Romance Series-Itis

Posted on April 1, 2010 by Victoria Janssen

Series-itis: there’s entirely too much wordcount devoted to reminding us what happened to the hero when he was a minor character in a previous book, and setting up various other characters for their roles in future books, not to mention the obligatory mentions of previous romantic couples in the series.

I’m not sure why I like and continue to read series of linked books when what I really want is for the romantic couple of one book to go off to the jungle after their book is done so I don’t have to find out that they’re pregnant or that they just had twins or how happy they are now while in the middle of someone else’s adventure. Their settled happiness is boring, and sucks all the lovely tension out of the current book.

And also, all the linked characters in such a series have to be Happy Together, or if they have any interesting disagreements, they must be resolved so we can eventually see them be Happy Together (“oh, he changed so much after his marriage to Julian’s cousin’s ward, you know the one who escaped France under the auspices of the Purple Pumpernickel–you mean Arthur is the Purple Pumpernickel? And he was in love with her? Oh, poor Arthur. Well, maybe he can find another wench, now that he’s unexpectedly come into his title through that bizarre great-great-aunt accident.”)

All that niceness gets a little wearing after a while. And if they’re all so friendly, that means, again, that old characters have to take up space in each book that should belong to its hero and heroine. Series-itis sufferers often replace the quite useful unnamed flat character in order to shoehorn in someone from a previous or future book.

Judy Cuevas’ Bliss and Dance use a better approach. The first book ends with the two brothers still not entirely settled in their relationship, and is resolved somewhat with very occasional letters in the second book. Brief, to the point, shows character change.

Related Post:
Ultra-Brother!

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Where Are the Older Heroines?

Posted on March 31, 2010 by Victoria Janssen

Where are the older heroines in romance novels?

Not there. Not often. Not that I’ve seen.

And by older I only mean, like, getting close to forty. It seems to be okay for romance heroes to be forty or above – though I’ve noticed the author may let you know only once or twice and then not mention it again – but heroines? Not so much. Fifty and above? Even close to fifty? Where are they? Are they there, only hidden away in specialty imprints?

I wonder if this will change, now that the world’s population is aging? Or if there’s some ingrained marketing belief that post-fifty people are assumed to want to read about people younger than themselves, much as kids are assumed to want to read about kids who are a little older than themselves?

My favorite romance with a post-fifty heroine is Stitch in Snow by Anne McCaffrey.

And as a side note, I’d love to read a romance novel with a heroine for whom age is a feature, not a bug. Who’s perhaps happy she’s grown in wisdom and self-knowledge, because it gives her more resources to fight the vampires.

What do you think?

If you have examples of romance novels with heroines past forty, please share them! I think at this point I’d even take past thirty-five.

Posted in genre, romance novels | 21 Comments

Underclothes in World War One

Posted on March 30, 2010 by Victoria Janssen

Cunningham, C. Willett and Phillis. The History of Underclothes. London: Faber & Faber Ltd., revised ed. 1981.

p. 141 by the end of WWI, women’s lingerie was called “undies.”

p. 142 for men: united garments cover to the wrists and the ankles. Pants reach to ankle, drawers to knees. Vests are undershirts, with either long or short sleeves. Nightshirts were long. Pajamas were made of flannel or silk.

P 143 women’s underwear was mostly made by hand. Often decorated with embroidery, threaded ribbon.

p. 144 corsets: “by the end of the [war] it started only a couple of inches above the waist and stretched well down over the thighs.” “At the same time the waist became less constricted and boning much lighter.”

p. 146 petticoats: by 1918 long with straight-hanging flounce (just above ankle), made of white cambric. The word brassiere first appeared in U.S. Vogue in 1907. (bra came into use much later.) Camisoles were still in use.

p. 147 knickers or drawers: “French” knickers were wide with frilly legs. “Directoire” knickers, or culottes, fastened with elastic or bands at knee and waist, fit more closely, and had removable cotton linings.

“Combinations were of longcloth, cambric, nainsook, etc., with wide frilled legs, embroidered or decorated with lace, ribbons, or insertions. They were close fitting in wool, silk, and mixture, plain or ribbed knit.”

p. 148 women’s sleepwear: nightgowns had square necks more often than round; they became less bulky due to wartime shortages “with low necks and short sleeves, or to be quite sleeveless” and more plain. Pajamas in the style of men’s began to pick up during WWI.

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Dissonant Details

Posted on March 29, 2010 by Victoria Janssen

The ultimate goal of sharing one’s writing is for the reader to “get” what you’ve written. Seen from that point of view, what you’ve written is less important than how the reader interprets it. So it’s important to try and direct the reader’s interpretation if you can.

One way to do that is dissonance. As in, if two things in the story don’t match up, you can grab the reader’s attention for a second.

*heh* I mean two things that don’t match up on purpose.

Here’s a simple example of how to intrigue the reader. The hero is engaged in crawling through a muddy ditch to overhear a conversation that’s all about smuggling weapons in baskets of puppies and is so close he gets kicked in the face by one of the smugglers as they leave the area. In the next scene, he meets the heroine and pretends to be falling-down drunk to explain how he got all muddy. The reader knows he’s lying, so they wonder why, and keep reading to find out.

Then you can reveal the reason for the dissonance, whatever will cause the most conflict: the heroine has been carrying the puppies for the smugglers, but doesn’t know about the weapons. Also, she’s been in trouble before. Also, her father is the hero’s lifelong enemy who shot his favorite horse for meanness when he was a child. Also, she thinks the hero steals puppies. Etc..

Dissonances are like little conflicts, in my mind. They’re even better if their result is not immediately obvious. Perhaps not the first result you think of, but the fourth or fifth. We can get extra points for having devious minds, if we’re writers.

