EDITING GENRE WRITING Genre writing has its own set of expectations. Although most
writers like to fit somewhere in the spectrum of "literary," certain
expectations exist in genre fiction which alter the scope of the writing and
the edit.
I recently edited a romance novel; I'd read a few over the
years, but this was my first structural examination of a romance. I continually
ran into sentences constructed thus (ok, keep in mind, its romance): "she was
perfection itself," or "he touched her softness...." Structure like this drove
me crazy at first: Perfection and softness are adjectives, not nouns! You
might touch something soft, but you can't touch "softness."
After an hour, I began to realize a definite similarity
between this style and that of other romances I'd read in the past. I paused
and made a few quick references to Amanda Quick and Danielle Steele. Sure
enough ... lots of touching of softness, and hardness, and other racy adjectives-as-subjects.
I went back and undid my changes to the author's romance
novel. She was entirely correct; the expectations she was addressing were a bit
different than the literary fiction I was used to. One of the greatest
expectations in romance writing is escapism, so it only makes sense that sensory
words, describing feelings, touch and smell are the subject of the sentence.
Particular expectations, resulting in unique structural
standards, are also true of other genres. Fantasy, for example, tends to be
plot-driven and prone to greater reliance on strong verbs and epic narration:
"... the beast was banished, hunted down, eliminated" or "Loss of the kingdom
pained the king worse even than the thought of death." (Were this not genre
fiction, I would be inclined to make the king the subject, resulting in a more
active sentence: "The king was pained more by loss of the kingdom than death.")
However, because it is fantasy, I defer to the author's style of narration as
an epic, story-teller's voice.
There are two morals to this story: Author, know thyself ...
and how "literary" you want to be. And: Choose an editor who is familiar with
the expectations of your particular genre!
|
