Are the traditional storylines, especially in realms of romance, still the favourites in the reader's hearts? For example, 'One day'. Where boy meets girl, boy loses girl etc... It's the typical legendary old fashioned love story with very simple premise but yet it's the number one best seller of the year. Is the market still craving for these kinds of stories? Or is it just me?
I'm sure there's a market for every genre. Some markets are larger but I wouldn't not write a story just because I thought it might be unpopular. If it helps, I love the old school love ballads and stuff like that but no one else my age does. I don't consider it outdated, just not trendy or mainstream.
Hey Jc, there's nothing wrong with old school music. Embarrasingly enough I'm a fan eighties rock. It's cheesy. Lots of back-combed hair and shoulder pads. It's dreadfully old fashioned but still enjoyable. Probably shared a little too much there but never mind. I just found it suprising with the huge success of that 'One day'. It's plastered everywhere but it's a pretty simple love story. I didn't realise there was still a huge market for that kind of material. Just leaves me wondering if the 'Moons and boons' are still going strong. In terms of the market, I'm sure there's writers out there who are focused on the market and writing to make ends meet. Personally, if I do get to publish something. I probably would have to write for the market's purposes and hopefully others for own amusement.
Of course. They have been around from the earliest days of stories handed down by verbal tradition to 30 seconds ago. And they will be around when all our digital media have turned to vapor in the last days of the bloated sun. Children of warring factions in love, revenge for murdered kin, love lost and arduously regained, jealousy and murder between siblings, coming of age, facing one's mortality... there are thoisands of them, and each one can be told in unlimited ways.
There probably is a market. I think vampires and wizards are just the trend at the moment, but the classics will always be there. I'm sure people are just waiting for something in that genre to come out.
I think good old romance will never be out of fashion, so to speak, but I definitely wouldn't call "one day" a traditional romance. I hated it, and didn't find it the slightest bit romantic. Well, maybe there was one point... but overall I wouldn't even call it romance. If that is what romance is going to look like today I think I'm going to quit reading it.
you'll find the answer to your question on the bookshelves of your nearest bookshop... and on the nyt and amazon's bestseller pages...
I don't go near these books or stories anymore. I I use to when I was a teanager for about not too long. I don't believe in fairies and so don't believe boy meet slipt or live happily ever after. It does not exist. I think books of another nature should arise to see to these myths. I much prefer a books that tells me life is not a bed of roses but at the same times warns me about possible hurts/deceptions and make me see things as realistically as possible. For example tells me about what men are about and how to relate to them and hopefull manage to keep them and not split because it is a fact of life and there are of fish in the water, and go on looking for another Mr right that does not exist.
There's an argument that there are only 7 plots anyway. How many rom-coms have you seen (or seen reviewed) lately with the same couple-who-start-out-hating-each-other-end-up-in-love plots? Lots, if you've been reading the reviews.
I think that every story can be boiled down to those few ancient themes, so in that sense, every story on the market, just about, is an "golden oldie" dressed in modern clothes. This is a good breakdown of all plots, as we know them, and the more detailed you make it, the more distingishable it will be. But it will always trace it's roots to the more generic one
there are actually only 3 basic plot themes and they were painted on the authors' walls long, long ago: man vs man man vs god man vs self everything written since, is just 'creative plagiarism'!
The specific categories don't matter. What matters is whether you can identify the existence of a conflict/plot, and be able to identify the actor, the goal or objective, the motivation, and the opposition. These four elements define a plot, and adjusting them is how you generate or modulate tension.
