I have a perfectly good blog sitting here, so why not put something on it?

I’m thinking of doing a mini series on writing tropes or sub-genres that have been underrepresented.

What do I mean by that?

Previously, I blogged about how difficult it was to find articles on writing revenge romance. Recently, another writer confided how difficult it is for her to research her niche of cozy fantasy. I replied with how difficult it has been for me to research what type of plot pattern a good mystery needs to have, for my mystery subplot. In addition, there is an entire taboo category of romance and dark romance that gets ignored unless you’re in the right reader Facebook group. Yet, these are obviously categories many readers camp in.

Which would be fine, if we were actually teaching people how to write these things. But who can I approach to teach me how to drop mystery hints when my protagonist is not a self-proclaimed sleuth, or how far is too far in rawness in an erotic romance scene? Who can teach me how to keep readers from hating my antihero who wants revenge on the heroine, when she does not want revenge on him? What about showing and not telling, when showing is graphic, or how to write in rich metaphor without overusing “like” and “as”?

You were going to answer, “Find a how-to writing book or article,” weren’t you. (Or use software to nitpick individual words.)

Except, we have a problem: How-to books these days aren’t even what university teachers are recommending. That’s because they are so general that they rarely help other than making a writer sometimes feel less alone in the process. Which is what writing community is for, by the way. Find a workshop. Find a Discord. Find a local group. Something. Anything. Use an online search engine before you say you can’t.

I have several how-to books on my shelf. The issue isn’t that how-to books exist. The issue is that people describe the same elements and repackage them with a different cover. Plot, dialogue, character, and setting are staples. You cannot promise me YA-specific content, or NA-specific content, and then tell me all the generalized content about stories that I already know, and place a line at the end saying, “You should read books in this category to see what’s the norm.” No. That’s why I bought your book. Tell me what I’m looking for. Tell me something other than how teenagers might call me out for trying to be hip. I live in real life; I’ve already seen that. I’ve been that teen. Tell me how to craft voice when I have a younger character. Don’t chicken out because you’re an adult and you’re winging it.

There is a deficit on our bookshelves and online and on our e-readers. The topics that we very clearly need sensitivity readers for are the topics that I have a 10% chance of getting in a workshop once in two years, and almost no chance of getting anywhere else. DEI is not the only thing that got buried.

If you’re like me, in that hole, trying to research and coming up empty, I can’t give you expert advice.

What I can do is start a blog where I share what actually helps me from my search, as I’m searching. Maybe that will jumpstart your own blocked search. Maybe it will spark someone who actually is an expert in one of these categories to do more than regurgitate how important it is to have a plot, have three sections, and save a cat. Those books have already been written. We need your help with new specifics, please. We need your techniques.

Don’t worry; our writing won’t come out like yours if we’re using your technique. We’ve got our own quirks to apply your techniques to.

We talk about “writers lifts” on social media, but isn’t a true lift when we give each other the tools we’re missing, so the rare manuscript gems that are challenging us the most actually get into readers’ hands?

Since when was the status quo fun to write for books?

Let’s write what needs to be written.

I want to pause and say to the many workshop and webinar instructors and speakers I’ve been sitting under for the past two years, and earlier than that: Thank you. Thank you for taking the time and covering the difficult topics, for providing the one-sentence takeaways that I’d been searching three years to find, for answering a dozen questions in a row, for not turning away our difficult and messy endeavors and our crayon-drawing-equivalents of addressing writing prompts and trying out your techniques. It took me a long time to find workshops like yours, and I recommend them to many other writers. I can’t say they all step up to try to tackle such big ideas, but I hope in the future they will.