posted
Closing distance is the most challenging of creative writing methods writers struggle with until they become second nature. Closing distance and preserving the reading spell methods separate published writers from unpublished writers.
Closing distance between reader and narrative artfully develops appeal, voice, craft, and style in an imitation of an illusion of reality within a narrative's events, moments, places, situations (settings), and personas (characters and narrator) through a single persona's viewpoint at any given moment. The single persona may be a narrator, a character, or one persona as both.
Narrative distance is the degree of distance between narrator and character viewpoint from either's voice and perspective. Remote distance estranges character viewpoint for dominant narrator viewpoint. Close narrative distance estranges narrator viewpoint for dominant character viewpoint. Close narrative distance generally is closest to a character viewpoint and, therefore, closest to a narrative's imitation of an illusion of reality.
More remote narrative distance may come from, instead of character or narrator viewpoint, an implied writer or real writer viewpoint. However, not necessarily from a remote aesthetic distance. Readers may close aesthetic distance with an implied writer or even a real writer's viewpoint.
Aesthetic distance is the degree a reader feels part of, bystander or participant in an imitated illusion of reality.
A character viewpoint, not an overall narrative point of view, is how a character individually perceives antagonizing events in dramatic settings involving at least the viewpoint character, if not other influential characters. The character's sensory perceptions and reactions to those stimuli through thoughts reflected by a narrator is a narrative point of view overall.
A character viewpoint is one perspective, one access through and from one character's perceptions of a narrative's or scene's events, settings, and personas. A viewpoint includes sights, sounds, touches, smells, and tastes and reactions to them. The reactions are physical actions, dramatic actions, thoughts, emotional feelings, evaluations, and judgments responses based upon social codes, value systems, and moral attitudes.
A narrative centered on a single viewpoint character stays close to, keeps in touch with the viewpoint character from the viewpoint character's perspective, from the inside looking out, as though the character is an audiovisual camera recorder mounted on the forehead, able to receive and process external and internal stimuli and responses and thought actions and reactions.
A narrative with an ensemble cast switches from character viewpoint to character viewpoint, having closest narrative distance to a single viewpoint character. However, narrative distance at times opens to narrator viewpoint for transitions between viewpoint characters, settings, and events.
Though those two approaches above are the primary ones, other distance closing approaches also appear across the literary opus.
quote: Though those two approaches above are the primary ones, other distance closing approaches also appear across the literary opus.
I've mentioned this before, but I'll go ahead and mention it again.
Extrinsic, I've pointed out several times before that you remind me of one of my professors in grad school. But there's a problem with that. My professor hated genre writing. Fantasy, science fiction, romance, and all their different subgenres. Hated them, hated them, hated them.
And I want to point that out again now because, honesty, I don't imagine you as actually being a genre writer, or a genre reader. I simply cannot imagine you enjoying Harry Potter, or True Blood, or Eragon, or writing books of that caliber.
I know some people here are sensitive to categories, but I'm not. There's genre writing, there's literary writing. Whenever you go into a commercial endeavor, it's a good idea to identify your audience, or potential customers. You don't try and sell Jose Saramango's "Blindness", or Cormac McCarthy's "No Country For Old Men" to Anne Rice and Dan Brown readers. And vice versa. Yeah, there's some cross reading going on, but I think it's extremely limited. Who goes to a Dan Brown novel expecting decent writing? What literary reader in their right mind would say Author EL James' "50 Shades of Grey" is well written? The big joke in English academia is how terrible a writer Stephen King is, and it's even more humorous that he actually wrote a How To Write companion book.
Meticulous attention to language is a very literary view to writing. And there's nothing wrong with that, until you're trying to publish. Commercial fiction is simply trying to tell a good story. Genre readers will say Tom Clancy is a brilliant writer, but not academic readers. Comparing Tom Clancy and Carson McCuller in terms of quality of writing will probably get you a beat down in academia.
So though posts like this are interesting, I can't help but wonder if they're counter productive to actually publishing genre fiction, where plot, and crafting a page turner, takes (supreme) precedence over language and dialog and characterization.
Perhaps this is where you and my professor differ. My professor would take published genre fiction and totally rip apart the prose, detailing all of the shortcomings. I know this because I tried to get him to read some Hugo and Neubla award winning fiction, among them Elizabeth Moon's "Speed of Dark", which I thought was incredibly written. He'd already read Ursuala K LeGuin's "Left Hand of Darkness" at some point, probably because of its LGBT themes, and he's a gay writer. But again, he thought it was mediocre writing, which is understandable when he holds everything up to Faulkner and Gertrude Stein and James Joyce. Another professor of mine back in the late 90s was derisive of Douglas Adams' "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy", which totally surprised me at the time. I mean, it's Douglas Adams, a totally brilliant writer.
