Pop-Up Submissions LIVE! | Writing Women's Fiction | Writing Tips & Critiques

[AgentPete]

On today's Pop-Ups Submissions…

• Compassion Fatigue - Women's Fiction by Viktoria Dahill;
• Saving Maria - Commercial - Upmarket? (seriously, not certain...) by Truant Memphis;
• Slow Play - Rom-Com by Angela Morrell;
• The tale of Queen Scowl-a-lot - Women's fiction, humour (fairy tale satire - contains adult language) by Sara Bourne;
• Far From The Tree - Commercial Women's Fiction by Shelley Hobbs.

Featuring Special Guests publisher Nicolas Cheetham CEO of Head of Zeus and Litopian Ali Gardiner!!

As a Litopian, you're invited to join everyone in the Genius Room (formerly known as the Chat Room!) every Sunday at 4:45pm UK / 11:45am EST for a great time!

PLEASE USE THE LIVE VOTE DURING THE SHOW!​

*** LINKS ***
Make a submission Pop-Up Submissions – Litopia
Audio podcast https://pop.litopia.com
Narrators voice – Litopia
Vote new_vote – Litopia

 

[Dorm Ant]

I'd love to know what "women's fiction" is?! (Tried Googling it, which didn't help.)

I have been watching recent editions retrospectively, though should be able to join the Genius Room again from next week.

 

[E G Logan]

@AgentPete

Can we make that a question for Nick Cheetham, please?
Specifically:
"How would you characterise the difference between Women's Fiction and Women's Commercial Fiction? And both of these from Commercial Fiction generally?"

And, if time:
"What would you expect to see in Women's Fiction? For example, does it have to have a happy ending?"

I'd love to know what "women's fiction" is?! (Tried Googling it, which didn't help.)

I have been watching recent editions retrospectively, though should be able to join the Genius Room again from next week.

 

[Josephine]

I'd love to know what "women's fiction" is?! (Tried Googling it, which didn't help.)

Men write for People, women write for Women. I assume...

 

[Pamela Jo]

Men write for People, women write for Women. I assume...

I would say men assume they write for people, it never occurring to most that they can't speak for women. Looking at you Joyce.

 

[Dorm Ant]

All seems nonsensical, to me. If we assume that men can't speak for women, we have to assume that women can't speak for men, and what is "speaking for", anyway? Is the implication that I shouldn't have a male lead character?

I wondered whether "women's fiction" and "chick lit" are the same thing, and both are pretty sexist terms, that don't sit well in 2022.

 

[Pamela Jo]

All seems nonsensical, to me. If we assume that men can't speak for women, we have to assume that women can't speak for men, and what is "speaking for", anyway? Is the implication that I shouldn't have a male lead character?

I wondered whether "women's fiction" and "chick lit" are the same thing, and both are pretty sexist terms, that don't sit well in 2022.

Your argument would assume that white people can speak for people of color as well. Colonisers always assume they can speak for the colonised. My experience of life is very different from a man's. It shapes my voice. Joyce's voice of Molly Bloom was explosive in it's day because it said women wanted sex. Yet his voice essentially sounds more like how women sound in porn. "OHHH its so big!" Please... To simply declare it is 2022 and therefore there is no difference in a woman's experience walking down the street to that of a man is to put yourself in danger. Reality will get you hurt or killed. All readers must identify with your protagonist. Do you really think men will pay money to read Bridget Jone's diary? Or Marian Keyes? Because we know they don't. The sales figures say they don't. Whereas from childhood I became used to slipping into the head of Tarzan, John Carter of Mars or Allan Quartermain, my sons refused to even listen to Little Women on audiotape. Meg, Beth and Jo's experience was too foreign to them. It did not aid them in learning how to be male. Women are used to reading men, to understanding them, anticipating their actions and motives for simple survival every time they walk down a street. Men do not have the same experience with women. Freud chose to believe that little girls who told him they had been sexually abused by family members were making it up rather than face the reality that they were telling the truth. A man trying to speak through a female protagonist has less to go on than a woman who has spent her life reading men to survive. You cannot plant a flag and declare equality anymore than you can plant a flag on an inhabited continent and declare it yours.

 

[Dorm Ant]

Your argument would assume that white people can speak for people of color as well.

Not at all. If a white person were to write a book in which every character was from the same ethnic background as them, it would be a book with a non representative cast of characters, which would seem very strange. Having diversity in characters is absolutely not the same as "speaking for" them. I have black and male characters in my stories, and will continue to do so.

 

[Josephine]

Sorry, I was being overly flippant about something that probably deserves better attention than that. In my defence I'm a millennial, so being a dick on the internet is my birthright.
@Pamela Jo, is your suggestion that we actually *need* a women's fiction? I confess I'd been looking at it the other way round, hearing "women's fiction" with a kind of sneer; maybe I've got some subconscious value judgments there that are my issue rather than something inherent in the genre.
@RG Worsey, I like your point about the tension between 'speaking for' and representing diversity. It's something that's exercising me a bit at the moment. Food for thought.
Disclaimer - I haven't yet had a chance to watch Sunday's Pop Ups so maybe these points have already been made in that. I'm looking forward to catching up with it anyway, as always!

 

[Hannah F]

I know men who read Marian Keyes, and there are male authors who write great women's fiction, some under a female pseudonym to avoid a bias judgement before anyone has even opened the book. There are also female authors who are excellent at characterising the male. There are Cis writers who characterise LGBTQ+ very well and vice versa. It's about observation, immersion, research, sensitivity readers. Some women do not need to read men to survive. Some men are better at reading women than many women. And, of course, some women used to be men and vice versa.
We cannot paint either readers or writers with a single brush-stroke.