Skip to main content

Chick-lit, originality, and Brandilyn Collins

Captain’s Log, Stardate 05.12.2006

Blog book giveaway:
My Monday book giveaway is PINK by Marilynn Griffith.
My Thursday book giveaway is THE PREACHER’S DAUGHER by Lyn Cote
You can still enter both giveaways. Just post a comment on each of those blog posts. On Monday, I'll draw the winner for PINK and post the title for another book I'm giving away. Stay tuned.

Chick-lit: I did take time today to catch up on a couple e-mail loops I’m on, one of which is the chick-lit loop. There’s been a really good discussion about where the genre’s going—if it’s evolving, if it’s dying, what?

Most people had good points. One woman especially said something that resonated with me, and which I think applies to most other genres as well:

A lot of chick-lit now being published is a lot of the same rehashed storylines. You know what I’m talking about—bridezilla, weirdo mother, dating lots of losers, etc. It’s making chick-lit readers bored.

As chick-lit writers, we have to take the essence of chick-lit—the voice, the plight of the single 20- or 30-something woman—and give it a different spin. If we keep up with the market and see that bridezilla is being overdone, then take a different theme and turn it on its head. It forces writers to be more creative, more unique, more original.

I see this a lot in entries I judge. Some entries have a really unique theme, idea, premise, or characters. However, many of them don’t have that something different to make it stand out as a story.

I think writers sometimes don’t pay enough attention to that aspect of storytelling. The characters are so real, the story so alive in their minds, they don’t want to think that it needs a boost of something to make it memorable.

MEMORABLE.

Scarlett. Everyone knows who I’m talking about.
Bond. Don’t even have to say his first name.
Darth Vader. (Okay, that’s actually movies)
Harry Potter. (No discussions from the anti-HP corner)

They’re all memorable stories. Scarlett puts b*tch in a whole ‘nother level. When it first came out, Ian Fleming’s James Bond was THE man’s man. Darth Vader is not your typical “son betrayed by father” story. Harry’s stories make the wizard/witch fantasy something out of the box.

I’ll take Brandilyn Collins as an unwitting example. EYES OF ELISHA, DREAD CHAMPION—her Christian heroine has visions and solves crimes. Innovative, especially when it first came out, especially within Christian fiction. Not your typical suspense, not your typical paranormal, not your typical crime story.

Okay, okay, my rant is over. But all you writers (and there are a lot of you who read this blog) really analyze your story. What makes you stand out within your genre?

TMI:

Diet: According to my body fat % scale, I’m down one fat percentage! I don’t know how, considering I haven’t been eating that well lately and exercise has been nonexistent. But oh well! I’ll take it!

Comments

woohooo down one fat percentage!!!! yay!!!
Ruth said…
Congrats on the diet!! :) And great thoughts on chick-lit!
Delia said…
I read a lot of books of many different genres. My favorites are romance (of pretty much any kind) and you do see a lot of repetition in the themes, characters, conflicts, etc. What does make the same storylines still interesting is when the author adds that little something special that makes it his/her own.

Way to go on losing one fat percentage! But, wait a minute...I think...maybe...yep, it somehow made it's way here, lol.
Mirtika said…
Actually, heroines solving crimes with visions was done in the romanctic suspense genre before Brandilyn (in films on tv, and by Linda Howard and others). Brandilyn had the schmarts to put the Christian Fiction touch on it and bring it to CBA. :)

Mir
Ruth said…
Hi Camy -- I sent you an email w/ my address yesterday afternoon -- it must've not gone through. I'll send you another one here in a sec. Sorry about the delay! Thanks!! Ruth
Anonymous said…
I think a lot of what you said about the chick lit realm has to do with character. We have to not only care about her, but we have to believe in her and her struggle. True, storylines can become cliched, but it's the characters (like Scarlett, Bond, Vader and Harry) that stick with us after the cover of the book has turned. That's how I want to stand out: memorable characters. Hmmm... maybe I should get back to my WIP on that note.

And congrats on the lost 1%!

