It’s been said that there are only seven basic plots in fiction – and I profiled each one in a series of articles in the mag a few years ago. These plots recur, according to psychologists, because they represent innate unconscious archetypes in the human mind. This begs the question: how do you make an archetypal scenario distinctive?
One answer is to locate a familiar plotline in a foreign setting. And judging by a great slew of novels due for release later this year, it’s a solution embraced by many publishers. You can see the attraction: an exotic backdrop rings the changes and gives the PR gals something to talk about, while the tried-and-tested tropes are guaranteed to satisfy readers’ instinctive proclivities.
This is a significant trend that spans every genre – literary to commercial, romance to crime – and has even spawned the subgenre ‘destination thriller’, with grisly offerings pending at a Jamaican carnival (Scarlett Brade’s The Carnival), a Greece resort (Gytha Lodge’s Please Help Me), a historic city in Japan (Akane Araki’s Murder at the End of the World) and more.
So if you have a home-based novel that seems slow to catch fire, it’s worth considering uprooting everyone and plonking them down in Lahore or Barcelona. And if you have a foreign holiday booked, don’t forget to pack your notebook.
On the basis that ‘the past is another country’, mixing in a bit of history doubles the bankable foreign factor: as in Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s The Intrigue, set in 1940s Mexico, out this autumn; and literary sensation Elif Shafak’s In One Brief Moment All Eternity, out next year, about women associated with Gustav Flaubert in 19th- Century France.
A nifty way of combining both history and foreign locations is the timeslip novel, currently undergoing a bit of a revival. Kate Moss, who popularised the trope in 2005 with her blockbusting Labyrinth, set in present-day and 13th-Century France, has recently signed a four-book deal including the timeslip Borderlands part-set during the Norman Conquests. Other timeslip titles in a variety of genres include Before She Vanishes, Time to Burn, Love and Gravity – I could go on...
Meanwhile, following the juggernaut success of the series Heated Rivalry, the publishing world is getting seriously hot under the collar for enemies-to-lovers romance plots in the sports world, and commissioning titles such as Full Throttle (motor-racing), Better Than Revenge (swimming), Her Advantage (tennis), Break Me (showjumping) and The Final Score (hockey). If you’re a romance aficionada with a penchant for competitive leisure pursuits, there could be a publishing niche waiting just for you.
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