Tag Archives: virgin

Rinse and Repeat

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So I was thinking about genre fiction and all the tropes, cliches and repeats that go on with it. There are so many stereotypes when it comes to books and writings.

Like Literary fiction is by smart peeps for smart peeps. And it is usually about nothing. Nothing happens. It’s just a telling.

In Romance, there are certain story lines that get used over and over again. Like secret babies or marriages of convenience or boss-secretary. There are certain things within the story line that gets reused like dish rag. Like virgins who are old enough not to be or motorcycle gang members who are really misunderstood heroes.

In SF/Fantasy, there is usually a quest. To find something or someone without which or without whom the world would end as they know it.

Nothing in fiction, or in real life for that matter, is new. It has been done a thousand times before. But for some reason, novels cycle these in great numbers. Like a thousand books about rock stars. Or a gazillion books about millionaires who fall in love with broke waitresses. Or orbs that must be found at the end of the quest.

I get that repeating verbatim, aka word for word, another person’s words is plagiarism. But what about all these recycled and repeated themes, tropes and story lines? No, I am not saying that using such is considered plagiarism. What I am saying that using such is a necessary part of writing fiction. I bet google searching will find your book has already been written. Your story has already been told. But, and this is a big but, I hope that you have written it better. That in your telling, something fresh and something new emerges. Even though it has been done a thousand times before. I also hope that your characters are the ones that are memorable. Fresh, new and defines that particular trope, cliche or theme.

I like reading genre fiction. I see the patterns in the writing. But I like it anyway. What I don’t like is laziness on the part of the writer, falling back on the trope and not making it theirs. Even if a theme has been written a thousand times, I appreciate that certain something that takes that trope and makes it their bitch. Now that’s talent. To take something old and make it new.

Sick of Virgins

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Seriously, I have nothing against virgins. If you want to keep your virginity until you die, go for it. More power to you. But I am fucking tired, tired, tired (yes I thought if I said tired more than once, y’all would know just how tired I really was) of finding the heroines in my books being virgins in their twenties. And not only are they twenty-something virgins, they are twenty-something lawyer, doctor, scientist, CEO, etc. ad nauseum virgins. Really?

I don’t need a lot of realism in my books. They are fiction for a reason. I can put up with the too stupid to live women. I can put up with the too perfect to have ever lived men. I can put up with plot device after plot device with a little of deus ax machina thrown in. But I cannot nor will I ever be able to swallow a 26 year virgin medical doctor. EVER.

Look, if you were home-schooled on an island where there were only other women, I might buy that you could be a virgin into your late teens/early twenties. But then you are so fucked up on so many other levels that really the whole virgin thing is the LEAST of your problems. To have heroine after heroine show up in books today as opposed to be re-released from back in the eighties, as virgins well into their careers stretches the truth, my imagination and any modicum of common sense as to be beyond fiction all the way to la-la land. And yeah, maybe aliens will pick you up as they blow by our solar system, not to mention that swamp land I have to sell you.

The average age that an American women loses their virginity is 17.3 years old. Let’s try to reflect that in the fiction section. Cause even fiction should have a little veracity thrown in. In other words, just cause the STORY is a fairy tale doesn’t mean that the world that you draw upon in the story should all be lies as well. Plus, it places a premium on female virginity that I just find fucking offensive. Christ, that is just so regency period. Medieval in fact. I could probably wax poetic about all these older female virgins finding the man of their dreams who just happen to be their soul-mates being about the writer’s hang ups, being a reflection of a patriarchal society and several other sociological/psychological issues but I won’t. It would be BORING. Almost as boring as reading about fucking late twenty-something virgins.

So just stop it already. Just say no. And quit giving me female protagonists who don’t reflect the reality of being a women in America today.