But case in point, most genre readers and writers hold up Tolkien as one of the best writers of the English language. But LOTR is almost never on any reading lists in English departments. Really, up until the movies came out, Tolkien was basically read by nerds. LOTR is really long, the pacing is prodding, and there's a ton of characters with strange names. Tolkien was never spoken of in the same breath as Faulkner, though they were both writing and publishing around the same time. Horror aficionados know H.P. Lovecraft, but everyone knows Edgar Allen Poe, because you can't get out of high school without reading at least one of his short stories or poems.
I don't want to say that genre readers are dumb, but I do think, if we were to compare them to movie goers, that they'd choose "Ironman" over "Boy A", two movies that came out in 2008. They'd choose something that's fun and exciting and easy to digest, over something that's complicated and foreign and a downer.
And maybe it's just my opinion, but I think genre writers focusing too much on language, considering their target audience, are shooting themselves in the foot. The writing will be more literary, but less readable.
Posts: 1216 | Registered: Nov 2011
| IP: Logged |
posted
One major difference between me and your English professor is I take no high brow approach to literature. Everything and anything within my reach regardless of genre, sensibility, or aesthetic is fair entertainment reading and reading and writing study. My graduate school English creative writing concentration folk allowed that they didn't know how to interpret convention-based genre, my undergraduate writing programs too. However, they also allowed any difference has no bearing on which or whatever genre or genres a writer chooses. So long as the writing suits the subject and each the other, and the opportune occasion and the audience (Rhetoric: Decoum).
The most recent edition of The Writer's Chronicle, March/April 2014, has an essay by Chris Gaveler, a convention-based genre literature professor at Washington and Lee University, Virginia. Titled "Is and Isn't: Literary Upheavals in the Post-Real Landscape," the essay covers the very issues you find contrary to engaging genre fiction, its assorted conventions and aesthetics and exclusions of so-called literary features. Gaveler surveys the literary history of recent modern to contemporary genre, including romance, horror, science fiction, fantasy, mystery, and thriller, notably absent western, compared and contrasted to this notional literary fiction genre premise.
Gaveler makes a few claims I object to. He claims H.G. Wells first initiated science fiction. Mary Shelly distinctly preceded him, and others back into the literary opus. Another claim he makes with which I most firmly disagree, and disagree with you, is that convention-based genre is somehow stylistically or aesthetically apart from or inferior to literary fiction or that literary fiction more artfully emphasizes any given convention that convention-based genre doesn't: character emphasis over event (plot) emphasis or theme emphasis or setting emphasis, etc.
About the only distinction of note for any genre is how readers receive whatever. From that reception, marketplace, publishing, and literary cultures categorize genre for appeals to potential target audiences, not the other way around. The conversation of what's what originates from readers.
I have not recently read a fantasy or science fiction or any convention-based genre narrative that lacks for an artful proportion of literary fiction qualities. The opposite is, in fact, my conclusion. The many I have read throughout my life that I recall contain the same literary features as this so-called literary fiction: poetic methods of persuasion, metaphor and ample other rhetorical tropes and schemes, artful language, and timely and opportune audience appeals.
I don't generally distinguish the categories I read so much as the overall and discernible minutia appeals of what at the moment I read.
Of note, though, Gaveler's essay promotes a term for the manifold crossovers between convention-based genre and this notion of literary fiction. He cites a term coined in 1983 by Rudy Rucker, a fantastical fiction writer, that for me sweeps across the clutter of genre categories: "Transrealism."
Transrealism uses the fantastical motifs of convention-based genre to portray the immediate illusion of reality complication moments the human condition encounters. An exquisite term, Transrealism is distilling out of the cultural aether as a distinctive literary movement that makes a significant departure from those that came before. At last, an ascendent cultural innovation to take the place of Postmodernism's pitifully unanswered questions of and challenges to presupposed notions of propriety. Arguably but not very successfully I don't imagine, Mary Shelly's Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus is decidedly Transrealism. Farther back in time, certainly, The Homeric Cycle is as well.
In my final analysis, genre is only relevant in so far as the target audience makes it so. Otherwise, one kernel holds true: Caroline Gordon expresses it somewhat succintly; "Since Stephen Crane's time all serious writers have concentrated on the effort of rendering individual scenes more vivid." (Booth, The Rhetoric of Fiction, p 22) In other words, portraying, creating an immersing imitation illusion of reality regardless of fantastical motifs. Though I disagree Crane was first. Arguably, Jane Austen had at least an early focus, if not others prior to her, of creating vivid scenes.
posted
Just to get the fire really going, let me add my bit. What I detest are the writers who make use of first person viewpoints to make their stories hyper intimate and personal, as if the reader were reading someone's personal hidden journal.
Talk about closing the distance! Any closer and the reader would be arrested for assault.
I am presently writing two books--two because they're both in my head and are bugging me so I'm getting them down on paper so I can maintain sanity. One book is far ahead of the other, but no matter.
I REFUSE to write either in first person because for some reason doing so feels cheap, like it’s the easy way.
(Two examples are "Hunger Games", and the acclaimed, "To Kill a Mockingbird.")
