“What’s wrong, Mary?”
“I’m depressed, Lillie. My
author does not know if she’s writing a mystery or if she is writing a
suspense.”
“What’s that to you?”
“Mystery fans don’t think the
book is a very good mystery and Suspense fans don’t think it’s a very good
suspense.”
“And that’s somehow your
fault?”
“Characters always get the
blame. We’re either unlikeable or unbelievable, or TSTL, or two dimensional, or
lacking proper motivation. I just don’t know how to act in one of these half
this, half that novels.”
“Well thank God I don’t have
that problem.”
“Are you in a straight genre
mystery, then?”
“No, but my author can create
a great suspense and a great mystery at the same time in the same book. It’s all in the
plotting and my author is a plotter par excellence.”
“My author, God bless her, is
a confirmed pantser. She tries but she should really be writing genre romances where
the plot’s not the story and where the ‘falling in love’ process is.”
“Don’t give up hope, Mary.
Your out of print novel could come back as an eBook and be revised by your
now much more experienced author. There just might be a second act in your life
yet.”
Lillie
Beaumont is a character in “The General's Secretary” talking to
Mary a character in a long forgotten novel.
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