Subverting Tropes: A Hard Sell

cornflake · Aug 9, 2014

AbbyBabble said:
Lots of unhelpful comments here. This is how it is:

1. Beta readers loved it, plus its sequels. Agents and publishers never read past chapter 1.
2. I wondered why, so I got tons of feedback on the first chapter, and rewrote it.
3. Repeat #1 about 100x. Not an exaggeration.
4. Repeat #2 about 150x. Not an exaggeration.
5. Everyone who read the novel expressed disbelief that I couldn't get an agent or editor to read it.
6. In recent months, I've gotten in-depth feedback on the latest version of chapter 1 from Big Five published author friends and Big Five former editors (aka industry professionals).
7. The lightbulb went on. I finally understand why 100% of industry professionals were commenting on the character's trope characteristics as a problem: It's because they expect the tropes to get played straight. They see a child genius, and expect this to be just another child-genius-saves-everyone story. It's not at all what they're expecting, but they write it off before the story takes its turn.

I'm sure some of you are thinking, "Agents are perfect gatekeepers; she's probably just an amateur writer." I've been doing this for twelve years, I have pro sales, and I don't know how you can be 100% certain that my fiction is amateur without actually having read it.

If you're making that assumption about me, it's understandable. But it's not helpful to my situation.

My beta readers include Big Five authors and slush readers for pro SFF magazines. I started out as an amateur, like anyone else, but I'm happy with my current beta reader group. They're sharp. And critical. And extremely helpful.

The comments about the trope problem in the first chapters were there all along; I just wasn't getting it as a major reason for rejection, until now. And since my beta readers offer feedback on the whole manuscript, plus sequels, I don't think they saw a solid reason for auto-rejection. They were as mystified as I was. They just kept saying, "That's weird. You still haven't gotten an agent to read it yet?"

********** If anyone else has this problem ************

It's *great* to be aware of the problem. That's step one. Now I need to try and signal the trope subversion in chapter 1, and/or in the query letter. I've gotten some excellent advice about how to go about this from other writers. Suggestions include:

- A first scene that subverts another trope, showing that this is not a typical trope story. George R.R. Martin did this in the prologue scene of "A Game of Thrones." [Spoilers] Readers expect the hapless guy to get killed by white walkers (zombies), but he makes it out alive ... only to get beheaded by the guy he reported it to. That sets up the tone of a trope-subverting story. Then readers are more willing to buy the child protagonist in chapter 1, expecting it to not turn into the typical boy-in-a-fantasy-novel-grows-into-The-Chosen-One.

- Have a character literally comment on the trope, to show that the author is aware of it. "Good thing you're not a space cadet, or people might mistake you for Ender Wiggin!"

- Embed the trope subversion in the query pitch.

I'm having trouble with these, due to reasons specific to my particular novel. But I think they're all great suggestions, and will probably work well for other writers with this problem.

I bolded that and replied, to point out that I think you're doing the same thing as with the agents. You're assuming people are thinking something, then working off and arguing with the assumption.

You're having an entire conversation/argument with people without their participation.

The assumption, however, is your own invention - not necessarily true.

You're also free to do whatever you like, but you asked for advice and got lots of it - at least some from some high-level industry professionals. If your response to all of it is just that nothing can work because it just can't because you can't do anything, well... what is it you want, exactly?

You decided on your own what the problem is, with no evidence, then decided there's no solution, despite many suggestions. Ok?

Old Hack · Aug 9, 2014

Abby, could you clarify a couple of things for me, please?

Have you queried this book yet?

If so, has anyone requested partials or fulls from you?

Who are the industry professionals who have seen it, and in what context have they seen it? Did you submit to them, or did they read it in a critique environment?

I'm just a bit confused by what's happening with it, and I think a few other people in the thread are too. I wondered if we might understand your position better if you clarified these things.

Mac H. · Aug 9, 2014

AbbyBabble said:
I'm sure some of you are thinking, "Agents are perfect gatekeepers; she's probably just an amateur writer." I've been doing this for twelve years, I have pro sales, and I don't know how you can be 100% certain that my fiction is amateur without actually having read it.

If you're making that assumption about me, it's understandable. But it's not helpful to my situation.

This almost reads as satire. "I am sure of my assumption that some of you are assuming this. But your assumption (that I assume you have) isn't helping."

Have you seen ANYBODY in this conversation state that 'Agents are perfect gatekeepers'? So why on earth would you assume that some of us are thinking it?

If the assumption isn't helping then the best course of action is to stop assuming it. After all - it is your assumption.

You are incredulous that people are '100% certain that your fiction is amateur'. You are right to be incredulous ... that is something from your own imagination.

Go back to the thread. Do a search for a single occurrence of the word 'amateur'. Who used the word? Anyone - apart you, and those answering your assumption? If you can't find anyone who has said it .. then stop assuming that others believe this about you.

