Originally published on LinkedIn. Updated August 8, 2024.
Mindset Shift: From Queer Romance Hobby Writer to Queer Romance Storyteller
There are some queer romance authors who churn out books like they’re working on Henry Ford’s accursed assembly line. By that I mean they release upward of five or six books a year, all under the auspices of creating or maintaining a backlist. Donald Maass, in his craft book The Fire in Fiction, calls these authors “status seekers.” I call them “hobby writers.”
Consequently, a hobby writer’s primary desire is to be published. There’s nothing wrong with being in this category per se. In pushing out books so quickly, though, these authors risk diminishing the quality of their stories.
A storyteller, on the other hand, writes for the love of the craft itself. They have a story idea, character, or even major plot event that demands to be released into the world. Storytellers focus emphatically on making their stories the best versions of themselves. They confidently ask what crucial elements are missing from their story and the best techniques to use to put those elements in there.
For those who write chiefly for a love of the craft, acknowledge where you are in your writing journey versus where you want to end up. You can accomplish this by asking what kind of story you’re trying to tell, who you’re telling your story to, and why you write the type of story you write.
Storyteller: What Kind of Story Are You Trying to Tell?
As a queer romance storyteller, your focus is ensuring every word on the page makes the reader want to continue to the next one. To keep them reading, you must be confident you’re writing for your ideal audience. Queer romance readers are as diverse as the story, characters, and themes you write.
Your first draft is you telling the story to yourself. All subsequent drafts—even as you move into line editing and copyediting—are refining it so your readers forget they’re reading fiction. They live the story’s events right along with your characters.
Of course, that doesn’t mean to take it easy on them—your characters or your readers. On every page, overtly or covertly, deny them what they want. Being a storyteller means making their problems more complex, their decisions harder to make, the consequences of those decisions more devastating. Queer folx and queer relationships are just as dynamic and fraught with conflict as heterosexual ones. In fiction, queer romance storytellers raise the volume on that complexity without drifting into the melodramatic or producing cardboard-cutout characters.
Who Are You Telling Your Story To?
A great number of my premise ideas center around flawed men trying to heal. These psychologically scarred men either don’t believe in or feel they are unworthy of real happiness and true love. While the recent trends in queer romance center around sports, there is still a readership for the hurt/comfort–slow burn–mutual pining trope trifectas I write to fit right in.
First and foremost, 99.98% of stories are meant to be shared. (It’s a scientific fact. Whose science is not the point I’m trying to make here.) Readers seek stories that both entertain and educate them, especially in fiction. Well-rounded characters experience plausible events in their quest to achieve goals that are vital to them.
Isa Pearle Richie says, “When you hear ‘write to market’ as advice, it doesn’t necessarily mean write the same thing that others are writing, it can also mean figure out what readers are craving.”
Storyteller: Why Do You Write What You Write
In my newest blog entry, I mention the different types of fiction publications and their generally accepted word-count ranges. Within those publications’ covers will be the queer romance subgenre that fits the story you want to tell. Only you (or your characters) can tell you which genre that is.
Ask yourself which subgenres are easiest for you to write. They may come so naturally because it’s what you enjoy reading the most. Explore writing flash fiction as a stepping stone to longer forms of storytelling. Maybe that plot idea or character who popped into your head in the middle of the night would be better shown in less than 10,000 words instead of the 85,000 words you originally wanted.
However, you should also not only acknowledge but accept that it will take multiples tries (multiple whole drafts, on occasion) to learn the form that best fits your storytelling style. I like exploring flash fiction using prompts, but I’ll never be able to tell a short story.
Photo by Sweet Life on Unsplash
To Sum It All Up
I’m a mood reader. I can read nothing but queer romance for two months straight, but then I need what I like to call a palate cleanser. It’s usually a thriller of some kind. More often it’s a nonfiction book on US or military history.
These books let me lose myself in an entirely different kind of world while allowing me glimpses into different styles of writing. Best of all, I can see the variety of storytelling techniques used to keep my eyes on the page. You can’t imagine the squeal of joy I let out every time I spot a craft technique I’ve studied in the wild.
Suzanne Rindell agrees: “Whenever I forget how much I love writing, I go back to reading … I allow myself to get lost in the reading, and suddenly something sparks again.”
In my eyes, there is a chasm of difference between hobby writers and storytellers. The Kindle store is loaded down with the former. Queer romance storytellers can and should pull up a seat and put out their own powerful and sound-craft-driven stories all the same.
Reflecting On Your Story One Word At A Time!
