Genre problem! Will anyone like this twist....?

[Adrain_On_Society]

Hello, writers. I'm Adrian, I'm not exactly a new writer, but I'm new to listening to advice.

I need some. I wrote a book I'm fairly happy with, but I have some nagging doubts. I shared it with friends, and the feedback that comes back a lot is how off-putting my midplot twist is. I have been told that it made them not want to continue reading, even though they were into the book before. It comes in about the middle stange, and then there's a genre twist.

So, it's a story about a woman who falls in love with a man, they build a relationship, but over the years, he keeps disappearing and she doesn't know why. I guess that puts it on the romantic mystery end of the spectrum.

The twist is, he's a time traveller. After that, the book looks into the reasons why things have panned out the way they have. I might like it, but it's no good to me if no one will read it because they don't like the blend!

Because I'm talking to a community of SFF fans, I guess the question is, would you read a story like that, not knowing that there was any sci-fi twist to come? What might be some reasons why you would or wouldn't?

 

[Jo Zebedee]

My favourite book is The Time Traveller’s Wife, so the premise is fine (although I do worry you’ll be seen as nicking a fine idea but hopefully yours is different enough) and I also enjoyed Matt Haig’s How To Stop Time. Come to think of it I also love the St Mary’s Chronicles by Jodi Taylor so I must be a time-travelling romance kind of gal.

They all introduced both the time travelling element and the strong relationship character/romance early on. Which leans me towards feeling that a sudden intro to time travel after I’d invested in something I thought would be a different story would jar with me.

 

[tinkerdan]

The question might be:
Is it necessary to the story to wait that long for a reveal such as that.

The reason I ask is that normally that kind of twist late in the story usually signals the end of the story and that might be why the readers are confused.

I had a twist at the end of my first chapter and that worked for many; however some were put off by waiting that long for that reveal and that was only around 8 to 10 pages into the story.

I'd almost think you'd need a Part 1 and Part 2 just so that people are somewhat expectant of some sort of major division in plot.

It still goes back to--as far as plot--do you need to wait that long for the switch.

The story itself, as mentioned, had been done before so there is no problem with Romance mixed with time travel.

Oh, oh, and does the romance continue because if it doesn't that could kill the story also. It would best be a time travel romance all the way through.
Rather than it be a romance followed by time travel.

Another thought:
If you could take that contemporary Romance and parallel it with scenes from the time travelers origin time point--without revealing his identity--and highlight the discrepency in timelines and then brought the two together at that twist, it might make better sense and even prepare the reader for something out of the ordinary. (Do you have back-story for the time traveler? That would work in this respect.)

 

[The Judge]

Personally I couldn't understand the hype around The Time Traveler's Wife, but that was because I thought the plot had gone AWOL and the characters were the type of people I'd cross the street to avoid, not because of the genre mash-up (though I was mystified it was labelled as SF, notwithstanding the chrono-impairment non-explanation). I'm also a lover of twist stories, so a novel that has a good twist would be right up my street.

However, I'm not at all sure I'd be happy with a mixed-genre novel which delayed disclosing the mix until the mid-way point -- I've read apparent fantasy novels which have morphed into SF later on, but there were clues beforehand, and it's not such a big leap between the two in any event. In addition, for me a twist story should have the twist at or very close to the end, so it makes one re-assess the whole novel. So here, to my mind, you're bringing the time-travelling in too late for one expectation and far too early to be effective for the other.

I also see a problem with your potential readership. If you're touting this as a romance, then you're likely to be getting mainly readers who only want romance, and so are going to be disgruntled if half-way through the story is hi-jacked by something they didn't expect or want -- which is apparently what has already happened with your friends. If on the other hand you're pushing it as a SFF or SFF romance, then the SFFers are going to be expecting something out of the quotidian anyway, so it's not going to be a twist at all when it comes, only expectation delayed for no apparent reason, and to be honest, time-travelling might well appear to be something of a cliche.

So, I'd suggest that you re-think having the twist where it is -- or, rather, stop thinking of it as a twist, since it isn't one really -- and bring in the time-travelling earlier in some way. That doesn't have to affect the woman's confusion about what is happening, since you could leave her in ignorance of the truth eg you could have an early chapter/vignette or two from the man's POV, or perhaps from another time-traveller who knows what is going on or the Time-Travel Council who make the rules about what is and isn't allowed.

