If you are a reader of genre fiction of any kind, but most especially romance, you probably know that one of the most common and, yes, toxic tropes, is Not Like Other Girls.
You know the trope. The heroine is made more interesting/fascinating/beautiful/smart because she isn’t like all the other women. This is probably best personified by Lizzy Bennet in Jane Austen’s Pride & Prejudice (one of my students in a course on the history of sex, gender, of romance in pop culture once wrote a spectacular essay on this a few years ago and now I can’t unsee it. Thank you, Brigit!). A woman who is less pretty than her elder sister Jane and not as affluent as Caroline Bingley, Lizzy goes from “tolerably handsome” to one of the most interesting and attractive women in the eyes of Mr. Darcy as he begins to distinguish her from the many women throwing themselves at his wealthy, awkward feet (I refuse to think of Darcy as a snob, but a socially award introvert, but that’s another discussion for another time). She takes long walks across the countryside, muddy hems be damned! She talks back! She is, in fact, quite witty! And very pretty after rigorous exercise! And she has fine eyes!
Lizzy Bennet, in short, is Not Like Other Girls.
On the one hand, you can see why it’s a classic trope. Who doesn’t want to be Not Like Other Girls (and I mean that in a gender-inclusive way) in the eyes of someone you’re sweet on? It’s a heady feeling to know that someone sees you as a distinct, autonomous—and delightful—human being rather than just another warm body, or worse, fitting their “type” which, if you’re a woman of color, can dip into some fetishy territory pretty quickly. It’s the reason why we love Lizzy Bennet so much in Pride & Prejudice and hate Caroline Bingley. Caroline is more than happy to be Like Everyone Else and is pretty transparent about staking her claim on the most eligible man within eyesight. Lizzy, on the other hand, has standards. She is different. She is cool. She is Not Like Other Girls.
But guess what?
Every person I know would much rather be a Lizzy over a Carline which makes us…just like everyone else. We want to be different, seen as individuals who bring something special to the table no matter the context—but we also want to be just like the things we love. The plucky witty feisty heroine has become something of a cliche in the romance genre simply because, as much as we want to be seen as different, we also love sharing our perceived difference with others who understand the joys of certain tropes or character types when done well.
Yet, we also have to acknowledge that most, if not all of us, want what Caroline Bingley thirsts after: the proverbial rich, handsome man with the big…estate. We’re just as mundane in our desires, in other words, as the Caroline Bingley’s of the world, if a little more palatable and not quite so obvious. I’m talking broad-strokes here, but put another way, there’s nothing wrong with wanting to be Not Like Other Girls in the eyes of your beloved(s). But it becomes toxic when that singular desirability is at the expense of putting others down or signaling that there is only room for One Kind of Woman—the woman we all want to be, but, by her very singularity, can only be one of us. Everyone else is just window dressing—the Boring Besty or the Evil Competitor—in her story.
Don’t worry—this won't be an essay hypothesizing about who would win in a Lizzy vs Caroline duel. I merely used Austen’s classic novel to highlight what we love—and what is deeply problematic—about the Not Like Other Girls trope to introduce you to a very similar trope I often see in writing circles, specifically in genre fiction, what I like to call Not Like Other Writers.
Not Like Other Writers
It makes sense that this trope would find its way into the world of writing marketing. We authors want to distinguish ourselves. We want to stand out from the crowd so that people see our stories and know that we are one of a kind. We also want them to buy our books, because, well, it’s nice to see money coming in from doing something you love. And yes, fulfilling a dream of making a living from what we love is the artistic equivalent of Lizzy sticking to her principles and still ending up with a rich lord and living on a grand estate—not always realistic but it sometimes happens. It’s also a deeply intoxicating dream and one that can’t happen, when it does, without significant commercial success.
So there we have the same conundrum in the Not Like Other Writers trope. We want to be unique and stand apart from the rest of the writing world, but popular enough, common enough, to get a hefty paycheck from what we do. We want to be a rebel, but also be so well-loved that we can survive on the written word alone, no day job necessary (or at the very least, become an auto-buy author for more readers). Just as the Not Like Others Girls trope easily becomes the Every Girl trope, so too, does the Not Like Other Writers become Just Like the Rest. We all basically want the same things as authors—to write good stories and ideally make a name and some money from it.
How do we distinguish ourselves, you might ask? By showing how we stand out from the crowd, and, in some cases, how we are just like the rest.
