The problem with frum novels

singleagain

Thu, Jan 06 2022, 7:19 am

Censorship is a really big one. I couldn't even get my true story about my divorce/depression in it bc the publisher cut out so much I told the author to pull it from the book. Hello.. I'm not the only person to have those problems I'm sure and seeing them in a book could have helped someone but no.. it wasn't kosher enough? Guess what, life isn't kosher. Life is messy. We need to talk about how messy it can get and how to clean up the mess. Not pretend the mess never happened.

amother

NeonYellow

Thu, Jan 06 2022, 7:31 am

singleagain wrote:

There's a difference though between a self help book and a novel when it comes to these things...I feel like there might be (should be) more leeway for self help/non fiction.

chanatron1000

Thu, Jan 06 2022, 7:33 am

amother [ NeonYellow ] wrote:

There's a difference though between a self help book and a novel when it comes to these things...I feel like there might be (should be) more leeway for self help/non fiction.

Novels should reflect real life too. Perhaps not as much as self help books, which sometimes have to use graphic detail depending on the subject. But if a novel is intended for adults, it doesn't have to be 100% kid-friendly, though it does need to stay a novel for adults, not an adult novel.

watergirl

Thu, Jan 06 2022, 8:09 am

singleagain wrote:

My point was that if my very true story couldn't get past the censors it doesn't give me a lot of hope for fiction

My theory (and you do not have to look farther than imamother to see this) is that the majority of buyers of these books are the ones who state so often "I will not bring this into my home where my kids will read it" instead of "I will bring it into my home and not allow my children to read it". I think if parents would teach their children boundaries, frum literature could address the tougher topics.

amother

Wandflower

Thu, Jan 06 2022, 8:32 am

chanatron1000 wrote:

Another issue is that because the Jewish market is such a small niche market, they try and make the adult books applicable for all the family, because it encourages people to buy the books if more than 1 person will be reading it. So censorship comes into play because books are not really adult books because of money. I understand that selling books doesn't make much money, but it makes for less enjoyable books.
I don't understand why publishers don't do more paperback books as they're much cheaper to manufacture than the hardbacks. I get sefarim need to be hardback but if you look at the non jewish market, most fiction books are paperbacks. Only the better selling authors get hardback copies.

amother

Thu, Jan 06 2022, 8:47 am

I do think there's a market for novels about frum people who deal with real life stuff. Naomi Ragen makes a living off of it but it often falls into the "frum people live in a miserable box" trope. I'm really curious about how my book would fall into this. I think it's pretty clean but I do have attraction in it. I'm currently in my second year of editing but I hope to finish within the year.

amother

Thu, Jan 06 2022, 8:54 am

amother [ Wandflower ] wrote:

That makes sense too. A lot of adults in frum books act like teens lol.

As a side note, the book about two mothers would be so much better if they had edited after publishing as a serial. It was tedious to get through all the repetition like "Chungarabi the gypsy". At some point we know Chungarabi and that she's a gypsy (or Roma). It's like reading a book and reading about Jacob the Jew every chapter.

aweinback

Thu, Jan 06 2022, 9:02 am

amother [ OP ] wrote:

I'm an aspiring author and I'm writing a frum book. I noticed that there's very few online reviews of frum books, but I've heard people complain about them before. As in, secular novels are more well written. So... What's the problem with frum novels? No need to call out a specific novel, I don't want to bash, just wanted to see how to make my book the best it can be.

I'll start. My problem with frum novels is that sometimes there's too much repetition when the novel used to be a magazine serial.

In one of the magazine serials two weeks ago, an entire conversation consisted of two people talking like this:
“...”, she replied
“Oh, .......”, she replied.
“Yes,” she replied.
The word replied was used as a dialogue tag about six or seven times in a row.
(As opposed to said, asked, answered....)

Even if the dialogue is brilliant, your brain will recognize the repetition and you will be bored and might even wonder why you ended up with a migraine when you put the magazine down.

As others mentioned, a proofreader will not catch such an error since it is grammatically correct, you need to catch these things yourself or have an alert reader/editor look over your work.

I see so many of these types of writing mistakes in frum novels. Besides for the plot and character issues mentioned above, writing like this makes it impossible for a reader to enjoy your story.

PinkFridge

Thu, Jan 06 2022, 9:08 am

amother [ Rose ] wrote:

And here I am wondering what makes a mature frum novel “mature”.

Dark themes - like a very dysfunctional or sad situation (see Shoshana Mael's Dancing in the Dark since she was mentioned already)
A confluence of lives complicated by decisions re areas that aren't so relevant to say, high school girls - gambling, sholom bayis, many, many of the serials and serials that become books.

PinkFridge

Thu, Jan 06 2022, 9:11 am

LovesHashem wrote:

Correct. And then they aren't realistic or relatable.

In real life how many of us have gotten caught up with mafia? And then there like 16 characters who all happen to connect at some point and meet each other from different places and it always ends in a Simcha.

