See Jane Write: A Girl's Guide to Writing Chick Lit

Author

Introduction:

I Could Write That!

Here’s the thing about you: You love chick lit. You read it often, staying loyal to your favorite authors, but you’re always willing to open your heart (and eyes) to a new chick on the block. When you read it, you laugh, you smile, you nod your head in recognition, you feel exposed, you feel hopeful. You think, I’ve thought that , I’ve been in that situation, I’m pretty sure I’ve dated that guy , and so on, until finally you arrive at, Hmm, I could write that .

Here’s the thing about us: We’re here to tell you, Yes, you can.

As a bestselling chick lit writer (meet Sarah) and a former chick lit editor (say hello to Farrin), we know a thing or thirty about chick lit. We’ve watched a lot of good women translate their lives’ highs and woes into fiction. And we’d like to share our knowledge with someone who feels she has her own chick lit story locked somewhere inside of her: you.

Despite what you might have heard, there’s no formula for chick lit. You can’t connect the dots and end up with a bestseller. But you can benefit from advice, and that’s what we’re here to provide—us and a few of our friends and acquaintances—Meg Cabot, Sarah Dunn, Emily Giffin, Kristin Gore, Marian Keyes, Sophie Kinsella, Nicola Kraus, Emma McLaughlin, and Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez, to name just a few.*

You’re probably anxious to get to the guide part of our guide, so we’ll make this introduction short and sweet. But there are a few things we want to explain about how the book works. It’s broken down into two main parts. In part 1, we talk about the general stuff: everything from what exactly chick lit is to how writing chick lit is like dating to how to steamroll your excuses and start your book already. In part 2, we break down the writing process, touching on subjects like choosing your point of view, making your heroine likable, and why you might want to reconsider including a gay best friend in your cast of characters.

We’ve sprinkled some cheeky but helpful (always helpful!) exercises and sidebars throughout the book. The boxes titled Mistakes I’ve Known let you in on some of Farrin’s experiences editing chick lit manuscripts. It Happened to Me sidebars offer up anecdotes from Sarah’s writing life. Chick Lit Mad Libs poke fun at some of the chick lit conventions and highlight the most egregious clichés—so you can avoid them. And Words of Wisdom, well, that’s pretty self-explanatory.

We occasionally take a tough-love approach, but that’s because we know you can handle it. You want your novel to be the best it can be. And that’s what we want, too.

We hope you enjoy our guide to writing chick lit—and that it helps you become the heroine of your own story.

*For a full list of the awesome authors who helped us out (and their books), see Appendix 2.

ONE

What Exactly Is Chick Lit?

Contrary to popular belief, chick lit is not all about shoes. Or clothes. Or purses. Yes, some chick lit characters enjoy their fashion collections, but if an interest in designer names is what made you pick up this book, maybe you should grab Vogue instead. Chick lit is also not all about getting a guy. Love may be a happy diversion, or a painful pothole, but the chick lit story is about the main character’s road to self-discovery. Although there’s usually a satisfying and uplifting conclusion, the ending is more about hope for the future than snagging Mr. Right.

So if it’s not about shoes and guys, then what exactly is it? Well, chick lit is often upbeat, always funny fiction about contemporary female characters and their everyday struggles with work, home, friendship, family, or love. It’s about women growing up and figuring out who they are and what they need versus what they think they want. It’s about observing life and finding the humor in a variety of situations, exchanges, and people. It’s about coming of age (no matter how old the woman is—chick lit heroines can be anywhere from teenaged to beyond middle-aged). It’s generally written by women for women. It’s honest, it reflects women’s lives today—their hopes and dreams as well as their trials and tribulations—and, well, it’s hugely popular.

But you already knew all that, right? (Just nod your head and make us happy.)

A Brief History of Chick Lit

When Bridget Jones hopped the pond and sailed into U.S. bookstores in 1998, she changed the world of women’s fiction forever. Helen Fielding wasn’t necessarily the first chick lit author, but with Bridget Jones’s Diary, she was certainly the most popular. And her timing, as Bridget might say, was v. good. Girl-centric television shows like Ally McBeal and Sex and the City were making waves, landing on the covers of mainstream magazines and gaining fans at a rapid pace. Clearly, women were ready for these types of characters and the stories of their lives and loves. Alongside Bridget sat Laura Zigman’s Animal Husbandry, followed by Suzanne Finnamore’s Otherwise Engaged and Melissa Bank’s The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing, and with their success, publishers knew a bona fide trend was in the making.

No longer were the ladies at the center of popular women’s novels limited to windblown tragic heroines (care of Danielle Steele) or descendents of Hollywood/mob dynasties (thank you, Jackie Collins)—the kinds of characters who populated the bestseller lists in the 1980s and ’90s. Now they were the girls next door. These young women had been around in contemporary fiction (check out Rona Jaffe’s The Best of Everything and Gail Parent’s Sheila Levine Is Dead and Living in New York for some pre–chick lit chick lit), but they had never made their mark on publishing in quite this lucrative way.

Of course, there was Jane Austen, surely the mother of all chick lit, but in popular contemporary fiction this was something new. And publishers were taking note. Soon they began marketing more books as chick lit (which they quickly decided meant pastel covers and shoes).