I'm likely stupid for not taking the simple road, but maybe I’m also stubborn. I want to write exceptionally without use of cheap crutches.
It's even harder to make a story third person with more than one major POV character. There's where the real business is, where the soldiers battle.
Posts: 92 | Registered: Dec 2013
| IP: Logged |
posted
First person is by default the closest narrative distance. However, not necessarily the closest aesthetic distance. First person automatically alienates a portion of readers' sensibilities. Contrarily, a large portion of readers favor the closeness of first person. An axis for me is the degree of self-involvement a first person narrator-character has in the action.
I favor third person. I also favor first-person narratives that portray another character in protagonist position, and in so doing reveals as much, if not more, about the narrator as the subject character. That narrative point of view and character viewpoint develops a Specimen shape in Jerome Stern's vernacular. The first-person narrator is the object character, camera-like. The Specimen is the subject character, portrait-like. Either or another, or other characters or all are the influence characters partly, influentially antagonizing the subject character's actions, with the subject character's actions predominately self-antagonisms.
First person is an ideal narrative voice for expressing a subjective viewpoint; third person's inherent objectivity recommending it for a default trustworthiness, first person's recommending it for artful unreliability. However, neither objectivity or subjectivity is assured by only the simple narrative voice. Many artful third-person narratives are subjective and unreliable; many artful first-person narratives are objective and reliable.
First person is actually more challenging to write than third person because of first's inherent subjectivity and unreliableness, perhaps unintentional or inapprorpiate untrustworthiness that spoils willing suspension of disbelief.
In any case, overly involved narrators spoil a narrative for me. Perhaps Suzanne Collins' Hunger Games is a little too self-involved, mostly from Everdeen's narratorial asides addressed directly to readers as invisible bystanders of the action. But that conspiratorial characteristic appeals to the target audience.
Third person is the narrative voice for an ensemble cast. Multiple viewpoint characters is nearly impossible to manage masterfully in first-person overall narrative voice. Though I've read several model narratives that manage it artfully.
In order to manage the magic mischiefs of multiple viewpoint characters, some distance closing compromises are indicated. First and foremost for managing an ensemble cast is an overall dramatic complication and outcome, and related individual dramatic complications for each viewpoint character. Tom Clancy's The Sum of All Fears manages multiple viewpoint characters quite masterfully.
posted
I think many writers believe first person is easiest, but it tends to suffer from what we discussed before, author surrogacy. But not in an intended way. First person characters are too often the author writing him/herself in the work in a way that gives the writing that diary, or hidden journal, feel.
This doesn't have to be a bad thing, as long as it's what you're specifically going for. In school, we called it 'Confessional Fiction'. I did a bit of that and got some positive comments on it, and when I want to write in that vein again, I'll go back to it. It definitely has its adherents.
But when I'm trying to craft an imaginary world, third person is what I stick to to create a distance between me and the characters. And really, it wasn't until fairly recently that I feel I've become competent at writing third person narratives. My previous efforts suffered from author surrogacy when I didn't mean them to or want them to. I found, though, that a way to escape this common trap many writers fall into is to write a POV that's relatively different from yourself.
You can't take it too far as it probably won't be believable (unless you do a ton of research, and I'm definitely not that type of writer). This is where I personally believe having a wide range of different individuals in your life comes in handy. You don't have to do research, but you do have to step outside of your comfort zone often enough to get to know people intimately enough to be able to forge their characters with your intended project on the page.
I haven't read the "Hunger Games", but I was surprised at how disappointing I found the first person narrator in the last books I read in which the perspective was employed. Ernest Cline's "Ready Player One" was basically a long description of 80s culture through a teenaged narrator which got tedious before half the book was completed. I can't say I got to know the character beyond the fact that he inexplicably really loved a decade he wasn't even born in.
Though I didn't exactly enjoy the book, Ann Leck's "Ancillary Justice" did a good job of creating the feel of a genuine character with her first person narrator. Of course, that character was an android that was mostly devoid of emotions, which isn't the more engaging prose to read.
There is this short story I read by Ted Chiang titled, "Understand", which pulled off a first person quite well.
And of course, one of my favorite scifi stories, a classic that's been emulated (ripped off) by other writers for decades:
quote: Limp, the body of Gorrister hung from the pink palette; unsupported—hanging high above us in the computer chamber; and it did not shiver in the chill, oily breeze that blew eternally through the main cavern. The body hung head down, attached to the underside of the palette by the sole of its right foot. It had been drained of blood through a precise incision made from ear to ear under the lantern jaw. There was no blood on the reflective surface of the metal floor.
posted
Citing attribution and source for a work under copyright or not is a duty, even if the quantity cited is less than Hatrack's thirteen lines fragment policy.
Ellison, Harlan. "I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream." If: Worlds of Science Fiction. 1967.
Posts: 6037 | Registered: Jun 2008
| IP: Logged |
posted
Denevius, was your professor American? He seems to have the annoying habit of American literary elitists who want to build ghettos for the barely literate rabble. Europeans, aside from a fetish for disliking American work, seem to have less propensity for this kind of categorizing.
