Another word on children's books and horses

[mrissa]

One thing the Horse chapter of Zodiac House does not have is Horse Book Nature. You probably know what I mean here -- Children's Horse Books are very much a genre. And more so, they're a genre I don't write, did not like as a child, do not like as an adult, and have no interest in ever writing, ever. I think that without being pornographic in the least, they fall into some of the writing problems columbina discusses with smut writing in this entry: they are focused on a narrow audience with extremely specific tastes. That audience wants certain extremely specific things that the Children's Horse Book writer must deliver. And sometimes this delivery will interfere with what a more general reader would consider good writing, reasonable characterization, etc.

The horse is a danger zone in ways that some other genre or category elements are, and some are not. Two characters can fall in love without anybody insisting that the story as a whole behave as a functioning member of the Romance genre. But if they have extremely explicit sex on most pages of the story, or enough of it early on despite how the ending goes, the story will most likely be parsed as Erotica or Pornography of some sort. Just having a dead body show up mysteriously in the first chapter does not make a book a Mystery -- you have to devote most of the structure of the book for that -- but if you have a children's book whose main character is on a sports team that shows up in the story at all, you may well be writing a Children's Sports Book whether you meant to or not. Some elements are category black holes. (Black holes, for example.)

So despite the presence of horses in this chapter -- and despite the presence of horses in Dwarf's Blood Mead -- I am very carefully avoiding anything that might smack of Horse Book nature. I am handling the horses very differently because I am conscious of Horse Book devotees and their obsessive ways; some of those devotees were my best friends when I was 11, and they urged their Horse Books upon me. I don't want to write a failed Horse Book. I want to write something else completely. The analogy with smut writing goes further: I am willing to believe that someone could write a book that was interesting to me that was a Horse Book, just as I'm willing to believe that books primarily about sex, sex, and more sex could be interesting and well-done. I nominate Someone Not Me to write them, though.

Hmm. I'm thinking of other children's book categories, and I'm really not opposed to writing a School Book (although I would prefer to wait until people had a little more distance from the Harry Potter phenomenon and could realize that J.K. Rowling did not invent the School Book!) or a Club Book or a Kid Detective Book. I would have sworn up and down that I would never write an American Pioneers Book, but the utopian commune book that's simmering in the back of my head does share many of the features, so maybe I'm wrong. We'll see.

People who are writing: are there any categories you're staying well clear of? Any categories that are trying to impinge?

Comments

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

I'm willing to believe that books primarily about sex, sex, and more sex could be interesting and well-done.

I'm surprised you make that a conditional, didn't you just read Lust a couple of months ago ?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Lust wasn't about sex, it was about a guy dealing with his childhood.

Sort of.

[buymeaclue.livejournal.com]

It honestly took me two paragraphs in before I realized that you were talking about horsey books, not zodiac-horse books. I couldn't figure out what catagory the latter might be, but that didn't stop me from being convinced!

That cart horse book I've got (on vacation, at the moment) is meant, in part, as a kick back against Horse Books. We'll see if I can pull it off, assuming I ever touch it again!

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

If anyone can, it's you.

[songwind.livejournal.com]

Right now I have no interest in books (or stories) about Saving the World.

I have written the very beginning of a short story with some hardboiled detective sensibilities.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

The World always needs to be Saved again anyway after you do it the first time. Stupid World.

[songwind.livejournal.com]

*grin*

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

are there any categories you're staying well clear of?

There are some things I am staying clear of because I do not want to write about them yet, but pretty much the only things I'm staying clear of by policy are detailed writing about guns and the US Civil War* [ and dang it, I initially wrote that as "First USAn Civil War", which tells you which setting I've been mostly writing in recently ], because there are just too many details to ever feel I've got the research right.

*Note also papersky's comment at Albacon a few years back, when people were going on and on about minutiae of "the Civil War": "Get over it, Cromwell won."

[redbird]

If I recall correctly, it was "person," singular, and he was trying to derail a perfectly sensible panel.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I am actually not steering clear of guns categorically, on the theory that I have a dd_b and a pleasing assortment of other lj-endowed resources on this topic, so if I want to have significant shootin' in a book, I can say, "Take me to this place and show me how to make it go boom, and incidentally can you look at this bit and tell me what I've done wrong?"

