Hello, writers. Happy Halloween!
We are NaNoWriMo minus four hours, and so far there are only two people planning to go for the gusto:
terrypinder
archer070 (100k goal)
Which brings up a point I forgot-- feel free to set your own goal, lower or higher than 50k words, using what you already know about your process. That's the way we roll around here.
In other news, watching the publication and aftermath of auto-bestseller Allegiant this past week-and-a-half has set me to thinking about reader expectations.
**Spoiler Alert**
If you haven't read Allegiant , the last book of the Divergent trilogy, and think you might want to, don't read on.
I'm guessing that most of y'all, if not all of y'all, are still here. As we've discussed before, the intersection of bestseller-readers with hardcore-omnivore readers tends to be {} or the empty set.
Anyway, the Divergent series, which I don't knock because I haven't tried it, is a dystopian trilogy set in a future USA, and I gather has a female protagonist named Tris and a love interest.
Allegiant sold 450,000 copies the day it was issued, which is over three times as many copies as all of my books have sold combined. Like I said, I don't knock it.
But a lot of the readers do.
So what happened here? Well, fiction has expectations, like any other field of entertainment. If a reggae band got up on stage at a concert and announced that tonight they were going to be singing their favorite selections from Italian opera, some fans might be intrigued, but at least half would be headed for the exits.
You don't end a romance novel with the heroine suddenly deciding that all men are jerks and she's becoming a female separatist. (Not unless you do it really, really well.) You don't end a detective novel with the intrepid sleuth announcing that she's damned if she can figure out whodunnit, and anyway she doesn't care because all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. And you don't end a YA dystopian trilogy with a female lead and a love interest by **SPOILER ALERT** ah never mind, I'll put it in the comments.
My genre, middle grade fiction, has its taboos. You don't kill the dog.
(Yes, I know it's been done. But recently?)
All of these rules, like every other writing rule, were made to be broken. But as with every other writing rule: They have to be broken extremely well, and even then, you're still going to get complaints. Lots of complaints.
Tonight's challenge:
End the following passage in a way that is contrary to readers' expectations.
From the ballroom came the murmur of voices and the patter of feet as dancers promenaded after the waltz. Out here on the veranda, the only sound was the susurration of the wind and the croaking of froggies.
Lord Postlethwaite-Praxleigh (pronounced Puppy) seized Belinda's hands in his. “Belinda! Dearest!”
Belinda gazed up into his eyes, then looked demurely at the ground instead. She said nothing.
“There's something I must ask you,” said Lord Postlethwaite-Praxleigh.
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