McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft
Dresden vs everyone in the Genre
DragonFire:
--- Quote from: neurovore on October 22, 2007, 08:37:25 PM ---Your statement "Female authors, male or female lead characters, tend to emphasise romantic relationships and such, in their stories" did not read to me as limited to this particular subset of SF/fantasy. My apologies if that was a misreading.
--- End quote ---
Given the thread was about urban fantasy, I thought it was implied that my statement related to that, not SF\F as a whole.
--- Quote from: neurovore on October 22, 2007, 08:37:25 PM ---
There is a perception of a certain kind of urban fantasies with female protagonists - paranormal romances, vampire shaggers, nosferotica, call them what you will - as being principally about romance with action secondary if present at all. This is a marketing perception. It leads publishers to think more of this stuff will sell. It leads authors to think that this kind of stuff will sell; or, perhaps a more apropos and less cynical way of putting it, it leads authors who want to do things with lots of romance in to find that market appealing. The more of it there is, the more the people who like that kind of thing will buy, the stronger the genre gets, it's self-sustaining and self-fulfilling, and I think LKH and Buffy are explanation enough for how the whole thing got started.
--- End quote ---
Possibly. However, there is a lot of stuff I find sitting in teh 'Fantasy' section of my bookstore, that when I read it, could go under romance.
Don't mistake me however, LKH, Kim Harrison and Kelley Armstrong aren't writing romance, it's urban fantasy. It's just that the stories always seem to include worry over a man/love life, being attracted to men, and that being distracting, and so on. Breathless descriptions of how attractive man A is, or how it's unfair that man B is such an asshole, yet so pretty.
Lavish descriptions of clothes and shoes and the rest.
Compare that to some male authors, and you don't have that. There tends to be more action. Yes, they might have partners/sex, but it's a sideline, or a seldom mentioned thing, rather than every 20 pages.
Now, all that said, does it mean every female author who writes urban fantasy does this? Of course not.
It is a trend I've noticed??
Yes, it is.
That was all I was saying.
--- Quote from: neurovore on October 22, 2007, 08:37:25 PM ---
How are you defining urban fantasy ? I don't think the biases you express about women and romance extend to Emma Bull or Kara Dalkey, for example, in the work of theirs I think of as urban fantasy.
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Never read them. The defintion of 'urban fantasy' is very fluid. I define it as fantasy in the modern world.
--- Quote from: neurovore on October 22, 2007, 08:37:25 PM ---
If you want to define urban fantasy specifically as meaning paranormal romance, then yes, sure, lots of it is by female authors and romance-focused; I think what this says is that at the paranormal romance is a popular subgenre and easier to sell than other kinds of urban fantasy, [ witness for example the total failure of the final part of Walter Jon Williams' Metropolitan trilogy to find a publisher ] and I do find going from that to generalisations about how men and women write to be problematic.
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Becuase I didn't do this, you did.
You took what I said, assumed I was either talking about a sub genre, or paranormal romance, and ran from there, getting more upset as you went.
What I said was what I had observed from my own reading and my own writing.
Yes, it was a generalisation, but so what.
I never claimed the male or female 'way' was superior. YOu did that in your own mind.
the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:
--- Quote from: Lightsabre on October 23, 2007, 03:15:38 AM ---Now, all that said, does it mean every female author who writes urban fantasy does this? Of course not.
It is a trend I've noticed??
Yes, it is.
--- End quote ---
I'm not actually sure there's any point to continuing this argument, because you are making it circular by narrowly defining the grounds you are talking about to give a tautological result. If your argument is that women writing paranormal romance tend to focus on romance, that's true but is it actually saying anything meaningful ? If you want to call LKH's books urban fantasy rather than paranormal romance, fine, but if you then want to exclude other threads of urban fantasy, by whatever definition, until "urban fantasy" is left meaning paranormal romance that happens to be shelved under SF/Fantasy rather than romance, that really does become pointless.
--- Quote ---.
You took what I said, assumed I was either talking about a sub genre, or paranormal romance, and ran from there, getting more upset as you went.
--- End quote ---
I assumed you were talking about a subgenre because you said you were talking about urban fantasy rather than SF/Fantasy in general, and you are disregarding any counterexamples I make, in urban fantasy or out of it, that do not fit your thesis.
--- Quote ---I never claimed the male or female 'way' was superior. YOu did that in your own mind.
--- End quote ---
I've not accused you of saying that. What I am saying, and continue to believe, is that your identification of a particular style as "the female way" is just plain wrong.
Shecky:
--- Quote from: neurovore on October 23, 2007, 03:08:00 PM --- just plain wrong.
--- End quote ---
How very male of you. ;D
What? I couldn't resist getting in the middle of a wordfight that I wasn't already involved in LOL!
DragonFire:
--- Quote from: neurovore on October 23, 2007, 03:08:00 PM ---I'm not actually sure there's any point to continuing this argument, because you are making it circular by narrowly defining the grounds you are talking about to give a tautological result. If your argument is that women writing paranormal romance tend to focus on romance, that's true but is it actually saying anything meaningful ? If you want to call LKH's books urban fantasy rather than paranormal romance, fine, but if you then want to exclude other threads of urban fantasy, by whatever definition, until "urban fantasy" is left meaning paranormal romance that happens to be shelved under SF/Fantasy rather than romance, that really does become pointless.
--- End quote ---
THat is not what I am doing.
Read it again.
I've noticed that a majority, of female writers, despite writing GOOD urban fantasy, play up the romance elements.
THis doesn't mean they are writing paranormal romance, nor am I claiming that all urban fantasy with a romance element is 'paranormal romance'.
A completely seperate point I was making, which may have confused you, was that after urban fantasy started to get popular, a lot of 'paranormal romance' was rebadged and sold as 'urban fantasy'.
I am NOT redefining urban fantasy to be 'paranormal romance'. It was, before all this crap started, simply my observation to LIzard King's question.
--- Quote from: neurovore on October 23, 2007, 03:08:00 PM ---I assumed you were talking about a subgenre because you said you were talking about urban fantasy rather than SF/Fantasy in general, and you are disregarding any counterexamples I make, in urban fantasy or out of it, that do not fit your thesis.
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My point was that I can only go on books that I, personally, have read. I haven't read the books you offer as a rebuttal, therefore I cannot take them into account, can I?
If you can offer a couterexample I HAVE read, then by all means, we can take this further, although I've already noted that not all female writers do this.
--- Quote from: neurovore on October 23, 2007, 03:08:00 PM ---I've not accused you of saying that. What I am saying, and continue to believe, is that your identification of a particular style as "the female way" is just plain wrong.
--- End quote ---
Well agree to disagree. Multiple female authors all including similar elements, despite vastly different ideas, writing styles and characters?
And Male authors doing the SAME THING, but with different elements?
See, you turned this into a gender debate, when all I was trying to tell Lizard King was that I think male and female authors have a different slant.
It's not a slur on anyone's gender.
Different doesn't equal worse, simply different. Some people may like the male 'way' better, others, the female.
THat was all I was saying.
Men and women think differently, and it's not suprise that that would show up in something like their writing.
Lizard King:
--- Quote from: Lightsabre on October 23, 2007, 07:51:10 PM ---
Men and women think differently, and it's not suprise that that would show up in something like their writing.
--- End quote ---
Now that HAS to be something we can all agree on! C'mon!
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