Prompt No. 26
Last Week’s Story:
I did not finish week 24’s story, “The Demon of Ypres”, until this past Thursday, which means I did not start last week’s story, “Double Murder”, until Friday, finishing it up this morning. But I’ve done it! I’ve written twenty-five stories this year! Twenty-seven stories to go! Most are atrocious in one way or another, but some are quite good. I’m quite proud of the stories I wrote for week two and week nine, for example, but I think they all have some sort of spark in them.
I’ve read lots of books on the craft of writing, and I’ve found that the ones that are more prescriptive — say, Save the Cat Writes a Novel or The Secrets of Character — are more full of counter examples than they are of examples. “Here’s how I do it,” they may say, “and how you should do it! Now look at all these examples which don’t, and how successful they are.” It’s more nuanced that that, of course, but I think it’s mostly true. It all brings to mind Chuck Wendig’s maxim: “Most writing advice is bullshit, but sometimes bullshit fertilizes.” I’m paraphrasing here, but I think it’s true.
If you, Dear Reader, have any thoughts, I’d love to hear them.
This Week’s Prompt:
This week I rolled a 1 on the D4, and a 2 on the D6, which means that I drew from the main Story Engine Deck, and that the story will be a romance. This is what I came up with:
ROMANCE: A wealthy messiah wants to end the power of a letter, but a terrible secret will come out.
I don’t have any ideas for this one… yet. It’s hard for me to ponder a wealthy Messiah, since most of the Messiahs I think of are not wealthy, though some — such as Paul Atreides from Dune, I suppose — do come from wealthy backgrounds.
And to make this story a romance! I don’t know how to write a romance story! I sense a wee bit of research in my future.
Back in 2017, Andrea Stewart wrote a blog post about the romance genre, entitled “Can We Stop Devaluing the Romance Genre?” and it really got me thinking thoughts that still resonate with me today, eight years later. I know a lot of people poo-poo romance as being formulaic and silly, but come on, you can’t disparage an entire genre like that. People love romance. Sure, there are some terrible romance novels out there, but there are terrible novels in every genre. And you know what? Romance outsells them. Romance is the number-one selling genre, outselling science fiction and fantasy. And romance has been recommended to me since good romance does emotion well, a feature of my own work which I think is lacking.
When I went to the Sacramento Book Festival recently, I was amazed by the number of romance novelists were there. At the time, I skipped by those tables, explaining that romance, particularly M/M romance, is “not my genre”. I do wish now that I’d picked one up to read as part of my quest to better indulge my curiousity (see last week’s recommendation of the book Seek).
This Week’s Recommendation:
My friend Hilary Berwick has written a zombie novel! I have several friends who write zombie novels, and they are all excellent. I used to be all about the zombies, but I grew weary of zombie fiction a few years ago when I realized I was rooting for the zombies in The Walking Dead (seriously, were any of the main characters sympathetic?). But Hilary has done something interesting and new with the concept:
Zombies are often seen as symbols of, say, rampant cosumerism or racist brutality or something like that — see George Rometo’s zombie films, for example. In The Returned, Hilary writes zombies that are truly frightening, and uses them to great effect in her secondary world setting. Here we see zombies as a harsh critique of colonialist powers and mentality, and, well, you just need to read it to understand.
That’s all for this week. As always, stay kind, stay safe, and have fun.