Popular Posts

Chinese Take-Out and Sushi for One

Captain’s Log, Supplemental My agent sent me an article from Publisher’s Weekly that discussed this incident: Chinese Take-Out Spawns Christian Controversy And here’s also a blog post that talks about it in more detail: The Fighting 44s This is Soong-Chan Rah’s blog: The PCS blog In sum: Apparently Zondervan (yes, my publisher), who has partnered with Youth Specialties, had put out a youth leaders skit that had stereotypical Asian dialogue, which offended many Christian Asian Americans. In response to the outcry, Zondervan/Youth Specialities put out a sincere apology and is not only freezing the remaining stock of the book, but also reprinting it and replacing the copies people have already bought. I am very proud of my publisher for how they have handled this situation. The skit writers have also issued a public apology . (I feel sorry for them, because they were only trying to write a funny skit, not stir up this maelstrom of internet controversy. I’ve been in youth work long enou...

Excerpt - A HUNDRED YEARS OF HAPPINESS by Nicole Seitz

Captain's Log, Stardate 03.05.2009 Update: Sorry, this giveaway is closed. A Hundred Years of Happiness by Nicole Seitz A beautiful young woman. An American soldier. A war-torn country. Nearly forty years of silence. Now, two daughters search for the truth they hope will set them free and the elusive peace their parents have never found. In the South Carolina Lowcountry, a young mother named Katherine Ann is struggling to help her tempestuous father, by plunging into a world of secrets he never talks about. A fry cook named Lisa is trying desperately to reach her grieving Vietnamese mother, who has never fully adjusted to life in the States. And somewhere far away, a lost soul named Ernest is drifting, treading water, searching for what he lost on a long-ago mountain. They're all longing for connection. For the war that touched them to finally end. For their hundred years of happiness at long last to begin. From the beloved author of The Spirit of Sweetgrass...

Cover Reveal + New Logo for Year of the Dog, a Mahina Security Novel

A New Look for Year of the Dog (and a Behind-the-Scenes Oops!) What do a dog trainer, a security expert, and a nearly-naked book cover have in common? Let me explain. 😅 Year of the Dog is the first book in my Christian romantic suspense series, Mahina Security, set in beautiful (and sometimes dangerous) Hawaii. It features quirky humor, family tensions, sweet romance, and a mystery involving a missing person—and it’s now available to read in the Christian suspense anthology, Danger in the Shadows , on Kindle Unlimited ! But before that happened, I had a bit of a cover mishap… While creating the ebook cover, I realized that the original stock photo made my heroine look, well, completely nekkid. 😳 She’s actually wearing a tube top in the image, but when I cropped it for the ebook, the top disappeared—leaving her looking very PG-13. To fix it, I did some Canva magic on a strappy top from another image and stuck it onto the model (so she’s decent now). But when I resize...

Toilet seat cover

Captain’s Log, Supplemental Update August 2008: I wrote up the pattern for this with "improvements"! Here's the link to my No Cold Bums toilet seat cover ! Okay, remember a few days ago I was complaining about the cold toilet seat in my bathroom? Well, I decided to knit a seat cover. Not a lid cover, but a seat cover. I went online and couldn’t find anything for the seat, just one pattern for the lid by Feminitz.com . However, I took her pattern for the inside edge of the lid cover and modified it to make a seat cover. Here it is! It’s really ugly stitch-wise because originally I made it too small and had to extend it a couple inches on each side. I figured I’d be the one staring at it, so who cared if the extension wasn’t perfectly invisible? I used acrylic yarn since, well, that’s what I had, and also because it’s easy to wash. I’ll probably have to wash this cover every week or so, but it’s easy to take off—I made ties which you can see near the back of the seat. And...

Favorite chocolate?

Captain's Log, Stardate 04.22.2008 Lately I’ve been on this chocolate kick. Normally, I’m not a huge chocoholic like Captain Caffeine. I enjoy chocolate, but if given a choice, I’ll usually choose a fruit or custard/creamy dessert over a triple decadence chocolate layer cake or a chocolate-lovers’ downfall brownie. But lately, I’ve been eating dark chocolate squares. I think it started when I went into Joseph Schmidt gourmet chocolate shop in Santana Row. We’d gotten Joseph Schmidt truffles for Christmas, and they’d been fabulous—I can honestly say that they were as good as DeBrand truffles (author Colleen Coble’s favorite). So when I saw the brick and mortar shop in Santana Row, I went in immediately. Inside, this man was buying up stacks—and I kid you not, stacks —of the Joseph Schmidt Belgian Dark Chocolate bars. He raved about them, said they were terrific. A cashier was restocking the display case the man had cleaned out, and I snagged a bar. “I’ve got to try one, after watc...