posted
That's a bit one-sided of a subject line, so take it with a grain of salt.
But I'm finding a lot of critiques these days (even my own) seem not to be about what's good and bad, but what's marketable and what's not.
For example, are books like Dune and Lord of the Rings and 1984 good or are they not? I've heard it said that their really just riding on their classic status and that their not really that great, in fact their over-written, too philosophical, too political works that aren't marketable today.
The idea of prologues taps into this. I have enjoyed books with prologues because I shifted my mindset to the type of story, but I still criticize most prologues out of habit.
Now. I get that marketability changes and either of those works might not be marketable today, however. Didn't someone actually enjoy them when they came out? Don't people in fact still enjoy them? Aren't they still selling on their merits today?
I tend to think that it's in the eye of the reader. I can put myself into most works. I can read Dracula and enjoy it as it is instead of comparing it to modern works and finding its 'faults'. I can do the same with all of those. I can enjoy a classic by its own right.
So then, is a work in modern time that may be more political, religious, or otherwise heavy, actually any worse as a work or is it just harder to market? And even if it is harder to market, isn't that (not to be snobby) but really the loss of the reader? Would a work like those really be better if it was streamlined, or wouldn't in fact lose something?
I think of the Ender Saga. I'll admit, Xenocide tried my patience. I wanted something to happen and there to be less talking. But I enjoyed the other three and they didn't have much more in the action or otherwise department. I enjoyed the wrestling with the dilemma, I think in Xenocide I just felt too removed from the stakes. It was too academic. But I did read it and enjoyed enough (mostly on the merits of the first two) to pick up Children of the Mind.
So this maybe a rant, but I'm also looking for some validity. I miss stories that stretched me, that required me to engage. Sure, I liked Hunger Games, and it stretched, but I identified more with a small struggle of a girl. Ender made a story about something larger. Both good, but different.
Is there a place for a slower story that has "lots" of exposition on politics, religion, or a detailed look at a law?
Posts: 336 | Registered: Jan 2011
| IP: Logged |
posted
Sure. Depends on how it's done. You need to have the thinking woven tightly into the story. Lord of the Rings does that. So does Dune. I have read many others that just use cardboard characters and stage props as backdrop for an author's chance to preach. Those aren't worth finishing. Bottom line, all stories are about "somethign happened to someone and this is what came of it". If you care about the person that the story happened to, then extra thought can just enrich the story. As long as it doesn't pile up so thick that it replaces the story.
I think a lot of the criticism you are getting might be due to the conviction that modern readers are conditioned by tv sound bites into having the attention pan of a flea. I really hope that's not true. Even if it is, tv is fading away and internet entertainment is gaining more depth, so I have hope.
Posts: 884 | Registered: Feb 2012
| IP: Logged |
posted
Publishing has been about appealing to as large a target audience as possible for the past century and a half. Less emphasis was placed on popular appeal prior to then. Much emphasis is placed on financial returns today, since publishing is commerce, and artistic merits can go hang, since audiences that appreciate literary arts are smaller.
Blame the commercial publishing culture for saturating the market with a few breakout successes and many inferior copycats that dictate what's hot and what's not. Not readers or writers for not appreciating artful writing. As form follows function, mass production follows money and mass culture follows production and writers and readers follow mass culture because that's what's hot and where the money is.
However, large enough audiences there are for literary arts. A quiet bestseller managing a meager hundred thousand sales over its several publishing season years before backlisting might not get the publicity pop of one that sells a million out of the box. But $100,000 in royalties and emergent critical acclaim are nothing to harumph about.
Popular acclaim is fickle and a popular product ephemeral, soon forgotten in favor of the next coolest, greatest must-have. Critical acclaim, though takes years to develop.
Literary critics still analyze and interpret meaning and method from Homer's Odyssey. Has anyone really analyzed the Potter saga? Some critics attempt to analyze Lord of the Rings. Frankly, most literary critics are not equipped to do so. They haven't been taught or learned how. Take Lord of the Rings, Hunger Games, Twilight, Harry Potter and compare them to L. Frank Baum's Wizard of Oz franchise. Oz, except for Dorothy's story made into a film, faded into oblivion soon after publication. It was on top bestselling lists for a decade though. An omnibus was recently published that re-releases the entirety. Except for piecemeal here and there books, though, the franchise has largely disappeared from library shelves. It got lifestyle reviews in journalism media that expressed their critics' sentiments but did not analyze or interpret meaning in a literary manner. Decades later now, the other novels of the franchise have been forgotten.
Critics today are barely scratching the surface of literature published at the end of the nineteenth century. Will a work published today have that degree of staying power, long enough to receive reasonably close reading, analysis, and interpretation? At present, one relatively recent writer's works are receiving literary attention and enjoying critical acclaim: Philip K. Dick. After that, not much in any convention-based genre has: science fiction, fantasy, horror, Western, romance, thriller, mystery. Cormac McCarthy's Border trilogy Western enjoys some critical acclaim and popular appeal, not enough in my estimation. But then convention-based genre is largely an innovation of the twentieth century. There's a lot of literary culture catching up to do, beginning with the influences of technology, commerce, and civil law on current literary culture.
posted
I think you're right, I can think of two examples. One, I'm reading "Looking Backward" a utopian Rip Van Winkle type novel. The story definitely exists just to present a world that could be. It's taking effort to finish, but in part because I don't find his world appealing in most ways.
