Good morning, everyone. Sarah asked me to put up an open floor today. She’s feeling much better but the workshop is exhausting and she still has to get ready for it this morning. So, she won’t be posting a new chapter but promises to try to double up next week.
So, here’s your chance to talk about what you’re seeing in the industry, to ask your questions and even to suggest some topics for us to discuss.
The floor is now yours.
Mad Genius Club 
24 responses to “Open floor”
I wonder how self-publishing will impact the public perception of an “author” as a professional. Traditional publishing has always kept writers at a bit of distance from their readers, carefully orchestrating book signing tours and media appearances to present a certain image.
While I suspect there will always be rock star authors who will still get the ivory tower treatment, I see indies as more of the garage bands of literature, able to interact more directly with their fans, both through the internet and in person. Personally, I see this as a good thing, a way of encouraging people to read books written by people “just like them”.
I’d like to hear other opinions on how being a self-published author differs from the traditional model in terms of how readers see them.
I was going to say that I approach indie books with caution (and I say this as someone who just put up her first book indie this year). Then I realized that I have started approaching all books by writers I don’t know with caution. Is this writer going to annoy me to tears with some morally repellent character? Is this writer going to give me the horse kick to the belly that Cedar described the other day? Am I going to be totally grossed out? Those are questions I ask myself about traditionally published books. There’s a reason I re-read old favorites a lot. I ask myself the same questions about indies, too, and check the first three pages for typos before I take a sample.
Other than that, I view the people who can plot, create cool characters, vivid worlds and suspenseful, satisfying tales with great happiness, regardless of whether they are indie or traditional.
You’re right. I find myself wanting to defend people who say they don’t trust indies because I have the same skepticism… but I really do have the same skepticism toward traditionally published books, too. I hadn’t thought of it that way before.
(I’m also developing a whole lot of skepticism toward “bargains”. I buy an ebook and then discover that it wasn’t a *deal* it was a short story. Ugh!)
Of course the “Public Perception” of authors will change.
It will become more realistic.
The public will realize that a lot of the publishing houses manufacture their “Rock Star” authors, and treat the majority of their authors like cash cows, to be milked for all they can get, then sent to slaughter at the first sign that they aren’t going to become “Rock Stars.”
Indie is giving authors a way around the stranglehold control of a limited number of publishing slots.
As posted on FB a few mins ago
My various responses on Liz Williams FB page whence I found the link:
It seems to me that if you want to actually have a popular piece of fiction (as opposed to a ‘critically acclaimed’ one) then your protagonist should be someone people kind of like and empathize with.
…
Oh and on a related note – while I don’t insist on a “Happily ever after” ending, I’d like to have
a) some sense of closure and achievement
2) a lack of cliffhanger
iii) a more positive ending than “they all died but at least they weren’t raped and tortured first before turnign into depressing grey goo”
Give me vaguely likeable/empathizable characters that surmount challenges and live to fight another day and I’ll read it and its sequels
…
Its a bad sign when you start sympathizing with the villain and want him/her/it to get a clue and put the hero(ine)s out of their misery (which is definitely one reason why I rather dislike Hamlet …)
I think that sometimes people really like the Bad Boy or the Bad Girl… People *liked* Rorschach in Watchmen (even though he was a horrible person and I believe that the author didn’t intend him to be the hero). Someone I’d dislike in real life might be someone I like pretending to be in a book. The phrase “someone people like” sounds so bland, so milquetoast. A reader might “like” a character who doesn’t care what people think, who get’s up in their faces, who is rough around the edges or even pushy.
We used to use the term “sympathetic”. I don’t think I’ve seen that term used for ages in this context. Perhaps too many people mistake it for meaning that you feel sorry for the protagonist. It’s more… can I pretend to be that person for the duration of the book? Do I *want* to pretend to be that person for the duration of the book? It’s different from empathize, though that’s pretty close.
It’s hard to talk about things properly when we spend so much time these days avoiding the “difficult” vocabulary… like protagonist and antagonist or sympathetic.
I’ve seen “sympathetic” used as a euphemism for “victim” in reviews for some grey goo disguised as chick-lit. Yet another perfectly good word misappropriated through no fault of its own.
How about “identify”? I agree that there are characters in fiction who I enjoy reading about, who I would find very annoying in real life. But there is some part of me that identifies with some part of them. One may be quiet and reserved in real life, and yet take great cathartic pleasure in a character who is more bold.
You get anti-heroes like Ringo’s Ghost who most of us wouldn’t like in real life, but they have characteristics we can identify with, and ‘sympathize’ with them. It takes some actual talent to pull this off, but when done successfully it can be very successful.
“Identifying with characters” is a rubric brought to us first by the Child Psychologists who took over the writing of children’s cartoons, because clearly they understand writing better than writers (snort). They took the idea of a point of view character and turned it into a blank slate that the viewer is supposed to substitute himself in. The theory being that Obviously a child would identify more with, and want to be Jimmy Olson rather than Superman. And the Network Executives, who clearly understand writing better than the writers, (snort again) because they get paid to boss them around, went with it.
This worked SO well that eventually NBC dropped its Saturday Morning cartoons entirely, in favor of sports. But the idea had already spread to other media.
I always try to keep in mind what an HBO exec supposedly told David Chase when people were worried about whether Tony Soprano would be likable enough: “I don’t care of he’s likable. Is he interesting?”
And yet, people *liked* Tony Soprano, right? Just like people really *like* Dr. House. Even if no one would like them in real life. They still *like* the character.
