Things Up With Which I Will Not Put
Mar. 24th, 2009 12:16 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ivyficThrough my work, I've read quite a lot of chick lit novels over the last few years. And not just the popular ones—it's been a fairly random selection. Which means I am starting to get really tired of some of the genre's cliches.
-The bumbling heroine. I entirely blame Bridget Jones's Diary for this trend. I quite liked that book, but Bridget, despite her many faux pas, was still endearing (in the book at least). She was well-intentioined, but slightly inept, so her mistakes felt relatable to the reader. Since then there have been a spate of hapless heroines. It's as if the conclusion many writers took from Bridget Jones was clumsy=loveable. I am tired of my heroines crashing cars into things and getting sweat stains on their interview suits and accidentally knocking over expensive things and taking prat falls and generally making asses of themselves. Because most of these heroines are not endearing. They're just annoying. Rather than identifying with their travails, I end up getting aggravated with them.
-The self-obsessed mother. This seems to be a staple of many of these books. This is the mother who makes everything that happens about her, who flirts constantly and shamelessly with all men, including the hero, who is a drama queen, who dumps problems on her daughter, and who is incapable of seeing how this affects her. I've seen a few uses of this stock character that really dive into the pathos and difficulty of that relationship. That for the child, no matter what the mother does, they still have to put up with it and keep her in their lives. And that, despite it all, they still love their mother. And that the mother is still worthy of being loved. Far too many authors just use this bad mother as an additional cross for the heroine to bear to show how perfect she is for putting up with this.
-The perfect, yet manipulative and bitchy, rival. This rival exists to humiliate and belittle the heroine, and then eventually be humiliated themselves. Because her come-uppance is necessary, the rival always reveals herself to be an utter psycho hosebeast. I am so tired of this, and the underlying assumption that because someone else gets what you want, whether it be the job, or the fame, or the guy, it must be because they're an evil person who cheated you. Sometimes people are just better than you. And sometimes they're just luckier. I've known quite a few people who I wanted to hate because they got something I wanted, but couldn't, because they were nice people and ultimately they beat me, fair and square. I would like just one of these rivals not to be intentionally cruel, and force just one of these heroines to realize that they aren't entitled to get everything they want. Is schadenfreude really so necessary?
-Mr. Wrong. This I also attribute to Bridget Jones. Well, I suppose I should attribute it back to Jane Austen, Bridget Jones made it popular again. That novel used the formula of the heroine going after the guy that's all wrong for her when the guy that’s right was there all along. In principle, there's nothing wrong with this. When done well, I quite like it. But so many of the books I've read that rely on this formula telegraph the ending so blatantly that it's immediately obvious at the start who the RIGHT GUY is, and that he's not only absolutely perfect, but head-over-heels in love with the heroine, sending obvious signals of interest, and just waiting for her to come around. When the heroine then goes after the superficial dickweed instead of Mr. Perfect, it makes her seem like a shallow airhead. The dynamic here should be that she's going after what she thinks she wants because she has no idea she has another option. When instead she even says that she's in love with Mr. Perfect but won't pursue it for contrived reasons one through ten, and then goes after Mr. Wrong and is confused and upset when Mr. Perfect/her BFF gets his heart broken by this… Then I pretty much hate the heroine, for being criminally stupid at best and coldly manipulative at worst. (Oh, it just makes me long to rewatch Slings and Arrows season three, where one of the subplots was a wonderfully executed example of this.)
-Cutesy in-jokes. The plot set-up above relies on having the heroine and Mr. Right already be BFFs. Unfortunately, this means that in many of these books, lots of time is spent on developing the attraction and the relationship of heroine and Mr. Wrong and none at all on her and Mr. Right. Instead we get some sort of in-joke, cutesy, conversational game they play. This is shorthand for "they have a history"—but if you don't actually show me the history, I'm not emotionally invested in it, am I? I understand the need for shorthands in fiction, but not if the author is using that instead of giving the characters an emotional connection and showing how they really do complete each other. All we get (and I wish I was making this up, but I've read such examples) is the heroine realizing she should have been with Mr. Right all along because no one else plays Would You Rather with her by text message. Hint—the in-joke only serves as a metaphor for the whole friendship if you've given us more of the friendship than just the in-joke.
I'm sure there are more, but that's all I've got right now. My fingers are tired.
