Would I consider myself a Swiftie? Perhaps. Would I spend endless hours weaving friendship bracelets? No. Would I drop everything and preorder a book about a songwriter performing in her glittering prime where stars reflect off her silhouette every night? Yes. Yes, I would. And I did!
I read the authors’ Emily Wibberley and Austin Siegemund-Broka previous book, The Roughest Draft, and as a Taylor Swift follower, I was so excited to see what they did with The Breakup Tour. Unfortunately, this novel had me lying on the cold hard ground faster than Now That We Don’t Talk’s run time.
It already sounds incredibly difficult to write a story heavily inspired by a celebrity, and then to that celebrity be Taylor Swift? This story was trouble when it walked in.
So look what you made me do, Wibberley and Siegemund-Broka. It’s a storytelling review.
Reviewing The 6 Taylor Swift-Style Storytelling Elements (Morgan’s Version)
Just like how red lips and fast cars compose a classic T Swizzle song, every compelling story uses the same 6 elements: concept, theme, character, and plot as well as executing scenes with a strong voice.
Starting on the Right Notes with This Concept
Concept can be a hard, well, concept, for non-writers to grasp. The concept for a story is made up of a character with a goal who faces an internal conflict up against an external conflict. If a story only has a character up against an external conflict but no demons to conquer, no loss of self to muscle through, it’s a premise. Larry Brooks explains the difference by saying, “Premise is a concept that has brought character into the mix.”
So, The Breakup Tour’s concept is that Riley, our Taylor Swift copy-cat, wants her latest song to be claimed by its actual inspiration, her college ex rather than her ex husband, while she struggles with her self-worth being tied to her songwriting abilities.
Not a bad concept, right? Wibberley and Siegemund-Broka took a premise and elevated it to include an internal battle for the character. And probably a very real internal conflict for one Taylor Swift. Although, it sounds a little fan fiction-y. In fact, I’m pretty sure I read this exact story sophomore year in 2013. That doesn’t mean it’s bad. It just means I’m still on the quest to find a book that accurately portrays fame. (We’ll get more into this down the page.)
Theme Should Be an Electric Touch, Not Death by a Thousand Cuts
Sadly, tragically, despite building the basis for an internal conflict within the book’s concept, an overarching theme never came to fruition. And if a story doesn’t have theme, if sparks don’t fly, I can’t be burned by it. I can’t remember the book. Author Jack Smith says, “Successful literary fiction hinges on whether there is more at hand, meaning-wise, than what appears on the surface.”
I guess in Riley’s case that would be: you’re more than what you create. But if that’s the main character’s theme, the events of the plot don’t support that narrative. She struggled with this conflict at the end of the novel, but theme has to be prevalent at the beginning of the story. The audience needs to see what holds her back from getting what she wants. In the book’s first 100 pages, she’s portrayed as confident and sexy, very much aligned with the public’s general view of Taylor Swift. But when we, the audience, connect more to Max, the male main character, who is a pianist refusing to give up on a bankrupt senior living complex, it’s hard to empathize with someone who isn’t struggling.
Riley didn’t struggle with her identity in every single scene. And the main character has to struggle with whatever they’re struggling with in every scene - that’s what makes it a theme, a pattern, a motif, a memorable story. Theme is the conductor that zaps story to the live wire of our hearts. Outside of Riley’s feelings for her romantic endeavors, I could count on my hand how many times she struggled with what she was supposedly set to struggle against. So Wibberley and Siegemund-Broka led me on only for them to twist the knife of under-delivering.
This Is Me Trying to Connect to Character
So we know what Riley wants and what, theoretically, holds her back from getting what she wants but she has conflicting behaviors and worldviews. She comes across as the girl-next door - which is the pretense of Taylor Swift who came from living on a literal farm - but where Wibberley and Siegemund-Broka lost me is their portrayal of Riley as, “Oh, I’m totally normal (a la Jennifer Lawrence) but I also love fame and singing for thousands of people, and ah geez, I’m so uncomfortable in this lush Hollywood Hills home, let me just answer the door with no pants on.”
Like, did I miss something? The math ain’t mathing. If she was uncomfortable, she would have covered up before answering the door. (And I understand wanting her to not have pants on when Max comes over - it creates vulnerability but it’s such a cliche, such a cheap shot - come up with something better.) If she hated the stage decorated home, we should have seen her rearranging the furniture or taking things off the walls or painting them.
Riley’s struggle isn’t relatable. She isn’t relatable. I detested her while envying her because there is a calmness exuding from her throughout all of the celebrity events, interactions, and encounters I wish I could have. But in those moments that she’s alone, Riley reflects on her behavior and admits to acting petulant, and I kept thinking, “this is why we can’t have nice things.”
And! Because Riley is based on a certain female pop star of the century, I continually compared her to the real Taylor Swift and while the authors applaud Taylor and thank her for being their inspiration for the book, if Riley is a reflection of Taylor, Riley is the fun house mirror version. I think it’s rude to paint Taylor in a bad light when I don’t believe she is the type of person to have sex with her pianist/ ex-college boyfriend/ co-performer on the floor of the recording studio.
Additionally, Riley didn’t have anything at stake if she didn’t get what she wanted. She wouldn’t lose anything. If her ex-husband continued to dance around on TikTok and claim the song is about him, and even if Max didn’t agree to come forward and say the song’s about him, her life would go on. Her tour would continue. She’d be employed. She’d keep making money.