Bingo. There are two different meanings of “like” — one for “I would like this person in real life; I could enjoy having them as a friend”, and a completely different meaning for “this is an interesting character that I enjoy reading about.” Some of the nicest people I know in real life would make boring characters in novels, and some of the most interesting and fun characters to read about are people I would NEVER want to have as a friend. So “I don’t care if he’s likeable, is he interesting?” is good advice for writing — as long as the character isn’t hateable. (That’s another problem altogether.)
It strikes me that the two writers of that piece belong to the “Literary” crowd, or as I recently read in that Neal Stephenson article on Slashdot, a “Dante” writer, rather than a “Beowulf” writer. Especially the way the second one namedrops and assumes the reader has read and feels the same way about the works she mentions, without having to flesh out the details of what she’s referencing. (What details I was able to draw out sounds like she reads a lot of tedious stuff.)
(Link for the curious: http://slashdot.org/story/04/10/20/1518217/neal-stephenson-responds-with-wit-and-humor )
Crap. This didn’t seem that long when I was thinking it out…
Likeability, empathize with the protagonist? Or something that is appealing in the whole book? Some books perspective hop enough that “protagonist” is a cast of tens, at least. *chuckle* Yes, there must be *something* in there for the reader to sink his metaphorical teeth into (you’re not chewing on the books, are you?).
Given the plethora out there of bands of disreputable rogues out to do in someone (or something) orders of magnitude worse, we allow some flaws in our characters. The detective with the serious drinking problem, the spy with kleptomaniac tendencies, the hero with problems relating to the common folk… But these are not major faults.
There have been torturers of innocent men that the author somehow contrived to make somewhat sympathetic- Abercrombe’s The First Law did that. There’s also something darkly, deliciously enjoyable in employing a thief to catch a thief, a murdering b*stard to off an even bigger b*stard. The real trick here is bringing the reader back into the daylight where children play and men and women go about their daily lives in peace again. Or at least lifting the veil just a bit.
Dystopias and post-apocalyptic fare give this the flip, though. I’ve read stories that were as unremittingly dark as anything in the human imagination- there’s a market for that, else these things would not sell, not hardly at all.
What kind of market, or readers if you prefer, does your book call to? I’ll agree that a sense of closure/achievement are a good idea. But cliffhangers are common enough, at least in the books I read, to not be too off-putting. And “the evuls win, you lose, go die in a fire” books have their place.
The protagonists don’t have to be likeable for a book to snag and hold my interest. There must be something for my mind to latch onto and want to follow, to see what happens next. Cliffhangers are a tool that can be used here, selectively (overuse or clumsily applied will ruin the effect).
For you likeable/empathizable characters surmounting challenges and surviving the big final conflict are necessary, and that’s fine. *grin* I think most people are like that- heck, one of my favorite series is so constantly positive (the good guys *always* win) it’s a theme.
There are broad trends to what draws a reader in, and this doesn’t just mean genre. There’s even a trope for when the villain gets more sympathy than the hero, and even *becomes* the hero. An engaging story, with adventure, excitement, and fascinating characters is pretty much my basic requirement for a good tale. The excitement may be totally without violence- try the Solar Clipper stories for this. The adventure might might not be world spanning, or even neighborhood-spanning. The character that plays the hero might have been the villain, cast in a different tale… see the short story “Malevolence” by Maisey, if you you like your superhero comics in text only form.
Make the story one that keeps the pages turning, the setting a place the reader creates with hints from the author, and the “characters” (human, sentient, or not…) come alive, and I’ll keep reading. I don’t want to keep myself from a good story by being more specific in my requirements than that. *grin*
Kittens, squirrels, dragons, and…oooh, shiny!
I’m very alarmed by the growth of intolerance among leftist science-fiction fans, which has now reached the point of major science-fiction writing organizations and conventions turning against well-established authors for violations of imaginary and variable rules. This has now gotten to the point of racially-segregated facilities at at least one science-fiction convention. I never expected to see the return of racial segregation in my lifetime (I was born in 1964, and hence remember seeing news reports of the end of its very last bastions in the 1970’s and 1980’s).
Racial segregation, cultural segregation, religious segregation are natural events. Chinatown, Little Tokyo, Little Mexico, Black town, Amish. Have always existed. Science Fiction Conventions are a form of segregation in that Romance Writers, and non-fiction writers are not welcome to set up tables. Inter-racial writer segregation is only another sign of their failure. They will set up rooms for ‘persons of color’ and when the POC see that the party is in the main room, they will disappear into the crowd. If there is enough people left in the main room for a party the way they are pushing them out. They are also pushing the conventions to stop bringing in large name authors like Elizabeth Moon. Who’s going to go to a convention to see nobody? At this rate, there won’t be a SF Convention anymore; unless, it becomes a Baen or Indie convention.
Don’t laugh, everything is getting weird and if a convention organizer thinks he can drum up a crowd from Amazon, maybe. We don’t know what is coming to replace what is only starting to build. Perhaps the manufacturing industry will see the change and redesign tablets and ereaders to be even better. On Sarah’s page this morning the writer (forgot his name) spoke of how the future we thought would be, turned out another and probably a better way. We just have to be uninvolved but not disinterested in the group fail; while, watching the future in order to catch the next bus with an unknown destination.
Can I have the ceiling instead?
Raining there?
I think you floored him with your comment. 🙂 And yes, I’ll go sit in the corner now…
Corner of the floor or corner of the ceiling?
Here’s a future topic. Since Indy publishers don’t have a big book company to back and market their work (Oh stop laughing) and the authors all have to do their own marketing, what are you doing and what seems to be working for you? What’s been a total waste of time and money?
Okay, weird, I didn’t realize I’d been logged out of logging in via Twitter.