-The bumbling heroine. I entirely blame Bridget Jones's Diary for this trend. I quite liked that book, but Bridget, despite her many faux pas, was still endearing (in the book at least). She was well-intentioined, but slightly inept, so her mistakes felt relatable to the reader. Since then there have been a spate of hapless heroines. It's as if the conclusion many writers took from Bridget Jones was clumsy=loveable. I am tired of my heroines crashing cars into things and getting sweat stains on their interview suits and accidentally knocking over expensive things and taking prat falls and generally making asses of themselves. Because most of these heroines are not endearing. They're just annoying. Rather than identifying with their travails, I end up getting aggravated with them.
-The self-obsessed mother. This seems to be a staple of many of these books. This is the mother who makes everything that happens about her, who flirts constantly and shamelessly with all men, including the hero, who is a drama queen, who dumps problems on her daughter, and who is incapable of seeing how this affects her. I've seen a few uses of this stock character that really dive into the pathos and difficulty of that relationship. That for the child, no matter what the mother does, they still have to put up with it and keep her in their lives. And that, despite it all, they still love their mother. And that the mother is still worthy of being loved. Far too many authors just use this bad mother as an additional cross for the heroine to bear to show how perfect she is for putting up with this.
-The perfect, yet manipulative and bitchy, rival. This rival exists to humiliate and belittle the heroine, and then eventually be humiliated themselves. Because her come-uppance is necessary, the rival always reveals herself to be an utter psycho hosebeast. I am so tired of this, and the underlying assumption that because someone else gets what you want, whether it be the job, or the fame, or the guy, it must be because they're an evil person who cheated you. Sometimes people are just better than you. And sometimes they're just luckier. I've known quite a few people who I wanted to hate because they got something I wanted, but couldn't, because they were nice people and ultimately they beat me, fair and square. I would like just one of these rivals not to be intentionally cruel, and force just one of these heroines to realize that they aren't entitled to get everything they want. Is schadenfreude really so necessary?
-Mr. Wrong. This I also attribute to Bridget Jones. Well, I suppose I should attribute it back to Jane Austen, Bridget Jones made it popular again. That novel used the formula of the heroine going after the guy that's all wrong for her when the guy that’s right was there all along. In principle, there's nothing wrong with this. When done well, I quite like it. But so many of the books I've read that rely on this formula telegraph the ending so blatantly that it's immediately obvious at the start who the RIGHT GUY is, and that he's not only absolutely perfect, but head-over-heels in love with the heroine, sending obvious signals of interest, and just waiting for her to come around. When the heroine then goes after the superficial dickweed instead of Mr. Perfect, it makes her seem like a shallow airhead. The dynamic here should be that she's going after what she thinks she wants because she has no idea she has another option. When instead she even says that she's in love with Mr. Perfect but won't pursue it for contrived reasons one through ten, and then goes after Mr. Wrong and is confused and upset when Mr. Perfect/her BFF gets his heart broken by this… Then I pretty much hate the heroine, for being criminally stupid at best and coldly manipulative at worst. (Oh, it just makes me long to rewatch Slings and Arrows season three, where one of the subplots was a wonderfully executed example of this.)
-Cutesy in-jokes. The plot set-up above relies on having the heroine and Mr. Right already be BFFs. Unfortunately, this means that in many of these books, lots of time is spent on developing the attraction and the relationship of heroine and Mr. Wrong and none at all on her and Mr. Right. Instead we get some sort of in-joke, cutesy, conversational game they play. This is shorthand for "they have a history"—but if you don't actually show me the history, I'm not emotionally invested in it, am I? I understand the need for shorthands in fiction, but not if the author is using that instead of giving the characters an emotional connection and showing how they really do complete each other. All we get (and I wish I was making this up, but I've read such examples) is the heroine realizing she should have been with Mr. Right all along because no one else plays Would You Rather with her by text message. Hint—the in-joke only serves as a metaphor for the whole friendship if you've given us more of the friendship than just the in-joke.
I'm sure there are more, but that's all I've got right now. My fingers are tired.
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Date: 2009-03-24 04:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-24 11:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-24 02:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-24 09:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-24 04:21 pm (UTC)And chick lit STILL sucks. (As does my ability to embed things.)
no subject
Date: 2009-03-24 04:27 pm (UTC)Well, for the proofreading I have no choice in the matter, and just happen to know the PE's who do chick lit. For reviewing, I asked for romance, and chick lit just kinda comes with.
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Date: 2009-03-24 11:55 pm (UTC)Have you read Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum novels? I'm tearing through them like a house afire, but I can certainly see a couple of the cliches above in them, especially the bumbling heroine and the perfect but bitchy rival.