Max, on the other hand, wanted to support Hartcourt Homes but struggled internally about leaving the family business behind while struggling to find his place on tour and pursuing music. There’s a lot to lose there!
Riley might lose her control over the public’s opinion of her, of her reputation, but again if that was her concern, Wibberley and Siegemund-Broka never made that apparent. They only focused on the external consequences for Max rather than the internal effects it has on Riley. Max became a more compelling character than Riley, and when a man steals the show that has a woman on the cover, you did something bad.
Building Plot Structure on (Un)Holy Ground
With Riley’s internal conflict not fully fleshed out, or the authors indecisive on what the story is about, The Breakup Tour is the Lover house burning down with its reputation. Which is weird because Wibberley and Siegemund-Broka had the blueprint. They had the story’s concept.
But when it came to executing that, building the foundation out of characters, they didn’t stick to the plan. And when you start building a plot, framing walls on top of an uneven foundation, you’re gonna have a crooked building (but not like the Tower of Pisa, more like a balloon-framed structure from the 1800s).
So here’s as close as I could decipher what the authors of the Breakup Tour were using as their plot structure milestones:
The inciting incident is Riley asking Max to come forward and claim that her popular song is about him, nor her ex-husband.
The first plot point is Max counter-asking Riley to play the song together on her tour because he needs money to save his family’s retirement home.
The first pinch point is Riley and Max playing out of sync on tour so they spend more time rehearsing.
The midpoint is Riley and Max hooking up at the recording studio.
The second pinch point is Max breaking up with Riley and dropping out of the tour.
The second plot point is Max returning home, missing Riley, and buying tickets to see her last show.
And though not part of the technical plot structure milestones, the resolution is Max navigating his way through the crowd and getting on stage to play the song they wrote together with Riley.
Kind of disconnected, right? And who’s story is this? If heroes save the day, and Riley is the main character, why is Riley the one being saved? Do any of these events threaten, at any point, what Riley wants? No. She got what she wanted. She got Max to come forward and claim the song as his through public speculation. She got that in act two. So what is the rest of the book about? What is it there for?
And, I might be the anti-hero for this, but Wibberley and Siegemund-Broka literally lost the plot in act three. First, Riley performs with her ex-boyfriend at Coachella, Max leaves to train a new employee for the retirement home, and upon his return, he hooks up with Riley then immediately breaks up with her just to leave again.
It’s like the authors couldn’t decide which of the main characters' story to follow or what is subplot versus what is the main plot. And it’s unfair to jerk readers back and forth, a tediously common cliche in romance novels, just so that the climax can be dramatic even though you know it’s going to be an HEA. I love you, Taylor Swift, but The Breakup tour is ruining my life.
Strategy Sets the Scene for the Tale
If you want to be a mastermind like Ms. Taylor Allison Swift, you can’t go into writing scenes without the structure there to support it. If plot is the structure of our story house, scenes are the drywall that make that plot, that structure, a livable experience.
Scenes didn’t have a hook. There wasn’t a ramping up of external or internal conflict. There wasn’t a cause and effect. Scenes did not rely upon the last. There weren’t conclusive decisions by the end of each scene that inevitably caused the one after it. I have such bad blood with The Breakup Tour; it’s like a wine-stained dress I can’t wear any more.
Voice Like Nails on a Chalk Board
If I had to read one more expositional page - not paragraph - page using the words “iridescent and incandescent”, I’d breathe flames each time I talked.
And you know when you say a word so many times that it stops sounding real? Every single page included music metaphors. Every single one. I understand that Riley and Max are musicians and that’s the language they speak but to me, it was overwhelmingly nauseating. At the fifty page mark, it just became white noise.
The balance of exposition, action, dialogue, and description was absolutely nonexistent. There was more exposition than there was of the other three elements combined. Too much inner monologue, not enough dialogue, and what dialogue was there was weak.
You’d think a book set to the backdrop of traveling on tour would have more description and world building details of what that actually looks, sounds, smells, and feels like. For all Wibberley and Siegemund-Broka’s exposition, they never actually captured the organized chaos of pop star life which is a huge reason for readers (me) picking up a book like this.
I wanted to become the pop star and see and hear and feel what it’s like to be the most popular singer-songwriter in every aspect from security coordination, touring logistics, choreography rehearsals, dress rehearsals, stage design meetings, radio interviews, award ceremonies. There were endless possibilities Wibberley and Siegemund-Broka could have covered, and they chose to confine their characters to a bus.
Final Verdict: Mo’s No or Go Pile
Long story short, Emily Wibberley and Austin Siegemund-Broka had the makings of a fun, romantic, and empowering story but the snaps from the same little breaks in my soul told me it’s time to go. I’m breaking up with the Breakup Tour.
I was spinning like a girl in a brand-new dress when this book arrived at my house, but overpromising and under delivering leaves nothing but disappointment. I actually threw my copy of the book away (I recycled it) because it was not even worth donating because no body, no crime, bay-bee. Nobody needs to be reading this. Unless you have low standards and don’t care, be my guest. But even then, there are so many other — better — stories whereas the story of The Breakup Tour looks a lot like a tragedy now.
What do you think? Have you read this book? Will you now or will you stay away from it? What do you think about Max being a more compelling character? How do you think the authors could have improved the story?
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