The other would be 1984, where, it was really a story about a guy in a dystopia. I suppose maybe it was preachy, but I didn't think so because there was lots happening and the thoughts created the context. The cafeteria scene or just going out and buying a book would have been dull scenes, but the thinking turned into a dangerous act.
Can you name a modern book that does this well though? I'd like to read a modern book that does this so I can see how they did it?
Posts: 336 | Registered: Jan 2011
| IP: Logged |
posted
Try Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men. Dystopia in the real world of today, timely and relevant, brutal and engaging, fraught with cruel complication and confrontation, and a literary and popular masterpiece. It has yet to pick up much literary review, but its metaphorical qualities are accessible and appealing. It can be read and understood at once on its many levels. Not much puzzling out is necessary for it to hold deep and thought-inspiring meaning for many readers. Consider each character, each situation and setting, each event as concrete and tangible at the same time as abstract and intangible, and the full meanings of the novel open up into its larger-than-life meanings.
That's what George Orwell's 1984 does, what Ray Bradbury's Farenheit 451 does. Larger-than-life is all about portraying the dramatic experiences of everyday lives impacted by everyday complications in a dramatic and exotic personal though universal way that has larger appeal than immediate, singularly personal lives.
Posts: 6037 | Registered: Jun 2008
| IP: Logged |
posted
Is there a place for a slower story that has "lots" of exposition on politics, religion, or a detailed look at a law?
I think China Meiville's works tend to be pretty thoughtful and exciting at the same time. His book Kraken explores religion, faith, and government all while wrapped in a fun crime mystery. The Bas-Lag fantasy series by him delve into some deep questions about probability, possibility, street economics, and love. Even his young adult novel Un Lun Dun takes a pretty nice look at environmentalism and government. His book The City & and the City I think could be read as a sci-fi critique of the Israeli/Palestinian situation.
That's one guy, but a lot of books.
Posts: 823 | Registered: May 2009
| IP: Logged |
But I'm finding a lot of critiques these days (even my own) seem not to be about what's good and bad, but what's marketable and what's not.
From what I see in crits -- you are absolutely right. It's become all about grabbing that agent with your first page, or better yet your first line, and if your work takes, and needs to take, time to develop, that's a flaw. No one has patience anymore as readers, critters, or apparently as agents and publishers. They want MTV in print, I guess.
"Critics have learned all they know from listening to each other." -- Jack Vance
Posts: 782 | Registered: Dec 2010
| IP: Logged |
quote: It's become all about grabbing that agent with your first page, or better yet your first line, and if your work takes, and needs to take, time to develop, that's a flaw. No one has patience anymore as readers, critters, or apparently as agents and publishers. They want MTV in print, I guess.
I think that's a false assessment. An agent wants something that can sell. If you go to him without a track record and only have the one thing by which to be judged, expect a quick judgement. That agent has time restraints. Time looking at your work is time not looking at something else.
As a writer, I think some diversity in my creative properties might be good. A catalog of material is a good thing to develop. I can write the things that take a while to get into, but then I should also understand they might take a while to sell. The faster paced works might go faster. Sell enough of the faster paced works and the slower ones will pick up speed. The nice thing about being a writer is that my overhead is low but my inventory can be pretty deep.
Posts: 823 | Registered: May 2009
| IP: Logged |
posted
Markets, agents, and audiences exist for a wide variety of texts, more than the general populace knows. Prospect for what you seek and you will find. However, every one is as competitive in its own ways and the same ways as fiction cultures' ways are.
Posts: 6037 | Registered: Jun 2008
| IP: Logged |
posted
I'm glad you brought this up! The short answer is yes.
I think sometimes people give little thought to the opnions they hold. And Western culture over-values the trappings of immaturity. Rather than a thrill a minute, we're better off wrestling with real moral problems - especially if the result is uncomfortable and messy.
One writer's work I thoroughly enjoy is Michael D. O'Brien. I've started on his Children of the Last Days series. I recently finished Father Elijia and am halfway through Eclipse of the Sun. One of my other favorites is For Whom the Bell Tolls by Hemingway. I haven't gotten to Lamentations of a Morally Ambivalent Urban Cannibal though I keep hearing exciting things ;-)
But just as newer isn't better for its own sake, neither is older. I happen to think Hemingway's To Have and Have Not ain't so great. I put it down halfway through. And Heinlein recycles the same pompous heavy and cardboard women so much that I gave up on him.
The bottom line is I decided I won't write crap I wouldn't enjoy and benefit from reading. John Gardner's On Moral Fiction, especially the first paragraph of chapter 2 reflects my thinking. Good fiction inspires us to be good.
