Storytelling Instincts vs. Formulaic Expectation

WARNING: THIS BLOG CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR THE NEW GINGER VOIGHT BOOK "GROUPIE" AVAILABLE NOW FROM AMAZON FOR YOUR KINDLE!
>
>

>
>
>
>
As an author, I have come to trust my storytelling instincts... so much so that I allow my characters a lot of leeway to make decisions that threaten to ultimately change the landscape of my best-laid plans.

This means that sometimes I go outside of convention and buck genre rules; I'm here to write the story true to my vision and my characters and I can tell you even with my romances you may get some payoff, but I can't guarantee you a Happily Ever After.

Some of my romances are more traditional, but others involve triangles where I give the characters what they need, rather than what you may want for them. In fact, I always aspire to fill my characters' needs more than their goals, and sometimes it ain't pretty.

Apparently this could prove very problematic for me finding an audience among those who love the romance genre, as an overwhelming majority of readers prefer and demand a Happily Ever After (HEA) which often includes a major commitment between the two characters.

I have a problem with this particular demand considering sometimes this makes sense for the characters and the worlds I've created, and sometimes it just doesn't.

This was especially the case in my latest book, GROUPIE. When I started out, I aspired to write the typical "romance" where girl falls in love with her fantasy guy, they have a wild relationship full of ups and downs, and ultimately she gets her absolutely completely belief-suspending and unrealistic happy ending.

As much as we want to believe it, there is nothing realistic about an average girl getting the womanizing rock god who juggles a handful of relationships to commit and be devoted after 300 pages.

He may love our heroine... but the question is does he love her MORE than he loves himself?

As long as fame is driven by ego this is an iffy proposition at BEST. There's a reason that long-term romances and marriages are the exception rather than the rule in "Hollywood." I know these guys and I know people who have loved and been seduced by them. It's exciting and titillating, but generally it's the kind of thing you enjoy for the moment, rather than a lifetime.

The whole reason I chose this particular sandbox to play in was to dig down deep behind the weird, seductive and often completely fabricated world of celebrity. I love to turn expectation on its ear; that will prompt me to write quicker than anything.

So I set out to bring something real to the illusion, and do it in a way that everyone could connect to regardless if you've spent time following around a rock band on the road.

Odds are many of us will never get our chance to be with our celebrity crushes; but I'm guessing most of us know what it's like to be cheated on and lied to by a womanizer. I'm also guessing most of us have fallen for the one we couldn't truly have, and hung in there through imbalanced relationships.

Girls think having the celebrity would be glamorous, sexy and exciting. But there's a dark underbelly of that world where you have to share your man with the world - and a litany of other women (both sane and insane) that hate you and are almost literally gunning to take your place.

(This is the B-plot of GROUPIE, which makes it more than just a genre romance from the opening chapter... thus strict genre conventions don't necessarily apply.)

Having said that, I should probably confess that until the book was about three-quarters done I was still willing to grit my teeth and do it to give my audience what they wanted. My characters, however, had a mind of their own. I found myself going the more Danielle Steel route by torturing my heroine and putting her through a variety of near-misses to make HER grow and become the person she needed to be happy all on her own.

Like with any of us, then and only then can we truly be happy with anyone else. (It's not easy being a feminist romantic.)

Needless to say this put me in QUITE the quandary of following genre convention vs. my own storytelling instinct. I found my original plot not serving the characters as they were written, which was as honestly as I dared write. Each decision that they made had natural, organic consequences that escalated their conflict (rule #1 in dramatic storytelling.) The further down the rabbit hole I went I realized the story simply could not tie up in a happy little bow. To do so would have robbed the story of its integrity, and cheapened all the characters I came to love.

I would have to bend my own rules and undercut my own standards to Macgyver it to give it the HEA the romance genre often demands. Some feel that the absence of the HEA invalidates the whole story leading up to the end, but to me cheating the ending cheapened the story that came before it.

