Learn the Publisher's Preferences and Prejudices

• “Strong male heroes with a compelling story” (one must define for oneself, however, what “strong” and “compelling” mean).
• “An arc” [i. e., structure] with a beginning, middle, and end, showing one (two if there is a hero and a heroine) character's need to accomplish a goal, their motivation for it, and the conflict that keeps them struggling to achieve the goal.”
• Action that changes a character.
• A tone consistent with the expectations of the genre and audience: for example, a hero cannot speak like a professor, even if he is a professor.
• “Show,” don't “tell” (i. e., use dramatization, rather than exposition in narrating the story, a modern prejudice that has pretty much spread throughout genre fiction but remains the exception, rather than the rule, in literary writing).
• No “head hopping” (i. e., switching between limited points of view within the same scene, which is prohibited in genre writing but fairly common in literary writing). (Some editors seem to make up their own critical terms rather than using established jargon, so if one encounters an editor like this, one must "translate" the editor's idiosyncratic terminology into established jargon, which takes time and energy, or buy a good book on how to write fiction in the genre of one's choice. Personally, I found Leigh Michaels' "On Writing Romance" very helpful in this and other regards.)

Cyia said:

Perhaps because head hopping is not something that such programs tend to instill in the authors participating in them. To head hop is to poorly execute an omniscient point of view, so it's likely that professors and mentors simply refer to this as: mistake, wrong, incorrect, or failure. I'm sure these are terms with which any academic - especially one in a writing program - is familiar.

The term does not appear in academic texts because it is not in the critical lexicon of scholars, Cyia.

Not to anyone who actually recognizes what the term means.


Sorry, no. Stephen King is fond of, and skilled at, using Omniscient as his POV of choice. Dickens wrote for a different cultural norm. If you want to use him as an example, then you'd have to also cite his sentence structure, idioms, and other conventions as ones to be adopted as well.

Stephen King also "head hops," and quite frequently, in fact. As far as recommending Dickens' style, I wouldn't "have to" do any such thing, Cyia. An artist is free to select his or her techniques as he or she pleases. To choose one alternative and not the others is perfectly within a writer's range of abilities. However, some contemporary writers do, in fact, emulate Dickens in these other areas as well--Dan Simmons, for example.

I'll agree with you on this one, but it's not near so many as you'd think. There are also some mystery writers who do this. Some sci-fi writers who do this. Some [insert any possible genre] writers who do this. You find it in all genres. That doesn't make it right.

Nor does it make it "wrong."

That's a strange observation for someone to point out when they start their argument with the contention that the term isn't used in academia. Where then do these professors teach, I wonder.

Professors often address topics that students ask about, even if the topics of their students' inquiry are not listed in or addressed by a textbook, even if only to clarify concepts, both of an academic and a popular nature. Professors are under the illusion that such an approach is, or can be, instructive.


The goal of language - the only goal of language - is to facilitate the communication of ideas. The goal of grammar is to set parameters in which that communication occurs, also to facilitate understanding of what's being said. The goal of editing is to enforce those parameters to the extent which best conveys the meaning and intent of the author. (The secondary goal of editing is to encourage one to manually and forcefully remove strands of their own hair a fistful at a time.)

Hopefully, you understand the difference between prescriptive grammar and the rhetoric of narrative. (By the way, descriptive grammarians would disagree, in large measure, with your premise concerning what you refer to as "the goal of grammar," and many an editor would take issue with your account of "the goal of editing"--or, at least, with your idea of editing's primary role. (I daresay many writers and editors would agree with your idea of editing's "secondary role.")

A mistake is used effective only when it is acknowledged as a mistake, in which case, it can be used as flavoring the same way sentence fragments or accented speech can be used. Mistakes do not facilitate the communication of ideas when they are rebranded as technique.

Your technique may be to swim in sand, but that won't get you across the English Channel.

Snark, sarcasm and deadpan humor are all highly effective means of communicating information and subtext.

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Roxxsmom said:

A publisher who published what their editors like instead of what their readers like probably wouldn't stay in business very long. Perhaps it's more accurate to say that successful publishers employ editors who have the same kinds of taste as their core readership. They may screw up fairly often (no one has a crystal ball, and only a small percentage of books become bestsellers), but if editors only bought what they liked, and what they liked was different from their readership's tastes, no one would ever get a rejection that says, "I really loved this, but [insert subgenre or story type] isn't selling well for us right now."

Publishers publish what they believe their readers may want to read, Roxxsmom. There is no way they can know, because they (presumably) are not psychic, and publishing history is not an altogether accurate or reliable predictor of readers' future behavior, and even scientific surveys (rarely used) are only more or less probably accurate, as David Hume's An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, in principle, made clear in 1748.