Fiction that is mostly thrills and entertainment isn't worth the time it takes to read it because I can pop in a DVD for that fix.
Gardner said good art "appeals to the better angels of our nature."
posted
John Gardner also has a critically disapproving view of convention-based genre that largely fills the commercial fiction market. He calls it "trash fiction." If there's a demand for it and people read it, it's all good, as far as I'm concerned, because one reader's trash is another reader's pastime. At least they read. Too many folk don't read.
On the other hand, the literary fiction that Gardner promotes has a limited though large marketplace appeal. Maybe in the several hundred thousand reader numbers.
Jonathan Franzen's latest book Freedom, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2010, enjoyed generally favorable lifestyle reviews, some mixed, few outright pans or condemnations. The book's sales performance data is not available, though more than three thousand libraries worldwide have circulating copies, compared to four thousand three hundred library copies for Stephanie Meyer's Twilight, 2005, and Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men, 2005, in the three thousand libraries range.
Literary fiction works like Franzen's come out every year numbering about one thousand titles, few are as popular or critically acclaimed. Literary criticism, analysis focused on Franzen's body of work, hasn't had time to trickle through the process. Established literary critics take their time getting around to new titles because first they have to find a meaningful point to make, test the theory out on peers, then decide which approach to take.
Having read closely and enjoyed Franzen's Freedom and his previous novel The Corrections, I see many approaches to either, both, and his body of work. I'd probably prefer a textualism analysis approach, since that method matters most to me as a creative writer. Franzen's biting satire about middle U.S. family life is most appealing to me and his audience. His voice, of course, is most poignant. A recurring songbird motif and symbolism, in its many connotations, was most delightful for me.
Whether Corrections has the timeless and enduring appeal of works entering the annals of the literary classics canon, like John Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath, H.G. Well's The Time Machine, or Mary Shelley's Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus, remains to be seen. New methods, new insights, new expressions, political, social, technological, religious, and cultural commentary are common in the literary classics canon. Such works are few and far between, as meanwhile much contending literature comes out annually regardless of staying power.
posted
I agree. Many times ill finish reading or watching something that I thoroughly enjoyed on many levels only to later learn that according to the critics it was trash.
On the other hand when I read works like Harry Potter or Twilight I didn't just like them for entertainment's sake, I find (and this is true of many books I read) passages and undertones that make me pause and reflect on the deeper thoughts of life.
Twilight, in particular, surprised me by how interesting it was to enter so completely the mind and thoughts of a girl--no matter hooverly dramatic. It was psychologically fascinating to me. It also gave me a lot of material for philosophoval and religious reflection--although quite unintended by Meyer, I'm sure (at least not the parts she intended which I found shallow and silly).
Mistborn by Sanderson had a lot in it on religion and politics, but I wasnt nearly as enthralled by his efforts as I was by Dune, or the Wheel of Time, the Golden Compass, or even Star Wars. One book that wasn't nearly so heavy, but infinitely more profound was The Little Prince.
On a different note some books like the Da'Vinci Code are written so cleverly that they really mess with your mind and force you to think, challenge your beliefs and drive you to research.
And on still a different note a simple wholesome story like Anne of Green Gables or Mrs Polifax can refocus our attention on the more immediately philosophically important things in life.
Posts: 164 | Registered: Jun 2013
| IP: Logged |
posted
However, I must say that as a reader from a younger and less indoctrinated generation. I find some of the "classics" to be so boring as to be unapproachable even by those who love heavy, slow, and long-winded books. And many, I feel, are even poorly written. Although maybe the proliferation of, and easy access to literature has raised my expectations higher than anyone could hope for when there were far fewer choices available.
Posts: 164 | Registered: Jun 2013
| IP: Logged |
posted
Or poorly translated...Jules Verne, for one, is very hard to read in the translations of his day, and those are what have the widest circulation, even to this day...
Posts: 8809 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
posted
I grew into reading the classics. Each led on to another and taught me how to read them. I don't know about hard to read, slow, or heavy as descriptions of them. Reading them takes a different mind-set, a different cognitive code than contemporary action adventure romanticism, and a degree of interest in their subjects and topics. They were written for their audiences, their times, and their cultures.
One feature common to the evolution of literature throughout the opus: the overall voice changed from the lecturing voice of scriptures, which Western literature emulated for several thousand years, to the participatory voices of the eighteenth century romanticists, nineteenth century realists and transcendentalists, and twentieth century modernists and postmodernists.
Mass production technologies developed during the Industrial Age underlay a large part of the voice shift. Factory book and magazine production made literature financially accessible for larger and larger audiences, who found less sophisticated voices, yet more challenging to compose voices, more accessible and appealing.
What signficant changes might evolve from digital technology? One appreciable one is emerging; audience numbers can be small and a text still see publication. Another, online word-of-mouth buzz can go viral long before a text has been reviewed and recommended or panned in formal media publication. Another, writers and audiences can more conveniently interact one-on-one online than the self-limiting letter correspondence of bygone eras. Another, writers can exposit online about their methods and aesthetics, dress rehearsing creative texts and for perhaps a poetics text that may see traditional publishing outcomes. In other words, personal online interactions between writer and audience are a large new potential. Writers can be personally closer to perhaps larger audiences online now.