They can be dissonances in point of view – one character knows something another doesn’t, or another knows in a different way – or they can be dissonances in purely physical clues. Why does the heroine wear a slinky dress to transport puppies this time? Is it to impress the hero? Why, no…she’s figured out something is wrong and is trying to seduce the Evil Smuggler to get information out of him.

I think it also works to stagger the dissonances to create suspense. A small thing that’s off, and the reader might think it’s a mistake, but when another, larger dissonance appears, the first makes more sense, and so on and so forth.

In a way, I’m reinventing the wheel here. But every time I think of a new way to think about writing, it teaches me something.

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Three Tommies

Posted on March 28, 2010 by Victoria Janssen

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Ivor Gurney, "The Bohemians"

Posted on March 27, 2010 by Victoria Janssen


The Bohemians

Certain people would not clean their buttons,
Nor polish buckles after latest fashions,
Preferred their hair long, putties comfortable,
Barely escaping hanging, indeed hardly able;
In Bridge and smoking without army cautions
Spending hours that sped like evil for quickness,
(While others burnished brasses, earned promotions)
These were those ones who jested in the trench,
While others argued of army ways, and wrenched
What little soul they had still further from shape,
And died off one by one, or became officers.
Without the first of dream, the ghost of notions
Of ever becoming soldiers, or smart and neat,
Surprised as ever to find the army capable
Of sounding ‘Lights out’ to break a game of Bridge,
As to fear candles would set a barn alight:
In Artois or Picardy they lie–free of useless fashions.

–Ivor Gurney

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American Memory Film Collection

Posted on March 26, 2010 by Victoria Janssen

American Memory Film Collection at the Library of Congress.

Click on the title of the topic that interests you, then click on “List the Film Titles” for the individual film. That link will give you a choice of mpeg, rm, or QuickTime for most of the films. Which you can then watch. (Some of the topics are less straightforward, and you have to hunt a little for the list of available films.)

The coolness brings me near to weeping. These are real people I’m looking at, and it’s a lot easier to realize that from film than from photographs.

These are mostly nonfiction films, out of copyright, very short. It’s like magic. Like looking through a time machine.

You can also listen to some audio recordings. Ever wondered what Theodore Roosevelt’s voice sounded like?

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A Weird Dislike

Posted on March 25, 2010 by Victoria Janssen

It’s very weird and pointless, I know, but I have an aversion to the phrase multi-published.

I understand what it means. It means you sold more than one story, or one book, and had it published. It’s usually used to describe writers who are making a living from their work, but not always.

But why does it matter? If it does matter, why don’t we say double-published and triple-published and on and on?

And does it count if you sell, say, one novel and one nonfiction essay? How about two short stories? Two pieces of flash fiction?

I just don’t think it tells you anything, really. And it sounds like you’re trying too hard to be accepted. “I’m not just any writer. I’ve been published multiple times.”

Isn’t published enough? Or professional writer? Or even just writer?

Am I missing some subtlety here?

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Musings on Discovering/Implementing Theme in The Moonlight Mistress

Posted on March 24, 2010 by Victoria Janssen

Someone asked me fairly recently about how I use theme.

For me, I might think about theme ahead of time, but it doesn’t really start to manifest until I’ve written a certain amount of the manuscript. Then I start realizing what my subconscious is trying to tell me (or maybe my conscious mind gives it a name and a shape). Like, for The Moonlight Mistress I knew wolves were a symbol of the wild, but linking the shapechanging idea to the human characters sank into my my mind gradually, influenced by something a transgendered woman had once told me about feeling she was a real-life shapechanger.

I decided that acting outside of conventional gender roles was also, in a way, like shapechanging, and I had plenty of characters who did that, whether by dressing and acting as the opposite gender, or performing a job usually associated with the other gender, or simply by not having a heteronormative sex life.

After I realized all that is when I start adding descriptive details throughout the manuscript to emphasize this theme and to, hopefully, bring the idea to the reader’s attention. I examined all the characters and how I’d presented them, and thought about which ones were most like shapechangers, and how, and tried to emphasize that a little, indirectly. I also tried to do a little bit of mirroring, werewolves with humans.

I don’t know if that kind of detail actually works for the reader or not, but I make the attempt. Even if it doesn’t come through, it’s fun to do! I’m also not sure if it really counts as theme if you’re doing it on purpose. But I think it should count.

I’m still thinking about this myself, so I apologize if I sound a little vague. Your input is welcome!

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Safer Sex in Erotica

Posted on March 23, 2010 by Victoria Janssen

Lisabet Sarai blogged on safer sex and erotic romance.

For me, it depends on the story’s sub-genre.

In a fantastical setting, I don’t usually mind if safer sex is not mentioned, because in science fiction or fantasy the issue can be easily covered by the worldbuilding (everybody has an injection! everybody has a spell!) even if the author hasn’t mentioned it explicitly.

In historicals, I wish there was a bit more worrying about safe versus not-safe thoughts, but again I’m a little more accepting if safer sex is left out. However, I definitely appreciate it when historical characters think about the issue, even if it’s only in the first intimate scene and left to the reader’s assumption after that.

In contemporary novels, I prefer that safer sex be practiced, and if it isn’t, that a reason I can accept is provided (obviously, not every writer can read my mind!). I don’t mind if subsequent sex scenes aren’t shown as safe, at least not so much, because I can extrapolate from scene number one, in much the way that I extrapolate the characters are eating, sleeping, and using the toilet even though those actions aren’t necessarily described.

What do you think?

Posted in erotica | 12 Comments