I mean I'm a gay man who has precisely zero interest in the world of heterosexual dating and romance, but even I like the idea of your story and I would read that book.
I agree — grab 2 or 3 friends for drinks and keep spinning this idea. You have the makings of a very dark comic novel. That app could take him anywhere, so could the older women. Specific requests. Improbable situations. Throw in a three-way, the guy turns out to be someone from his office. It could get messier with each chapter. And do not give it a happy ending but one that’s fitting and original.
The braiding of platform, subject, and form here are fantastic. It's clever and O. Henryish when it comes full-circle at the end, and it was seeming to me like a well-practised exercise at that point, but that small bit of acid in the final line makes the whole thing deeper. Shows the sort of scathing undercurrent he might have been missing in this entire friendship--and then I realized you hadn't mentioned if the narrator was a man or woman, which itself adds a terrific layer of ambiguity.
I'm excited to see where you go in deploying (if I remember correctly) these 40ish tactics!
Me too! It is nice to realize that I can just steal. Like that's not illegal, right? Shakespeare did it! I've been keeping a list of various plots and techniques (from public domain sources) that I want to steal.
I am not sure if "deserved" is the right word. Authors don't always write stories based on their sympathies, rather on "this is likely to happen if A does B", which is somewhat closer to how real life goes.
Aye. I thought i had seen her saying the characters didn't deserve a happy ending somewhere, but I can't find it so probably imagined it. To quote Gilda Radner “nevermind.”
I like reading about affable losers, but why must they all be writers? I have no desire to read about how much being a writer sucks and nobody else does, either.
Beyond having no interest in reading about writers I’m dismayed that people keep chucking these stories out. It’s actually getting seriously off putting. I certainly don’t see any resemblance to O. Henry.
The only thing funnier than this story is the comment where the guy asks why the character deserves a bad ending. I laughed too many times while reading this, thank you!
1) The twist here is directly (and thematically) relevant to what came before. I didn't expect it, but it made sense in retrospect.
2) The "notes" provided are, really, a completely different story. A better one, and one that could still have lots of character interiority and complexity, but in the end just a different story.
3) Empathy is a tricky thing. Some writers try way too hard to make their characters empathetic, when really I just want a character who's interesting. Also most readers probably try hard themselves to empathize, so you can probably get more mileage out of NOT making the characters empathetic, and letting the reader do the work instead. The ones I have the hardest time empathizing with are when I can tell the author wants me to empathize but has written someone terrible, possibly by accident.
Full disclosure: I don't actually have one. Because if I'd ever had an idea like that, the marketing executive who lives in my brain would've strangled it in the crib.
Although Teddy Wayne and ARX-Han seem to have made it work, so it's possible I miscalculated
If you start from the assumption that at least 80% of the audience for general fiction is women, it's hard to make a case that anybody would want to read that kind of thing. It's like the polar opposite of an Emily Henry novel.
I went to an Edgar Rice Burroughs panel at HeroesCon a couple weeks ago in Charlotte. One of the main complaints that genre people (especially pulp and sword & sorcery types) have about modern fiction is that it spends so much time on character development and introspection that nothing happens, plot-wise. They tend to like gore and sex, too, but the main thing is a story that moves.
I found this phrase so well-crafted haha. Your story sounds like a great read. I think the key is that the guy has to be a doer. I recently posted about having re-read You, and you said women loved Joe, and my response was that he may be psychotic and mopey and angry, but he's at least relentlessly devoted to Beck and full of action. That's like 90% of what a likable romantic male lead needs. The 10% insanity can be forgiven then.
>“But we haven’t actually heard it!” he said. “There haven’t been any successful novels recently >about angry white sexless losers!”
It's a slush-only genre, or was until recently. Twenty-five years ago, BDSM-tinged sex melodramas featuring heterosexual couples was a slush-only genre too, and then thanks to fan fiction and micropublishing broke through into the mainstream. We're seeing the same today with this incel loser business.
There are also even slush-only short story genres, e.g., a creepy old pedophile bum corners a precious young girl...BUT turns out she's a vampire or serial murderer or avenging angel and kills the pedo. The moral of the story is: don't molest children.
I think it's wrong to write content critical of men in that position. Might as well write something critical of the homeless, it's a very lonely kind of suffering. I've been at it for a year, and I've made progress, but it's difficult.
Pull yourself together. Fiction aims to investigate the human condition. In its entirety. If you take a (nonexistent) fiction which in part attributes flaws to someone partly similar to you personally, well, while I sympathize with your difficult situation, let me tell you, you’ve got a flaw.
How many classic novels have you read? Frank assessments of characters’ strengths and flaws are one of the most characteristic aspects of, at the very least, the realist novel.
Quite a few I think, from what I remember portrayals of flawed characters are more nuanced than this. Even Notes from Underground, which is quite critical of its protagonist, is simultaneously empathetic for him.