Historically, such promotional interactions were in person and mostly at impersonal events. A large fraction of writers' living costs had been paid by being sponsored for such events, and they enjoyed the in-person satisfactions of an approving audience. Writers in this digital age still enjoy sponsoring and in-person audiences at writing conferences, though honorariums aren't quite what they used to be except for a few must-have writers who earn more than attendance costs and expenses. Even then, more often than not, presenting at a conference for many writers might be at a writer's own expense.
posted
One thing you can do to find markets for your work is to look for similar works that are in print. You can look in bookstores, but you may be able to look online as well.
When you find work that is similar to what you want to write and publish, see who has published that work. Then look them up online and see if (and how) they are willing to consider submissions.
As extrinsic has pointed out, the markets are out there. You just have to find them.
Posts: 8826 | Registered: A Long Time Ago!
| IP: Logged |
quote:John Gardner also has a critically disapproving view of convention-based genre that largely fills the commercial fiction market. He calls it "trash fiction." If there's a demand for it and people read it, it's all good, as far as I'm concerned, because one reader's trash is another reader's pastime. At least they read. Too many folk don't read.
I think you oversimplify John Gardner's take on genre fiction. I'm not sure how much of his work you have read, but if you did, you might review what he had to say. He talked a lot about genre-blending as a source of innovation, including SF and comics. Any artistic medium can be good. He also named academic snobbery and "literary in-breeding" for what they are.
There's more to judging a work than the sheer numbers of people buying it. Writing morally relativistic fiction leaves the author with little more material than a series of empty thrills and two-dimensional characters.
I seriously doubt you intended to make the argument, but there's high demand for pornography, gratuitous violence and various depictions of dehumanization for its own sake. And that stuff is trash because it dehumanizes, i.e., reduces people to a number.
We care more about Frodo than Conan the Barbarian, yet they both hack and slash their enemies. There is a difference.
quote:We care more about Frodo than Conan the Barbarian, yet they both hack and slash their enemies.
I wouldn't say Frodo was a hack-and-slash character. True of the other characters in The Lord of the Rings, most of them, but not of Frodo. A little as the story progresses, then he gradually drops it and by the end he wasn't doing it at all while it went on around him...
Posts: 8809 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by babooher: I think that's a false assessment. An agent wants something that can sell. If you go to him without a track record and only have the one thing by which to be judged, expect a quick judgement.
But it's the perception that (in my observation) most critters have, and are giving to writers who don't yet know their own voice well enough to reject bad crits. So, as the OP said -- works that rightfully take time to get "moving" (by the current definition of a 'hook') have no chance. Shouldn't agents recognise when a book needs to start in low gear, rather than expecting 'em all to do 0 to 60 in 6 lines flat?
I remember when I read Titus Groan, noting that it was about 20 pages before anything 'happened'. Would such a book be published today, if it didn't already have a track record from the past?
Posts: 782 | Registered: Dec 2010
| IP: Logged |
quote:John Gardner also has a critically disapproving view of convention-based genre that largely fills the commercial fiction market. He calls it "trash fiction." If there's a demand for it and people read it, it's all good, as far as I'm concerned, because one reader's trash is another reader's pastime. At least they read. Too many folk don't read.
I think you oversimplify John Gardner's take on genre fiction. I'm not sure how much of his work you have read, but if you did, you might review what he had to say. He talked a lot about genre-blending as a source of innovation, including SF and comics. Any artistic medium can be good. He also named academic snobbery and "literary in-breeding" for what they are.
There's more to judging a work than the sheer numbers of people buying it. Writing morally relativistic fiction leaves the author with little more material than a series of empty thrills and two-dimensional characters.
I seriously doubt you intended to make the argument, but there's high demand for pornography, gratuitous violence and various depictions of dehumanization for its own sake. And that stuff is trash because it dehumanizes, i.e., reduces people to a number.
We care more about Frodo than Conan the Barbarian, yet they both hack and slash their enemies. There is a difference.
I've read several criticism articles and several of Gardner's books. I understand his points but disagree that the "trash fiction" he singles out as commericially oriented lacks literary merits. I don't per se mean gratuitous porn or violence narratives nor empty and vacuous narratives. I mean and I believe Gardner means narratives that lack for artful character, setting, complication, emotion, and meaning development and outcome satisfaction: works that are underrealized and underdeveloped that nonethess are published prematurely.
Posts: 6037 | Registered: Jun 2008
| IP: Logged |
posted
I've read Titus Groan, 1946, and the Mervyn Peake Gormenghast trilogy. It was recommended to me by a similarly passionate reader, who also recommended Julian May's writing, which I also devoured. WorldCat indexes 817 libraries worldwide holding copies of Titus Groan. Strong representation compared with The Golden Torc by Julian May, 1982, at 521 library copies worldwide. But not very strong compared with J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit, or, There and Back Again, 1937, at 4,231 libraries worldwide.