If you want to have a conversation - you might find it useful to reply to what they have actually said. Replying to what you assume they are thinking can just get confusing ... because you may well be wrong.

At the least - it will be an easier conversation !

Mac

Calla Lily · Aug 9, 2014

Folks: Assume good intentions, please. We're all trying to help each other.

(No, that ^ was not a pun.)

Wilde_at_heart · Aug 9, 2014

AbbyBabble said:
1. Beta readers loved it, plus its sequels. Agents and publishers never read past chapter 1.

7. The lightbulb went on. I finally understand why 100% of industry professionals were commenting on the character's trope characteristics as a problem: It's because they expect the tropes to get played straight. They see a child genius, and expect this to be just another child-genius-saves-everyone story. It's not at all what they're expecting, but they write it off before the story takes its turn. Then as I'd mentioned, make that turn sooner

I'm sure some of you are thinking, "Agents are perfect gatekeepers; she's probably just an amateur writer." They're not 'perfect' gatekeepers and have their individual tastes like anyone else.

The comments about the trope problem in the first chapters were there all along; I just wasn't getting it as a major reason for rejection, until now. Great!

Suggestions include:

- A first scene that subverts another trope, showing that this is not a typical trope story. George R.R. Martin did this in the prologue scene of "A Game of Thrones."

- Have a character literally comment on the trope, to show that the author is aware of it. "Good thing you're not a space cadet, or people might mistake you for Ender Wiggin!" only if the entire book is that self-conscious. Though as I reader, I tend not to like anything that breaks that fourth wall

- Embed the trope subversion in the query pitch. Not sure how you've 'inverted' the 'child genius' trope, but if you have, that sounds like a good idea

I'm having trouble with these, due to reasons specific to my particular novel. But I think they're all great suggestions, and will probably work well for other writers with this problem.

Or test the first chapter in SYW here. Getting repped is hard for nearly everyone. Occasionally there are factors beyond the book. But if *nobody* is getting past the first chapter, then the first chapter is the problem. However it might not be a problem with the 'trope' per se, but something else doesn't compel them want to read on.

Calla Lily · Aug 9, 2014

AbbyBabble, I went to your website and read the first chapter of City of Slaves.

An older(?) version of this chapter is Here in SYW.

JMO, I think your first chapter is a hard sell because the POV character comes across as a Mary Sue. He isn't physically perfect, but in that one chapter we're told the following:

He had directed a team of scientists at Harvard, yet most people assumed that he was twelve years old. He simply wasn't. True, his body was age twelve, but Thomas had absorbed hundreds of lifetimes. He'd spent enough time around doctors and scientists to equal the smartest among them.

<snip> he could have recited ten trillion items in correct order after a single glance.

<snip>by the age of two, he'd learned to sort salient information from the flood of mundane trivia.

In the past month, he'd given lectures at universities. He'd even been wheeled onto The Late Show as a guest star. Ever since he'd invented a medical treatment for spinal muscular atrophy—and his own unique variant of that disease—millions of people wanted to meet the young Genius of the Twenty-First Century.

I haven't read your query thread, but in the chapter the voice isn't consistent with a 12-year-old:

They would strip him of his hard-won accolades and reduce him to a lab rat. Of that, he was certain. Never mind that he'd stitched together brilliant ideas to invent a medicine.

Certainly if he's a true genius he'd sound older than his years. Do I gather the yen for cherry Pop-Tarts is to show that he's still a kid in some things? (I did read on that the Pop-Tarts are a symbol for the freedom of choice he doesn't have.)

The point where I stopped was at my perceived logical disconnect: If he's a scientific genius who's in truth created a breakthrough medical treatment? Why is he still in an anonymous foster home? Why isn't he working/living daily someplace where his genius can be nurtured and (frankly) exploited? If he's lecturing at prestigious universities, something like this would be very likely to happen. One of the Big Pharma companies, for example, would snap him up, give him tutors, full-time nurses, an apartment in a secure (read: controlled) area, and wait for him to make them zillions of dollars.

Thus: my issue was not with tropes or subversion of tropes. It was with suspension of disbelief.

My opinionated opinions.

mayqueen · Aug 9, 2014

Old Hack said:
Abby, could you clarify a couple of things for me, please?

Have you queried this book yet?

If so, has anyone requested partials or fulls from you?

Who are the industry professionals who have seen it, and in what context have they seen it? Did you submit to them, or did they read it in a critique environment?

I'm just a bit confused by what's happening with it, and I think a few other people in the thread are too. I wondered if we might understand your position better if you clarified these things.

I'm confused about these points, too. My confusion is mainly about the state of querying the MS. If you're re-querying something you've previously queried, that might be part of the problem. But I don't know.

