{"id":6400,"date":"2020-12-04T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-12-04T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jerichowriters.com\/townhouse\/articles\/literary-hemlines-a-fashion-review\/"},"modified":"2020-12-04T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2020-12-04T00:00:00","slug":"literary-hemlines-a-fashion-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jerichowriters.com\/literary-hemlines-a-fashion-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Literary hemlines – a fashion review"},"content":{"rendered":"

I got an email recently from someone who had come to us for an editorial review. He found the report helpful and full of insight, but he was worried by his editor\u2019s opinion that:<\/p>\n

\u201cmy protagonist is currently \u2018unfashionable\u2019 in the publishing world. This character is, like me, a guilt ridden white, middle class, middle aged to elderly man, recently retired from a very successful but dull career.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Literary fashions come in a lot of forms and we\u2019ll talk all about that in a second, but first:<\/p>\n

It turns out that some people missed their Black Friday bonanza last week because they didn\u2019t open their emails, or were being chased by crocodiles up the Zambezi, or were being targeted by mobsters in a Volgograd crack den. So, for today only, and with no more exceptions (stern glance in the direction of the Volgograd people), we\u2019re reopening the Black Friday discount. Just use the BLACKPASS<\/strong> code at checkout. The membership signup page is right here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Okiedoke. Fashions.<\/strong><\/p>\n

The chap emailing me raised one kind of fashion issue, but there are plenty of others you can think of:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Misery memoirs<\/strong>. There was a time when misery memoirs were massive. Then that market pretty much burned itself out. They still sell, a bit, but aren\u2019t the automatic bestsellers that they used to be.<\/li>\n
  2. Vampires<\/strong>. Once didn\u2019t particularly exist as a category of fiction. Then were Twilighted into being huge, and a whole \u2018paranormal romance\u2019 category was born. Vampires are still a thing, but the category has expanded and morphed and branched out. Vampires are just one amongst a whole medley of possibilities.<\/li>\n
  3. Bullying<\/strong>. Used to be the thing in children\u2019s fiction, a burning issue that had to be explored. Then it suddenly seemed overdone. So it became hard to sell books on bullying.<\/li>\n
  4. Unreliable narrators \/ psych thrillers \/ domestic noir<\/strong>. Gone Girl\u00a0<\/em>made this category huge. Then Girl on a Train<\/em> overextended it. The category is still huge, but it\u2019s become complicated and competitive. Girl on a Train<\/em> wouldn\u2019t really make much of a mark today (and never really deserved to.)<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    And so on.<\/p>\n

    Writers are left feeling like they don\u2019t know what they ought to write about. And if you are pale, male and stale \u2013 like me and like my correspondent \u2013 what are you to do? You can change your story; you can\u2019t easily change your skin.<\/p>\n

    Well.<\/p>\n

    What we really notice here \u2013 give or take a bit of temporary overreaction in both directions \u2013 is that something comes along which gives the literary market a good kick in the pants. Sometimes that kick has been an unambiguously good thing (eg: a greater awareness of diversity amongst writers and readers. For an industry based in the multicultural cities of London and New York that awareness was decades late in arriving.) Other times \u2013 vampires, misery memoirs \u2013 the change seems a bit more random, a bit more happenstance.<\/p>\n

    But then fashions gradually sort themselves out<\/strong>. The literary world moves in the direction of something more subtle and more interesting.<\/p>\n

    So today, for example, you couldn\u2019t sell a teenage love story simply by marrying up an ordinary teenaged girl with a handsome vampire. You have to address more interesting questions of worldbuilding and purpose and storyline. Do all those things in an interesting way and, yes, the basic girl + vampire model can still work. But it works because you\u2019ve created something more interesting and more shaded than that simple formula suggests.<\/p>\n

    Indeed, it\u2019s worth asking whether Stephanie Meyer could even sell Twilight\u00a0<\/em>today, assuming she was an unknown debut author? Well, possibly. The book was capably written and its basic hook still works. But that same book, released today, wouldn\u2019t cause much of a splash. It would be just one more contribution to an overstuffed genre. No one would particularly notice it. It wouldn\u2019t even deserve to be noticed much.<\/p>\n

    Same with the pale, male and stale protagonist. Of course, there are still stories about such people. People still buy them. Publishers still sell them.<\/p>\n

