Subjectivity, Take 4 (Cavemen and Flying Cars)
Herewith, my take on subjectivity in publishing.
It’s simple: Execution wins every time. There’s a lot of emphasis placed on “hooks” and “high concepts” in genre fiction these days, and while yet another novel about a brooding/angstful/vengeful vampire/werewolf/fae solving a muder/saving the world/managing his clan can sound dull at the outset, a sufficiently skilled author can turn the same thing into a bestseller.
It’s sort of like someone writing a story about cavemen. (See, there was a point to that header.) Everybody writes about cavemen, so why aren’t you the bright penny writing a story about flying cars? No one’s done flying cars! Flying cars are poised for a breakout!
Maybe because you can say things about the nuances of modern culture with cavemen that you can’t say with flying cars. Maybe you don’t have the experience to write about flying cars. Maybe because market trends we’re seeing now were manuscripts on submission 2-3 years ago, so if you’ve got a TARDIS, you’re all set. The rest of us just have to write what we love and give the execution our own spin.
Take two of my very own books, Night Life and Street Magic.
Night Life: A werewolf detective must track a demon serial killer while struggling for acceptance in a world that reviles supernatural creatures and fight her growing attraction to a pack alpha who may know more than he’s telling about the murders.
Street Magic: A world-weary detective inspector and a heroin-addicted mage must stop a vengeful ghost’s plans to use the children of London for mass mayhem, while struggling to stay alive in an alternate, supernatural, and dangerous version of the city.
Neither of these concepts are new, especially Night Life…the cop-tracking-serial-killer hasn’t been new since Silence of the Lambs and a nonhuman struggling against a world that hates and fears them? The first I heard of that was circa 1963, in a little comic book called X-Men. Street Magic’s conceit of secret cities and flawed heroes has been used to great effect many times in genre fiction, not least by an author who’s last name starts with a G and ends in aiman.
So why didn’t I rip out my hair and wail over the fact that my “hook” had be used before? Because I knew that each of these stories were mine, and that the way I told them was new. Don’t misunderstand-when I say don’t worry if your hook isn’t 100% shiny and new, I don’t mean you can do this by rote. You need to have something to say, be it thematic underpinnings, characters interacting in new ways, or an inversion of genre tropes. But you don’t have to get so wrapped up in hooks, pitches, dos and don’ts and market trends that you lose all sense of why you started writing the bloody story in the first place. But you can make even the oldest of tales new, and these concepts work, after all, for a reason: because they’re good stories. The hero’s journey is still a valid structure to hang a plot on. The tales of Beowulf and Cuchulainn might be re-imagined as detectives or vampires, but the lone hero mystique will always sell a book. Stories of tragic love might be as old as property marriages, but they survive because they’re compelling and easy to engage with. (The Tale of Genji, widely considered the world’s first novel, is a romance.)
Write your book, and quit worrying, is my advice. Make the words and the story your own, and it will be noticed. Passion shines, even in the most well-used of plot hooks. Brilliant execution trumps brilliant concept, any day.
But of course, that last bit is just my opinion.
-Caitlin Kittredge
It’s simple: Execution wins every time. There’s a lot of emphasis placed on “hooks” and “high concepts” in genre fiction these days, and while yet another novel about a brooding/angstful/vengeful vampire/werewolf/fae solving a muder/saving the world/managing his clan can sound dull at the outset, a sufficiently skilled author can turn the same thing into a bestseller.
It’s sort of like someone writing a story about cavemen. (See, there was a point to that header.) Everybody writes about cavemen, so why aren’t you the bright penny writing a story about flying cars? No one’s done flying cars! Flying cars are poised for a breakout!
Maybe because you can say things about the nuances of modern culture with cavemen that you can’t say with flying cars. Maybe you don’t have the experience to write about flying cars. Maybe because market trends we’re seeing now were manuscripts on submission 2-3 years ago, so if you’ve got a TARDIS, you’re all set. The rest of us just have to write what we love and give the execution our own spin.
Take two of my very own books, Night Life and Street Magic.
Night Life: A werewolf detective must track a demon serial killer while struggling for acceptance in a world that reviles supernatural creatures and fight her growing attraction to a pack alpha who may know more than he’s telling about the murders.
Street Magic: A world-weary detective inspector and a heroin-addicted mage must stop a vengeful ghost’s plans to use the children of London for mass mayhem, while struggling to stay alive in an alternate, supernatural, and dangerous version of the city.
Neither of these concepts are new, especially Night Life…the cop-tracking-serial-killer hasn’t been new since Silence of the Lambs and a nonhuman struggling against a world that hates and fears them? The first I heard of that was circa 1963, in a little comic book called X-Men. Street Magic’s conceit of secret cities and flawed heroes has been used to great effect many times in genre fiction, not least by an author who’s last name starts with a G and ends in aiman.
So why didn’t I rip out my hair and wail over the fact that my “hook” had be used before? Because I knew that each of these stories were mine, and that the way I told them was new. Don’t misunderstand-when I say don’t worry if your hook isn’t 100% shiny and new, I don’t mean you can do this by rote. You need to have something to say, be it thematic underpinnings, characters interacting in new ways, or an inversion of genre tropes. But you don’t have to get so wrapped up in hooks, pitches, dos and don’ts and market trends that you lose all sense of why you started writing the bloody story in the first place. But you can make even the oldest of tales new, and these concepts work, after all, for a reason: because they’re good stories. The hero’s journey is still a valid structure to hang a plot on. The tales of Beowulf and Cuchulainn might be re-imagined as detectives or vampires, but the lone hero mystique will always sell a book. Stories of tragic love might be as old as property marriages, but they survive because they’re compelling and easy to engage with. (The Tale of Genji, widely considered the world’s first novel, is a romance.)
Write your book, and quit worrying, is my advice. Make the words and the story your own, and it will be noticed. Passion shines, even in the most well-used of plot hooks. Brilliant execution trumps brilliant concept, any day.
But of course, that last bit is just my opinion.
-Caitlin Kittredge