So I could either sell my soul (and principles) to sell a few more books and avoid harsher, more negative criticism OR... I could stay true to my vision and let the characters reveal the story for all of us.

What to do, what to do?

After some agonizing soul searching I realized I just couldn't do it. Sorry, folks. I'm always going to default to story over genre. Genre may be how I sell it to you... but story is how I sell it to myself.

Granted there are plenty of romances that do not have a true "happy" endings, but modern readers prefer to see the girl get the guy of her dreams even if he is the absolute worst thing for her in the shape he's in.

I've reprogrammed a few frogs into princes in my day, and this is not an easy task. To quote Roseanne, "You think they come out of a BOX that way?" This can take years... and to say that Vanni is a fixer-upper is putting it mildly.

But I get it that a majority of romance readers couldn't give a rip how "unrealistic" it was to complete a miraculous conversion for my romantic hero. The general understanding is that women don't pick up romance novels for realism but I will let you in on a little secret: I have more faith in my readers than that. If you make it to the end of this book then I've already done something right by giving you characters in which you could invest yourself. If you're mad at me, then I've done my job as a romance writer; you WANT the characters you love to get together.

Guess what? I want that too. But it has to make sense.

In the case of GROUPIE, the leading man is an up and coming rock star whose need for fame and all its trappings, particularly LOTS of female attention, affects how he thinks and the decisions he makes. As far as he came within the three year time frame I covered in 300 pages he still wasn't evolved enough to give the readers - or the leading lady Andy - what they wanted (and deserved.)

Simply put there was more to this story than could be told in one book. To chop it off just to hang the ending on a HEA would have been a band-aid on a gaping wound. This guy has a lot of issues (which is why he was so fun to write,) but no real impetus to change. He gets too much of a payoff with his current behavior - which is further facilitated and encouraged by his growing fame. Changing that to make him a one-woman romantic hero would have felt like an abrupt cheat to his character and their story. At least to me.

And frankly I'm the person I write these books for in the first place. I'm glad (and often ASTONISHED) that other people love these stories and characters as much as I do. But in the end, I have to do what is right for me.

I'm the parent. These are my babies. And I have final authority on how they "grow up."

(Interestingly enough those readers and consultants who have actually had relationships with celebrities and musicians were the ones who advocated the strongest against a cliche HEA. And it was with great consideration that I weighed their advice and experience when crafting the ending of this book.)

That means I deliberately crafted each part of GROUPIE, even if I ended it differently than I originally planned. This was thanks mostly to the introduction of Graham, a character wrote himself in and created UTTER CHAOS by being the kind of man Vanni is just unable at this point to be.

As a writer, and a woman, I was torn myself between TEAM VANNI and TEAM GRAHAM.

Despite this, I am very happy with the way that it ended and think it's a much stronger story because of his presence and triangle that resulted.

And I'll even tell you this: this wasn't the first or even second or third ending that I crafted for the book. When I realized the story would have to go on past the end of this book, I tried to cheat a sorta HEA ending. My early readers (editors, consultants, friends AND husband) let me know that kind of ending fell flat and rang inauthentic... which proves once again that if I can't sell it to myself I just can't sell it to anyone else either.

So I wrote the ending that made sense to me. The characters all stayed true to their character and made their decisions accordingly, especially Andy. She made conscious choices based on the integrity of her character rather than her need to be in a relationship. This kept all the strong, wonderful qualities that attracted Vanni to her in the first place intact.

Because of this, it makes any possible HEA from upcoming books starring these characters pack a stronger, more organic emotional punch.

Bottom line, I knew when I published GROUPIE that I'd make a lot of enemies from those who prize the HEA as part of their romance reading experience. It's your payoff, and I realize that depriving you of it doesn't make you happy with me. I accept the consequences of that. All I can really do is ask that you trust your storyteller, even if you aren't crazy about some of the twists and turns I may take you on.

I'll repeat Vanni's melodic plea, "Don't give up on me yet."

I have a plan. This isn't the ending... just a new beginning.