As for his dismissal of award winning books, I'd like to appropriate and paraphrase the film reviewers from CinemaSins. "No book is without sin." If you want to rip a book to shreds, it can be ripped to shreds.
Posts: 823 | Registered: May 2009
| IP: Logged |
posted
He was actually an extremely nice guy, if a bit absentminded. But English academia's disregard for non-literary fiction is well documented. And the general population's dislike for literary fiction is widely evident in best selling lists.
I don't consider genre fiction inferior, but I do think literary authors and genre authors have different aspirations. And the reason why a case can be made that literary writing is a superior writing form is because it mainly concerns itself with what makes a book: the written language. This is why a book like "Finnegan's Wake" can be considered one of the greatest novels in the English language, even though hardly anyone has actually read it. It's almost completely unreadable, but it does something, so I'm told, quite brilliant with prose.
I had a similar discussion with a genre writer ten years ago, and she said that she doesn't consider herself a writer, she considers herself a storyteller. I've heard this repeated since by different genre writers, and I actually think it's quite profound. I'm not a fan of Harry Potter, and I only read the first book, but it was a good story. Dragonlance books are good stories. I haven't read "Twilight", or "50 Shades of Grey", but I think they all fall under the same category as good of stories.
But another girl I knew said it best. When Harry Potter fever was really raging, she read all of the books as soon as they came out in a matter of days. However, later on, she tried to re-read one of them, and she found she couldn't. Beyond the story, the writing itself is pretty bland and uninspired.
A book like "Catch 22" is so rich and complicated that you can probably read it a dozen times and find whole new worlds you never saw before. And this isn't to say that no one enjoys re-reading genre fiction. But I think that the pull of it is "What happens next?" Once you know what happened next, then you're left with the actual writing, and too often that is sorely lacking in genre fiction because it was never too important to begin with.
Language, dialog, and complicated characterization are the province of literary fiction. Praise Tolkien, but let's not say that the characters in LOTR are complicated, or the dialog is rich and varied. I actually just finished re-reading "The Hobbit", and it sounds like a guy telling me a story in the mold of oral tradition. The speaker adds his two cents, he hints about the future, he dips in and out of characters' heads when needed to manipulate the reader to greater tension. But it definitely reads like a guy telling you a story. The language is very straight-forward and very accessible.
David Foster Wallace's "Infinite Jest" does not read like a guy telling you a story.
Posts: 1216 | Registered: Nov 2011
| IP: Logged |
posted
The academic literary elitist culture has eroded appreciably in recent years. More and more humanities and English academia recently embrace the opus of literature, regardless of genre.
A survey of university and college course catalogs shows particular focus on the assorted convention-based genre categories: science fiction, fantasy, horror, romance, mystery, thriller, and western. Every liberal arts program I've surveyed offers at least one focused English literature genre category curriculum or course, not to mention independent study projects. Other courses may survey at least one under a special heading along with other comparables and contrasts.
Basic studies courses, in particular freshman composition courses, anymore prompt individual, focused curriculum subject matter selection for any of the four core composition metagenre papers: perfomance (creative writing), research (analysis), inquiry (problem analysis and answer), argumentation (declamation). If a student is on an engineering track, for example, the papers are prompted to be related, as well, the discipline's style manual is required to be followed. Not just humanties' MLA requirement, but Chicago Manual of Style, APA, AP, CSE, etc.
In the case of creative writers, for example, a composition student may select a performance paper as the focal portfolio term paper, a creative writing paper. A research paper may analyze a craft method of, for example, a Rowling selection. An inquiry paper might analyze the fad culture that arose around, say, a Rowling selection. Similarly, an argumentation declamation paper might focus on the spiritual culture zeitgeist clash of the Potter saga with its folk culture zeitgeist. During my college years, recently, I encountered more than a few undergraduate, graduate, and postgraduate students' theses and dissertations that followed those general outlines, as well as tenure track professors meeting continuing publish or perish criteria.
Also recently, a firm and widely accepted consensus has been reached about what constitutes a classic and, therefore, "literary" work: Further reading and rereading continues to enthrall, is timeless, and enduringly relevant to contemporary audiences.
Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus? Yes. The Time Machine? Yes. War of the Worlds? Yes. Lord of the Rings? Yes. Farenheit 451? Yes. Madame Bovary? Yes, to a lesser degree. Catch-22? Yes. Catcher in the Rye? Yes. Potter? Time will tell. Twilight? Probably not.
Note that socially approvable value systems and moral and social codes predominate in classics, not per se poetic justice. Literature as a folk tradition fosters subversive social reforms. Nineteen Eighty-Four, Clockwork Orange, and Breakfast of Champions, to name a few recent examples. Though Twilight is subversive, the saga's elitist value systems to a degree contradict normative social reforms. However, that's one of the saga's greatest appeals, as much as approving of social elitism. For that alone, the saga has timeless endurance potentials, regardless of the writing caliber.
