a series of connected tangents
Fantasy Openings to Avoid or to Very Carefully Consider: Your fantasy opening pages might be in trouble if…
#1) Your novel opens with an easily recognizable fantasy genre trope.
Ages ago, Writers Digest asked dozens of agents what story openings they saw too often. Agent Kristin cited the fantasy trope of gathering herbs in the forest. Turns out that’s still a pretty popular opening-and therein lies the potential problem. Why? Because opening with an established trope might make your story feel too familiar or not original enough, and you definitely want an agent read beyond chapter one.
Every genre has its established, easily recognizable tropes, and, technically, there’s nothing wrong with choosing one for your fantasy story’s opening. (In fact, we’re sure readers can cite plenty of examples of established authors who have done it, and done it well.) We’re not arguing that trope-openings (tropenings?) should never be done. We just want to make you aware of a few so that you can very carefully consider whether an easily recognizable opening is the best or most effective opening for your story.
This set me thinking about what I’m looking for in the opening pages of a book. I’m not an agent, I’m not wondering if a book is sellable and the books I pick up have usually been through some sort of “quality check”: they have been traditionally edited and published, they’ve been selected for the library’s collection, they’ve been positively reviewed by someone I respect or who shares my tastes, I liked the author’s other books.
When I read about a book - synopses and reviews - I’m interested in originality. And if a book as a whole lacks originality, then that’s an issue. But I don’t care if it’s a trope-opening. Especially not if that trope-opening provides tension. When I read the opening pages, what I want most is characters I can connect with, some source of tension - reasons to be curious about what happens next, and a writing style that I like.
I started reading All the Crooked Saints by Maggie Stiefvater over the weekend. I’ve loved five of Stiefvater’s books and hated one - but that was one of her earlier novels and years ago, so while I wasn’t assuming that I’d love this one, it seemed more likely that I’d like it than not.
I got to page 100 (out of 311) and thought Why am I reading this when I could be reading an Angela Thirkell novel? So that’s what I did.
All the Crooked Saints is unusual and seems highly original. I like the characters introduced in the first chapter. I appreciate the writing style - well, I appreciate a lot of the sentences. But I didn’t appreciate the narrative’s tendency to go off on tangents, particularly about minor characters who I don’t yet care about. Unless I’m suddenly beset by curiosity about how it ends, I’m not going to give it another go.
By contrast, Angela Thirkell’s Northbridge Rectory is, to someone who has read seven other Thirkell novels, familiar and comfortingly so. It is lots of atmosphere (WWII, small English town), some amusingly expressed observations and nuanced characterisation. I’ll review it properly sometime.
On the topic of Stiefvater, she recently posted about the effects of book-piracy on sales of the Raven Cycle, which I found very interesting.1) This is a U.S. centered discussion. Not because I value my non U.S. readers any less, but because I am published with a U.S. publisher first, who then sells my rights elsewhere. This means that the fate of my books, good or bad, is largely decided on U.S. turf, through U.S. sales to readers and libraries.
2) This is not a conversation about whether or not artists deserve to get money for art, or whether or not you think I in particular, as a flawed human, deserve money. It is only about how piracy affects a book’s fate at the publishing house.
3) It is also not a conversation about book prices, or publishing costs, or what is a fair price for art [...]
It is only about two statements that I saw go by:
1) piracy doesn’t hurt publishing.
2) someone who pirates the book was never going to buy it anyway, so it’s not a lost sale.
Discussions on this topic can get derailed with debating the ethics, or else with the difficulty of demonstrating how piracy by people who can’t (or wouldn’t) buy something for financial or geographical reasons has an adverse effect. I liked that Stiefvater managed to pretty much side-step that.
(Although there were still the inevitably annoying-to-me comments assuming that everyone has access to libraries like US libraries.)
If the culture is to change positively, I suspect there needs to be more focus on the people who could - and would - buy things, but who believe, or persuade themselves into thinking, that they wouldn’t.
Last night a panel on TV were discussing internet piracy. They showed an anti-piracy ad aimed at teens and pre-teens (twelve to thirteen year olds are apparently the biggest growing culprits of piracy) and discussed the effectiveness, or lack thereof, of its persuasive strategy. Kids that age are highly unlikely to care much, if at all, about adults they don’t personally know losing money or losing jobs.
I wonder if ads should target parents - either encouraging them to buy things for their kids or to stop their kids from pirating stuff? Kids in this age group don’t exactly have much discretionary income. They do have pester-power, but depending on the personalities involved and also on their parents’ financial situation, there are limitations on how successful this can be. (My own parents were often impervious to nagging.)
