AKA – why we have to stand out from the crowd.

My father-in-law has a theory he calls the ‘envelope theory’. The basic premise is we all live in an enclosed space (like an envelope). When it comes to being social, we tend to interact with other people who live in the same envelope. An envelope is defined by a combination of things like religious and political beliefs, hobbies, habits, etc. Not all of those things have to be there, but the things that matter to you the most tend to be.

Because we surround ourselves with these people, sometimes we forget that the entire world isn’t like that. Our world is, so it’s easy to believe everything is.

For instance, as writers a lot of us spend our time in a writers’ envelope. We hang out in the blogsphere together, we hang out on Twitter together, we hang out on Facebook together, I assume some of you even hang out with other writers in real life. I’m a social hermit and don’t like people so I don’t hang out with anyone in real life (a statement which is about to be negated by my story, but doesn’t it sound all reclusive and stuff?).

Our writer friends probably aren’t our only friends. For instance, I also frequent technical envelopes. In my technical envelope, everyone knows the difference between a hacker and a virus, and when I say “that’s because you dropped the leading zeroes” it means something. This is where my two worlds don’t blend well, because it appears as though a lot of creative people are not technical people…but that’s not my point. Not completely.

I was talking to a friend yesterday. A technical friend, not a writer friend. I said “I’m writing a romance novel next.” In my mind this means “I’m taking a break from fantasy, I’m diving into contemporary fiction, and all of the magic gets left behind while I let my characters scream at each other until they kiss.”

Friend said something along the lines of “That’s cool. Is it going to be more like a Harlequin novel…”

I cringed and shook my head

Friend continued “or like Twilight?”

I raised an eyebrow. Friend knows how I feel about Twilight, and with any luck that my opinion has nothing to do with sparkles. Friend said “Not that I’m comparing your work to…”

My brain was already whirring in the background, trying to dissect this question. To me the actual question gave me two options to pick from:

• Harlequin romance = category romance that comes in under 70k words, has a distinct hero and heroine who fall in love despite manufactured hardship and is formulaic and meant to be devoured in an afternoon and is the same plot over and over, just a different setting
• Twilight = paranormal romance for teenagers which features a weak female protagonist I want to punch in the hole in her chest to put her out of her misery so she stops relying on the opinions of (creepy-pedo stalker, or part-animal(bestiality anyone?)) men to make her a complete person.

All of this passed through my head in the matter of seconds it took Friend to ask their question. On top of that, I also started to consider how to compare my story to something more like a well-made chick flick, or contemporary romance like ‘Making Waves’.

My brain is a busy place.

And then Friend said “You know, in terms of sex. R or PG-13?”

Oh.

And then my brain stopped trying so hard. It occurred to me at that point that this was a technical friend, who would happily to tell me that if I wanted to learn a new programming language, I needed to understand patterns. This was not a writer friend who could explain in three sentences or less why magical realism is different from contemporary fantasy, and who their favorite authors are in each. (though honestly, I’ve never had anyone do this, and I’d be fascinated to see someone with an answer).

The entire brief conversation was a flash of revelation in the midst of everything else we were talking about. In case anyone ever wonders what I’m thinking (yeah, I didn’t think so), this was all running in the back of my head while we moved on to other topics, which yes, I heard completely.

I was reminded that most readers are not writers. Friend is a voracious reader. More so than me, definitely. And even knows other writers, but…doesn’t hang with y’all the way I do. It reminded me that the average reader walks into a bookstore, looks at a cover and a blurb and decides based on that two second glance whether or not to buy. They might have a recommendation from a friend that sends them to the right section. Or they might have a favorite author and they’re looking for more of their work. In the same section they bought the rest of said author’s books.

They’re not wandering through the entire book store (or, Loki forbid, all of Amazon or bn.com), and reading every blurb and scanning the first fifty pages of every book before they decide what to read. The (probably) haven’t been reading the writer’s blog through their entire publication journey (we’re talking about the average reader here, not all readers). They don’t care if ‘it gets better in the middle’, or if ‘the blurb doesn’t do the story justice’ or ‘if you just knew how unique it was you’d want to read the entire thing’.

If they don’t know you personally, they don’t worry about telling you the story just isn’t that good. They don’t care if you earn out on your advance. They’re just looking for something to read that will help them escape for a few hours because sometimes life is brutal and books are a way to ignore that temporarily.

So…how are you going to get noticed outside your envelope?