These days, you can’t walk into a bookstore without spotting at least a couple, but most likely more, chick lit novels on the New Fiction display, and some stores even have tables or shelves reserved solely for the ladies in pink.

Which is lucky for you, since you’re interested in writing chick lit and all.

THE MAKING OF MODERN CHICK LIT

1995: Marian Keyes publishes her first novel, Watermelon, in Ireland.

1996: Along comes Bridget Jones in the UK and the dawn of the chick lit craze.

1998: Bridget Jones’s Diary, Animal Husbandry, and The Girls’ Guide to Hunting and Fishing are published in the United States.

2000–2001: American publishers continue to dip their toes into the chick lit pond with titles such as Valerie Frankel’s Smart vs. Pretty, Jennifer Weiner’s Good in Bed, and British imports Jemima J, by Jane Green, Getting Over It, by Anna Maxted, and Confessions of a Shopaholic, by Sophie Kinsella.

2001: Harlequin Enterprises is among the first to capitalize on the trend with a dedicated chick lit imprint, launching Red Dress Ink with Melissa Senate’s See Jane Date. Other publishers, such as Simon & Schuster (Downtown Press) and Kensington (Strapless), follow shortly afterward.

2005: Warner Books launches the imprint 5 Spot, confirming that chick lit is here to stay.

It’s Only Chick Lit

The chick lit label can be a mixed blessing. Without it, a lot of your favorite books might never have seen the light of day. But because of it, some of those same titles get no respect. "I think chick lit has become a negative term, and it’s one that’s used primarily as a way to put female writers in their place," says Sarah Dunn, New York Times bestselling author of The Big Love. On the other hand, as a publishing trend it has been positive for a lot of women, some of whom wouldn’t have gotten their novels published at all if the chick lit thing hadn’t taken off the way it did. But if you live by the sword, you die by it too.

Caren Lissner, whose first novel, Carrie Pilby, had been making the publishing rounds and getting good feedback for a while before an editor at a designated chick lit imprint took a chance on it,* sees it in a stark business sense: It’s a marketing term, and I am grateful for anything that helped get my books into the hands of readers.

The problem with the term is that many (misguided) people automatically assume that chick lit means a tale about a twenty-something trying to find love in the big city. While that may have been true once, these days chick lit casts a wide net: Stories can be about anything from dating to dealing with death. Walk into your local bookstore and take a look at how diverse the novels have become.

Of course, people love to label, and chick lit has already been divided into many subgenres. There are those based on the supposed life stages of the heroine: Teen Lit (girl juggling her issues at home and at school); Single-in-the-City Lit (young woman living in New York/London gets dumped and tries to find her way in the urban jungle); Bride Lit (young woman about to walk down the aisle, or walking behind her friend down the aisle); Mom Lit (young woman juggling life, kids, and desires); and even Hen Lit (young-at-heart woman juggling life, kids, desires, and grandkids).

Then there’s chick lit cross-pollinated with other genres: Mystery Chick Lit (hip woman solving crimes); Christian Lit (not only is she trying to find a man—she’s trying to find God); Multicultural Lit (everyday struggles with an ethnic slant); and Paranormal Lit (everyday struggles—except the protagonist happens to be vampire/witch).

There are also thematic subgenres: Gossip Lit (she knows the goods); Assistant Lit (she works for the woman who knows the goods); Plus-Sized Lit (she’s no size four) …

Basically, if you write it in a cheeky tone and a publisher slaps a clever title and a cute cover on it, people will call your novel chick lit. There are worse things your novel could be called.

Critics and even other female writers (ones who fancy themselves serious, literary novelists) tend to treat chick lit as some subpar version of Real Writing. Don’t listen to them. As with any other type of book out there, there’s bad chick lit and good chick lit. Books filled with cardboard characters and cardboard writing are published nearly as often as (if not more than) those brought to life by unique voices and endearing protagonists. Some trip from one cliché to another, while others offer twists and turns that feel wholly original. We want you to write good chick lit. That’s why we’re here.

*I was that editor!—FJ

Chick Lit Is Dead;

Long Live Chick Lit

Don’t worry; despite the death knell people have been sounding for chick lit for years, it’s not going anywhere. Readers continue to flock to it, and the books continue to fly off the shelves in all their versatile glory. The fact that there are so many types of chick lit available helps propel the market forward and ensures that it will continue to thrive. It’s a genre that will evolve with the times to give women fiction that is relevant to their lives. And although one BBC critic attacked chick lit by claiming the novels merely hold a mirror up to women’s lives, we say, Yeah, so what?

Sometimes looking in the mirror is a valuable way to learn and grow. Because chick lit is like life … but funnier. When you peer into the reflection, maybe you learn something by example, maybe you don’t, but we guarantee that you’ll be entertained. It’s true that publishers who once saturated the market are now determined to publish only the best of the best. But as long as people still enjoy reading chick lit, the books will keep coming.

Maybe one with your name on it.

TWO

Getting Back at

Your Ex and Other

Reasons to Write

Something is compelling you to write your own chick lit novel. Do you know what it is? People sit down and morph into writers for any number of reasons—personal, professional, and financial. Want to know why and how a few published authors took their first steps toward chick lit? Let’s start off with a personal story.

How Sarah Became a Chick Lit Author*

The first novel