If you can make it through the twilight

The Great American Novel

For the most part, I like to write horror. My favorite thing is pulp horror… I don’t know if that’s a real thing or not but it’s what the ex-idiot called it and I liked the way it sounded so when we broke up I got custody of it. 





I’ve been trying my hand, feebly, at fantasy, but not doing so well.  There’s a craft to fantasy writing that I simply do not have the patience for.  All that inventing and creating and legislature blah blah blah and I get bored before I even get to the meat of the story.  I really dig the way Jim Butcher does it; creating Alera throughout all of the books rather than dumping it all into the first three quarters of the first book.





But I have this narcissistic fantasy to create a classic.  Something that really affects people on a deep, emotional level.  I guess what brings this up is the Perks of Being a Wallflower and the rumors of a film adaptation (thankfully to be directed by the author). 





Here’s the thing (and I run a very real risk of being lynched in saying this) I hated the ending.  If you haven’t read the book, it’s a series of letters written from a 15-16 year old boy named “Charlie” (he states in the beginning that Charlie isn’t his real name) to an anonymous reader who Charlie admires and respects.  I’m sure that everyone has their suspicions as to who the reader is…I do, at any rate but that’s not the point so …moving on.  Throughout the book we come to find out that Charlie’s world isn’t all kittens and rainbows and there was more to his favorite Aunt Helen than met the eye.  His world goes spiraling out of control through these letters to this anonymous friend.  But then…and this is the part that made me want to throw my book….it all works out in the end.  It’s not perfect at story close but happily ever after is implied. 





Those who don’t know me well will say, “Oh, that’s just because you are anti-happy ending.” Those who know me well know that’s not the case.  I’m not anti-happy ending, I’m anti-Disney ending.  Read Hans Christian Andersen’s Little Mermaid.  It does not end well for the heroine.  But Disney’s Little Mermaid…





Okay, fine, Disney endings.  The endings that feel like some editor somewhere along the way told the author that it would appeal to a broader audience if we find out Charlie really is going to be okay…and a happy ending is slapped on the tail end of the story like a bustle.  Hideous and out of place, doing the exact opposite of what it was intended to do (in the case of a bustle, hide a bubble butt, a happy ending, to make everyone feel warm and fuzzy and resolved).





WOW.  This is the second time tonight that I have set out to write this blog and the second time I have gone totally off topic in a “happily ever after, my ass” tirade.  Let’s stop, take a deep breath and start again.





I write horror.  Or try to.  And I am trying to figure out how to write fantasy without boring MYSELF to tears.  But I really want to write something that has no real genre and which moves readers to a passionate discourse and to claim my book among their favorites.  I don’t really want to write a “classic” because I know what happens to the “classics” in college literature 101…. They get picked to ribbons by some first-year, Master’s degree professor who is trying to prove to his students (most of whom are within 5 years of him in age) that he has earned every right to be teaching them ….well, anything.





So, no “classics,” just something that will elicit some kind of real, raw emotion from my readers.





What is involved in that?  What does it take to create that?