Posts: 6037 | Registered: Jun 2008
| IP: Logged |
posted
extrinsic: That's an entirely different characterization of Gardner's viewpoint than you made earlier. And there is much more to discover.
I recommend anyone interested read The Art of Fiction for themselves and OSC's Character and Viewpoint for themselves as well. Also, there is a wonderful letter from Hemingway to F. Scott Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald has asked Hemingway for his opinion on Tender is the Night. Lots of good advice can be gleaned from the letter.
Posts: 130 | Registered: Aug 2012
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Reziac:-- works that rightfully take time to get "moving" (by the current definition of a 'hook') have no chance. Shouldn't agents recognise when a book needs to start in low gear, rather than expecting 'em all to do 0 to 60 in 6 lines flat?
Agents come in as many shades as definitions of "hook." At one extreme are agents who want only a minor cue within a few hundred words that evokes curiosity and empathy. At the other extreme are agents who want a knock-down headlock in ten words or less. Most agents fall between extremes, simply because a diverse portfolio is a best business practice, though specializing in genres that passionately interest them, and since they know those genres' conventions and audiences and markets and their personnel more intimately than genres they don't represent as often.
quote:Originally posted by kmsf: extrinsic: That's an entirely different characterization of Gardner's viewpoint than you made earlier. And there is much more to discover.
If anything, more detailed but not differently characterized, in my estimation. Gardner is fairly loose with his definition of "trash fiction" in The Art of Fiction, changing it to suit a point of the moment, persuasively, perhaps, using rhetoric's repetition, substitution, and amplification scheme as a method.
Posts: 6037 | Registered: Jun 2008
| IP: Logged |
posted
Well, it is my hope that anyone interested in writing good fiction - meaningful, truthful, and moving stories - will read Gardner and others in their own words.
Posts: 130 | Registered: Aug 2012
| IP: Logged |
posted
I've read Gardner. Try Aristotle, Virgil, Gustav Freytag, Vladimir Propp, Percy Lubbock, E.M. Forester, Roland Barthes, Norman Friedman, Seymour Chatman, Damon Knight, to name a few. I don't per se agree or disagree with any one in particular, though each has nuggets and gems and each may in an area or two reciprocally oppose another.
Psychic distance and narrative distance are one area I find Gardner a bit shy on. Though psychic distance overlaps with narrative distance, they are different to greater degrees than Gardner relates in The Art of Fiction. Seymour Chatman emphasizes narrative distance in Story and Discourse, though, again, he's a bit shy of its full realization. David King's essay on narrative distance was for me most enlightening on the several topics of distance features: "Decoding Narrative Distance". I disagree with King on first person not having much, if any, narrative distance control, though.
Gardner and Chatman were contemporaries and participated in the millennia-old poetics theory discussion begun by Aristotle, mostly claiming subtly differing opinions, positions, and terminology about similar writing and narrative theory topics. I don't take any one viewpoint espoused by any poetics theorist at face value or as singularly gospel. I like a cornucopia I can glean greater understanding from, comparing and contrasting many differing viewpoints on topics, and setting my own self-imposed writing guidelines. And I'm working on my own unique contributions to the poetics conversation.
quote:Originally posted by kmsf: We care more about Frodo than Conan the Barbarian, yet they both hack and slash their enemies. There is a difference. [/QB]
Personally, I rather prefer Conan. To each their own.
I find the most satisfaction from books where the author manages to weave their thoughts so skillfully into the story that you don't even notice them. Not until you finish the book and find yourself pondering something in it several days later.
As in so many other things, Mark Twain is one writer that I revere in this regard. While much of his work (e.g. Letters From Earth) is heavy handed, he acheived remarkable success in blending the author's voice into the weave of the character's existence.
For example, in Huckleberry Finn his personal disdain for the anti-intellectual bias of antebellum culture, and his poignant descriptions dueling, feuding, slave punishment, etc. reveal the innate savagery of a people who, in their own eyes, represented the pinnacle of civilization. He unveils the hypocrisy of their lives while showing that they were, at heart, no worse and no better than any other people. Which forces us to re-examine our own preconsidered attitudes.
His presentations are developed with the graceful touch of a true master. I can only hope to approach his level of skill someday before I die.
The beautiful thing about fiction like that, Twain's and that of other people, is that it provokes thinking without *requiring* it. Stories like that make it impossible for a reader not to think. I can't imagine that a story like that will ever go out of fashion.
Posts: 884 | Registered: Feb 2012
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by extrinsic: I've read Titus Groan, 1946, and the Mervyn Peake Gormenghast trilogy. It was recommended to me by a similarly passionate reader, who also recommended Julian May's writing, which I also devoured. WorldCat indexes 817 libraries worldwide holding copies of Titus Groan. Strong representation compared with The Golden Torc by Julian May, 1982, at 521 library copies worldwide. But not very strong compared with J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit, or, There and Back Again, 1937, at 4,231 libraries worldwide.
