Posts Tagged Women’s fiction
Chester or Candy? Do Bookcovers Make a Difference?
I am not really a Twitter fan, but sometimes I do run across interesting articles that I wouldn’t find otherwise. Today I happened upon some tweets by Jennifer Weiner. Since they were a bit puzzling, I followed the trail back to what appeared to be the original reference, which was an article related to gender and fiction. The article that evoked the reaction appears to be this, Book By Legal Scholar Gets the Chicklit Cover in Jezebel. It showed both the hardback and the paperback cover of a serious novel and asked if you’d pick up one or the other. Personally, I found them both a bit “chick-lit”-ish and wouldn’t have picked up either. Actually the hardback looked like a YA novel to me.
I found this short piece interesting in relation to a blog I wrote where someone commented that the women’s fiction was mostly defined by the cover. In the comments on the Jezebel post I found a link to another tweet and the resultant piece in the Huffington Post relating to the hypothetical changes in covers given to male and female authors. I’m sure everyone has read at least one of the books that was featured, and the shifts in cover color and design certainly tend to lend credence to the idea that “women’s fiction” is all in the (cover) marketing. Worse, it makes the case that any book written by a woman is forced to appear to be a book of interest only to other women. Check it out. Toward the end of the piece there is a slideshow of alternate covers for around twenty book titles.
Pick one of your own manuscripts or books. What would the cover look like if you were the opposite sex?
For mine, I’m going to pick my manuscript with the most “manly” title. Maybe titles are the first giveaway rather than the actual cover?
Statue of Chester Arthur in NYC park.
I have one titled Man in the Middle. If the book were written by Chester Arthur Cole, the cover might feature the figure of a one-legged man with a cluster of women in one corner and a motorcycle in another and fishing equipment in the third. Candy Apple Cole’s cover would be a handsome man with a surprised look on his face and a perky woman on either side, kissing his face. Probably one or both would be holding a rose and the cover itself would be pinkish red.
With this in mind, how would you see your books illustrated? Would you select one cover over the other if you were a reader?
On Death Row–Literary or Women’s Fiction?
Posted by c2london in Reading, Uncategorized, Writing on July 6, 2014
I’ve mentioned my quest to figure out what women’s fiction is, most recently in a blog on book covers. I picked up I’d Know You Anywhere at a recent bookswap, thinking it was women’s fiction. The title sounded like one my WF writing friends had mentioned. Also, the paperback cover features two pictures of the backs of women in what appear to be raincoats. Not the dead giveaway of flowers or children, but hinting it might be for and about women. The book did receive accolades from the likes of Stephen King, as well as decent reviews.
This cover looks even more representational than the real one due to the glossy nature of the material. I had to use a flash.
A month or so prior to reading the above, the Board of the Friends of the Colorado State Library sponsored a talk by Elizabeth L. Silver. She spoke about her 2013 novel, The Execution of Noa P. Singleton. At least two versions of the cover of this novel include a partial face of a woman. What I take to be the hardback edition features only text, with some of the words crossed out. This, too received good reviews, although I am not able to unearth a review on the NYTimes.
What do these novels have in common? Each has a female protagonist. Both have murderers on death row facing dwindling days to their execution. Laura Lippman’s story is told in alternating past and present chapters recounting the story of Eliza’s kidnapping, and what she’s doing now. A few other points of view are included. Occasional sections are about the mother of the young girl for whose murder Walter is to die. Sections of Noa P. include letters the mother of Noa’s victim wrote to her daughter.
How would I categorize these two novels? Are either women’s fiction? In a short article, Rebecca’s Rules: Defining Women’s Fiction (Booklist, March 15, 2013), Rebecca Vnuk suggests that women’s fiction deals with emotions and relationships of a female protagonist, and that “the main thrust of the story is that something happens in the life of that woman.” She then tries to set romance, women’s fiction, and literary fiction apart. One clue, Vnuk says between women’s fiction and literary is if you pay more attention to the beauty of the words than the story. She notes that the two can be confusing to distinguish and also says there is nothing wrong with filing a book under “general fiction.”
Although a large portion of IKYA is from the male antagonist’s point of view, the above definition allows both books to fall into the WF category. Somehow or other, I would never think to call Noa P. a work of women’s fiction. Probably IKYA was published as suspense or crime fiction, but to me, a non-expert on WF, it seemed very much like a novel that could be called women’s suspense fiction. What marked the difference between these two books and their classification?