Yet a perceptual residue of elitist ideology and bias persists in both academia and across genre culture. High brow is still high brow ideology and bias; low brow is still low brow ideology and bias; and no brow makes no matter. I consider myself no brow, except, of course, insistence on artistic merit, be that craft excellence, voice, appeal, style, all the above, whatever.
quote: The academic literary elitist culture has eroded appreciably in recent years.
I do think, however, that it would be somewhat disingenuous of us to not at least acknowledge that literary fiction is a more complicated form than genre fiction.
We've discussed this at length in other threads, but the bottom line is that most genre fiction works by the numbers. There's a protagonist, there's an antagonist, and 9 times out of 10 the protagonist wins. This isn't a question of 'If'. The protagonist in most genre fiction is going to win.
Not only is this a certainty, but we also know when they're going to win, if not in the world of the story, then in the practical world of page count. You know when you're 20 pages off from the end, somewhere in those 20 pages, the protagonist will somehow manage to triumph. It's predestined from page one.
So now you've eliminated 'If', and you've eliminated 'When'. What's left? Why?
Why is the protagonist going to win? Because good has to triumph over evil. There are some subversive examples in genre fiction, but for the most part, good beats evil. The protagonist in genre fiction will be flawed at the beginning, and through the course of the story, he/she will either overcome their flaws, or learn to use their flaws to their advantage. This is also not a question, we know this is going to happen.
So that's 'If', that's 'When', that's 'Why', all covered before you've started the novel. What's left except 'Where', which is the world of the novel; then 'What', which is the character, be it a hobbit, a wizard, or cyborg.
And then, the most important aspect of genre fiction, the question that drives the narrative and creates a page-turner. The How?
How does the protagonist win? That's the only important answer that changes from novel to novel. And when you've eliminated everything else and are left with just that one question, you have to admit that that's a somewhat simplistic story.
Some genre writers have tried to deconstruct this, and you get graphic novels like "Watchmen", where the protagonist is questionable, the antagonist is questionable, and whether or not anyone wins is questionable. I actually thought the first book of Game of Thrones did a good job at subverting the formula. But these types of narratives in non-literary fiction is rare. For the most part, genre fiction tends to follow a somewhat predictable route, from beginning to end.
posted
I've encountered quite a few "literary" writers who claim plot is an unnecessary tyrant. Their writing shows they don't grasp plot's core function of emotional persuasion. I feel they justify loose, if any, plotting as a writing shortcut. Plot is a challenge occasion to which many writers do not rise.
I do not of necessity include the many so-called plotless classics. Plots are discernible in them, just not conventional-expectation plots. Nor are they as artfully experimental fiction as their acclaiming critics claim. Maybe they might be plotted more complex than Damon Knight's "conflict resolution" narratives, and their plots' motifs might be more subtle than general expectations, but plotted they are. "Complex" is a key. Narrative distance may be open; aesthetic distance may be open, and they often are in "experimental" fiction. Open distance to me is more a problematic issue for "literary" fiction than complexity.
Complexity of construction is often confused with complexity of plot. A complex plot contains one or both anagnorisis or peripeteia, the surprise, artful twists readers of any aesthetic enjoy. A simple plot straightforwardly resolves a conflict. If every narrative ended with a conflict resolution, readers would know every ending from an outset, that unvarying outcome telegraphed by simple expectation, and become bored.
Though any given plot is distinguishable as complex or simple, only motifs are different; there is only one plot structure.
Denouements often end with a villain's death and love interests' marriage and, of course, a champion's success. They are side complication outcomes that emotionally satisfy, but they are props for weak plotting.
A simple plot may have a minor turn during a falling action act that enhances doubt of outcome. This is where an anagnorisis or peripeteia most often fufills a mid-drama tragic crisis role. Actually, each of the five act-bridging crises of a dynamic and natural plot is a turn in those regards. Anagnorisis and peripeteia are mere matters of greater proportion.
Natural plotting begins and ends with a proportionate magnitude identity crisis that complicates a protagonist's life. At a proportionate personal cost, the identity crisis resolves satisfactorily. Winning may not be the outcome. Losing may not be the outcome. Unequivocal, irrevocable maturation transformation is the outcome, for better or worse fortune, regardless.
A number of "literary" narratives' structures have defied my analysis for, at times, years. All have eventually fallen before a now simple-to-me screening criteria: what's the central complication from beginning to end? A literary fiction's complication may not be as tangible as much as intangible. A tangible complication may obscure a more appreciably meaningful intangible one. An intangible complication might be too inaccessible for the target audience, too open an aesthetic distance for the audience. When an intangible complication's accessibility slightly leads the target audience's reading skill maturation, that satisfies most of all.
posted
Denevius, I don't understand why you think that narrative distance doesn't apply to genre fiction. Literary fiction has different goals than genre fiction, but successful writers in both use the same tools just for different purposes.
