In this round of revision, we’ve reached the Hate Mail scene, in which people who don’t deserve to die do. I have repeatedly interrogated the necessity of this scene because I know it’s difficult. Intentionally! Can’t trauma-bond without trauma, and this is the trauma the situation provided. It works structurally. I’ve barely altered it since the first draft because it’s one of those keystone scenes that was born saying everything it needed to say.
I was bouncing this unpalatability issue off a friend, who asked, “Is this a romance problem? Because something like that would be right at home in fantasy, sci fi, horror, thriller, western, lit fic, or anything else I can think of.” Which brings me back around to my genre problem. In my head, this is a romance novel. Heroine and Hero’s relationship is the spine of the story, and it ends with happily ever after. Check, check, romance.
But romance is, overwhelmingly, more than any other, a feel-good genre. Readers don’t turn to it in search of vicarious trauma, fear, and pain. Even in romantic suspense, the danger is grounded in the warmth and security supplied by the relationship.
I think if I label this A Romance, romance readers who pick it up on that basis will feel unsatisfied.
I’m also pretty sure if I label it A Fantasy, fantasy readers will confidently complain it’s A Romance, so there’s no winning.
I’ve known all along this was going to be a problem, so it’s not a revelation. Judging by diminishing returns with the last two books I’ve released, two people will ever read this one post publication, so I know the target audience is me. And yet I’ve been trying, against resistance, to cram more romancey expectations where I know they would go but I really don’t want them.
I guess this is leading me to pluck those off like ticks in the next revision round and make this the book I want it to be rather than a halfhearted and ultimately futile attempt to gain the approval of others.
This does NOT mean I’m removing the sex and romance (that whole “spine of the story” thing). I’m only removing the heavy-handed assurances that they’ll fuck eventually. Nothing of value will be lost by striking every bit of the tacked-on “omg so hawt I’m distracted from my life-or-death mission,” the writing of which made me feel stupider.
So here, post 75% (of the revision; not sure how it will fall in the finished product), sex is performed for the first time. A lot of the “cramming romancey bits where I don’t want them” was an attempt to create the “burn” portion of a “slow burn.”
The problem, of course, is that it’s not and has never been a slow burn romance. It’s a fantasy with two people working together in a fraught situation that’s kicking their asses too much for them to be horny constantly. They’re not thinking about fucking all the time. Nobody has an action plan to that effect. Opportunity, need for comfort, and mutual willingness just happen to collide at this moment. It’s also not 20 pages long.
Blah blah, too much sex for people who don’t want to read about sex, not enough sex for people who want to read about sex, moderation is unmarketable, blah blah.
TARGET AUDIENCE OF ONE. Embrace it, self, and write something that makes you happy.
While I was having the megrims, I pinned down a bit more about a magic-related condition. It will be more important in subsequent books, but as I go through this one, I can look for opportunities to scatter seeds and tidy up anything that contradicts this lore that has now assumed its final form.
I don’t anticipate a lot of tidying because this is a case of things I already knew clicking into place, but I might have gone astray with how they work together.
Editor Angie informs me there is a hard date beyond which she won’t be able to fit a doorstopper into her schedule, so I have about a month to get this as far as I can and send over the bulk of it, much less polished than I would like. *hyperventilates into a paper bag* She has very generously agreed to squeeze in the last bit at a later date, but since she’s giving me a hardship discount as it is and what I send her will be in much worse condition than she expects from me, I don’t feel right imposing.
Pretty sure she’s never seen my writing before the fifth draft, so barely three should be a rude awakening…
