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edenfallingSince Vicky got into writing M/M ebook romances, she's occasionally prodded at me to maybe file off the serial numbers from some of my fics or write something new specifically for profit. And mostly I make vaguely noncommittal noises because I am bad at schedules and also romance, but. I think about it now and then, you know?
So last night I was making a list of things that might be workable as novellas or short-ish novels, and it occurred to me that over the years there has been a slow but distinct change in the types of relationships I'm most interested in writing.
When I was a kid, I always structured stories with two main characters: one female and one male. I generally tried for rough parity in the sex/genders of secondary characters as well, though I was less strict on that point. I find it more interesting to write about relationships (in the broadest sense of two or more people dealing with each other on a regular basis) than to write about a singular figure with ancillary hangers-on, and I figured that since roughly half the world is female and half male, it was only fair to divide my characters along the same ratio.
Not all of these stories assumed a romance -- in fact, the majority of them didn't; they were either about friends or siblings -- but that one-girl-one-boy structure was always there.
I don't do that much anymore.
These days, I tend more toward putting a trio or a quartet at the center of my original stories, and if I use a pair, the pair tend to both be women. Even a bunch of my childhood story attempts have shifted that way as I've reworked them: "Ashes," for example, went from a one-woman-one-man pair (Morgalen and Riam) to a two-women-one-man trio (Morgalen, Riam, and Zalir). My background notes for "The Sum of Things" keep increasing Bren's narrative role until she's almost as important as Talin and Ranna, so again, a one-girl-one-boy story is turning into a two-girls-one-boy story. "Two Guys and a Girl," on which I have actually done the initial number-filing and for which I have detailed notes for expanding and restructuring into a YA trilogy, would end up centered on a quartet (two-girls-two-boys), and my goal is to make all of their component relationships (pairs, threesomes, foursome) seem equally plausible, because reasons.
The other stories I've been considering filing serial numbers off of are mostly straight up femslash, or would tip that way if expanded: "Leaf and Letter," "Of Stone and of Sky," "The Rule of Threes," etc. Also the Persephone Noir series I invented for Rose to write in "Leaf and Letter," which I now kind of want to turn into a real thing myself.
...
I don't know if I had any particular point here, besides noting that I started with a bias toward including female characters which has only grown more pronounced over time, and that that preference (aside from the porn and romance issues) is why I could never get into writing commercial M/M romances even though they sell better than most other categories.
But F/F, or F/F/M threesomes... that, maybe, I could do. *wry*
(Actually, I should point Vicky at "The Law of Conservation of Mangrit" and ask how she would go about filing those serial numbers off. I am genuinely curious, because I don't know how you could quickly sketch and justify the emotional and worldbuilding background of that story without the entirety of Homestuck canon to lean on.)
Anyway, I should get back to working on actual fiction.
So last night I was making a list of things that might be workable as novellas or short-ish novels, and it occurred to me that over the years there has been a slow but distinct change in the types of relationships I'm most interested in writing.
When I was a kid, I always structured stories with two main characters: one female and one male. I generally tried for rough parity in the sex/genders of secondary characters as well, though I was less strict on that point. I find it more interesting to write about relationships (in the broadest sense of two or more people dealing with each other on a regular basis) than to write about a singular figure with ancillary hangers-on, and I figured that since roughly half the world is female and half male, it was only fair to divide my characters along the same ratio.
Not all of these stories assumed a romance -- in fact, the majority of them didn't; they were either about friends or siblings -- but that one-girl-one-boy structure was always there.
I don't do that much anymore.
These days, I tend more toward putting a trio or a quartet at the center of my original stories, and if I use a pair, the pair tend to both be women. Even a bunch of my childhood story attempts have shifted that way as I've reworked them: "Ashes," for example, went from a one-woman-one-man pair (Morgalen and Riam) to a two-women-one-man trio (Morgalen, Riam, and Zalir). My background notes for "The Sum of Things" keep increasing Bren's narrative role until she's almost as important as Talin and Ranna, so again, a one-girl-one-boy story is turning into a two-girls-one-boy story. "Two Guys and a Girl," on which I have actually done the initial number-filing and for which I have detailed notes for expanding and restructuring into a YA trilogy, would end up centered on a quartet (two-girls-two-boys), and my goal is to make all of their component relationships (pairs, threesomes, foursome) seem equally plausible, because reasons.
The other stories I've been considering filing serial numbers off of are mostly straight up femslash, or would tip that way if expanded: "Leaf and Letter," "Of Stone and of Sky," "The Rule of Threes," etc. Also the Persephone Noir series I invented for Rose to write in "Leaf and Letter," which I now kind of want to turn into a real thing myself.
...
I don't know if I had any particular point here, besides noting that I started with a bias toward including female characters which has only grown more pronounced over time, and that that preference (aside from the porn and romance issues) is why I could never get into writing commercial M/M romances even though they sell better than most other categories.
But F/F, or F/F/M threesomes... that, maybe, I could do. *wry*
(Actually, I should point Vicky at "The Law of Conservation of Mangrit" and ask how she would go about filing those serial numbers off. I am genuinely curious, because I don't know how you could quickly sketch and justify the emotional and worldbuilding background of that story without the entirety of Homestuck canon to lean on.)
Anyway, I should get back to working on actual fiction.