I think narrative distance is a very important tool that can strengthen any story. I think it is one of the main things that keeps a lot of aspiring writers from getting published.
Stories are about creating some sort of emotional reaction. Different stories have different goals. There are some stories that work just fine with a narrative distance (Davinci Code, Jurrasic Park), but other stories need an emotional connection between the reader and the main characters (most romance, horror, and fantasy benefit from this). Closing that narrative distance gives the reader that connection. The readers are no longer watching the character's story unfold, they are experiencing it.
Knowing how to zoom in and out is very important skill for a writer to learn. I know I'm working on it.
Extrinsic, that link you posted in another thread was so awesome. I hope you don't mind me posting it here. It's a must read.
I don't mind at all you reposting that Dave King link, nor do I imagine he does. Unraveling the article's mysteries is worth the candle. The essay is a signal work on a complex topic that is a point of access for strengthening writing and expression skills.
Frankly, I think the essay should be required reading for anyone on the Poet's Journey. The essay is a trail blaze for entering a leg of the Journey.
I am working on an essay for publication in a literary crticism journal about dramatic complication related to antagonism, causation, and tension for developing close distance as a signal writing reference essential as well. I've searched for one, anywhere, that codifies the parallel or individual roles of antagonism and dramatic complication. Several theorists scratch at the edges of those ideas, but do no more. I'm confident there is none such yet.
Posts: 6037 | Registered: Jun 2008
| IP: Logged |
quote: In my opinion, I think it is one of the major reason that keeps many aspiring writers from being published.
But I don't. The least we can acknowledge is that there are a lot of awful things published traditionally that are simply bad writing, just as there are some movies made that are simply bad movies, and some songs made that are simply bad songs. Because something is published doesn't mean that it's good, or that it's artfully done. Books are published traditionally for a myriad of reasons that don't necessarily have to do with writing caliber.
quote: Denevius, I don't understand why you think that narrative distance doesn't apply to genre fiction.
It's a matter of degree, is all. The idea that the writing has to be great to publish is a nice sentiment, and it's suggested in every publishing submitting website. But then explain James Redfield "The Celestine Prophecy", a massively successful book that's terribly, terribly written. I haven't read "The Da Vinci Code", but I've heard the writing is quite poor. I did read Patricia Briggs "Moon Called", and that was like chewing nails.
And really, this was my original point. I simply think that *too* intense of a focus on language is unnecessary for a successful genre novel published traditionally, because that's not all *that* important. If someone wants to do it, that's grand, and more power to them. But I would caution getting too caught up in it, because in genre fiction, in my view, the 'How' reigns supreme. Creating a page turner. And in my opinion, if you take it too far, I think it puts you at a disadvantage. I think I took a very literary approach to the genre novel I just wrote, but I, personally, think that that's a big risk for the market it will go in.
And this goes back again to the original post, which seems like it would be better suited in a literary writing class. As a matter of degree, I simply think genre writers focusing on what actually concerns the craft is a wise course of action if publishing traditionally is the goal.
I'm currently reading short stories by Ted Chiang, "Stories of Your Life and Others", and yes, it is interesting fiction, and yes, he's won a lot of Hugos and Neublas. But the writing itself seems quite poor, in my opinion, because 70% of every story is science explanation, and the 30% that's actually a *story*, is minimalist to a point where it feels tacked on to the science. Go to Amazon, read the three starred reviews, and you'll see this criticism popping up.
I feel like I'm reading science lectures, and in order to spice them up, the professor throws in a bit of humorous anecdotes, or tragic anecdotes, but the anecdotes aren't the point, so they're brief so they don't take up too much time. How this could be considered artful writing escapes me, and yet, it's quite successful, and is quite fascinating to read. This guy seems to be a powerhouse in scifi circles, and I read they're making a movie of one of his short stories. But I think to call this quality fiction writing is a serious stretch of the word 'quality'.
posted
Closing distance, as King relates, and is very much on point, isn't a matter so much of what language to use; formal or informal, sophisticated or unsophisticated, vulgar or genteel, faulty grammar or rhetorical virtue; but how, and who, when, where, what, and why, language is persuasively used. No matter what genre.
Maybe you aren't the audience for works you believe are "terribly" composed. I have read The Da Vinci Code closely and analytically, inferior and faulty grammar, yes, at times. Craft shortcomings, yes, at times. But in a language and appeal accesssibilty the target audience uses and appreciates every day.
For a college project, I evaluated thousands of undergrad compositions. I would not have gotten past the first one if I hadn't let go of preconceived grammar skill expectations. The papers contained nugget contents that recommended them for their respective course requirement satisfactions.
Yet, and here's the core I took away: In all, they were grammatically stronger papers than high schoolers'. The students only understood as much grammar as they learned and knew and could comprehend and apply. If a comprehensive grammar correction hand had been applied, all but a very few would have been thoroughly discouraged. I've since read later writing by a few of the students, now leading their lives on other paths. They continued to grow as writers. And that is all the difference. My point is progress follows comprehension ability learned as much by trial and error and correction as by study and application.
