Wednesday, October 21, 2015

Good Dog!

by Wendy Hobday Haugh from the September 29, 2015 issue

Tagline: Cassie loved her dog and Matt loved his dog. It wouldn't be long before the two dog-lovers fell in love with each other!

Observations: I saw something in this story that I hadn't seen before. At first, it's a regular
Woman's World story. A new guy moves in next door. His dog digs into her yard and her dog digs a hole to his yard and they meet and hit it off. Nothing really new or noteworthy. What was different was this:

And that's how our story began. The rest, in a nutshell, went like this:

What follows that line is a summarization ("telling", if you will) of the rest of their courtship and wedding.

I've seen weddings at the end of stories before. They're not common, but they do occur, but this is the first time I've seen the author just flat out state they were going to summarize. It was a little narrator-ish and pulled us back from the deeper POV we'd been in, but that was fine. Think of that distancing like when at the end of a movie, they pull back for that driving off into the sunset shot.

6 comments:

Mary Jo said...

Kate, the majority of the WW romances lately have taken the last paragraph or two to tell the rest of the story. I guess it testifies to the brevity of the word count when most of the action ends up in a synopsis. Is this a trend, or just a passing style?

Pat said...

I thought this story was so cute.

Mary Jo, I think this was just such a cute premise with adorable characters that the telling worked. I think as long as you have those elements it doesn't matter how you tell the story. Just my opinion. I've had so don't, tell drummed in to me so much, I'd never think to tell a story this way. Maybe that's part of my rejections. Who knows?

Kate Willoughby said...

I don't agree with the statement that most of the action ends up in a synopsis. I think if the author has done a good enough job with the bulk of the story, then the summary ends up like a tiny epilogue.

Pat said...

I agree, Kate. I think that's why the story worked for me.

Mary Jo said...

However you view it...synopsis or epilogue...this seems to be appearing in many of the WW romances lately. Readers may find it more satisfying to know the outcome of the romance.

Tamara said...

I think it has to do with whether the couple in the story actually go so far as to marry or whether the story stops with them just meeting and the reader left knowing that they will get together and move forward in a relationship. I just finished one in which I had the couple marry, but there was an obvious gap between when they met and the wedding.