Learning, Cookies and an Opinion…
Fun Things About This Time of Year…
Tonight, Kris baked Christmas sugar cookies and I slathered on white sugar frosting. I managed to only eat about four of them due to the fact that I wanted to spend some hours working tonight without fighting a sugar coma. Yes, the cookies were that good.
This afternoon, in the Kickstarter Design Class webinar, I learned that younger people than me (most everyone) these days will buy three states of any book. They want the electronic, an audio copy, and a physical copy.
Now, back in the traditional publishing days, that would have made zero sense, but as it was explained to me today, it makes total sense in this new world. Total. I got some thinking to do…
Last night, as I was just working to shut off my brain before heading to bed, I was watching a Lifetime Holiday Romance. And I started to imagine the trope diagram for the movie as a book and it just made me laugh.
Now, I hate those things. Writers take an image of their cover and then beside it put all the tropes from the book pointing at the cover as if we readers are too stupid to figure out they mean the trope is in the book. Writers put them in kickstarters, and they tend to just give away the entire book and the reason for readers to buy the book. But in romance, it can sort of make sense. Except for the romance movie I watched last night.
On one side of the book it would have “Holiday Decorations” with a twisted arrow pointing to the cover.
“Dead Mother” trope pointing to another part of the book.
“A Second Dead Mother” trope pointing at the book on the other side. (Might have been a third dead mother, but I lost track.).
“Hot, Shirtless Handyman” trope. “Gay Best Friend” trope. “Comic Relief Couple” trope. “Heartless Ex-Girlfriend” trope. “Holiday Drinks and Cookies” trope. “Putting on an Event” trope.
And there is the entire story. Only thing out of the story not made clear by the diagram of twisted arrows are the two dead mothers. Think resistance to the romance and you got it. What would dear old, very dead mommy say?
I really do think those trope diagrams are just flat silly and hurt Kickstarter sales more than they help them. But just my opinion.
4 Comments
Diane Wordsworth
I’d seen those ad graphics and wondered what all the awful arrows were. Now I know…and I’m even less likely to buy the flippin’ book! Trad publishers are doing it too…(shakes head)
LM
I debated whether or not to explain this at all, but *tags* are book summaries for those who grew up reading internet fiction. Summaries are for those who grew up with physical or bookstore books. Most people read / focus on one or the other as the better indicator of whether a story will deliver the reading experience they’re looking for.
I grew up with both but always wished books in stores used tags because the amount of books that looked good and I ended up hating with book summaries was a much worse rate than tagged fiction.
It was quite obvious when internet fiction writers went indie pro because suddenly the tags appeared.
Tbh, I can more easily identify my preferred subgenres and variants via the trope tags than the summaries. I suspect most readers do not read both.
LM
To also add, like book summaries, tagging culture has norms. Most kickstarter campaigns I’ve seen with tags follow them and successful deliver genre, subgenre, tone, and style via their tags. The example tags you gave wouldn’t likely be used as is for a romance genre story as it fails to tell me key information about the subgenre and focuses on peripherals to the reading experience.
I get why those who are no spoilers people and grew up on physical books wouldn’t be into tags, and I’ve seen screeds. But internet writers sucked at summaries and used tags to find reader matches, so anyone growing up on that system is comfortable enough with it to either use or ignore without being turned off.
dwsmith
Thanks. Never heard them called tags, and used in that fashion. My idea of reading might be old-fashioned, I grant you, but I do not want to know the story before I read it, otherwise I find no point in reading it. (Or writing it for that matter.)