You’re talking as if this is a one-sided assault on the character, but it’s obviously not. There’s basically nothing critical at all except the meta-textual claim that the character hasn’t earned a happy ending yet. If you want to understand that better, just ask about it (or if you want to criticize that, criticize that specifically) don’t make some silly assertion about what fiction writers are allowed to do in general.
I was so sure this was going to be a response to the new review of the ARX-Han novel (which was published a while ago, I realize) but no!
Seriously, though, the twist ending of Teddy Wayne’s “Loner” from back in 2016 (which I think ARX-Han or another TMRish guy might have praised which caused me to read it) is sort of O. Henry ish in the way that this one is and my reaction wasn’t, oh what a hacky end to something that was otherwise disturbing and interesting, it was more like, nice job Teddy, you actually wrote an ending to your novel unlike most modern literary fiction which doesn’t deign to have an ending!
It would be kind of funny for you to rewrite the ending of “The Guest” (which I remember you criticized for having no ending) to have an O. Henry style twist…
Oh the Guest would be so good if it had a twist! Because otherwise the novel was great. I really need to read the Way e novel, it seems very up my alley
I’m now realizing that the ending of the guest should be that she’s remembering the whole story 20 years later after she’s married a rich guy. Is that O. Henryesque?
I just felt like with this kind of guy, if the author gives him a happy ending then people are upset, but if you give him a bad ending then people feel sorry for him :)
I mean I'm a gay man who has precisely zero interest in the world of heterosexual dating and romance, but even I like the idea of your story and I would read that book.
Thank you! I do feel like this book would work, no?
I agree — grab 2 or 3 friends for drinks and keep spinning this idea. You have the makings of a very dark comic novel. That app could take him anywhere, so could the older women. Specific requests. Improbable situations. Throw in a three-way, the guy turns out to be someone from his office. It could get messier with each chapter. And do not give it a happy ending but one that’s fitting and original.
Thank you!!!
The braiding of platform, subject, and form here are fantastic. It's clever and O. Henryish when it comes full-circle at the end, and it was seeming to me like a well-practised exercise at that point, but that small bit of acid in the final line makes the whole thing deeper. Shows the sort of scathing undercurrent he might have been missing in this entire friendship--and then I realized you hadn't mentioned if the narrator was a man or woman, which itself adds a terrific layer of ambiguity.
I'm excited to see where you go in deploying (if I remember correctly) these 40ish tactics!
Me too! It is nice to realize that I can just steal. Like that's not illegal, right? Shakespeare did it! I've been keeping a list of various plots and techniques (from public domain sources) that I want to steal.
I would totally read this book and think it was a great story tho im baffled why you think the guy deserved the bad ending.
I don't, I just felt like my audience would sympathize with him more if I didn't seem to ;)
I am not sure if "deserved" is the right word. Authors don't always write stories based on their sympathies, rather on "this is likely to happen if A does B", which is somewhat closer to how real life goes.
Aye. I thought i had seen her saying the characters didn't deserve a happy ending somewhere, but I can't find it so probably imagined it. To quote Gilda Radner “nevermind.”
I like reading about affable losers, but why must they all be writers? I have no desire to read about how much being a writer sucks and nobody else does, either.
The stories about writers perform better than the ones about non-writers :)
Hear, hear.
Beyond having no interest in reading about writers I’m dismayed that people keep chucking these stories out. It’s actually getting seriously off putting. I certainly don’t see any resemblance to O. Henry.
The only thing funnier than this story is the comment where the guy asks why the character deserves a bad ending. I laughed too many times while reading this, thank you!
Thank you!
lol this is great
I don't normally read much of these Substack posts, but I did. I have to say it came across as real till the end - so great writing.
I quite enjoyed this! A couple general reactions:
1) The twist here is directly (and thematically) relevant to what came before. I didn't expect it, but it made sense in retrospect.
2) The "notes" provided are, really, a completely different story. A better one, and one that could still have lots of character interiority and complexity, but in the end just a different story.
3) Empathy is a tricky thing. Some writers try way too hard to make their characters empathetic, when really I just want a character who's interesting. Also most readers probably try hard themselves to empathize, so you can probably get more mileage out of NOT making the characters empathetic, and letting the reader do the work instead. The ones I have the hardest time empathizing with are when I can tell the author wants me to empathize but has written someone terrible, possibly by accident.
Thank you! Yes I think trying to hard to instill empathy often doesn't work
Delightful!
Now I just have to figure out what to do with my half-finished manuscript about an angry white sexless loser
OMG we all have one in a drawer somewhere right? I have tried to make mine work for so many years.
Full disclosure: I don't actually have one. Because if I'd ever had an idea like that, the marketing executive who lives in my brain would've strangled it in the crib.
