Your cheap and easy thrill for the evening

[maderr]

I wonder what people really hate about the romance genre - I mean, I've read plenty of 'literature' that was nothing but fucking trash. Don't get me started, it's a favorite rant. Every genre under the sun has it's highs and lows. That doesn't mena the entire genre is a wash, and I'm pretty certain that damn near every single piece of 'literature' was, in its time, regarded as trash or very close to it.

But, still, if you want to be amused:

Here you go

Comments

[skylark97.livejournal.com]

XD *dies laughing* I took a creative writing class in college, and the TA had us go around the room and say what it was that we liked reading and writing. When I said I liked romance novels, you would have thought that I told her I wanted to run through the streets naked, given her expression. And since everyone else in the class had lied through their teeth said things like Shakespeare and Dickens and Ann Rand, I suppose I can see where I might have sounded a little out there, but still. Is it too much to ask for a creative writing class centered more on writing popular fiction instead of Great Literature? Some of us weren't interested in boring ourselves or our potential audiences to tears...

People who write Great Literature bemoan the fact that no one reads it or buys it. I tend to think, if they weren't such sanctimonious pricks about it and didn't put their audiences to sleep with things that are so "deep" they're completely obscure on top of being condescending, and therefore boring as hell, more people would buy their Great Literature and read it.

And like they (and you) point out, Austen and Bronte and a great many others were scoffed at for being fluffy popular writers in their own time. How does something become significant and 'classic' if no one reads it or wants to read it?

Sometimes, I think people hate on the romance, because the romance is pretty unapologetic about what it is and what purpose it serves, and is therefore, an easy target.

[maderr.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's pretty much it. I took a creative writing course, and a poetry course, and they were both stuffed full of the same sorts of liars. I got sick of it. Sammie has a book, and the guy talks about knowing your audience. His one paragraph is something along the lines of 'say what you will about romance novels, they know their audience and do their job well' because yeah, I think that is what burns so many people. A lot of what we read is crap, sure, but that goes for everything in life. And it's all shamelessly and unapologetic about what it is - romance. Be that fluffy, dirty, or something inbetween. We're having fun, and don't give a fuck, and the Deep and Meaningful crowd resents that, I think. They're not allowed to have fun, but they're the ones that made that rule, so suffer.

[chilayse.livejournal.com]

My problem with romance is limited to bad romance. Same as with any other literature. It just seems that when romance is bad it's VERY bad. I think it's mocked because it's "girly"...

[maderr.livejournal.com]

Oh, I dunno. My biggest kicks from bad fantasy. There's nothing more hysterical than a fantasy gone horribly wrong.

[joisbishmyoga.livejournal.com]

I think it's more that people retain their grade-school mentality that "cool" kids don't read books, so books are icky. Scifi is for hopeless nerds. Fantasy is nerd lite with a princess complex. Westerns don't even deserve a descriptive phrase. Regular fiction is all beach reads or schoolwork. Anything YA and under, and manga, is for kids and future senile cat ladies. Plays, poetry, non-fiction... that's for stuffy old British guys. I think about the only genres I haven't heard dissed are mysteries and horror.

Shakespeare: a playwright in an age where theatre troupes were about one step from prostitutes. And not in an upward direction.
Dickens: Americans waited on the docks for the last chapter of one of his serials, like HP7 midnight parties.
Dickinson: wrote "tripe" when everybody knew "real" poetry was twenty pages long.

[skylark97.livejournal.com]

I took two classes in college for creative writing/poetry and I learned more about writing and how to write from writing fanfic with friends. *Shrugs* But then again, creative writing classes tend to be really generalized. The beginning classes even more so. Everyone in the class is usually writing for a different audience so having your classmate critique your work for content is usually meaningless because they aren't the ones you're trying to target with what you're writing.

'say what you will about romance novels, they know their audience and do their job well'

XD Amen to that. *snickers* And you know, talking about the popularity of some 'classic' authors. Makes me wonder...a hundred years from now are they going to go on and on about authors like Danielle Steel and Nora Roberts in literature classes? Because that would make me giggle. ^_^

We're having fun, and don't give a fuck, and the Deep and Meaningful crowd resents that, I think. They're not allowed to have fun, but they're the ones that made that rule, so suffer.

*snickers* Yes, very much so. They do give the impression that they're trying too hard and for the wrong reasons.

[maderr.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I learned more about writing from doing it, and playing with fanfic and Rainbow and all. My writing class was cool, in some respects, cause the teacher at least was not pretentious, and she kept to the basics, for the most part. Show, don't tell. No second person. some shit I didn't agree with, but other stuff stuck with me.

Way, way more is learned out here in the field, so to speak. I think good teachers would agree - if you want to be a writer, then fucking *write* and you'll go from there.

Nora Roberts in a lit class. Rockstar!

[skylark97.livejournal.com]

Mine toted the 'show, don't tell', but she had us do an exercise where we turned one pov into second person so that we could explore other povs.

They were very, very big about revising too. X_x Which I tended to think was way over emphasized 'cause at that stage, I think you learn more from practice.