DoNoKharms · Aug 9, 2014

Abby, I know my comment may not have seemed helpful, but I stand by it, and I really do think it's something you should consider. "Betas love it but agents won't touch it" means there's something wrong with your beta pool. In Hollywood, if a focus group loved a movie but general audiences hated it, the person who ran the focus group is getting fired. Same principle applies here. The function of betas is to think like agents and to spot all the possible issues that agents would flag before you send it off to them. If there's a huge disconnect between your beta pool and agents, it means your betas aren't doing their job.

One reason this happens a lot is because beta readers, and I'm totally guilty of this when I beta read, tend to read from the point of view of "is this good?", while agents read from a pov of "will this sell?" Betas usually accept the premise of a book and judge it in terms of how it lives up to it, without critiquing the premise itself. I think if you gave your friend a book about a piece of cheese on an epic 100k word quest, they might read it and critique the plot or the pacing or the scene with the bread-dragon. But an agent would instantly toss it because there's no way it's sellable to a mass market. And remember, that's what agents are looking for: not necessarily books that are amazing or brilliant or wildly original (though that always helps), but books they can sell.

If this thread had a slightly negative vibe in responding, I think it's because it felt like you were making some pretty broad conclusions about the mindsets of agents based on one limited sample size, and then offering them as advice. It'd be a bit like if I wrote a romance novel about a 95 year old guy and a 15 year old girl, and when it got rejected, posting "Older men in romance: a hard sell". Well, no, in fact it's often a very easy sell, but what's a hard sell is my specific execution of it. I do think this book is a hard sell, not because your protagonist is such a trope, but the opposite: because a cold, dark, utterly brilliant 12 year old is a very atypical protagonist and one I think most people would have trouble emotionally connecting to. The thing about Ender Wiggin is that he's a child who happens to be a genius, whereas this character strikes me as a genius who happens to be a child. That's why I'd pass, personally.

BookmarkUnicorn · Aug 9, 2014

The whole 'disabled BUT with a superpower that makes him better than everyone on the face of the earth' trope also has a way of turning off we readers with disabilities as well, no matter how much you backpedal later on. Part of that is the fact that no matter how much you say 'yes but' afterward the story doesn't normally work unless he has super amazing powers.

I'm not saying your story is bad, it might balance everything perfectly and be great. But it's good to remember that disability isn't simply a trope to consider but a part of many peoples' un-X-Men toned lifes.

It's a very layered topic, and one that is sold short a lot in media by painting disability as either 1)A tragic flaw that makes someone lesser or 2) A magical element that makes someone suddenly so much more than a mere human by making them superhuman to 'make up' for it.
When really, we're just people who have a hard time of it sometimes like anyone else. Different hard times sometimes, but still.

Anyway, again not to say your writing has these troubles, it most likely doesn't. I just like to add my two cents when any idea related to this trope is brought up

.

(This also isn't to say disabled characters can't have super powers, it's just the best of the best ever level of power element is a very overdone one, maybe even above trope level. It's the difference between making a character like Superman and making a character with a disability even stronger than Superman, theme wise.)

Hapax Legomenon · Aug 9, 2014

What DoNoKharms says is right, an agent looks for what sells while betas look for books they think are good. If you think you've managed to fall into the chasm between them, well, these days you have the self-publishing route as well.

BookmarkUnicorn · Aug 9, 2014

Self- publishing is a good way to go, most of all if you are a good self-editor.

Fuchsia Groan · Aug 9, 2014

Read your first chapter. Granted, I'm not an expert on the child genius trope, because as tropes go it's one of my least favorites. (I spent my childhood being horrendously jealous of child prodigies and have never wanted to read about them.) But I'm seeing some trope subversion here, in the form of Thomas' bad attitude. While I had some of the same concerns about Mary Sue-ism as Lily, I thought Thomas' less likable characteristics (impatience, arrogance, anger) were pulling against that tendency and making the chapter more interesting and dynamic.

So, could you put more of that attitude in the query? Could you hint at how Thomas' character will develop when he gets all the respect he seems to want right now, and more?

If I were an agent, though, I think the age issue would be a bigger one for me than tropes. The chapter reads adult with a young protagonist, not YA. It will appeal to teens, sure, but the kind of teens who read adult SF, Stephen King, etc. That's my take, anyway.

Subverting Tropes: A Hard Sell

cornflake

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Old Hack

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Mac H.

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Calla Lily

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Wilde_at_heart

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Calla Lily

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mayqueen

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Hapax Legomenon

BookmarkUnicorn

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Fuchsia Groan

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Subverting Tropes: A Hard Sell

practical experience, FTW

Such a nasty woman

Board Visitor

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On hiatus

practical experience, FTW

does believe in fairies

does believe in fairies

Becoming a laptop-human hybrid

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