There's been quite a bit of smack talked about the romance industry in the past couple of days. Fanboys and girls are calling it "Novel writing by numbers," USA Today referred to it in a bit more complimentary light, but said that wooing was no longer necessary. I don't necessarily agree with that; romantic courtship nowadays usually involves sex. Women are reading what they do, not what their mothers or grandmothers did.
The fanboys and girls took the romance bashing onto another blog, and I don't know whether to giggle or fume. Yes, there are some craptacular romances out there, but there's also a great deal of well-written, engaging material. And I don't think it's just romance, I think all the genres get bashed. I just read a book on the Sci-Fi/Fantasy biz and it was quite apologetic over dialogue and characterization, and how difficult it is in the midst of all that world-building. Isn't that a reason why the genre's challenging to write, as opposed to an excuse to bash and consider it less of a medium?
Bah, I'm going to go read the new fic bit Savannah's posted on her blog, that ought to cheer me up at least!
No comments:
Post a Comment