Anyhow, whatever you decide, good luck with it!

 

[The Big Peat]

I probably wouldn't. The description sounds somewhere between Romance and Literary, and I'm not particularly about those things - I'd probably never even look in the part of the library/bookshop where it is. Even if I knew there was a Sci-Fi twist, I probably wouldn't pick it up. I love mysteries and I like love stories, just not in that way.

 

[Brian G Turner]

I shared it with friends

This could be your problem - unless they are big fiction readers, especially in your target market, then they may not be the best people to seek an opinion from.

 

[Toby Frost]

I agree with what's been said already, especially @The Judge. In particular, I think there are a fair number of people who will be put off by the jump from a "real-life" novel to one with fantastical elements, and they may feel cheated as a result. (A fair percentage of people still think that SFF is just a waste of time.) Some indication (beyond, perhaps, the cover) is probably needed to warn readers of what they can expect - the framework within which the book will operate, so to speak.

 

[Jo Zebedee]

The Judge asks an interesting question in the sense of what made Time Traveller's Wife work for so many, mostly non-genre fans (because most SF people don't buy the SF elements, since they're patently rubbish....) but also was universally disliked by so many.

What worked for me (if it helps you define where the twist should be):

The car-crash of a life the Time travelling brought about. Really, it started bad and kept getting worse and that brought about so much conflict.

Characters I liked. Well, one mostly, since I thought Clare was a right moody one. But I liked Henry because he was funny and he got on with things, even though he had this complete pain in the neck condition. And he, mostly, tried to do the right thing by people, even though he was patently unreliable.

The tight plotting, where the time travelling elements mostly didn't step out of time and place at all. Ie the continuity.

Note, not one of these is about the twist of there being time travel, but many are about what the element of time travelling brought to the story. I'm not a romance reader but I do read women's fiction from time to time, and the fatalism it brings, that sense of being doomed on the edge of a precipice (which Haig's also has in spades), did bring about an extra frission. But, I expect, that only happens for those who are very character-led, not for those who are genre-idea led.

 

[sknox]

It's never about the twist, it's about the execution.

In the first part of the book, does your MC show up with odd clothing? A device inexplicably strange? A slip of the tongue about something? And are there elements in their relationship to set up *why* this person travels through time? Why not just stay home in domestic bliss?

In general, you don't want your reader to say "where did *that* come from?" You want your reader to say "oh, *that's* why!"

In the second part of the book, does the romance element stay strong? Is it still driving the book, or have you essentially switched premises? The reader has become invested by caring about certain characters and themes. You don't want the second part to insist that the reader now care about a whole new set of themes, unless you've carefully led them to the transition.

Finding the right sort of reader can be important, but most any reader will react to a bungled twist. The trick is to know how to listen to them, for many readers--especially those not experienced with critiquing--will have trouble identifying why they're having trouble. And most authors have trouble drawing out a critic without sounding defensive.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

It's never about the twist, it's about the execution.

I agree with this whole-heartedly.

But also, time travel romance is rather popular, so it may be a question of getting the book to the right sort of readers (which means, yes, letting people suspect much sooner what is going on, even, perhaps, letting them know up front). Sometimes writers get hung up on the cleverness of a twist, and forget that it has to work for the whole book, not just that moment when it is revealed. Not having read your manuscript I have no idea if that is the case for you, but perhaps you need to start thinking more about what the book as a whole needs and less about the surprise.

Surprise can be over-rated. Sometimes anticipation works as well or better—like anticipating the moment when a MC finds out what readers have known or suspected all along.

 

[Stephen Palmer]

Don't write the novel other people want you to write, or that you think other people might like.
Write your novel.

 

[sknox]

Don't write the novel other people want you to write, or that you think other people might like.
Write your novel.

This assumes that I know how to execute the story I have in my head. For the most part, beginning writers do not. Even after four novels, I'm quite certain I do not succeed on my own as I do when I get valuable comments from educated readers (meaning, those who know the genre or who know how to edit).