    But thirty or forty years ago, it was possible to sell that kind of book in a world where the underlying assumption was this book is being published by people like us for people like us and we don\u2019t really need to address the fact that there are other sorts of people in the world. That view has, thankfully, collapsed. And about time too.<\/p>\n

    One strategy that evades this trap is the one I\u2019ve adopted. I write in the voice of a young woman with mental health challenges. She\u2019s not remotely like me. Nothing in my books makes people think that the author has a closed or exclusionary world-view.<\/p>\n

    But maybe the book you want to write does have a protagonist who is pale, male and stale. Fine. You just need to avoid the feeling that your world is all there is, or all that matters. You need to address the upheaval that is taking place in literary awareness and respond. So for example Amazon Prime has a thriller series, Jack Ryan<\/em>, in which a white, clean-cut, Ivy League analyst is teamed with his boss \u2013 a black, Muslim, grizzled CIA guy, played by Wendell Pierce.<\/p>\n

    If everyone in Jack Ryan\u2019s world had been white Ivy Leaguers like him, the show would have felt utterly removed from the reality of the world we live in. It would have felt exclusionary and hard to love. As it is, the show feels modern, complicated, dramatic, realistic. Yes, the show is more diverse. But it\u2019s also just plain better.<\/p>\n

    Literary upheavals have their sillinesses, of course. But the silliness tends to happen in the year or two after a new wave has broken. (So it\u2019s either \u201cno books on bullying\u201d or \u201cbuy anything with vampires\u201d. Both of those approaches were too crude and didn\u2019t last.) Longer term, upheavals simply force fiction to become better \u2013 more interesting, more subtle, more responsive, more inclusive.<\/p>\n

    So you can\u2019t just write about vampires, you have to justify your use of them. You have to figure out the metaphorical structure of your universe, and why it matters and what it\u2019s for.<\/p>\n

    Equally, you can\u2019t just write about heroines-who-are-unreliable-narrators. You actually have to craft an interesting and coherent book that just happens to use that as a technique.<\/p>\n

    And in the end, the only way to get ahead of the next fashion wave is to read the books that are being published today. To stay abreast of contemporary fiction. That way, you\u2019re part of the wave. Your writing will respond to the changes that are happening right now.<\/p>\n

    And that means, your writing will be better than it otherwise would be. It also means more likely to sell.<\/p>\n

    Can\u2019t beat that combination, huh?<\/p>\n

    Let me know what you think below. I promise to comment on your comments. I’ll comment on your comments on my comments on your comments. I’ll comment on your comments on my comments on your comments on my comments on your comments. I will not be outdone.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    I got an email recently from someone who had come to us for an editorial review. He found the report helpful and full of insight, but he was worried by his editor\u2019s opinion that: \u201cmy protagonist is currently \u2018unfashionable\u2019 in the publishing world. This character is, like me, a guilt ridden white, middle class, middle<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[29292],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6400","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-harrys-friday-email"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nJericho Writers<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/jerichowriters.com\/literary-hemlines-a-fashion-review\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Literary hemlines - a fashion review – Jericho Writers\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I got an email recently from someone who had come to us for an editorial review. 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I've published trad & self-pub. Love both. Best known for my Fiona Griffiths crime series. Oh yes, and I'm the capo di tutti capi at Jericho Writers.\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/jerichowriters.com\/author\/harryjericho\/\"}]}<\/script>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Jericho Writers","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/jerichowriters.com\/literary-hemlines-a-fashion-review\/","og_locale":"en_GB","og_type":"article","og_title":"Literary hemlines - a fashion review – Jericho Writers","og_description":"I got an email recently from someone who had come to us for an editorial review. He found the report helpful and full of insight, but he was worried by his editor\u2019s opinion that: \u201cmy protagonist is currently \u2018unfashionable\u2019 in the publishing world. 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I've published trad & self-pub. Love both. Best known for my Fiona Griffiths crime series. Oh yes, and I'm the capo di tutti capi at Jericho Writers.","url":"https:\/\/jerichowriters.com\/author\/harryjericho\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jerichowriters.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jerichowriters.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jerichowriters.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jerichowriters.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jerichowriters.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6400"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jerichowriters.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6400\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jerichowriters.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jerichowriters.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jerichowriters.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}