I loved the depth of characters in M. Kenan's. And Ruti Keplers books. There's still the issue of the plot but both authors drag you in very well to the story...

I remember a Family First spoof of the frum thriller. In the interim I've read book backs that read exactly like those. But they are fun for those who like them.
The other big genre besides thriller is soap opera.

I'm not knocking any author. It's not as easy as it looks.
I'm really hesitant to engage further in this. Not because I don't want to sully my eyes with reading LH but I don't want to contribute to it. I would love to discuss some of the issues I've had but I would rather do it in a smaller group, IRL.

PinkFridge

Thu, Jan 06 2022, 9:14 am

amother [ NeonYellow ] wrote:

This is really the bottom line.
I read an interview of a editor at a frum publishing company recently and she said they are getting book manuscripts submitted by teenage girls that they are planning to publish including, iirc, one by a 12 year old. It's technically possible that a 12 year old girl is the next Bronte sister or Jane Austen, but c'mon, I hardly expect these books to have the level of sophisticated writing and character depth that I hope for in a novel.

I think teenage writers can be great. (Look at Gordon Korman.) But these books need to be beta read, and carefully edited. They don't have to be sophisticated, just cohesive in plot and grammatically correct.

PinkFridge

Thu, Jan 06 2022, 9:17 am

sara_s wrote:

As someone who has written in the past for the Frum press, and is now trying to write a novel for the general press, the thing that was the biggest block for me in the Frum publishing world is the extreme censorship.
Good literature is about capturing reality. When the most personal and often most challenging aspects of life can't be written about, you're left with a much less potent and emotionally involving story. (For instance, even when writing about Shidduch dating, a popular Frum topic, you can't write about attraction. And with married couples, their bedroom life, which is a huge part of marriage, is entirely taboo. These are just examples, there's much more that is off limits). This gives the impression of watching characters on the stage instead of being inside their head.
Also- there are issues with our society, and part of what makes a lot of literature interesting, impactful, and meaningful is highlighting those issues. But again- censorship. The frum world is getting a bit better at discussing some topics, but many are still banned. (E g any criticism of rabbis' directives, or what gedolei yisrael said, or corruption within the system, and these are just some examples).
The Frum press is starting to push the boundaries with columnists (usually male columnists), but is much less forgiving of fiction. For instance Jonathan Rosenblum wrote about a topic in Mishpacha, a few weeks after I was told I couldn't bring it up in a story in Family First. He even writes about LGBTQ and there is no way that will currently appear in frum fiction!

Another separate issue is I was never taught grammar properly, and definitely never studied creative writing at a high level, forget about an MFA. I'm trying to self-teach myself and that's a challenge.

BTW if anyone is interested in beta reading and critiquing the 4th draft of my novel, which is about Frum characters but which I want to get published in the general press (because it would never pass the frum censorship), I would love feedback.

I'd love to read it.
Have you read Ruchama King Feuerman's books?
What boundaries are you setting? How far can you go in the bedroom? Language? More?

PinkFridge

Thu, Jan 06 2022, 9:20 am

amother [ Wandflower ] wrote:

The thrillers are overdone in a dramatic unrealistic way. I mean, seriously do you really think the mafia would be chasing a 18 year old girl across the world? And she just happens to meet up with another Jewish person while hiding out in Timbuctoo, who somehow has the magic connection with the CIA and can solve the issue?
.

Re the thrillers: that's reminding me of a related thing. Look at The 39 Clues. Dan Korman's Coke and Pepsi books. It's a thing: somehow, these kids have been chosen as The Hero Who Will Save The World. (There's a literary term for it; I don't know what it is.)

PinkFridge

Thu, Jan 06 2022, 9:22 am

amother [ NeonYellow ] wrote:

Censorship doesn't help when it comes to plots, but that isn't what is to blame for tpoor writing.

Think about Jane Austen--certainly there is nothing in her books that would need to be censored by frum standards. I can think of other secular books that are just as "clean" and very well written.

There is a handful of actually well written frum books where the characters come alive and I don't think it's a coincidence that most of those were either written by BTs or published long ago. It comes down to education and being exposed to quality literature on a regular basis. Sure, you can have an author with sheer raw talent who has had neither, and that just needs a bit of shaping by the editor but that's very rare.

One thing that bugs me about some frum writing is how over the top it is--way too many clunky words (overuse of a thesaurus), too many "exciting" verbs instead of plain writing, way too many italics and exclamation points.

How many people discover Austen on their own? What's Austen a gateway to
Re your last paragraph: Yes, show, don't tell.

PinkFridge

Thu, Jan 06 2022, 9:22 am

allthingsblue wrote:

Miriam Zakon (I think) wrote a great serial, historical fiction, that really pulled me in. Leah Gebber also did. If they would be written as novels without repetition I think I’d enjoy them.

Both have them had deep characters, conflict and even love - true love, not surface level shidduch dating he’s my bashert love.

Some of the best books out there are in Judaica are historical fiction.