I'm all for following one's heart. The genre of alternate historical fantasy is hardly one to crowd the best-seller lists. I write what I do because those are the novels I want to write. I also want to write them well, and on how to write my novel well I gladly listen to comments from others.

 

[Josh K]

I listened to a lecture from Brandon Sanderson on this very topic. You should probably just listen to it yourself, it's on youtube, but the gist was this. An author had no idea why he wasn't successful. His book was well-written, it had a great twist, and everyone who finished the book liked it. However, the people the book attracted wanted the first type of book (the first part was typical sword/sorcery, second part upended all of those tropes). So, for someone like me who wants more far-out fantasy and has been around the block, I might not pick up that book because I didn't think it would fit me. For the people who picked it up, expecting a certain type of story, they were shocked when it was actually something completely different. The moral here is this - you're making a promise to your reader what the story will be about. If you completely upend that promise, the reader will feel betrayed. It sounds like that's exactly what you're doing. You need to bring in proper lead-ins, add in things that are mysterious and indicate what's going to happen later (foreshadow). Make sure the reader has an idea of what's going to happen. Contrary to popular belief, readers often don't like insane twists, especially ones that are completely out of the blue.

 

[Cathbad]

This assumes that I know how to execute the story I have in my head. F

The only way to begin... is to start writing.

 

[zmunkz]

I listened to a lecture from Brandon Sanderson on this very topic. .... The moral here is this - you're making a promise to your reader what the story will be about. If you completely upend that promise, the reader will feel betrayed.

100% agree.

Here’s one of the lectures where he discussed this, starting about 14 minutes in:

 

[Stephen Palmer]

I'm all for following one's heart. The genre of alternate historical fantasy is hardly one to crowd the best-seller lists. I write what I do because those are the novels I want to write. I also want to write them well, and on how to write my novel well I gladly listen to comments from others.

Don't worry overly about writing it well.
Worry about imagining it well. (Imagination, part 1 - here.)

 

[Karn's Return]

Ultimately, romance can blend in with just about any genre, because it's simply human nature. It doesn't matter if there's a sci-fi twist at the end or not, to me. In fact, me personally, I'd prefer such a thing. But again, it's rather close to the Time Traveler's Wife, so you would have to watch yourself there. I would imagine that a better twist would be for him to be a controllable time traveler, at least in some sense, to make it a bit different. There's really not much more to say about it than that, but if it were me, I'd probably do more something along the lines of parallel realities, or even have either some of the time paradox issues when it comes to time travel or alternate reality timeline issues. Something a little scientific to jump in there to further separate it from TTW, and potentially put in a crucial conflict point within.

 

[Ihe]

Is the story set in contemporary times? In futuristic civilizations? If the context is advanced enough, thats half the battle in terms of foreshadowing.

 

[Karn's Return]

Ihe does bring up a good point, the setting is half the battle. And he's assuming that this is even taking place on Earth in any form. I'm sort of one who more subscribes to the idea of the multiverse theory, and to the theory that if multiple universes exist, that each could have their own laws of physics and that time may be more fluid than a roaring river in some than in ours...or that any intelligent beings any other universe out there might have, just might have mental manipulation abilities that our universe just doesn't seem to allow for, as far as we have learned...

 

[ryubysss]

I thought of a shortcut to making this twist work (and, as another poster said, it all comes down to execution, anyway): make the protagonist or her lover work in theoretical physics. that way you have introduced an element at least pointing in a science fiction direction already. the protagonist could even suspect that she fell in love with an agent investigating her work, say. or maybe even an alien. then you undercut that and provide a more mundane explanation. then you do the reveal. Philip K. Dick used to do this. he would introduce a fantastical possibility (fantastical even by sf standards) and keep you guessing as to the reality of that possibility then reveal the possibility as the truth. and/or reveal in even more fantastical possibility in its place.

so to use my example you'd do something like this: why does my lover leave me? evidence mounts as to deception. did my lover work for a foreign government? no. evidence mounts that maybe he came from space? no. then comes the reveal: a time traveler.

also, about the time travel element: if he had time travel capacity, couldn't he just slip back a short time after he left in the first place? go away for, say a month from his perspective, but a minute later from the protagonist's POV?