The more you write, the better feel you get for it. Sure, go back and revise it later. But writing one five page story that you revise twenty times over the course of a semester was a waste of time, imho. I could have revised that first fanfic I ever wrote until I was blue in the face and it was never going to be good. But, going back and revising it after I'd tried my hand at a dozen other fics gave me better perspective on what could/should/would be changed to make it better.

Sorry, that last class made me pretty bitter to the whole creative writing class experience and sometimes I think about how I'd teach it, had it been me. XD I think the answer is, I wouldn't teach it at all.

Nora Roberts in a lit class. Rockstar!

XD Now that should so be someone's thesis. <333

[maderr.livejournal.com]

Aha, I agree with the revisions thing. If you're going to 'fix' a story, first you have to ignore it for a very long time.

I think the only thing the writing and poetry classes was teach me that I will survive abject humiliation - and with a laugh. I was probably the worst writer in the writing class, and my poetry teacher pretty much said 'you suck, keep the day job'. But the idiot writing angsty crap and smelling like pot? He was apparently 1337. So I'll stick to my trashy corner, and go back to fighting with brothel! regency story. Ahahahaha. They can keep their Literature.

[maderr.livejournal.com]

Well said, well said ^___^ Poor Westerns, they get no love. rykaine is a huge lover of westerns, and despairs for her poor, unloved genre.

Nerd lite, ahahahaha.

You are marvelous. I wish people actually knew this stuff before they put the rest of down. They might figure out why we laugh at them, and then ignore.

[skylark97.livejournal.com]

Also, Rainbow! La, I love that story. And it makes me nostalgic. ^_^ <33

[maderr.livejournal.com]

*snort* Rainbow needs to go far, far away from me.

[skylark97.livejournal.com]

If you're going to 'fix' a story, first you have to ignore it for a very long time.

Amen to that. I have to have a bit of time between me and the realization that something is sucky before I can go back and attempt to desuckify it.

Oh, he was in your class, too? :D

So I'll stick to my trashy corner, and go back to fighting with brothel! regency story.

*________* Shiny!! *grabby hands* And your faithful fans are ever thankful for it. ;3

[joisbishmyoga.livejournal.com]

I'm pretty convinced that when we become The Federation, we'll use our awesome antigrav technology to put Quidditch in the Olympics, and higher education will have studies like "Perrault, Baum, and Rowling: the development of children's literature in pre-warp human society" and "Gutenburg to Internet: the rise and fall of copyright, with special attention paid to the Trekkie and fanfiction.net phenomena".

... this relates because Rowling is gonna be a classic, for all that she's pop now, and online writers are at the crest of the movement to wrest culture back into the public's hands.

[spurious-sanity.livejournal.com]

For fantasy gone wrong? I suggest Elizabeth Haydon's Rhapsody trilogy. Actually, it wouldn't be that bad, if it weren't for the fact that the main character breaks the Mary Sue scale. Seriously, she makes ff.net characters seem deep and three-dimensional. (Immortal? Check. Tragic past? Check. Stunningly beautiful? Check. Silly, romantic name? Check. Unearthly beautiful singing voice? Check. Ability to play 30 different instruments? Check. Leet magic skills? Check. Leet fighting skills? Check. Kind, gentle and self-sacrificing? Check. Ability to have every man fall in love with her, even when she hasn't bathed in two weeks, stinks and is covered with dirt? Check. yeah, I think that covers most of it.)

...I am vaguely ashamed that I enjoyed that story as much as I did... XD;;

[silverthunder]

I love romance, and I don't care who knows it. XD I don't read harlequin romance novels, but I can see where their appeal comes from.

Honestly, I see a lot of people who refuse to enjoy popular things simply BECAUSE they are popular and those people just HAVE to go against the norm for whatever weird reason they have. Sometimes I think literary elitists fall into that category.

My biggest beef is the mistaken belief that a tragic or depressing ending makes a story "better" or "more realistic". I like happy endings. So does most of the population. I suspect this mass preference leads to that silly "better" theory; after all, if only an elite few like it, it MUST be high class. As for "more realistic"... right. Because real life is consistantly tragic. If they really think that way, I feel sorry for them.

I'll stick with my romance series and enjoy the warm happy fuzzies while they bore themselves with "classics" and get depressed about all the crap endings.

[scary-sushi.livejournal.com]

Hahaha, thank you so much for the link! I think I laughed just as much reading the entry as I did the comments.

You know, before finding you and Tygati on the net, I was all about fanfiction because I had given up on lighthearted books; it was either dark and gloomy or depressing and gloomy or old and not-so-gloomy but with no romance whatsoever or kiddie books that were lighthearted but left me wanting. I mean, I used to read a book a day back when I was a kid (7 to 15) and then poof! Lit classes and philosophy classes and books whose titles were just as crap as their endings o.o

Then two years ago, I realised there were things that I could like, and that I was just looking in the wrong language and in the wrong library. So w00t for fantasy and romance and detective stuff, no matter what crappy elitists say! (not Danielle Steel though, cos she just makes me want to shoot her books. And her heroines. Or Nora Roberts.)

All my lit teachers can keep their stuffy 'classics' while I make a bonfire of my notes xD