Story Discussion: June 21, 2007 'Suzanne by the Sea' by drksideofthemoon

[drksideofthemoon]

I must have missed that one. Maybe it's on at the same time as "What Not To Wear" on TLC. Some of that footage is pretty incredible too, but I guess I didn't make my point.

Tying oneself to a rudder seems plenty wacky, but tying oneself to a mast looks entirely sane from where I'm sitting- so why would anyone call him mad for it?

Hmmm, I guess it was from his cursing and railing at the seas, one fist in the air, the other on the tiller trying to keep the bow into the wind...

 

[dr_mabeuse]

Me too. I was so lost regarding Doc's reasoning that I couldn't help but wonder if I misunderstood the essence of a romance even though in my twenties I must have devoured countless paperbacks that claimed to be just that. Not wishing to steer the discussion away from the story, I chose not to ask- but I'd love to revisit the topic sometime when we don't have another active discussion.

Maybe I can clarify what I meant and maybe nip this one in the bud without a separate thread: I meant drk's story was Romance as genre fiction rather than meaning to include it in the whole vast field of Romance in general. It certainly is the latter, but that wasn't my point.

What I meant was: you sit down with a story, you don't know what it is. Is it a sea story, a study of human nature, are aliens going to fall from the sky, we don't know what to expect. After a while, in genre fiction, it becomes clear - we're dealing with scifi, a western, a detective story, BDSM porn, a romance. That's what genre fiction is - it follows certain conventions that allow it to be categorized, and so by definition most simple genre fiction follows certain conventions.

A reader who buys a western expects to see guns and horses and sagebrush and the author better give them to him. Same for the other genres.

There's no sense in looking at Drk's story and saying that there wasn't enough action or sagebrush or whatever because that's not what he was trying to do. He was working in a specific genre with specific conventions and rules, and so I went back and kind of reassessed him against those and think he did a really beautiful job.

--Zoot

 

[Penelope Street]

Well, didja ever stop to think some of us might not want a thread on romance nipped in the bud?

Terminology worthy of italics often leaves me behind and sometimes I don't quite catch up. So what are equivalent of horses and sagebrush for a genre romance? How do I know one when I see one?

Remembering the paperbacks that still line my bookshelves two-deep, the commonality seems to be something like this:

She's a beautiful, virtuous young woman, probably a virgin. He's a handsome rouge who probably can't even remember being a virgin. He falls for her at once, mostly because she's the prettiest girl in the story. She's reluctant, but he wins her over, mostly with his sheer bravado. It doesn't hurt that he's the handsomest man in the story. Then the angst! They're separated and must overcome all odds to be together again. I think it's this last part, the struggling to get back together, that makes it satisfying.

'Suzanne by the Sea' does follow this pattern. Is that all there is to it, following a formula? Or am I totally lost?