Some of this is only logical. We want to highlight what we do differently from the rest of the pack and I’m no different. I’m a professor, writer, and bruja—I write in the genres that I love reading and teaching, and there’s more than a dash of magic in everything I do. Yay! Not everyone can claim to be both a scholar in genre fiction and write in it—although there are more of us than you think. Not everyone can write witchy fiction AND be witchy herself. Again, though, more of us than you think can claim that ability. I’m not the only one by any means. And guess what? I love knowing that I’m not alone in any of this! I have found my people.
Too often, though, many authors fall into the Not Like Other Writers trope by throwing the thing they (sometimes secretly) love under the bus: genre fiction. They are not romance authors or fantasy writers. They are Serious Authors who have Elevated/Subverted/Transcended the Genre. Or they secretly want to write in their chosen genre but for whatever reason feel they must qualify or otherwise distance their work from said genre—they must be better or somehow elevate it. Take for example the many authors who think they “subvert” the romance genre by not having a HEA (Happily Ever After). Guess what? That’s not subverting the genre—that’s writing something completely different! The HEA is one of the requirements for a book to be called a romance. Don’t want that HEA in your book? Fine—just don’t call it romance or say you’re subverting the genre. (I think the term many use now is Romantic Narrative, to show that the book has a lot of romantic elements but may not end happily—but correct me if I’m wrong.)
Let’s be honest, this mostly happens with writers who have more “literary” aspirations, authors who are desperate for some sort of artistic legitimacy (whatever that means), or authors who think their concept is “novel” or a “critique” of a certain type of story without even understanding the very narratives or genres they are critiquing. Any time spent within the bowls of social media should tell you that it is entirely possible to argue a claim vehemently while knowing very little about the topic itself. Just say it strongly enough and it might *seem* like you know what you’re doing (not to belabor the point, but whole presidential elections have succeeded on strategies like this, so it stands to reason a joyfully ignorant writer might think they could succeed with this model, too).
These type of authors, in other words, are like the worst of college creative writing program workshops: a bunch of people acting like they know fuck-all about what they’re doing while having read very little and having understood even less. Their critiques are invariably set up to elevate their own work—So edgy! So literary! So obscure!—by putting down others’—So formulaic! So predictable! So READABLE!
*Pauses as eyes roll into the back of my head as I recall all the condescension and idiocy that polluted my BFA years.*
The Lost Writer
I’ve been marinating on this trope as I watched The Lost City (2022), an action-adventure romance that is clearly paying homage to Romancing the Stone (1984). Think pieces abound about how this movie and the success of Netflix’s Bridgerton highlight the fact that the romance genre is a real moneymaker and should be taken more seriously. The mainstream romance community can’t stop gushing about it. I’m a fan of Romancing the Stone, and really, most adventure romances (gimme more please). So as I watched this movie, I was so struck that, even in the midst of media insisting on the importance of romance and highlighting how this movie, in particular, celebrates the genre for what it is, I stumbled across a Not Like Other Writers in the heroine of the movie, Loretta Sage (Sandra Bullock), albeit she embodies this trope, ostensibly, because she is grieving. Even this film, marketed as a joyful celebration of romance, has to imbed genre critiques within the story as if to explain why it’s okay to watch a shamelessly frothy narrative to genre outsiders—and to set down anyone who might critique it.
In the film, Loretta is a highly successful award-winning romance author who writes a bestselling franchise with twenty books to her name and, presumably, more to follow. She has an avid fanbase who have dubbed themselves “Lovemoreheads” after the protagonist in her books. And despite the movie making pains to point out that the romance genre is one of the most profitable in the publishing industry, Loretta is frequently dismissive if not downright condescending to her audience. She is resentful that they don’t want to know about the cool history she imbedded in the books and would rather ogle her clinch cover model Dash McMahon (Channing Tatum). She so often emphasizes the fact that no one reads her books for the really well-researched historical facts, it’s hard not to see her positioning herself above or as better than the average romance author, simply because she isn’t buying into the fantasy of the genre that he clinch cover model embodies and comes from a more scholarly background. She even gets annoyed when a “smart-looking” young woman in the audience (read: she wears glasses) asks Dash to rip his shirt off instead of asking a more thoughtful “smart” question about Loretta’s research interests.