I've read both sets of books (that is, Peake's and May's), and I have to say that for my part, I'm only likely to reread Julian May's work.
Posts: 8826 | Registered: A Long Time Ago!
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by babooher: Is there a place for a slower story that has "lots" of exposition on politics, religion, or a detailed look at a law?
I think what "exposition" means to writers and how meanings may differ from writer to writer holds promise for realizing political, religious, or legal commentary narratives. "Exposition" a century and a half ago meant introductions. Since many opening acts' expositions tended toward low tension backstory summarization and explanation, the term came to mean what many writers today mean; that is, detailed explication of low tension content.
John Grisham writes legal thrillers. His most recent novel, The Confession opens dramatically, but narrative distance is on the remote side and stays that way. The topic or idea (theme) of a state execution of an innocent man is emphasized over character and setting emphasis, plot is still in the foreground, and milieu emphasis following idea closely. Grisham fairly strongly set the bar high for legal thrillers with legal commentary.
Though controversial, Dan Brown writes religious thrillers. New religious commentary franchises come along every once in a while.
Political thrillers are fairly numerous. See Wikipedia topic Political Thriller for a breakdown of popular titles.
Political, religious, legal thrillers are challenging to write, requiring foreground drama and tangible action to package persuasive commentary.
Posts: 6037 | Registered: Jun 2008
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury: I've read both sets of books (that is, Peake's and May's), and I have to say that for my part, I'm only likely to reread Julian May's work.
I might sample both once more in this writer's lifetime.
Posts: 6037 | Registered: Jun 2008
| IP: Logged |
posted
I suppose much of my dislike of some classical works I've read comes from the difficult translations and styles or mostly the topics and content. For example, I find Plato 's republic to be mostly garbage ideologically (my opinion). Put differently, if they were modern well-written stories on the same topics, I wouldn't be interested enough to pick them up.
Posts: 164 | Registered: Jun 2013
| IP: Logged |
posted
I can only speak from the experience of a story I have been trying to sell for some time.
Briefly, the story is written from the POV of a character with extreme religious views. It follows his noting of a family celebrating in what he feels is heathenish fashion, with a particular young girl who he feels is dressed inappropriately.
He decides he is going to teach them a lesson and sets out to purchase a special type of gun that communicates with nanites in a person's body to give them super-marksman powers (the antagonist whose POV the story is written in believes "God would not want him to miss"). The story follows his purchase of the gun and the events that transpire between him, the gun itself, and the girl that is his target. Throughout the story touches on the idea of the source of the antagonist's (misguided) religious belief.
The story is what I presented to the guest blog editor at Scientific American that got me a role as a guest contributor there. It has received more personal rejections than any I have submitted(4), made it to the final rounds/out of the slush pile more than any story I have submitted to market. The latest personal rejection from a pro market said:
quote:Thank you for submitting "Platinum Blonde." It is well-written and had some very strong moments but isn't quite right for [us]. Best wishes placing it elsewhere.
I discussed this story with one critiquer, and I told them I thought it was the subject matter that was making this story hard to sell, but I also thought the quality was pro level or close to it. They agreed on both counts.
So I've been struggling with this question, is it possible to publish a story that hedges this close to some taboo/religiously or politically sensitive topics? Or is this particular story not as good as I think it is, and that may be the real reason it isn't finding a home has nothing to do with the subject matter?
Its a tough question to answer. My personal feeling at this point is that the fiction market here favors readers who are more interested in escaping from real world issues (we are so inundated by the media these days) than engaging with it through fiction.
Posts: 1043 | Registered: Jul 2010
| IP: Logged |
posted
Osiris, you're touching on some ideas that have bothered me and for which I have few answers.
Here's what I know. There are no taboos anymore, not global taboos. Media has separated into tribes. What's taboo at HuffPo is different from what's taboo at RedState. If you want to sell to either of these venues you'd better match the ethos/mythos/culture/worldview of that tribe.
But what is the political/religious worldview of Asimov's/F&FS/Analog. I haven't read them enough to know. I would imagine the largest publications try to steer clear of politics/religion that might offend (because they want a large audience that has liberals and conservatives). Increasingly that's hard to do. The market is fragmenting and will continue to do so.
If your story is politically/religiously offensive to some, you just need to find a market where it's not.
Finding that market may be hard, but I'm guessing it exists.
Posts: 222 | Registered: Jan 2013
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury: I've read both sets of books (that is, Peake's and May's), and I have to say that for my part, I'm only likely to reread Julian May's work.
I've read Peake twice, which is peculiar even to me because it's not the sort of thing I'd normally pick up. -- And then I thought of Ellen Kushner's Swordspoint, and I take it back; apparently once this sort gets my attention, I love it.
I've peered at May's stuff a few times but it's never caught me enough to read any.
