what i haven't been doing
I haven't been posting very much about writing. There are all sorts of reasons, most of which I've mentioned before and won't bring up again for fear of Protesting Too Much.
However, there are other people who are posting tons of interesting things about storytelling and publishing. I just spent a half hour (and could have spent a lot more time) over at Alison Kent's weblog.
Lots of good questions raised, for example this one by one of her readers:
How do you like your romantic resolutions? Must the couple be headed toward marriage? Or are you satisfied to know they’ve resolved their biggest issues and can move forward in the relationship?
I've been wanting to ask this question for the longest time, and now there it is. I stopped myself before I opened up the comments to see what people had to say. Because I have to go back to Halloween in South Carolina.
I admit in a story, I want the couple headed in the marriage direction, why I cannot really say, I guess my old-fashioned values have something to do with it, even though I am living in sin myself.
I do like happy endings but I understand that conflict is necessary to tell a story. I want to see couples have "issues" and to watch them resolve said issues together without it necessarily meaning they risk splitting up over it. I use the Nathaniel and Elizabeth example about her fear going to the village because of the sickness and him being angry with her.
If it had not have been for your books along with Outlander and other books that I have read where conflict is shown in the relationship even infidelity but people work it out and to me that is great story. That is just my 2 cents.
I don't need a happy ending, or even for the relationship to survive, for me to appreciate and be empathetic towards a romantic relationship. The example that springs to mind (and I'm sorry Rosina, I know you don't like this book!) is Paulina Simmon's "The Bronze Horseman". It remains for me one of the most powerful relationships in print, and was characterised by the lack of resolution of the significant issues surrounding, impacting and compounding their relationship. The author once said that in Russian literature, closure is when the protagonist finds out the reason for their suffering: that these characters did not reach resolution in this way somehow accentuated their relationship and made their relationship (as distinctly opposed to the story itself) a far more satisfying read.
But then, I like the misery…
I'm happy if they're together, it doesn't have to be all about marriage.
I do get kind of annoyed at the books that not only insist that the characters get married, but that also have an epilogue in which she has a baby to boot. Especially if the woman was "supposedly" infertile- come ON.