Both deal with the aftermath of a murder on both the perpetrator, the families of the victim, others involved in the subsequent legal case, and the death penalty itself. Another clue Vnuk gives to distinguish between women’s fiction and literary or general fiction is if the main character can be substituted with a man. Probably this would not work, or would be a completely different story in the case of the Lippman book. In the case of Noa, it might be possible, although it would again make it a much more common story.
The main difference between the two books, and where I would classify them, is in the writing, but not necessarily because I spent more time “admiring the use of language” in Noa than enjoying the story. I didn’t much like the character of Noa. I didn’t like Eliza, either, but for different reasons. Noa was unpleasant but, as someone with at least psychopathic tendencies, interesting. Eliza was plain dull, a wife, a mother, with few interests or thoughts outside of that role. If Lippman’s purpose was to show how being the victim of a crime dulls the senses and impacts the personality, she may have done an excellent job, but it seems to me if that was the intent, there should have been some way to show us that that was what she was doing. Every once in awhile Eliza would know something or show interest in something that seemed to me, as a critical reader, more to advance the story of make a more interesting observation than as something this character would actually say or do or know.
The other characters in the Lippman book–with the exception of Walter whom I felt was well portrayed–were right out of central casting. So many books have a best friend/older sister who feels like every other best friend or sister in every other book in the world. In Eliza’s case, the older sister might be described as “lovingly bullying,” but possessing all the expected traits: the Golden Girl to Eliza’s housewife, the smart one to Eliza’s dropping out of her masters program, the single career woman to Eliza’s long marriage with the “perfect” children. Noa’s only friend, who died in childhood, did not seem like her traits had been purchased in the stock store of characters, although her early demise did not flesh her out.
Eliza’s parents were both oh-so-perfect psychiatrists; again, more a role than real characters. Noa’s mother is quite awful. Her father is a reformed convict and not much like fathers in other books. Both are believable, but not particularly likeable. Eliza’s husband is too good/smart/understanding to be true. I kept expecting him to fail her, to in some way make her perfect life a lie. That would have made the story more complex and interesting, but in the end, he’s left home so that the sister can finish out the novel with Eliza.
Noa P. was told in the first person while Eliza’s story was all third. Eliza’s thoughts and feelings were explained and then explained again, while Noa held back information and lied, making you have to work to figure out what was going on in the dialogue as well as the rest of the story. This telling of emotions very well might be what I most objected to in the Lippman book. This over-explaining with dialogue that seldom rang true was for me what made this a less interesting read. I wonder if this problem might have been fixed if Eliza had told her part of the story in the first person.
I have to continue my search for “real” women’s fiction. I hope that some of what, for me, are deficits in the style of writing do not define the “genre.”
Do Covers Define Genre? What Might You Include on Yours?
Some people know that I’m not fond of the category “women’s fiction,” at least partly because I don’t know what it means. Although I do belong to the Women’s Fiction Writers Association, I’m not convinced I’m a women’s fiction writer. I am female and I do write fiction, but I’d say it was mainstream.
I’ve had a difficult time tracking down novels in that category, or at least novels that aren’t also part of another genre, most commonly a historical novel or a romance. Yesterday I posted a query in a forum on WFWA asking for examples of “women’s movies.” Andrea J. Wegner who has a most interesting looking website, Write with Personality, suggested that women’s fiction is a marketing gimmick to target mainstream fiction to women. Her contention was that the main difference between regular old mainstream fiction and women’s fiction was in the books’ covers.
This is an interesting idea and worth a few posts. My first thought, though, was to wonder if any of my manuscripts were to be published, what would the covers look like? What three representative items might be on the cover? Picking out representations of your story is an interesting and fun hypothetical exercise for any yet-to-be-published manuscript.
Here’s my thoughts on some of my manuscripts, which are in various stages of doneness.
Man in the Middle:
An old Miss Havisham-type exterior of a house, large and looming with three stories and peeling paint. A cluster of women, including a gaunt, gray-haired woman, a grandmotherly woman with white hair, two or three tall, dark-haired women, a plump blonde teenager and a cross loooking redhead. Somewhere there would have to be the outline of a man who is an above the knee amputee.
Alternate: the same man, fly tying equipment, possibly with a strand of the redhead’s hair caught in his vice. Those three images could be contained in the outline of the same house.