As for the subjective nature of quality, a recent ‘Sleeps With Monsters’ article by Liz Bourke, On the Question of Quality: There’s a comment that anyone who writes articles, columns, or even tweets about representation and inclusion will read eventually. If you write about queer people, if you write about people of colour (not that these groups are separate), or even if you write about women alone. This comment comes in many variations, but it usually comes from self-described straight white (cisgender, though they usually don’t add that part) men.
“But what about the quality?” is what this comment-in essence, over its many variations-boils down to. “When you talk about t6he books by all these (queer, non-white) people, are you really considering their QUALITY?”
[...]
It’s not helpful.
Here’s why.
Let’s take the idea that all people judge on the same criteria of quality. They don’t. Past a certain level of prose and structural competence*, “quality” is a nebulous concept. Books speak to certain people, and don’t speak to others. Their success as a work of art is entirely subjective.
*
More and more lately, I’ve found myself wanting comfort reading and have not known what to read. I have a collection of comfort reads that I’ve reread quite a bit in the past few years and I need to give them a break, I guess.
When I was a student, my main comfort-reading time was lunchtimes. But these days it’s become bedtime, when I’m less alert and more impatient and know that after this there’s a day of work between me and the next chance I’ll have to read.
So there are books which would keep me up late if I pick them up, and other books become comforting but I have to read much of the book to get the cumulative effect and I don’t have time for that at night. And then there are books that require more concentration than I really want to give.
The other night, it occurred to me that what I really wanted to reread was the first book of Tamora Pierce’s Circle of Magic - incidentally, the only one of that quartet which I don’t have. But it’s on Overdrive - and of course someone else has borrowed it. (I’ve put a hold on it now.)
There’s a secondhand shop that I go past nearly every day - when it is closed. But yesterday I was there while it was still open, and I found the Circle Opens book about Tris, Shatterglass. I would have been more excited if it were The Magic in the Weaving, or maybe one of the Tortall books I don’t have, but it still felt like fortuitous timing.
I was excited when I logged into my library account and saw I had several digital holds - the last time I’d checked, it had just been The Magic in the Weaving. And then I was disappointed when I discovered that out of books I’d asked the library to get, the library had added everything except the one I wanted the most, a graphic novel written by Sharon Shinn.
(I looked up how much the kindle edition costs and I’m thinking about it. Familiar author on one hand, less familiar format and unfamiliar combination of graphic novel + kindle on the other… I found out kindle has a return-for-refund option, and then was sidetracked reading discussions about it. Apparently lot of people believe it is beyond the pale to finish a book and then return it for a refund just because you didn’t like it. Like eating a meal at a restaurant and then refusing to pay just because you didn’t like it! A poor metaphor, I thought, because once you eaten a meal, it’s gone and no one else can have it, but a book read by one person still exists. And physical books often can be returned, or they can be sold or given or lent to someone else.
Another commenter declared that it was akin to standing in a bookshop and reading a book but not paying for it, something no one would expect to do and no bookshop would allow. So, um, yeah, about that one…
Anyway, I don’t think it’s very likely that I’ll want to use the return-for-refund option, but knowing it’s there makes me more likely to take a risk on something I’m unsure about.)
I don’t know why I wasn’t excited about the library getting Almost Midnight, two stories by Rainbow Rowell, because they were super cute. (I’ll review them properly later.) Short stories may be the answer to my bedtime comfort reading dilemma. One of the Almost Midnight stories was published a few years ago in My True Love Gave to Me, a collection of YA winter romances. I’ve known of that anthology’s existence for years, I’m familiar with half the contributors, so I’m wondering why I never considered reading it.
Perhaps the library didn’t have a copy in 2014? Perhaps I thought it sounded too cheesy? Perhaps I thought they’d be WINTER = CHRISTMAS stories? Because of the whole hemisphere thing, seasonal reading doesn’t always appeal to me.
I see a lot of seasonal reading recommendations online, but not for the season I’m currently experiencing. The word ‘September’ makes me think of Harry Potter. ‘October’ reminds me of Tam Lin retellings. But it’s spring! I don’t feel like reading about autumn. Remember this for March or April, I tell myself.
But seeing the some of the leaves change colour doesn’t remind me of books set in autumn as forcefully as seeing the words ‘September’ or ‘October’ whenever I glance at a calendar or write the date...
*
I read Mira’s Last Dance in early October. Because the most recently published Penric novella is actually set before Mira’s Last Dance, I debated whether I’d read it now or if I’d wait until the audiobook comes out in February. I asked the library to get it, it’s been ordered and I’m #1 of 3 holds.
In the last fortnight Bujold announced - and released - a sequel to Mira’s Last Dance! A sequel!
Ahhhhhhh!
