Inspired by a conversation with Russ
Allbery, I found myself
thinking that while I know a lot of the standard science fiction terms
(FTL, big dumb object, teleporter clone, etc.) I am less informed as
to criticism in other genres I favour, specifically romance and
mystery.
And there certainly ought to be vocabulary for this sort of
thing. Maybe it's out there and I haven't met it. But I've ended up
building my own set of concepts I care about in both genres. In a very
few cases I have standard shorthand terms for them, which I'll put in
bold.
Romance:
There are standard terms such as "second chance romance", "fake
marriage", "enemies to lovers", "only one bed", "big misunderstanding"
and "third-act breakup" to describe the shape of the plot. Fair
enough.
I need to believe in these people's happily ever after, not just their
lust now. Big Misunderstandings particularly work against this: what,
they're maybe the love of your life, and you drop them flat because of
something someone said that you didn't even ask them about? (Even
worse if it's something your known rival said to you.) A particularly
poor example of this, admittedly not a romance but annoying anyway:
Robert Goddard's Past Caring.
Related, I don't like to see someone giving up the entire career
they've made because, thanks to the romance, they don't have to work
any more. Fair enough if they're in a drudge job, but when they're
something that's taken a reasonable amount of skill to get to, and
they're good at it, and they enjoy it… all right, I've often said that
if I won the lottery ("meet me half-way here, buy a ticket") I
wouldn't give up my job, and perhaps I'm projecting here.
If it's a second chance romance, I also need to believe that they had
a reason to split up the first time, and that that good reason has
changed. (Well done in Mimi Matthews' The Lily of Ludgate Hill.)
I don't insist, but it's nice to know why the principals are available
for romance at the start of the relevant narrative, especially if it's
someone who's generally pursued and whom one might expect to be in a
relationship already. (Indeed, why they're not available but become so
can be an interesting subplot in itself.) The general trend in romance
heroines away from virginal ingenues towards more experienced women,
often divorced or widowed, is very welcome to me.
I'd like the sex scenes, if they're present at all, to tie into the
characterisation and show us things about the people rather than just
be titillation. (The Bright Falls series did a good job of this.)
I'm not the stereotypical sexually frustrated housewife; if I want
porn there are other places to get it.
Mystery:
Again there are style descriptors: cosy mystery, police procedural,
hard-boiled, thriller, and sometimes also spoilery descriptions of the
solution (idunnit, everyonedunnit, nobodydunnit).
As far as plot elements go, one can start with the Knox and van Dine
rules to see what the critics considered a "good" mystery back in the
day.
I like to know what the detective knows, no more no less. If there
must be villain's-eye view scenes, let them tell me only what the
investigators will soon learn, and my goodness don't make them
exploitative; people, usually women, in pain and terror are not only
not my kink, they're something I don't wish to read about for
pleasure.
A specific example of knowing more than the detective: the
non-diegetic solution, where I know it must be one of these six people
rather than a passing stranger because this is a murder mystery, but
of course the detective doesn't. Especially blatant when the detective
reviews the reasons why each of these five people can't be guilty and
casually forgets about number six. (A certain amount of this in Peter
Lovesey's The Vault.)
I like to hear how the various red herrings came out, i.e. the people
who had other reasons for being considered as suspects because they
had stuff of their own going on, but ended up not being the villain.
I read these things on two levels, as a puzzle that should feel "fair"
to solve and as a story with characterisation. I want them both to
work.
I'm especially sensitive to conservative attitudes in mystery because
it's an innately conservative genre: someone has disrupted the orderly
world (by murdering someone), and order must by restored by their
being caught and stopped from ever doing it again (if not always by
the law; dying by their own hubris is quite popular in the 1930s). I
can cope with that. But that doesn't mean I want the police to be
justified in trampling over people in order to get the villain, and I
get very bored when the writer portrays everyone who isn't like them
(or the way they'd like to think of themselves as being) as basically
unsympathetic and Wrong, even though this sort of thing clearly finds
an audience. (P. D. James I'm very much looking at you here.)