Later, when Loretta and Dash are both trying to escape the clutches of an evil mastermind, she goes on a long rant about her writing. She describes her situation as being a woman who “couldn’t publish a book on Spanish colonization” so she “decided to write a romance novel.” Luckily for her, her novels were a “smashing success” so “she kept writing her schlock.”
Schlock.
I know—we’ll get to that wording in a bit. But first, she ends her speech admitting that she isn’t who she’d hoped to be at this point in her life. Dash rightly calls her out, when he admits he was very embarrassed at first to be the cover model for her stories. Then he recalls the appreciation of the fans and asked himself, “How could I be this embarrassed about something that makes people this happy?”
Perhaps one of the best lines of the film comes when Dash gives her a much-needed talking-to. He tells her, “You can do whatever you want. If you don’t want to write anymore, don’t write. But don’t minimize the people that love your work by calling it schlock. It’s not fair to them.”
THANK YOU, DASH. (Read: Iloveyouwillyoumarryme?)
On the surface, many a viewer can see that her resistance to her chosen genre is played for humor and romantic tension between her and her cover model. Dash’s perfect response is also shutting down anyone who will ever criticize the genre, including Loretta. But she spends over half the movie hating on romance and I have to wonder at the choice the movie makes to frame so much of her character around being Not Like Other (Romance) Writers, as she both tries to distance herself from the genre while also profiting from it.
She clearly dislikes doing her book tours. As an introvert, I can appreciate the fact that Loretta hates being in front of large crowds and the stress of having to be “on” all the time. Many also have attributed her obvious distaste for her writing as really a form of grieving, since a huge part of the plot is that her partner passed away five years ago and she is struggling to move on, perhaps wondering if she will ever find love again. Yup. I get all that. The problem with these readings is that we never see a clear Before and After Loretta. That is, we never get to see her happy with her partner, loving her writing career, then spiraling into a deep depression after his passing, wondering what the meaning of life is. This means we never get to see her love of the genre. For most of her screen time, she is Not Like Other Writers.
I can’t help comparing her to Joan Wilder in Romancing the Stone. While most 80s movies don’t age well, casual sexism being a pervasive form of “humor” in many of the era’s films, Romancing the Stone is surprisingly progressive in how it depicts Joan. She is a wildly successful (pun intended), awarding-winning, best-selling romance author—and she is proud of it! Her apartment is decorated with posters of her clinch covers and awards. She is confident in her identity as a writer. And even when unforeseen circumstances force her into a very dangerous world of treasure hunts and dubious characters, it is her writing-know how that gets the job done—not the dashing rogue she teams up with.
When all seems lost, she is aided by a huge fan, and yeah, okay, drug lord (Who doesn’t love his exclamation of “THE Joan Wilder?” when he meets her?). Later, when she is trying to find the treasure, she draws on her book plots to uncover where the jewel is located. It is never questioned that she respects her writing. Others respect her writing—and get great enjoyment from it. Her experience as a romance adventure author even helps her untangle the wild adventure she's been thrust into. In other words, the joke in this movie is not that she’s a romance author, it’s that she hasn’t yet lived—or loved—like the stories she’s writing (another cliche yes, but how often do romance authors have their sisters kidnapped and held hostage until they deliver a treasure map to some baddies?).
Even in the sequel, Jewel of the Nile (1985), Joan struggles to finish her latest romance. The movie opens with an elaborate pirate-esque fantasy starting her and Jack Colton, only she can’t quite figure out how they end up together. Hence her writer’s block. Meanwhile, he’s living his best carefree party life, completely oblivious to her desire for something more. At the start of the movie, she tells him she wants to do something more serious—romance writing? A biography commissioned by a sketchy fan, perhaps? But the subtext is clear: It’s not about writing something more serious, just as her writer’s block doesn’t have anything to do with a rejection of her chosen genre. It’s in her wondering if her Happy For Now with Jack might have run its course or if it can become a Happily Ever After.
