I can't for the life of me understand why so many literary agencies out there do not want to represent horror. People love horror! I love horror!
They'll represent lady-porn (which I think I've figured out they like to call that "women's fiction"...these are the paperback books you see displayed at the checkout counter in grocery stores with beefy, shirtless men and titles like The Widower's Fantasies or something equally ridiculous) but they won't represent a good horror story?
And another thing...
I posted the revised version of my first chapter on CritiqueCircle and mostly received feedback from peope who had not read the original version - no big deal. I still received postive reviews and I still feel pretty good about my work. My problem is that I got a lot of people mentioning things like "Oh, the whole vampire/werewolf thing is very overplayed. These types of stories are almost all the same - make sure you try to be creative and make your story different. Are you sure you want to go with vampires and werewolves? It's a bit cliche. I really enjoyed your work and it got my interest, but it's a bit cliche."
Yes, I know full well that there has been an explosion in these types of horror stories ever since Edward Cullen sparkled his way into every female between the ages of 13 and 43's bedroom. I haven't been living under a rock. And yeah, I've noticed that stories under this genre are all very similar and almost all have the same plot - I'm a fan of the genre and have read and watched so many of these stories it's probably a little unhealthy.
I don't need to hear it!
I know they are really just trying to help, and I am extremely grateful to them for taking the time to read and critique my work, but come on. Give a sister a break.
It's only going to get harder from here. I'm going to face a lot more skepticism and be told a million reasons why my story isn't original enough, or just not "what we're looking for." And it's going to get increasingly harder to take.
But for now...I DON'T WANT TO HEAR IT!!!
Thanks for reading! =)
maybe you should take the advice of some of these people and write a closeted version of the same story. As you rewrite each chapter of your book also rewrite it in another genre. Keep the same storyline and characters, change the supernatural element (movie:push) but DON'T give up on Vampires and Werewolves.
ReplyDeleteThat would be a LOT of work. An interesting exercise idea, but a whole lot of work and I already have enough work cut out for me. As far as I can tell books and movies in this genre are still being produced and people are still buying, so I'm not too worried. I just don't want to hear people's negativity. Time to suck it up, I guess.
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