There’s no way I’m waiting until this one comes out as an audio... Originally @ Dreamwidth.
#1) Your novel opens with an easily recognizable fantasy genre trope.
Ages ago, Writers Digest asked dozens of agents what story openings they saw too often. Agent Kristin cited the fantasy trope of gathering herbs in the forest. Turns out that’s still a pretty popular opening-and therein lies the potential problem. Why? Because opening with an established trope might make your story feel too familiar or not original enough, and you definitely want an agent read beyond chapter one.
Every genre has its established, easily recognizable tropes, and, technically, there’s nothing wrong with choosing one for your fantasy story’s opening. (In fact, we’re sure readers can cite plenty of examples of established authors who have done it, and done it well.) We’re not arguing that trope-openings (tropenings?) should never be done. We just want to make you aware of a few so that you can very carefully consider whether an easily recognizable opening is the best or most effective opening for your story.
This set me thinking about what I’m looking for in the opening pages of a book. I’m not an agent, I’m not wondering if a book is sellable and the books I pick up have usually been through some sort of “quality check”: they have been traditionally edited and published, they’ve been selected for the library’s collection, they’ve been positively reviewed by someone I respect or who shares my tastes, I liked the author’s other books.
When I read about a book - synopses and reviews - I’m interested in originality. And if a book as a whole lacks originality, then that’s an issue. But I don’t care if it’s a trope-opening. Especially not if that trope-opening provides tension. When I read the opening pages, what I want most is characters I can connect with, some source of tension - reasons to be curious about what happens next, and a writing style that I like.
I started reading All the Crooked Saints by Maggie Stiefvater over the weekend. I’ve loved five of Stiefvater’s books and hated one - but that was one of her earlier novels and years ago, so while I wasn’t assuming that I’d love this one, it seemed more likely that I’d like it than not.
I got to page 100 (out of 311) and thought Why am I reading this when I could be reading an Angela Thirkell novel? So that’s what I did.
All the Crooked Saints is unusual and seems highly original. I like the characters introduced in the first chapter. I appreciate the writing style - well, I appreciate a lot of the sentences. But I didn’t appreciate the narrative’s tendency to go off on tangents, particularly about minor characters who I don’t yet care about. Unless I’m suddenly beset by curiosity about how it ends, I’m not going to give it another go.
By contrast, Angela Thirkell’s Northbridge Rectory is, to someone who has read seven other Thirkell novels, familiar and comfortingly so. It is lots of atmosphere (WWII, small English town), some amusingly expressed observations and nuanced characterisation. I’ll review it properly sometime.
On the topic of Stiefvater, she recently posted about the effects of book-piracy on sales of the Raven Cycle, which I found very interesting.1) This is a U.S. centered discussion. Not because I value my non U.S. readers any less, but because I am published with a U.S. publisher first, who then sells my rights elsewhere. This means that the fate of my books, good or bad, is largely decided on U.S. turf, through U.S. sales to readers and libraries.
2) This is not a conversation about whether or not artists deserve to get money for art, or whether or not you think I in particular, as a flawed human, deserve money. It is only about how piracy affects a book’s fate at the publishing house.
3) It is also not a conversation about book prices, or publishing costs, or what is a fair price for art [...]
It is only about two statements that I saw go by:
1) piracy doesn’t hurt publishing.
2) someone who pirates the book was never going to buy it anyway, so it’s not a lost sale.
Discussions on this topic can get derailed with debating the ethics, or else with the difficulty of demonstrating how piracy by people who can’t (or wouldn’t) buy something for financial or geographical reasons has an adverse effect. I liked that Stiefvater managed to pretty much side-step that.
(Although there were still the inevitably annoying-to-me comments assuming that everyone has access to libraries like US libraries.)
If the culture is to change positively, I suspect there needs to be more focus on the people who could - and would - buy things, but who believe, or persuade themselves into thinking, that they wouldn’t.
Last night a panel on TV were discussing internet piracy. They showed an anti-piracy ad aimed at teens and pre-teens (twelve to thirteen year olds are apparently the biggest growing culprits of piracy) and discussed the effectiveness, or lack thereof, of its persuasive strategy. Kids that age are highly unlikely to care much, if at all, about adults they don’t personally know losing money or losing jobs.
I wonder if ads should target parents - either encouraging them to buy things for their kids or to stop their kids from pirating stuff? Kids in this age group don’t exactly have much discretionary income. They do have pester-power, but depending on the personalities involved and also on their parents’ financial situation, there are limitations on how successful this can be. (My own parents were often impervious to nagging.)