Now, all these similar issues play out in The Lost City, and yes, I do think the movie was trying to frame Loretta as a grieving woman and not necessarily as Not Like Other (Romance) Writers. But the problem is that this isn’t made clear enough and as a result, her resistance to the genre reads as a qualifier (we can like this adventure romance while separating our enjoyment of the genre from the silly “Lovemoreheads”). Like I said, earlier, we see no Before and After of her life. No sense that she once really loved what she wrote and her grief has made her bitter about so much. It would take nothing to show framed images of her book covers on the wall or her awards proudly displayed or even photos of her and her partner celebrating her first book, for example. Instead, she becomes the stand-in for the romantic skeptics in the audience, the ones that want to enjoy an adventure romance but also are maybe embarrassed by the fact that they do, just as we only see Loretta as embarrassed and reluctant to embrace her romance writing, although she does eventually get there, thanks again to knowing she can love again.
Is this meant to trash The Lost City? No—go see it and enjoy. It is a delight! This issue I’m picking at is a subtle thing, one I only likely noticed as I’ve been drafting this essay, and one most viewers would likely watch past, especially romance viewers who are just so happy to see their stories included on the big screen, or perhaps the average viewer, who might be relieved to be watching a blockbuster film that isn’t a Marvel universe spin-off. But is interesting to me that the creators of the movie deliberately chose to show us a version of Loretta who is deeply dismissive of the genre she writes in for a large part of the movie. Grief-stricken? Yes. Wondering what it all means? Absolutely. Introverted? I get that. But without seeing her past where she is deeply happy with her unexpected career path—I mean, she must have been to write twenty novels, right?—her story arc of falling back in love with life, her writing, and yes, actual love, falls short of truly celebrating the romance genre. That is, we never get to see her as Just Like Other Romance Writers Living Her Best Life, only as Not Like Other Romance Writers Because Grief.
Her story arc might not feel fully formed, but the movie works as a whole because her ultimate journey becomes one of moving from her grief-induced Not Like Other (Romance) Writers to Just Like Other (Happy Romance) Writers Because, Yay! Romance! That is, she might start the film as Not Like Other Writers but ends, through healing, adventure, and the promise of new love, with the knowledge that she is a romance author capable of loving again who embraces the genre she writes in and all it has brought her. I would just like to see more Happy Joan Wilders or Jane Villanuevas (Jane the Virgin 2014-2019) who are happily writing genre fiction, in this case, romance, without having to justify anything. Happy to see more genre authors in media who aren’t in conflict about what they write or why they write it.
This trope of being Not Like Other Writers becomes more of an issue when we take it into the broader context of genre fiction, the writers who inhabit it, and how we’re represented in pop culture. We need more Joan Wilders, happily writing in their chosen genres, a less Loretta Sages (sans tragic backstory) who are at times resistant to the idea of writing in a certain genre or are constantly trying to explain why their work is better than [fill in the blank].
A Tale of Two Romance Authors
We recently saw this issue resurface again with a recent interview of Elizabeth Conte and her new book, Finding Jane, and her new publishing house, Jane Writes Press. While clearly trying to align herself with the likes of Elizabeth Gaskell and Jane Austen, not like those “‘wham, bam; thank you ma’am’ romances” (her words). She both wants to write romance and is also saying that she is smarter than the average romance reader. It’s an old trick to align yourself with classic authors, it’s why everything gets compared to Dickens or Austen or whoever because you want to signal longevity or a sort of timelessness—Not Like Your Contemporaries.
Romance Twitter had a field day reading her book blurb and her excerpts which basically boiled down to the fact that her book is pretty much like a lot of romances…just not as well written. It became clear in her interview, that her understanding of the romance genre started and ended with Netflix’s Bridgerton. In trying to set herself apart, she only insulted potential readers by explaining to them why their appreciation of “schlock” was embarrassing, wrong, and just plain un-Jane-like (although I would like to point out that even her beloved Jane Austen read horrid novels, gothic romances, and general trashy fiction, ahem).
Can’t we just enjoy a romance because it is a romance without having to reference Gaskell or Austen to somehow legitimize it? I mean, you can love Austen and Gaskell—I certainly do—and also other romances. You can even debate if Gaskell and Austen write romance! You can also frame your work around those authors, if you must, without trashing an entire genre you know little about. And if you want to write a romance that doesn’t go all “wham bam thank you ma’am,” at least not right away, it’s called a Slow Burn Romance. Someone who understands the genre they are trying to write in would know that.
Perhaps one of the most frequently cited examples of being Not Like Other Writers would be Diana Gabaldon, who famously refuses to call her work romance, although she has plenty of romance-reading fans and purportedly won’t allow the cast of the series adaptation to use the “R” word in interviews and press conferences. Now, I will admit that this made me roll my eyes hard when I heard this because the people I know who enjoy Outlander (the books and the show) are primarily romance readers. But after doing some digging for this article, I found that Gabaldon is NOT trying to be Not Like Other Writers, although she is often accused of doing so (I’m so guilty of this—sorry Gabaldon!).
