Sounds like a conversation with the man not long after we met ... Things I get on a regular basis: - "This is off the record ... " Usually a good indicator that the person speaking is about to say something either really juicy or that they think is really juicy but isn't. - "You know what you should write about?" Followed by a lengthy soliloquy on something that has nothing whatsoever to do with anything. Sigh ...
Clearly I've managed to avoid the know-it-alls, the falsely curious, the overly-critical, the judgmental, and the gawkers so far. People just nod and smile at me, like, "oh cool, you have a hobby just like me."
I've finally found a technique! "What's that?" "My book." *Continues scribbling* "What do you write in it?" "My book." *Continues scribbling* Worked a charm.
"They should just be BFFs. You don't know anything about lesbians." -My Mom C'mon, Mom. I don't know shit about straight romances, either, but you wouldn't say crap if I had one of those, now would you?
There's an anecdote about Samuel Goldwyn: He wanted to get the rights to Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness. An aide said to him, "You can't film that! It's about lesbians!" "All right," Goldwyn responded. "Where they got lesbians, we'll use Austrians."
I have no citations to support this, but in the book High Fidelity, set in the UK, the MC has a fling with an American girl. They moved the movie to Chicago, and the girl (Lisa Bonet) became African American. Always felt that was to preserve the exoticism.
I've said things like that though, telling people that something put up here reads like something I'd pay to read. There is an indefinable line between the work of a hobbyist writer and that of someone who's got a shot at getting properly published. I know which side of the line I currently fall on, but it sounds to me like you've crossed the threshold to the other side, so well done!
One thing I'm grateful to my mum for saying is that my work isn't publishable yet, but she'd still want to read it if I weren't her daughter, and it will get there. Encouraging and honest at the same time.
Me: *tells mom about story* Me: *happens to mention that the protags are not straight* Mom: Cool but you don't know anything about lesbian sex The kicker is that they're sixteen and one of them is ace.
Thanks for the laugh! But maybe @Iain Aschendale has a point, maybe they haven't chosen their words right. Maybe it is a compliment. I had a similar one. I read your story like I was watching a movie. Still don't know if that was a compliment or not. It would seem like it is, but books are meant to be different than movies, so I don't know.
Thank you both for that. It was said with such surprise, I couldn't tell, especially when it was said during a week when writing happened to not be going particularly well. @Rosacrvx, I think "...like I was watching a movie" was meant to be a compliment. Being a visual, picture-painting storyteller would be a good thing, so let's say the person who said it was going for that.
This is what I usually get: “Sounds a lot like [insert work of fiction that already exists].” Except...it isn’t. It literally friggin’ isn’t. Shot down my idea of family haunted by a friendly Colonial ghost boy.* Worse, my mom mentioned the Kate and Leopold movie. Because a family being haunted by the ghost of a long-dead colonial child is totally the same as a dude from the 18th century going forward in time to shag a 21st-century woman from the Bronx. Literally, the only thing they have in common is that • They’re both of the male gender. • They both come from the past. However, one of them is dead, and the other isn’t and is in a romance/comedy. EDIT TO ADD: “When are you going to include the sex?” None of my major characters are having sex. I’m sorry, I’m too busy focusing on what’s in their brains, not in their pants.
I think people normally mean well when they say "That sounds like ..." but it can definitely be frustrating. My tactic is to take a yes-and approach - "Yeah, it's kinda like that, except [the ways in which it's different]." Sarcasm optional. There's this short story author I see at a con I go to every year, and if I'm being honest I've never read her work (I always forget her name and lose my con notes), but I absolutely adore her personality and her opinions on every panel she's on. One year after the con I was telling my mom about her and my mom says, "I wish she'd take you under her wing, since she's made a living off short stories and that's what you want to do." I genuinely didn't know how to respond, because again, completely well-meaning, but ... writing short stories isn't and never has been my goal. They're just a hell of a lot quicker to write and simpler to get published than the big dumb space operas and interconnected series and shit that are my dream. Baffling. But bless her heart. I think I just said something like, "Well, that's not really what I ... Well."
I often find myself unable to explain the premise of my WIPs without it sounding terribly corny and cheesy, but I know (or do I?) that in reality and totality, it's not that bad. Extending that out, I've thought that the ideas of a number of members here sounded kind of cheesy and corny, but I know that's not only uncharitable, but quite possibly completely wrong if they suffer from the same inability to summarize well that I do. Hence it can be useful to, rather than try and fumble your way through an explanation of something that's really meant to be read, explain it in terms of similarities to pop culture that will give the listener a sense of what you're going for, even if the details are a little skewed. "It's kind of like a cross between Alien and Full Metal Jacket, but set underwater." "It's what would happen if you combined The Walking Dead, My Little Pony, and Behind the Green Door. Why are you looking at me that way? Is something wrong?"
Oh, yeah, figuring out the 'X meets Y' pitch is both fun and usually the best way to describe stuff to other people. I should probably think about doing that more because any explanation of my writing in person usually amounts to "It's like uh ... you know what, never mind, what are you up to these days?"
I think this is something everyone struggles with. When condensed into a tweet everything sounds cliché because in that kind of space you can only really communicate in those terms. Alien becomes "A sneaky alien attacks the crew of a spaceship and the spunky lady saves the day". If you go for something more engaging it just sounds pretentious. Full Metal Jacket would be "An exploration of the dehumanising nature of war". And, well, that's true but it tells someone nothing about your story itself, no sense of connection to the characters. Personally when people say what's it about I like to tell them smack on the nose and then grin terrifyingly at them until they ask more information. What's your book about? Oh it's about beauty pageant contestants crying, backstabbing and shagging each other *grins with a disconcerting relish* It's awesome. *continues grinning*. That seems to work pretty well in getting people to ask me more.
That's a bit like what happened when Ford introduced the Escort in January 1968 and people said "Oh, that looks just like the Vauxhall Viva (introduced September 1966)". Ford were quite vocal in saying "Oh, no it doesn't!" The fact that a lot of people thought that there was a similarity meant that there WAS a similarity.
I get your point, buuuuuuut.... Suburban family being haunted by a literal ghost of a dead child vs. some romance/comedy about an 18th-century dude flirting with a 21st-century woman. How are they exactly the same? I can get the Casper part, what with the dead kid ghost and all but... Yeah, I get a little peeved by that. >____>
Reminds me of Tori Amos and Regina Spektor. There's a lot of fan overlap, and a lot of comparisons, but the hardcore music otakus insist that the differences outweigh the similarities.
Oh don't even get me started on mothers dude... I told my mum the plot of my second book and she's never let me hear the end of it. She keeps banging on about how weird it was for me to use her name for the much older woman who sleeps with her surrogate son, can you believe that?
