their disapproval. Like the way a baby will refuse to eat broccoli. Or a teenager will react against a curfew. Or a billionaire will resist paying taxes.

Writers are like this when it comes to genre writing. Many writers don’t like to follow rules. They see guidelines as disruptive to creativity. Or spoiling the fun. Consequently authors who like writing crime or romance or fantasy may slide easily into a bestselling genre, while those who do not like rules will fall outside of genre classifications and, as a result, find gaining an audience much more difficult.

Authors may not relish genre labels and avoid limiting classifications - but ironically readers prefer them. Genre helps readers find writers they may potentially enjoy.

While genre authors may gain sales, fame, and success, there will always be wannabe “literary” writers who write work that meanders aimlessly from one unfocused topic to the next, from one intricately plotted moment to another unrelated flight of fancy.

Seriously, literary fiction doesn’t sell well because readers don’t know what they’re getting. Genre fiction sells for the precise opposite reason. Readers want and expect a genre piece to behave in a certain way. The characters in genre are recognizable as belonging to the type of story the reader wants to read. The action unfolds as envisaged, or if not, in a way that is surprising and fresh to a reader of that genre.

I guess it’s all about your intention. Do you want book sales or merely the satisfaction of creating art? You probably want a bit of both.

Writing to create art can be very taxing mentally and emotionally and often doesn’t work, especially if you’re a perfectionist. The good thing about genre writing is that you can satisfy a genre reader even when the writing isn’t great. On the other hand, when you work to get around genre conventions you may fail abysmally. Better to be bad than to miss the mark altogether.

Val McDermid is a genre crime writer who said something interesting recently. In one of her books she mentioned that telling a gripping story is only half of the job of the author. The other half is making readers like your characters and your story. Too many wannabe writers get so wrapped up in hyper reality, wallowing in sex, grit, and violence, trying hard to be original but often losing the sympathy of the reader along the way.

There’s no point to being outrageous if you do not create empathy.

My partner and I have just binge watched Dead To Me. The only two seasons of this fun black comedy exemplify much of what I’m trying to say here.

All the characters do bad things, break the law, cause harm and upset but, and here’s the kicker, they’re all likable for different reasons.  

Interestingly too, the Christina Applegate character (Jen) was compelling and sympathetic all the time she was gorgeous and sexy. Her willfulness was attractive. Her ability to get away with her crimes seemed right somehow…

But, through no fault of her own - in real life - the actress contracted MS and started to put on weight. Tragic and sad, yes, and no great crime surely but I couldn’t help myself. I didn’t like her character as much. I stopped wanting her to get away with her crimes. I wanted her to suffer and take responsibility for her actions. Why? Simply because she was no longer beautiful. This taught me a hugely valuable lesson about fiction and our willing suspension of disbelief. Also, I realized why movie stars have to be good-looking. Because, despite the best efforts of writers, their characters often don’t work if they’re not.

Okay. I hate myself for being shallow and for playing to my own prejudices

But we all have inbuilt prejudices.

Rules and conventions are there for a reason. They express ideas that are universal.

It’s about balance at the end of the day. If you’re writing a thriller and you focus on a psychopath to explore his motivation, you’d better have a nice person on the other side of the coin that your reader can root for, someone they can trust and feel at ease “being” while they are reading your book.
Look at your own fictional characters and ask, would anyone want to be them?

Can a reader really lose themselves in your story?

Or is your desire for so-called “originality” more important than your reader’s needs?
 
Keep Writing!

Rob’s Writing Academy