I can’t remember if I’ve written about this before, but will plunge ahead without checking my archives.
At Rachelle Gardner’s blog, she has been posting a workshop on verbal pitches. One type of verbal pitch is called the “elevator” pitch. You want to be ready with that, the saying goes, in case you board an elevator at a conference at the same time as an agent or editor, who then asks, “Are you a writer? What are you working on? I get off at the tenth floor.” You have 30 seconds to tell about your book in so compelling a way that the agent or editor hands you a business card and says, “Send me your proposal.”
Talk about stressful! It’s never happened quite like that for me, but other occasions have arisen where a short, verbal pitch was called for. So I’m interested in what Rachelle has to say about this. Today she invited people to post their elevator pitch in a comment. She’s now up to 68 comments, of which 47 are the requested pitch (one of them mine). Of those 47, at least 3/4 are for some type of fantasy or science fiction book. Rachelle doesn’t represent authors of those books. This is the second or third time where people in long threads on her blogs have identified their genre, and each time it’s this many or more who write science fiction. If she doesn’t represent it, why are so many people following her blog?
And why are so many people writing fantasy? and, to a lesser extent, science fiction? Is the market so large that we need that many books? I don’t read much of it (a little science fiction from time to time but not recent time, and a little fantasy). I have a theory on this; don’t know if I’m correct.
Besides that fact that a lot of people do enjoy fantasy and sci-fi, I think a lot of authors choose it because they believe they do not therefore have to do any research. In fantasy just create your world and go to it. In sci-fi, determine your future time and the technology needed and go to it. No research required.
I’m not saying no research required, but I suspect that is a huge inducement to writers. It would make those books seem easier to write than, say, a historical romance. Or even a contemporary novel, which requires accuracy as to settings and circumstances. In a fantasy, who’s to say what accuracy is? Create your world and run with it.
I’m sure, however, that the greater amount of time spent creating the fantasy world (i.e. the equivalent of research) the better the novel will be. So if a budding novelist really wants to be published in these genres, they still have to do the “research” in order to write the best book possible.
So says me. Waiting to hear from others.
Maybe the answer simply is their exposure to this genre is massive – books, tv, movies, video-games, role-playing games. The don’t know the classics, or history, or biography, or much of anything else. I would postulate that if you sampled a hundred such works, only a rare few would diverge from the standard scenarios and character types – faeries, trolls, zombies, and vampires.
That’s a good point. I suspect sci-fi and fantasy might have a disproportionate appeal to younger readers. Once these readers grow up a little, and transition into production of written works, it would be natural for them to write what they have been reading. I hadn’t thought of that before.