Ah…the power of research.
If you read through her FAQ page on her website, she explains that back in the day, many romance authors and readers roasted her for winning a RITA for Outlander. To them, she was not a romance author. Her books ended on cliffhangers, not HEAs. Jamie was a younger man, Claire was older—not a romance, according to some. WHAT?!?!?! Clearly, the genre has changed as we see a lot of these tropes put to good use now: time-traveling romances, younger man-older woman romances, Scottish romances, historical romances, romances that end on cliffhangers but end with a HEA at the end of the series…I could go on but won’t.
So, as often as Gabaldon gets flack for trying to distance herself from the genre, she is, in fact, an avid lover of romance (at least according to her FAQ page), but she doesn’t want to mislead readers by selling her stories as romances, given the concerns those in the community raised. She prefers to think of her work as genre-blending. Cool!
Gabaldon is a great example of an author who can appreciate a genre while also wanting to make sure that lovers of the said genre won’t accidentally pick up her book and regret it, thanks to false advertising. She’d rather err on the side of caution than give her readers a false expectation of her work. I also suspect she is recovering from battles with Romance Gatekeeping, a notoriously tough business if you don’t toe the line in just the right way, but that’s just my speculation. She isn’t putting anyone down—fellow authors or readers—and she isn’t trying to position her stories as “above” anyone else’s, unlike the laughable Conte, who clearly knows very little about the market she is trying to position her books and publishing house in.
Whose Fantasy is it Anyway?
Not Like Other Writers is not just a trope that plagues the romance genre. We see the same issue in fantasy. Many literary-minded fans of George R.R. Martin and Neil Gaiman position those two authors as Not Like Other (Fantasy) Writers, although, to my knowledge, neither author frames themselves in that way, thankfully. Gaiman writes, if anything, love letters to the fantasy and horror genres he writes in. Martin, meanwhile, is often credited with revolutionizing the fantasy genre by creating a “gritty” and “realistic” story that wasn’t just about magic and dragons.
Game of Thrones, you see, is Not Like Other Fantasies.
Um. Okay. Sure. It’s true that Martin changed how people think of the genre and got many non-fantasy readers into his books, the HBO series, and the genre, just as Gabaldon got many non-romance readers to appreciate romantic narratives (or at least the prospect of traveling back in time to deflower a nubile Scottish warrior). But Martin is also participating in an important subgenre of fantasy called “Grimdark,” the name of which I think explains itself. Gaiman has likewise made fantasy more mainstream, appreciated by people both in and out of the genre, and contributed much to the canon. The issue is not these writers nor their contribution to their respective genres. It’s that many people, mostly readers of more “literary” aspirations, frame them as Better Than the genres these authors are in loving communication with.
I can't tell you how many literary fiction types I know that use the words “elevate” or “subvert” when it comes to Martin or Gaiman. After listening to them talk, it becomes clear that few, if any, have a real working knowledge of the horror or fantasy genres to talk about how these authors “subvert” or “transcend” them. In fact, all they are really saying is that they are surprised they liked genre fiction and are finding ways to make it make sense!
This idea of Not Like Other Authors resurfaces again with the likes of J.K. Rowling. Again, many of her fans aren’t necessarily fantasy genre readers. Perhaps she is their gateway into the genre or the only magical series they read. We also can’t doubt that her work has changed the way pop culture sees fantasy in terms of commercial success and how it has shaped the imaginations of generations of children. To many, she is Not Like Other Writers because she INVENTED MAGIC SCHOOL.
But she didn’t. In fact, she is drawing from a long legacy of magic school fantasies, the most famous and iconic of which would be Jill Murphy’s The Worst Witch. The first book in the series was first published in 1974, long before J.K. Rowling’s series ever emerged. There are many who question the fact that Rowling never once credited Murphy with her inspiration which you can learn more about on the Reel Magic podcast. Her singularity, her uniqueness, her identity as Not Like Other (Fantasy) Writers is built on the silencing of the many authors who came before her writing about magic schools, dark academia, and general secret magical worlds existing right beside the mundane world. This insistence that we must hold up one author as The First or The Only only leads to the erasure of important genre history that should be celebrated.