In the spirit of fairness I just pulled a couple Mays from the electronic junkpile and gave 'em a look like I was hunting something to read... and they still don't. I don't know about the content but the style is too as-you-know-Bob, far as I looked, which annoys me. (And what I looked at were in 1st person, which has to be better-written than the average 3rd if it's going to get past my natural dislike.)
Well, it's a good thing authors and agents are a spectrum, eh?
But I think that was some of my point. To be good at choosing marketable fiction of more than one specific type, the agent (and therefore their precursor, the critter) needs to grok that not every story starts in mid-emergency.
Posts: 782 | Registered: Dec 2010
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Osiris: My personal feeling at this point is that the fiction market here favors readers who are more interested in escaping from real world issues (we are so inundated by the media these days) than engaging with it through fiction.
That would be me. I'm not even vaguely interested in reading about the Real World[TM] in fiction. I don't want to be lectured or enlightened or engaged by Mundania. I just want to be somewhere else for a few hours.
I can think of a few authors who started out writing about somewhere else, but over time have inserted more and more politically-correct commentary on Real World[TM] issue (sometimes disguised as 'character development' across a series), and the effect on me is that I've gradually stopped reading them. Posts: 782 | Registered: Dec 2010
| IP: Logged |
I feel from your description that the story is overwhelmed by the message. The method for expressing the message is too direct for audiences generally. You are up against a dilemma of fiction writing; that is, using a fictional construct to convey a "Noble Lie." Plato is credited with distinguishing a noble lie as that which is intended to foster social harmony or to promote and further an agenda. Religion is often labeled a Noble Lie, for example. Socially, politically, legally convenient fictions often too are Noble Lies. The Noble Lie is also sometimes called pious fiction.
Repackaging what I glean from your story description might diminish the piety of the message, maybe through moral ambiguity on the part of at least the narrator, maybe from the existential ambiguity of learning the lesson, maybe from the irony of a zealously pious man self-exposed as frail, flawed, self-serving, and revealing a greater meaning. I favor the latter. It affords opportunity for an ending twist or major turn, peripeteia in Greek vernacular, from an appreciable anagnorisis (discovery) causing a profound reversal.
For example, the shooter-antagonist discovers after he believes he succeeded in his mission that he's the actual evil villain, sort of like Scrooge does in Charles Dicken's A Christmas Carol, but through his own agency rather than the literal ghosts, the figurative symbols of social conscience ghosts of Christmas. However, that approach might require the antagonist to be the viewpoint character and maybe the protagonist. His transformation would then be center stage in the denouement act.
Perhaps he sees firsthand the tragic consequences of his noble villainry. In any regard, fostering reader empathy with him probably means his victims must be equal or greater villains than he is. They would deserve his punishment. But in him being the hand of vigilante justice he discovers he has taken away both their right to meaningfully redeem themselves and stolen from them their potential to meaningfully contribute to society. His journey might be sparked by his acts first, then he would become aware of his errors. Then he would attempt to redress them but nonetheless be punished for them.
Romanticism's enduring convention of poetic justice appeals to audiences, yet the punishment must fit the selfish injustice and the reward fit the noble self-sacrifice according to the society's value systems. So that citizens may feel safe in an unsafe world, poetic justice appeals.
Fiction, like its predecessor folktales, serves an important social function. Informing, cautioning, instructing, correcting, and controlling antisocial behaviors are fundamental social functions literature fulfills; however, too heavy-handed and limited entertainment or emotional stimuli narrative foregrounds the message and evokes resistance to it at the expense of persuasion.
Escaping from real-world issues may artfully parallel otherwise meaningful explorations of real-world issues. The ideal is to package the message persuasively. Readers want to cope with issues impacting their lives. Fiction provides a safe medium to do that. Actually, I believe, that is a cognitive dissonance that a writer reconciles for readers; that is, experimenting, through fiction, with ways to manage coping with life's struggles.
Then there's a whole other literature paradigm that avoids poetic justice altogether. Mere portrayal of the unique, complicated lives of entertaining, intriguing, and stimulating persons. I favor that. I'm too old to teach this dog many more new tricks.
quote:Originally posted by Osiris: [QUOTE]Originally posted by extrinsic: [qb]I feel from your description that the story is overwhelmed by the message.
It may be, it is hard for me to judge as the author of the work. I can say that it has been critiqued by many and no one said the message was overwhelming the story. My description may be giving the impression because I've boiled it down to that.
quote:...maybe from the irony of a zealously pious man self-exposed as frail, flawed, self-serving, and revealing a greater meaning.
I believe the way the story goes can be described as this. What happens essentially is he fails at his task due to the actions of the gun's AI. His last thought as he sees the inevitable turn of events and loss of control over the situation is ironic in that he declares that he is not ready to be a martyr, which contradicts his supposed religious convictions. I'm still too novice to feel sure that I've pulled off the story with complete success, but I do feel that I have based on feedback I've received.
I do agree that a too-heavy-handed approach is not appropriate, and it is something I try to be cognizant of when writing stories with a message.
If anyone would be interested in reading it and giving their impression re: is the message too strong, I would not mind at all sharing it.