As for the subjective nature of quality, a recent ‘Sleeps With Monsters’ article by Liz Bourke, On the Question of Quality: There’s a comment that anyone who writes articles, columns, or even tweets about representation and inclusion will read eventually. If you write about queer people, if you write about people of colour (not that these groups are separate), or even if you write about women alone. This comment comes in many variations, but it usually comes from self-described straight white (cisgender, though they usually don’t add that part) men.
“But what about the quality?” is what this comment-in essence, over its many variations-boils down to. “When you talk about t6he books by all these (queer, non-white) people, are you really considering their QUALITY?”
[...]
It’s not helpful.
Here’s why.
Let’s take the idea that all people judge on the same criteria of quality. They don’t. Past a certain level of prose and structural competence*, “quality” is a nebulous concept. Books speak to certain people, and don’t speak to others. Their success as a work of art is entirely subjective.
*
More and more lately, I’ve found myself wanting comfort reading and have not known what to read. I have a collection of comfort reads that I’ve reread quite a bit in the past few years and I need to give them a break, I guess.
When I was a student, my main comfort-reading time was lunchtimes. But these days it’s become bedtime, when I’m less alert and more impatient and know that after this there’s a day of work between me and the next chance I’ll have to read.
So there are books which would keep me up late if I pick them up, and other books become comforting but I have to read much of the book to get the cumulative effect and I don’t have time for that at night. And then there are books that require more concentration than I really want to give.
The other night, it occurred to me that what I really wanted to reread was the first book of Tamora Pierce’s Circle of Magic - incidentally, the only one of that quartet which I don’t have. But it’s on Overdrive - and of course someone else has borrowed it. (I’ve put a hold on it now.)
There’s a secondhand shop that I go past nearly every day - when it is closed. But yesterday I was there while it was still open, and I found the Circle Opens book about Tris, Shatterglass. I would have been more excited if it were The Magic in the Weaving, or maybe one of the Tortall books I don’t have, but it still felt like fortuitous timing.
I was excited when I logged into my library account and saw I had several digital holds - the last time I’d checked, it had just been The Magic in the Weaving. And then I was disappointed when I discovered that out of books I’d asked the library to get, the library had added everything except the one I wanted the most, a graphic novel written by Sharon Shinn.
(I looked up how much the kindle edition costs and I’m thinking about it. Familiar author on one hand, less familiar format and unfamiliar combination of graphic novel + kindle on the other… I found out kindle has a return-for-refund option, and then was sidetracked reading discussions about it. Apparently lot of people believe it is beyond the pale to finish a book and then return it for a refund just because you didn’t like it. Like eating a meal at a restaurant and then refusing to pay just because you didn’t like it! A poor metaphor, I thought, because once you eaten a meal, it’s gone and no one else can have it, but a book read by one person still exists. And physical books often can be returned, or they can be sold or given or lent to someone else.
Another commenter declared that it was akin to standing in a bookshop and reading a book but not paying for it, something no one would expect to do and no bookshop would allow. So, um, yeah, about that one…
Anyway, I don’t think it’s very likely that I’ll want to use the return-for-refund option, but knowing it’s there makes me more likely to take a risk on something I’m unsure about.)
I don’t know why I wasn’t excited about the library getting Almost Midnight, two stories by Rainbow Rowell, because they were super cute. (I’ll review them properly later.) Short stories may be the answer to my bedtime comfort reading dilemma. One of the Almost Midnight stories was published a few years ago in My True Love Gave to Me, a collection of YA winter romances. I’ve known of that anthology’s existence for years, I’m familiar with half the contributors, so I’m wondering why I never considered reading it.
Perhaps the library didn’t have a copy in 2014? Perhaps I thought it sounded too cheesy? Perhaps I thought they’d be WINTER = CHRISTMAS stories? Because of the whole hemisphere thing, seasonal reading doesn’t always appeal to me.
I see a lot of seasonal reading recommendations online, but not for the season I’m currently experiencing. The word ‘September’ makes me think of Harry Potter. ‘October’ reminds me of Tam Lin retellings. But it’s spring! I don’t feel like reading about autumn. Remember this for March or April, I tell myself.
But seeing the some of the leaves change colour doesn’t remind me of books set in autumn as forcefully as seeing the words ‘September’ or ‘October’ whenever I glance at a calendar or write the date...
*
I read Mira’s Last Dance in early October. Because the most recently published Penric novella is actually set before Mira’s Last Dance, I debated whether I’d read it now or if I’d wait until the audiobook comes out in February. I asked the library to get it, it’s been ordered and I’m #1 of 3 holds.
In the last fortnight Bujold announced - and released - a sequel to Mira’s Last Dance! A sequel!
Ahhhhhhh!
There’s no way I’m waiting until this one comes out as an audio... Originally @ Dreamwidth.