Trillium:
The obvious image here would be a representation of said flower, maybe with a dollhouse, a whiskey bottle and spilled glass, and a station wagon from the 60s, somehow drawn on each of a petal or at the tip of a petal. At each of the leaves there could be the representation of a woman—an older matronly woman, a middle aged but attractive woman, and a younger but harried looking woman. At the center would be a bald man.
Alternate image: A Hawaiian shirt, a circuit board, a cabin in the woods with a Wired Hair Pointing Griffin in the doorway.
Cuisine of Loneliness: A spilled box of fettuccine. Or maybe the title could be made out of pasta.
Three dark haired men grouped in one corner. One a chef, another a doctor, the third that same amputee, but older. A balding red-haired man in the opposite corner with a dark haired woman with two Irish Water Spaniels in the middle.
Alternate: A chef’s toque with a rolling pin flattening it, smashed china, and the skyline of Las Vegas in the background.,
The Lack: A wiry blond man sitting on the steps of a large Eastern house with a young girl on the porch next to him, a tall, dark-haired man with a small boy in front of a smaller house with boarded up front windows, a road running between the two and a woman in the middle, possibly with the roadway wrapped around her in a knot.
Alternate: A pistol, a tipped over coffee cup with only a drop of coffee left, a half-made wooden bow.
Do any of these conceptual covers appeal to you more than others? How would you represent your own novels in progress?
Better off French? The writer and French children’s Literature.
A friend of mine has a 1-year old whose father is French. When N. was pregnant, I bought Pamela Druckerman’s Bringing Up BeBe for the parents-to-be. I thought it might have some good advice and I wanted to know if it mirrored J.C.’s experiences. I’d read an excerpt in the NYTimes and thought the “method” sounded promising. I have since borrowed back the book to read. I don’t have any children, but I enjoy reading on different subjects. As a writer, you never know when information will come in handy or present an idea for a story.
The son of N. and J.C. Photo by his mother.
All in all, most of the techniques described make sense, partly because, other than being served Camembert at 18 months,
the style of parenting appears much like what my mother and other of my parents’ generation would have espoused. It sounds as if French children are far more internally motivated and less demanding of attention than their typical American counterparts. Now, there are caveats. Druckerman herself says what she describes applies mostly to parenting in Paris and, possibly, mostly to a particular socioeconomic class within Parisian society. Although she cites experts and other works, the book is based mostly on observation, not hard research.
What struck me as the reason I might be better off French was the short section on French children’s literature. Druckerman writes of American children’s literature, “…there’s usually a problem, a struggle to fix the problem, and then a cheerful resolution.” She adds, “… every problem seems to have a solution, and prosperity is just around the corner.” (p. 162) French stories, she says, start in a similar vein with a problem and struggle to solve the problem, but the solution doesn’t seem to stick for long and often there is no personal transformation or growth. Her interpretation of the less-than-perfect ending? That life is complicated, and no one is completely good or completely bad.
Of course not all American adult or children’s stories follow this format, but it seems there is a constant demand for growth and change in the characters; at least that is a criticism/question that often arises in critique sessions. Offhand, the only modern French novel I can think of that I’ve read is The Elegance of the Hedgehog. Certainly to me those characters were unlikeable, although I suppose they did change. With this as my only example, I don’t know how well adult French literature follows the model Druckerman describes in children’s books, but I know I would like to be free to write unlikeable characters who don’t necessarily find salvation by the end. And does the ending have to be happy? Most of my endings are more or less neutral, which some might see as “unsatisfying,” although the author Mark Spencer called one mauscript heartbreaking. (Yeah, yeah, it was as part of a class I paid for.)
What I desire is the ability to write “reality” without having to be considered literary. I don’t think my writing is insightful enough,”deep” enough, nor is the prose exceptional enough for that tag, which leaves “women’s fiction” the only category available to me. I’m not sure my writing meets the standards for this nebulous genre/category, defined at findmeanauthor.com as tapping “into the hopes, fears, dreams and even secret fantasies of women today.” The Women’s Fiction Writers Association exists for those who write about “stories about a woman’s emotional journey.” Other than the fact that women are the main characters, I still don’t see how this is different from what was once called mainstream fiction, and that’s why it might have been easier for me if I’d been French!
Cuisine of Loneliness 