[mmerriam.livejournal.com]

I'm steering well clear of erotica, despite my character, Jill, trying to steer me toward it. I remain a fade-to-black writer when it comes to sex. I tend to avoid writing "hard" SF because I don't have the knack of it (yet). No child protags who are smarter than all the adults around them.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

What about child protags who are smarter than most of the adults around them? Because that's totally realistic, in my experience. Especially when "smarter than" and "more knowledgable/experienced than" are recognized by the narrative to be different things.

[mmerriam.livejournal.com]

Now that I could get behind.

*eyes the YA space opera novel waiting in the wings*

Yes. That has possibilities

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I think it's important for more books to recognize that smart isn't the solution to everything while still recognizing that it's a good and valuable thing that helps with a lot of stuff. It seems like people are only good at the first part or the second part, not both. Sigh. Monkeys.

[timprov.livejournal.com]

Books where the tactics make sense are always a good idea.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Maybe it's not that your brain doesn't do mysteries but that it does mysteries orthogonally to how other current writers do them. In which case you could write really fascinating ones no one else could figure out.

It's entirely possible that no one would publish that. But I'd read it.

Interesting stuff!

[markiv1111.livejournal.com]

I think on a gut level I knew that young adult horse fiction was a genre. I know I will never be able to write it, as I really know so little about horses; also, reading a lot*lot*LOT of it as a kid, I developed a fondness for horse fiction, without being that interested in actually going out and riding a horse, or looking at them close up. (This differs from my love for science fiction, in that I really do enjoy reading about the space program and am thrilled that people are talking about a moon colony.) I think part of the deal is that Walter Farley, who did so much to invent and popularize the genre, really did write pretty well, which made it easy to lure me, to reel me in.

Nate B.

[aszanoni.livejournal.com]

Agreed; he certainly lured me in. I read every Black Stallion [and Island Stallion] book I could lay hands on.

I am trying to remember about Marguerite Henry. I loved her horses' stories. But it was the *horses* that I cared about. Except the Wild Horse Annie book made me care about Annie AND the mustangs.

- Chica

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

I wrote an encyclopedia article about Marguerite Henry recently. She wrote about horses that were horses, mostly. They seemed less humanized than most fictional horses I can think of.

[gjules.livejournal.com]

I recently (few months back?) finished the first rough draft of a Boarding School Novel. Not just any school novel -- a boarding school novel with paranormal elements. A very modern and very American boarding school novel, but a boarding school novel nonetheless.

Whether it's salable in today's climate is highly debatable, of course, but I read boarding school novels before J. K. Rowling, damnit, and I refuse to be scared off writing one now.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Good on you, and good luck with it! Sounds very cool.

[mamapduck.livejournal.com]

"J.K. Rowling did not invent the School Book"

Of course not. That field was pioneered by The Girls of Canby Hall. :)

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Yarg! But I did read those.

[broyd.livejournal.com]

What, pray tell, is a Horse Book?

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Oh, it's all about the relationship between a horse and its human, and it often includes the horse being the only creature who Truly Understands the poor little human, or the human burying its head in the horse's mane and whispering, "I wish I could keep you," or someone winning an important race or dressage competition along with their older relative's respect and love, or that sort of thing. You know. Horsey.

[seagrit.livejournal.com]

Um, does this include books about wild horses going on adventures without humans (or escaping from humans)? Because I read "The White Stallion" so much a pre-teen than my mom knew the story without having read the book, just by glancing over my shoulder. That was what *I* thought of when you mentioned "horse books" as a genre.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

It certainly can include that, yes.

[dsgood.livejournal.com]

I'm trying to steer clear of "Protagonist is a leader whose plans always work exactly as intended."

No battle plan survives contact with the enemy -- or with the ally. And war has the advantage that you know roughly what other parties are trying to do, unlike civilian politics.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

That doesn't seem like a category or genre to me, but it certainly seems like a thing to avoid.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

When I was writing Tooth and Claw I felt a need to keep away from that close relative of the horse book, the dragon book.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

And well done.