And, you know, some genres do better at this than SFF - it's one of the reason I like crossovers. Mystery crossovers are usually smaller-scale stakes. Romance, if you can stomach it, is all about smaller-scale stakes. (The word gives me hives, so I don't generally go there, but there's a whole subgenre called women's fiction that can be far less cliched.)
Oh. Just had another thought: YA. How much of YA fiction, including SFF fiction, is about Save The World stakes? Not much, I think. So, maybe the Rule about avoiding Coming of Age stories in SFF stories is taking those sorts of small-stakes stories away from us?
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branchandroot
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Date: 2009-08-31 12:28 am (UTC)And, you know, some genres do better at this than SFF - it's one of the reason I like crossovers. Mystery crossovers are usually smaller-scale stakes. Romance, if you can stomach it, is all about smaller-scale stakes. (The word gives me hives, so I don't generally go there, but there's a whole subgenre called women's fiction that can be far less cliched.)
Oh. Just had another thought: YA. How much of YA fiction, including SFF fiction, is about Save The World stakes? Not much, I think. So, maybe the Rule about avoiding Coming of Age stories in SFF stories is taking those sorts of small-stakes stories away from us?