November is nearly over, and with it, National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). I'm feeling pretty good about my NaNo project, Bob's Memoir: 4000 Years as a Free Demon, with 140,000 words so far. I've been averaging 5000 words a day! I plan to finish the story by Tuesday.
That doesn't mean it's ready for release, unfortunately. I'll start rewriting it at the same time that I'm drafting the next Team Manager book. Then I'll get it off to my overworked editors. Maybe we'll be ready to start posting in early January. Maybe.
While something is on my mind, I want to write about it. That something is the codes and tags that we assign to stories. There is no public comment section for blogs, so consider this to simply be my statement of how I assign codes.
First of all, I don't consider myself to be responsible for your squicks or triggers. I'm sorry I made you think of them, if I did, but I'm not responsible for your response. I'm a meat eater. I love beef. Nothing better than the thick, juicy slab of prime rib I had for Thanksgiving dinner. No turkey for me, thank you. I appreciate that other people have other tastes, but I'm not going to become a vegan to keep from offending them.
A large percentage of what I write is "coming of age," also correctly referred to as
bildungsroman.
"In literary criticism, a Bildungsroman is a literary genre that focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from childhood to adulthood (coming of age), in which character change is important. The term comes from the German words Bildung ("education") and Roman ("novel")."(Wikipedia)
There are elements that are a part of nearly everyone's formative years. Friendships, love, hardships, violence, sex, contact with (sometimes romantic) people of different religions, races, and sexes. An important part of growing up is learning to deal with loss whether it be a breakup, a pet running away, the death of a parent or lover. It's part of growing up. When I write a "coming of age" story, it is likely to include all of these at one time or another. But I won't include 'violence' tags when one chapter out of forty-five has an attack and a fight.
I use tags to indicate major themes or events in a story. Is this story about incest? There is a scene when sisters get it on together. No, I won't use the incest tag; that's not what the story is about. Will I use the 'tear-jerker' tag because there is an emotional scene in the story? Can you imagine a teen growing up without tears? No tag.
Often, things I think
should be tagged don't have tags for them. My first major series on SOL was "Model Student." It is about an artist who struggles through his entire college career with depression. There is no tag for 'depression', yet that is a major theme. The "Team Manager" series has a major theme of bullying. There is no tag for 'bullying.' One of Dennis's twelve girlfriends is black. No, I'm not using an interracial tag. She is a relatively minor character and just part of a normal high school group.
So, I use tags to describe what kind of story it is, not to describe every possible event that could occur in that kind of story.
Like it or not, now you know.
Enjoy!