Although Teddy Wayne and ARX-Han seem to have made it work, so it's possible I miscalculated
You don't have one? Oh you escaped! I definitely do have one, but eventually realized it just doesn't work.
If you start from the assumption that at least 80% of the audience for general fiction is women, it's hard to make a case that anybody would want to read that kind of thing. It's like the polar opposite of an Emily Henry novel.
I went to an Edgar Rice Burroughs panel at HeroesCon a couple weeks ago in Charlotte. One of the main complaints that genre people (especially pulp and sword & sorcery types) have about modern fiction is that it spends so much time on character development and introspection that nothing happens, plot-wise. They tend to like gore and sex, too, but the main thing is a story that moves.
The dudes who would have read Burroughs (and Howard and Lovecraft) are now playing video games.
"So she sends him out onto the internet"
I found this phrase so well-crafted haha. Your story sounds like a great read. I think the key is that the guy has to be a doer. I recently posted about having re-read You, and you said women loved Joe, and my response was that he may be psychotic and mopey and angry, but he's at least relentlessly devoted to Beck and full of action. That's like 90% of what a likable romantic male lead needs. The 10% insanity can be forgiven then.
I agree. I've tried to sell the world on passive losers before and they absolutely hate it
>“But we haven’t actually heard it!” he said. “There haven’t been any successful novels recently >about angry white sexless losers!”
It's a slush-only genre, or was until recently. Twenty-five years ago, BDSM-tinged sex melodramas featuring heterosexual couples was a slush-only genre too, and then thanks to fan fiction and micropublishing broke through into the mainstream. We're seeing the same today with this incel loser business.
There are also even slush-only short story genres, e.g., a creepy old pedophile bum corners a precious young girl...BUT turns out she's a vampire or serial murderer or avenging angel and kills the pedo. The moral of the story is: don't molest children.
I forgot about slush only genres! You're right this is such a thing.
Meta ... A story about a guy trying to tell a story, and the story about the guy is based on an earlier story about a similar guy.
1. Your story is good.
2. The novel in your story sounds like it would be good, despite the naysayers, and
3. The O. Henry story sounds good, too.
Thank you! The O. Henry take is definitely one of his best
I think it's wrong to write content critical of men in that position. Might as well write something critical of the homeless, it's a very lonely kind of suffering. I've been at it for a year, and I've made progress, but it's difficult.
I would recommend story "The Feminist" by Tony Tulathimutte.
https://www.nplusonemag.com/issue-35/fiction-drama/the-feminist/
It is certainly a very interesting take on the situation. Both the left and the right will find things to love and things to resent about this story.
I wonder if Tulathimutte "got away" with such an irreverent story because he is visibly of Thai ancestry.
Pull yourself together. Fiction aims to investigate the human condition. In its entirety. If you take a (nonexistent) fiction which in part attributes flaws to someone partly similar to you personally, well, while I sympathize with your difficult situation, let me tell you, you’ve got a flaw.
Judging someone is not investigating the human condition.
How many classic novels have you read? Frank assessments of characters’ strengths and flaws are one of the most characteristic aspects of, at the very least, the realist novel.
Quite a few I think, from what I remember portrayals of flawed characters are more nuanced than this. Even Notes from Underground, which is quite critical of its protagonist, is simultaneously empathetic for him.
You’re talking as if this is a one-sided assault on the character, but it’s obviously not. There’s basically nothing critical at all except the meta-textual claim that the character hasn’t earned a happy ending yet. If you want to understand that better, just ask about it (or if you want to criticize that, criticize that specifically) don’t make some silly assertion about what fiction writers are allowed to do in general.
I was so sure this was going to be a response to the new review of the ARX-Han novel (which was published a while ago, I realize) but no!
Seriously, though, the twist ending of Teddy Wayne’s “Loner” from back in 2016 (which I think ARX-Han or another TMRish guy might have praised which caused me to read it) is sort of O. Henry ish in the way that this one is and my reaction wasn’t, oh what a hacky end to something that was otherwise disturbing and interesting, it was more like, nice job Teddy, you actually wrote an ending to your novel unlike most modern literary fiction which doesn’t deign to have an ending!
It would be kind of funny for you to rewrite the ending of “The Guest” (which I remember you criticized for having no ending) to have an O. Henry style twist…
Oh the Guest would be so good if it had a twist! Because otherwise the novel was great. I really need to read the Way e novel, it seems very up my alley
I’m now realizing that the ending of the guest should be that she’s remembering the whole story 20 years later after she’s married a rich guy. Is that O. Henryesque?
Hang on. Why doesn't he deserve it? You seem to imply that he got over his problems, did you mean to?
I just felt like with this kind of guy, if the author gives him a happy ending then people are upset, but if you give him a bad ending then people feel sorry for him :)