As a recent Twitter thread explains to newbie writers, it’s never a good idea for an author to claim that they are The First to write a Never Before Seen Story! All it reveals to readers is that the author has never read a story like that, not that stories like that don’t exist. It also often reveals a complete lack of knowledge of a genre and sometimes, complete distaste for it. Very off-putting to readers.
There are also other issues in dealing with subverting, transforming, or elevating genre tropes. For example, Martin’s gritty take on the high fantasy world has become almost cliche where it was once a hot take on the genre. In fact, there’s a new subgenre writing against Grimdark called Hopepunk. It literally wants to SUBVERT the bleakness of Grimdark stories like Game of Thrones and return to more hopeful fantasy narratives. See? One person’s subversion is another person’s cliche and vice versa.
As Robert Jordan’s The Wheel of Time series was adapted to screen by Amazon Prime, we have a different type of subversion…the subversion of the subversion if you will. The screen adaptation leans hard into old high fantasy tropes, paying loving homage to worlds of bright colors and in-your-face magic. It’s a classic sword and sorcery tale, not a gritty grey-cast drama that just happens to have dragons. And yet, for as much as it adheres to traditional genre conventions, it also interestingly subverts some Martin-esque conventions by avoiding torture porn, rape-as-plot-point (also a Gabaldon convention), and gratuitous female nudity. Instead, The Wheel of Time show reminds us that you can tell a compelling fast-paced series without relying on shock value. Casual viewers might even think that the addition of queer and BIPOC characters in high fantasy fiction is a subversion of a typically white genre…and it is, but that’s Robert Jordan’s doing, as his books, first published in 1990, featured a more inclusive world from the get-go.
Do you see what I’m getting at here? So often, when specific authors either claim the label of Not Like Other Writers or are given it by fans, there’s a lack of understanding of those authors’ place within the history of the genre they write in.
The (Elevator) Horror!
We have the same issue in horror. I won’t go on much longer here, promise! Just long enough to share this hilarious thread asking horror fans what “elevated horror” means to them. The responses ranged from horror stories that subvert or transcend various genre tropes, make the audience think more, or offer up more than stringing along a bunch of horror cliches. More often than not, however, it was described as a term used to make horror lovers feel bad about their taste for the gothic or to make a really boring or bad piece of horror seem more interesting or smarter or more literary. Oh. And a few people said it had to do with horror stories that took place on elevators. That last response is clearly the winner.
As I read through this thread I realized this poll could work for any genre and the answers would be the same. In fact, the idea of “elevating” a genre is a red flag for any true genre lover. It signals to us that the story is likely catering to a non-genre audience and will make our eyes roll to the back of our heads Exorcist style. Or that we can expect some sort of Loretta Sage-type character, the Non-Believer of the genre or imaginative world where the story is set so that their character arc can act as our gateway into the genre proper. It also signals that the people invoking the Not Like Other Writers trope are, Lord help us, trying to make genre RESPECTABLE—at least in the eyes of literary types.
But the truth is, many of us love genre fiction because it pushes back against the dry tedium of the “respectable” (read: boring) literary world. Genre fiction pops out human experience and emotion with adventure! Love triangles! DRAGONS! Oh, and those skeletons in our proverbial closets? They become literal skeletons or specters as supernatural horror unpacks our psychological fears and exploration of the known.
We also know that the genres we love to read and write in are vast, only loosely tied together by themes, tropes, and narrative conventions, but that one author’s haunted house story can be incredibly different from another’s. At the end of the day, when it comes to genre fiction, there are only a few absolutes:
There are VERY bad stories with any given genre.
And there are VERY good stories with any given genre.
And there are just as many forgettable ones with any given genre.
And opinions will vary wildly as to which stories fall into each category.
So, what I’m getting at here, is that even if we are looking at an author who might be Not Like Other Writers, we can’t make those claims without deep contextualization and an understanding of the genres they write in. To an outsider, Martin looks like someone who revolutionized the genre! And he did, in a sense, but so did Jordan, in a different way, and so does any author writing in a genre they sincerely love. Even Larry McMurtry, who famously set out to write a western that subverted the heavily romanticized version of the American West that the genre. is so famous for, ended up writing one of the most iconic books in the canon, Lonesome Dove. He is not above or outside of the classic western, but an important part of that genre. We each make our mark on the genres we write in, and choose what tropes and narratives to subvert and which of them we want to render without transgressions.