I don't read enough romance to say whether or not complex themes and stories are generally unwelcome, but I've certainly read some that seem to be dealing with weighty issues (like feminism or class struggles or racism etc), though the focus is on the love story and a satisfactory resolution to these problems for the protagonist. That may be an eye of the beholder thing, though. And as a fantasy and SF reader, I can say there's a great deal of deepness there as well as a great deal of variation in writing style.

You seem to know a good deal about the issues and focus of romances for someone who, by her own admission, does "not read enough" of the genre to hazard an opinion as to whether romances tend to involve "complex issues." Reading more of them, however, might suggest to you, as it has convinced many others, that romance novels, although they may be entertaining, lack the depth and sophistication of, say, Mark Twain, William Faulkner, Walker Percy, or Flannery O'Connor.

And I'd so read a romance where the MMC talked like a professor (am one and am married to one, so eh).

I didn't know that literary fiction relied mainly on exposition or telling, though. I had to look that up to see what that meant (found this Wendig blog entry on exposition and making it work. I think he qualifies as a genre fiction writer, and he is giving advice on how to fold the exposition into the story action for the most part). So what you're saying is in literary fiction, most of the plot-driving stuff happens "off stage" and is summarized later with narrative summary or via devices like "As you know, Bob," conversations, while in genre fiction, most of the plot driving stuff happens "on screen," or is shown as it unfolds.

So I'm puzzled by your claim that literary fiction is mostly exposition. To be honest, I think every story needs a certain amount of summary (you can't show everything as it unfolds, or the book would have to take place in just an afternoon or be a million words long), but I have trouble seeing how a book that's mostly narrative summary would be very interesting. That would read more like a work of non fiction that's telling me a bunch of facts about who did what without pulling me into the world and story.

I suggest that you read C. Hugh Holman's A Handbook to Literature, Roxxsmom, and some of the work by writers whose literature Harold Bloom of Yale University suggests as being formative of the American portion of the Western literary canon: Edgar Allan Poe, Henry David Thoreau Thoreau, Edith Wharton, Theodore Dreiser, Edwin Arlington Robinson, Willa Cather, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, Ralph Ellison, and Flannery O'Connor. One might do well to read, in addition, some of Bloom's own books, such as The Daemon Knows: Literary Greatness and the American Sublime, in which he evaluates the key works of Walt Whitman, Herman Melville, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Emily Dickinson, Henry James, Mark Twain, Robert Frost, Wallace Stevens, T. S. Eliot, William Faulkner, and Hart Crane. (Lest one feel the need to point out that not all of the writers on these lists are novelists or a short story writers, let me point out that several are, indeed, poets, and a few are essayists. Of course, a writer of prose can learn much from a poet, and Bloom's book is not about novels or novelists, but about "literary greatness and the American sublime," but your concern is about the use of exposition in narrative, and in reading about the prose writers whom Bloom evaluates, especially Melville, for whom Bloom has the highest regard, James, and Faulkner, you can learn from an expert about this critically important narrative mode, as you can, indeed, by reading most of the other prose writers on Bloom's lists.)

Maybe I need some examples of famous literary novels that are mostly exposition to see if we're even talking about the same thing here. Because I'm not a spring chicken, and my writing teachers were extolling the virtues of "showing not telling" when I was in middle school and praising examples of such in the classic novels they made us read. So it doesn't feel like a recent fad that's limited to genre fiction to me.

See above.

As for head hopping, could you provide examples of some literary novels that do this? Omniscient doesn't count as head hopping (and a shocking number of authors who blog on this subject don't seem to know this), because with omniscient, the narrative viewpoint is external and that's not the same thing as zipping back and forth between limited narratives. Maybe omniscient third is more common in literary novels than limited third, though it seems like first person is fairly common as well.

See above. Also, Miguel de Cervantes' classic The Adventures of Don Quixote de la Mancha is a good example of an acclaimed picaresque novel that is not only largely expository but also includes many instances of "head hopping." Gil Blas is another (Mark Twain cites it as a model for his own The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The classic Journey to the West (aka Monkey) by Wu Cheng'en is another example both of exposition and "head hopping." Many contemporary experimental novels, such as some by William S. Burroughs, pretty much discard all literary conventions.

But omniscient third =/= head hopping. Head hopping is a term that tends to get used when pov shifts are done too frequently or without adequate framing, so the reader gets confused. If someone switches pov within a scene and it's done in a way that doesn't make the reader go "Wuh? Why is Heterosexual Henry checking out some dude's butt? Oh, wait, we're in Sue's pov now, and it's Henry's butt she's checking out." then it's not head hopping.

One thing that concerns me about the OP is it feels like it's dripping with thinly veiled contempt for genre fiction (romance in particular) and its publishers and editors. Hey, it's fine if you don't like those kinds of stories, but why on earth would you be attempting to write something (or offering advice on writing something) if you find it lacking in qualities you like, such as, "symbolism, linguistic complexity, and intellectual sophistication"? And why would you want to write and publish in a genre where you feel like the editors are unprofessional enough to let their whims guide them instead of picking up stories they think their readers will like?

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