By: Susan B.

Susan B. — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 23:31:46 +0000

It seems that my thoughts on the subject were a little clearer when we discussed it pre-flu. So I’m trying to think of fiction I know that builds slower and what I come up with is the soaps. (Hello, my name is Pot and I’m a soap addict. It’s been six years? since my last soap opera.) What I loved about soaps, and continue to love fiction in general, is the writers’ ability to manipulate me. In something with a longer time-line, they have the ability to make me hate a character and then, over time, show me where that character was coming from, how he’s changed and grown, and make me root for him. In soap, they don’t have to rely on the concept of OTP (although it does come up) and in a lot of circumstances they just can’t [suggest OTP] because of the constant partner changes. Instead, they are able to show us some relationships that grow more gradually than those in a lot of romantic suspense novels and action movies.

I’m not sure there’s that much of a difference though. In any case, the fictioneer has to make the fictionee buy the love story. They still need to make sure they show the reader enough romantic elements through the situations in which the characters find themselves to make it believable, and to show the characters’ reactions to them, show them feeling and falling. And they still need to make the reader fall too.

I don’t know if this comment acutally says anything that makes any sense. Taking my fuzzy head back to my Buffy marathon now.

Comments on: Timeline of Romance

By: Susan B.