In other words, as any genre-lover knows, it’s impossible to say that any book in a genre really “transcends” it. As Cat Sebastian explains in this Twitter thread, what many people perceive as “genre-transcending” is really an author playing to genre conventions. Sometimes they play with them, subverting and twisting and playing with the ones they want to draw attention to, and lovingly, earnestly writing their favorites without embellishment.
Just Like Other Writers
So, dear reader, thank you for following me on my rant about authors, stories, and readers who love to invoke the Not Like Other Writers trope in order to elevate themselves at the expense of fellow authors and genre readers.
I’ll let you in on a little secret, something only true connoisseurs of any genre know: We love to discuss the genre, the art of storytelling, and the similarities between authors we love. As writers, we like to let people know who we are like and find a bone-deep joy when a reader compares us to an author we love. I just about swooned when a reviewer of Weep, Woman, Weep compared me to Alice Hoffman and Terri Windling, two of my favorite authors. The fact that this reader saw elements of their writing in my own made me feel part of the witchy-fantasy-fairytale community that I so love to write in. And when that same reader compared me to Francesca Lia Block, well, it introduced me to a new author I’m dying to read. Jim Butcher? Beyond flattered when people compared his Dresden Files series to Laurell K. Hamilton’s Anita Blake series. Circling back to The Lost City, many of us watched it because it was like Romancing the Stone.
And guess what? Most readers, when looking for book recommendations, ask for someone similar to authors they already love or specific tropes or narratives that they want more of. Elevator pitches are often designed so that you can like your work to Famous Author/Book + Other Famous Author/Book sometimes with the addition of But With or But For or But In. I once auto-purchased a holiday-themed book because it was described as a gay Practical Magic. Another friend picked up Gaskell’s North & South because it was explained as Pride & Prejudice BUT FOR socialists. Why did I pick up Diana Raybourn’s Veronica Speedwell series? Because I was told it was like Miss Fisher’s Mysteries BUT IN the Victorian Era. Yes, please!
I see this with my creative writing students, too. They come to my classes and writing group because they want to write stories like Supernatural or Harry Potter. Or they want to keep living in the world of Riverdale or Once Upon a Time or a variety of other media, so they create fan fiction set in those worlds. They aren’t trying to be different—they are trying to be a part of the stories that have shaped them most. They are wanting to celebrate and explore those worlds they have found a home in.
And yes, sometimes they want to subvert certain tropes or rethink a plot point or narrative arc that bugged them about the stories they’re drawing from. Some of them even go on to use those stories to begin building their own worlds and characters inspired by the books that have shaped them. Those stories become something altogether different as they consider the types of stories they want to tell. They search for similarities within the genre they want to write in. They explore these genres with tenderness and love and joy—and critique what needs to be critiqued.
Those of us who love and write genre fiction are basically always paying homage to those who came before us. We are writing love letters to the stories that made us who we are today. We are having a conversation about stories and genre, not trying to burn down narrative conventions.
In other words, we want to be Just Like Other Writers.
And just like many genre fans have worked to subvert the trope of Not Like Other Girls in fiction and in life, creating and writing stories of women supporting women, no one stepping on anyone else to get to the proverbial top, I think it time to throw out the Not Like Other Writers trope. Tell us about your work, without trashing anybody else, or explaining why your book is so much better than anything else in the genre o by erasing important genre histories. Better yet, tell us what conversations you’re a part of in your chosen genre. What do you love about it? What do you want to play with or challenge or embrace or resist?
While you’re at it, will you help me murder and bury the Not Like Other Writers Trope in the bowels of our literary boneyard on a night when the moon is full and the setting is lush with gothic cliches? Will you dance upon its grave with me and invite all our other writing friends who love genre fiction to celebrate this most sacred of sacrifices? We can indulge in Midnight Margaritas back at my Hobbit hole while examining ancient artifacts which might or might not have magical properties (spoiler alert: they do).
Tell everyone.
Party starts at midnight.
The Bruja Professor, a witchy take on literature, the occult & pop culture, is the scholarly sister to Enchantment Learning & Living, an inspirational blog celebrating life’s simple pleasures, everyday mysticism, and delectable recipes that are guaranteed to stir the kitchen witch in you.
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