Posts: 1043 | Registered: Jul 2010
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Osiris: My personal feeling at this point is that the fiction market here favors readers who are more interested in escaping from real world issues (we are so inundated by the media these days) than engaging with it through fiction.
That would be me. I'm not even vaguely interested in reading about the Real World[TM] in fiction. I don't want to be lectured or enlightened or engaged by Mundania. I just want to be somewhere else for a few hours.
I can think of a few authors who started out writing about somewhere else, but over time have inserted more and more politically-correct commentary on Real World[TM] issue (sometimes disguised as 'character development' across a series), and the effect on me is that I've gradually stopped reading them.
I'm perfectly fine with that, I too sometimes feel this way. But sometimes, I do want a story that engages with or relates to the real-world. I've heard often that literature from Latin America, for example, has much more of a willingness to engage with political/social/moral issues, and I've also seen it more often in the literature of the Middle East. I just wonder why America seems to differ from much of the rest of the world.
Posts: 1043 | Registered: Jul 2010
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Osiris: If anyone would be interested in reading it and giving their impression re: is the message too strong, I would not mind at all sharing it.
I'm curious but too busy for the next several weeks to take a look now. Maybe. I'll let you know.
Posts: 6037 | Registered: Jun 2008
| IP: Logged |
quote:Originally posted by Osiris: I just wonder why America seems to differ from much of the rest of the world.
Several significant differences literature enjoys in the U.S. and parts of the U.K. are less censorship, if any, more commercial motivation, and a diversified marketplace culture. Many writers abroad I correspond with bemoan a general lack of home country agents, publishers, and home country writers writing in their genres.
Whether sad or a sign of cultural differences, fiction is not as pervasive in many cultures as in the U.S. Muslim countries, for example, largely forbid fiction. Exceptions are allowed but they are challenging to accommodate. The old Soviet Union also censored writers. Maybe Russian writers have yet to trust their newly-won creative liberties and relearn how to write without incorporating Soviet propoganda and political rhetoric. Far Eastern writers tend to rehash the same premises and narratives that were popular milennia ago. Indian writers' cultures are a bit inaccessible to Western readers. Latin American writers tend to reify their basic cultural values as well, one of which is a patriotic paradigm idolizing religion, family, and nation, in that order, over individualism. U.S. writers abandoned that paradigm soon after the Revolutionary war, but not fully until the waning years of the nineteenth century. Canadian writers tend toward victimism, though a nationwide campaign attempts to create a more diverse native Canadian literary identity.
The U.S. and Britain have been in a tug of war for literary culture supremacy since Herman Melville established a uniquely U.S. literary tradition that for a time reigned supreme over the global literary culture. That competition is a driving force for literary innovation, England had been dominant since Shakespeare at least. France at times acts like it is in the vanguard from that country's writers tending to experiment with the avant garde. Italy moves in and out of the mix, though Shakespeare's at times sarcastic poetry fairly well defined Italian literature culture's shortcomings as too pretty, too caught up in the beauty of language and amorous romance expressions, and insufficiently frank, and stuck there. Germany, now there's a literary culture caught up in Teutonic pride. Of course, those are gross generalizations, but each country has a literary identity that distinguishes it from others'.
In other words, U.S. literary culture is as different from the rest of the world as each country's is different from the rest of the world. What marks U.S. literary culture as distinct from the rest of the world I suppose is the diversity of it, in part from how censorship doesn't control the culture, in part from the liberties a lack of censorship allows writers, and in part from how societal, economic, and technological forces shape the culture.
quote:Originally posted by Kathleen Dalton Woodbury: Is TITUS GROAN being read very much these days?
Great book with memorable characters and setting and mood. I still consider it and its sequel(s) one of the fantasy genres "must-reads". It has remained in print for decades which, in itself, says something.
Anyway, I believe all my favorite stories have something to teach, something that resonates with the reader on a personal level--regardless of whether I agree or disagree, like or dislike it. For example, the LOTR has both the hero Aragorn who earns his inheritance through much work, suffering, and dedication and, contrarily the hero Frodo who saves the world and in so doing it loses it for himself.
I am more prone to enjoy, and write of, stories with these "life lessons" that have a more universal relevance than stories that proselytize an author's personal political, religious/anti-religious, societal point of view.
Respectfully, Dr. Bob
Posts: 1475 | Registered: Aug 2010
| IP: Logged |
posted
I've got to admit: I haven't reread the Gormenghast books in some time, even though I did buy a new edition a few years aback. (I reread The Lord of the Rings just about every year---in fact, I'm coming off it right now.)
Someone above mentioned Julian May's The Golden Torc---I haven't reread that series that it's a part of since 'round the time it came out, only thumbed through it a couple of times---but I remain extraordinarily impressed by some of the things in it, particularly how May made use of the song "Londonderry Air"...
Posts: 8809 | Registered: Aug 2005
| IP: Logged |
Printer-friendly view of this topic
![[Frown]](frown.gif)
