The Secret Wedding is a story about two writers. The hero, Tom,
wrote bestselling thrillers for men. His readers didn’t want emotional guff polluting the action. Women were included for the sole purpose of providing sex and sympathy while they fixed up his hero’s wounds. And to bump up the body count.The heroine is 'bestselling romance novelist Mollie Blake', who's giving a writing workshop. The types of novels written by the protagonists, and the way they're described, reminds me of this description of the collaboration between Jennifer Crusie and Bob Mayer, though I think Fielding's story was written some time prior to this:
One evening in Maui [at the Maui Writers Conference, where both were teaching], Jenny Crusie was watching the sun set over the Pacific when Bob Mayer sat down beside her and said, “What do you write?” Jenny said, “Well, basically, in my books, people have sex and get married.” Bob said, “In my books, people have sex and die.”Tom's publisher is not entirely happy with his writing and tells him that he has to go on a writing course because
" [...] you seem to have lost that wonderful humanity the women readers loved. Get back in touch with your feminine side, Tom." The man hadn’t been making a suggestion. He’d meant it. "Women buy a lot of books."Women do, indeed, seem to read more fiction than men. In 2005, for example, Statistics Canada published a report including the finding that 'Women are clearly the biggest readers. Women comprise 6 out of 10 regular readers and 7 out of 10 heavy readers'. In the UK, according to a 2002 report prepared by Book Marketing Limited:
- Men spend slightly more time reading (about 5%) than women, but this is because they spent far more time reading printed newspapers and electronic information. Women are more avaricious book readers, particularly of fiction. Over a quarter of women’s reading is devoted to fiction, compared to one sixth for men. [...]
- Two thirds of all books started are read by women, though this rises to over 70% for fiction, and falls to under half for non-fiction.
- Of the new books started, three-quarters are fiction. Over 80% of new books started by women are fiction, whereas for men this figure is nearer 60%.
The story told in The Secret Wedding isn't particularly full of novelties: it doesn't 'push the envelope' of genre conventions. But it isn't meant to. Instead, it illustrates the various aspects of the romance novel that Mollie intends teaching her students. Each chapter begins with a quotation from 'Mollie Blake’s Writing Workshop Notes', and then serves as an example of how to put the writing advice into practice.
The advice given in Chapter One is: 'Begin your story at a moment of crisis, a point in time when your character’s life is about to change forever'. While this advice isn't adhered to by those who commence with a prologue, or many famous authors such as Thomas Hardy (his Return of the Native, for example, begins with a pages-long description of the landscape of Egdon Heath), it does seem to be popular with many contemporary writers of genre fiction. At the site of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, for example, there's an item which asks:
Does the story start at the right place (the beginning?) Most stories by beginning writers start far too early - way before the key action takes place. Some, however, may start too far forward. These writers have taken the advice of "start with the action at full steam" too literally.At Liz Fielding's own website she gives the same advice as Mollie does: 'The opening is important. Start with the crisis'.
The descriptions of the characters are similarly, and quite explicitly, written to fit genre conventions: 'she was the kind of woman that any one of his heroes would be glad to have hanging off his left arm', and:
the man was a relic from some cliché-ridden romance. Ignoring the pick-chat up line, she straightened, unimpressed with Mr. Cute.
But she couldn't escape the clichés. Even in the darkness of the car park she could see that he was tall, with mile-wide shoulders.
I had a lot of fun with this, reading the story and noticing how it fitted Mollie's guidelines, and how self-aware Fielding was about genre conventions/clichés. There's even a fairy-tale beginning, '"Once upon a time..."' at the very end of the story, which reminds us that romances have a lot in common with fairytales, and usually end with everyone living happily ever after.
It used to be on the Harlequin website too, but they removed most of the online reads, which I thought was a bit of a shame, but it could be because they've launched an ebook 'boutique' where, among other things, they're selling 'Harlequin mini' ebooks. I'm sure at least one of the mini ebooks is a story which used to be a free online read.
