Over at Making Light, former Valiant Comics editor Teresa Nielsen Hayden started a thread on trying to explain marketing categories in publishing, and how they’re not solely determined by the content:
Say your book features a strange and powerful device, the Transnistrian Infundibulator:
If the storyline is about the inception, interim difficulties, and eventual happy resolution of the relationship between the inventor of the Transnistrian Infundibulator and some nice young woman, it’s a romance.
If he’s a scholar studying the Transnistrian Infundibulator, she’s a governess, and his best fossil specimen of T. infundibulator falls out of his pocket during a reception at Almack’s, it’s a regency.
If one or both of them is not 100% human, they meet cute while fighting off spooky badguys, and the Transnistrian Infundibulator is an ancient magical artifact they use to defeat said badguys, it’s a paranormal romance.
If she’s his lab assistant,...
Say your book features a strange and powerful device, the Transnistrian Infundibulator:
If the storyline is about the inception, interim difficulties, and eventual happy resolution of the relationship between the inventor of the Transnistrian Infundibulator and some nice young woman, it’s a romance.
If he’s a scholar studying the Transnistrian Infundibulator, she’s a governess, and his best fossil specimen of T. infundibulator falls out of his pocket during a reception at Almack’s, it’s a regency.
If one or both of them is not 100% human, they meet cute while fighting off spooky badguys, and the Transnistrian Infundibulator is an ancient magical artifact they use to defeat said badguys, it’s a paranormal romance.
If she’s his lab assistant,...
- 4/14/2011
- by Glenn Hauman
- Comicmix.com
The month's half over and amazingly, I have yet to reference former Valiant Comics editor Teresa Nielsen Hayden's lecture on "The Evil Overlord Devises a Plot". This must be remedied immediately because, even though you are probably deep in your story, you may have hit a few snags along the way. Her own plot advice says "steal from the best" and so I'm going to steal from her. Take it away, Teresa:
Start with some principles:
A plot doesn't have to be new. It just has to be new to the reader. In fact, it doesn't even have to be new to the reader. It just has to get past him. (It helps if the story's moving fast and there's lots of other interesting stuff going on.) A plot device that's been used a thousand times may be a cliche, but it's also a trick that works. That's why it keeps getting used.
Start with some principles:
A plot doesn't have to be new. It just has to be new to the reader. In fact, it doesn't even have to be new to the reader. It just has to get past him. (It helps if the story's moving fast and there's lots of other interesting stuff going on.) A plot device that's been used a thousand times may be a cliche, but it's also a trick that works. That's why it keeps getting used.
- 10/18/2010
- by Glenn Hauman
- Comicmix.com
"Straight on till mourning!"
That was the end of the last public announcement of science fiction author F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre, when he posted a note that said he'd be getting away from it all for a while and might be some time in getting back. At the time, some folks thought it was a typo.
Sadly, it wasn't. It appears that he was tremendously depressed and killed himself last Friday by setting his Brooklyn apartment on fire.
"Froggy" was a was a Scottish-born journalist, novelist, poet and illustrator, who lived in Wales and New York City. His writings include the science-fiction novel The Woman Between the Worlds and his anthology of verse and humor pieces MacIntyre's Improbable Bestiary. As an uncredited “ghost” author, he was known to have written or co-written several other books. In the early 1960s, under his previous name, MacIntyre was an employee of Lew Grade and...
That was the end of the last public announcement of science fiction author F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre, when he posted a note that said he'd be getting away from it all for a while and might be some time in getting back. At the time, some folks thought it was a typo.
Sadly, it wasn't. It appears that he was tremendously depressed and killed himself last Friday by setting his Brooklyn apartment on fire.
"Froggy" was a was a Scottish-born journalist, novelist, poet and illustrator, who lived in Wales and New York City. His writings include the science-fiction novel The Woman Between the Worlds and his anthology of verse and humor pieces MacIntyre's Improbable Bestiary. As an uncredited “ghost” author, he was known to have written or co-written several other books. In the early 1960s, under his previous name, MacIntyre was an employee of Lew Grade and...
- 7/2/2010
- by Glenn Hauman
- Comicmix.com
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