In the end, no composition is likely to be flawless, very, very few anyway, but faults accumulate until a tipping point. More appeal strengths outweigh lesser shortcoming alienations. Resistance to strong grammar and rhetoric skills, though, is fatal to closing distance.
quote: I have read The Da Vinci Code closely and analytically, inferior and faulty grammar, yes, at times. Craft shortcomings, yes, at times.
Would you agree that if you took some of the most popular genre fiction to publish in the last 15 years, and some of the most popular literary fiction to publish in the last 15 years, that this problem would crop up more in the genre fiction, but will almost never be an issue in the literary fiction?
Posts: 1216 | Registered: Nov 2011
| IP: Logged |
posted
No. I've seen about as faulty a grammar and craft in each category, minor in most cases of popular works. Though I'd be hard pressed to name any literary fiction that has enjoyed as much popular acclaim as a very few genre works. However, those genre works also exhibit exceptional literary merits that many if not most readers of whatever category pay little mind to in them.
Posts: 6037 | Registered: Jun 2008
| IP: Logged |
posted
Are there literary works that really qualify as "popular"? Seems like a bit of an oxymoron to me.
Posts: 8826 | Registered: A Long Time Ago!
| IP: Logged |
posted
Recent "literary" labeled works that are popular include Jonathan Franzen's Freedom, Charles Frazier's Cold Mountain, Donna Tart's The Secret History, and E. Annie Proulx's The Shipping News.
As I understand the meaning of "oxymoron"--"Placing two ordinarily opposing terms adjacent to one another. A compressed paradox." (Silva Rhetoricae: "Oxymoron") And respectively, paradox: "A statement that is self-contradictory on the surface, yet seems to evoke a truth nonetheless." (Silva Rhetoricae: "Paradox")
Popular literary fictions' evoked truth is literary fiction enjoys popularity in mass culture when accessible by general readers.
posted
Interesting. I wouldn't have characterized COLD MOUNTAIN as literary, but my definition may be a bit narrower than yours, extrinsic. Haven't read the others.
Did just finish WOLF HALL by Hilary Mantel (because it was the Wall Street Journal Book Club selection). Don't know if it qualifies as either popular or literary or both, but I thought it was worth reading.
Posts: 8826 | Registered: A Long Time Ago!
| IP: Logged |
posted
A critical buzz developed for Cold Mountain from its reinvention of Homer's Odyssey, among other literary strengths: its Realism, and ironic commentary about war, love, and the epic hero's journey.
I understand Wolf Hall has generated popular and critical literary buzz for its rigid historical accuracy, Realism--an exceptionally realistic illusion of reality imitation--a Postmodern approach to one of British history's reviled villains, a villain-of-the-piece portrayed as sympathetic, and timely relevance from its courtly political intrigues.
Both, I imagine, exemplify strong closing distance methods. I know Cold Mountain does, which is an appreciable factor in its popular appeal.
quote:Are there literary works that really qualify as "popular"?
I didn't use the word 'popular' at first. I wrote the word 'best', but then thought that might be unfair to compare the best literary writing to the most popular genre fiction in the last 15 years.
I would think, however, that any literary novel that was made into a movie would be considered the most popular works. So Cormac McCarthy's "The Road" and "No Country for Old Men", Yann Martel's "Life of Pi", Jose Saramago's "Blindness". I would also add Salman Rushdie as a popular literary author.
In the end though, it's just a difference of opinion. Which is fine, the world would be a boring place if everyone agreed on the same subject. But I don't think the writing in genre fiction is very important, and is actually quite poor. I think if we were to take excerpts of prose from notable literary works, and notable genre works, that the differences in writing quality would be stark.
Posts: 1216 | Registered: Nov 2011
| IP: Logged |
posted
It depends on how you define "good writing."
Philip K Dick is one of my absolute favorites. When I first read him, I thought there were a lot of fun and even thought-provoking ideas, but the writing quality was pretty poor. However, I kept reading more of his books and loving them. Then I came to the realization that his writing wasn't poor at all, but actually quite brilliant. It was just brilliant in different ways than I was used to reading as an English major immersed in the classics and literary fiction.
In my case, it was a case of expanding my understanding of what constitutes good writing.
Posts: 1528 | Registered: Dec 2003
| IP: Logged |
posted
extrinsic, forgive me if I missed something in the density of your explanation of what narrative distance is and why a certain level of closeness is preferred. Any concrete advice on what to do about it in addition to the abstractions? Or is that something that can only be done on a case by case basis? Sometimes I can feel the narrative distance in my writing, but I have trouble saying exactly why one version feels different than another. So I understand the concept, but I fail to concretely recognize the symptoms.
Posts: 823 | Registered: May 2009
| IP: Logged |
posted
"Good and bad writing" are subjective matters. However, "bad" writing that's published and popular is only critically misunderstood. For example, Mickey Spillane's crime thriller franchise is some of the more critically villified writing of the twentieth century. A close read of Spillane's work leaves little doubt he wrote fast and loose. But his work is popular and subject to critical interpretation if not acclaim.