ReplyDeleteCurrently, all of the 99-cent mini-books for sale at eHarlequin's e-book Boutique are former Online Reads. They were recently removed from the free online library and are being presented as new material. (The sin is actually one of omission--nowhere is it suggested that the stories are not brand-new.) Granted, some readers will be delighted with the minis. But I submit that the kind of reader who's likely to pay for and download the mini e-books (romance-hungry, internet-savvy) is precisely the kind who is likely to have discovered and devoured scores of the free reads before eHarlequin closed that door. So it's a bad marketing move, and one that will leave many readers feeling duped. How would you like to download several of the 99-cent titles only to find, once you began reading, that you'd seen every one of the stories before?
In case you're wondering, the authors are making nothing on the minis. The online reads were contracted as "work for hire," meaning the authors were paid flat fees and received no further payment. That's becoming a bit of a sore subject among many of those authors because they never expected to see the "free online stories" they wrote recycled in this way and sold to readers.
I hope eHarlequin wises up and admits that the minis aren't new material. Where's the harm in offering "a collection of stories that delighted eHarlequin readers, now available to you for just 99 cents each"?
I usually admire Harlequin's marketing savvy, but this time they've shot themselves in the foot.
Thanks for that information, Brenda.
ReplyDeleteHow would you like to download several of the 99-cent titles only to find, once you began reading, that you'd seen every one of the stories before?
I'd be disappointed. I'm one of those people who gleefully 'discovered and devoured' almost the entire free-read library. It took me a while, because it was huge and I didn't want to get eye-strain.
I suppose at that price it wouldn't be a huge loss, but it might make me wary of buying more. I agree with you, I think openness with the readers would be the best policy. For one thing it would give readers an indication of the length of the minis. I hadn't realised they were quite that mini.
It's a shame the authors aren't getting any money out of this. I suppose the minis help with name recognition, but not any more than they did in the library. And I wonder if the authors would have written them differently if they'd known they were going to be sold this way? I don't mean that as a criticism of the reads, I just have the impression that if authors were writing them as a freebie, to be released in installments, they'd maybe have written them one way, and it'd be a bit different from how they'd write if they knew that there would be paying readers who would read the whole thing in one go. Because the stories were serialised there's often repetition/re-capping from one chapter to the next. I suspect that the authors assumed that readers would have read the last chapter a week previously, and might have forgotten some of the details. And some of the free reads were introductions to series/involved characters from print books that were being released at the time. Again, that's going to affect how they're perceived by readers who might not now be able to find those print books.
I just have the impression that if authors were writing them as a freebie, to be released in installments, they'd maybe have written them one way, and it'd be a bit different from how they'd write if they knew that there would be paying readers who would read the whole thing in one go.
ReplyDeleteLaura, one thing that's stressed to the authors who are contracted to write Online Reads is that each installment must end with a cliffhanger. And you're right about the constant recapping. You didn't see as much of that in the daily online reads, but in the weekly ones, it was necessary. Obviously, those stories are going to have a completely different feel when read all in one sitting.
When you read those stories in the online library, you understood that you were reading serialized novelettes. But people downloading the mini books are going to view the stories in a way that was never intended by the authors. Might some of the stories come off sounding a little melodramatic when presented outside of their original context? If I had written any online reads, I think I'd be worried about that.
Thanks so much for featuring my story on your blog, Laura. You're right -- it is fairly old; I wrote it in 1999 and it was one of the first 12 contracted mini stories for eHarlequin. It has also been published as an add-on to one of Betty Neels stories in the UK.
ReplyDeleteI had an enormous amount of fun writing a story that addressed the conventions of the romance genre, giving a little twist to all the cliches.
For something a little more up to date -- and free -- there is another of my short stories on eH at the moment, featured alongside the Bella Brides series. :)
I've read that one! It's The Cinderella Valentine and it probably won't be up on the eHarlequin website for ever, but for anyone else who would like to read it the link is here. There are other online reads books in the eHarlequin library, but no others by Liz (at least not at the moment).
ReplyDeleteI had an enormous amount of fun writing a story that addressed the conventions of the romance genre, giving a little twist to all the cliches
That really comes across when you read the story (well, it does if the reader knows the conventions and/or pays attention to Mollie's notes).