Spillane's popularity is directly a consequence of audience targeting. His protagonists are hard charging, cynical, misunderstood, marginalized, mug-faced Caucasian men. His villains are elitist, intellectual, powerful, and influential movers and shakers, beautiful people, often attractive, feminist women.
Taken as a whole, Spillane's characters are the audience and their cultural and social nemeses. Spillane's work in those regards documents a cultural era. Interpreting them in those lights, they are literary masterpieces.
Too loving bad Spillane's novels goad the sensibilities of the very critics who condemn the writing as "bad." Those critics misunderstood that condemning them made them even more popular for the target audience due to the controversies. A narrative isn't a restaurant serving bad food with poor service, poor ambience, and mediocre reception that negative reviews will likely reduce visitation. A narrative's negative reception by condemning critics is part of marketing buzz. So-and-so says this is trash, taking a stand for the common good. Let me see for myself. Oh, not bad, well, maybe I'll skim a few more pages. Well, a few more. Okay. I'll buy and read the whole story. Later, maybe years or decades later, a non self-annointed arbiter of the common good critical analysis might examine why a work transcended its humble writing.
Spillane's works are notable for their "bad" writing: faulty grammar, uneven style, formulaic structure, and telegraphed endings. However, their audience-targeted close character viewpoint, their voice, their close narrative and aesthetic distance, their intangible though stable depths exhibit the persuasive nature of masterful writing. They appeal to their target audience's social and cultural sensibilities. That those sensibiliities. moral codes, social beliefs are Caucasian, Anglo, misadjusted Christian, blue collar working class, marginalized, middle adult male--in a folkloric interpretation--persuaded otherwise conventionally nonreading audiences to read and share a folk identity is noteworthy. Of greater signficance folkloristically, Spillane's works persuaded his audience that their lives were meaningful and helped them understand and cope with some of their life-complicating stresses.
Historical signficance, personal, social, and cultural significance, persuasion, enlightenment, meaningfulness, entertainment--what else is the function of literature? Informing, cautioning, correcting, castigating, controlling human behavior. Spillane stock protagonist Mike Hammer is a brute, but he follows a rigid, though outdated, moral code that's not entirely extinct nor likely to ever be. The portrait is masterful. Though not intended or meant to be emulated in real life, it is. For we who can enjoy the portrait and not be swayed, we can recognize the type and be appropriately cautious.
Posts: 6037 | Registered: Jun 2008
| IP: Logged |
Part of the density of my post, many of my posts, is a product of generalizing. Closing distance methods are manifold. They are too numerous and too individually and collectively complex to detail on a writing forum. For me, the King essay MAP links to above was a tipping point. From it, I studied deeper into the concept of closing distance, from narratives I felt especially close to, from emulating their parts, from rhetoric texts, many, many texts; each led on to the next. Without reading prior texts, I would not have understood later ones. Each rhetoric text also demands having read and understood the narratives used as reference points. A lot of reading and study.
I developed a stonger reading skill in the process, as much if not more than writing skill. That at least has been worth the candle.
You ask for symptoms to concretely recognize closing distance. Several general categories may be a point of access. However, first, I must assert they are ephemeral, unstable, both concrete and abstract all at once. As soon as a tentative grasp feels solid, it slips away. Just putting a moment of thought into writing changes the thought, and takes an exponential quantity of time and word count to reduce the moment of thought clearly, strongly, and concisely to written word. That latter is itself a challenge and a method for closing distance. The imagined creative vision of a writer is difficult to reduce to writing in such a way readers may share in it.
Two ephemeral features most challenge and accomplish the closing distance magic. As seemingly concrete as they are, they are no less ellusive. One leads on to the other: dramatic complication, problems and wants wanting satisfaction. A viewpoint character with problems and wants parallel to readers' is an engaging character for those readers. This is the so-called "hook" readers need to engage in a narrative.
Problems cause wants; wants cause problems; both at once and one in the same, are often separately distinguishable but indivisible. A want for money is a problem in and of itself due to the problem of not having it or enough of it. A problem of captivity is a want for freedom at the same time. Yet those are black and white, diametric opposites. Dramatic complications can be and more often are not such polar opposites. Captivity problems and coping with captivity complications, for example, do not per se require wanting freedom. Wanting money does not require a lack of it for the want to be a dramatic complication. An underlying greater problem may be the very miserly pursuit of and hoarding of wealth.
Events directly cause characters' dramatic complications in settings. Dramatic complication, event, character, and setting are the basic ingredients for a closing distance formula, not to mention, for plot and for meaning making. The dramatic complication ingredient is the antagonism factor that causes a protagonist to act in a way readers care for and are curious about.
Dramatic complication and event, setting, and character closing distance features lead on to creating an illusion of reality imitation. The second of the two basic closing distance pivots. The most straightfoward and challenging closing distance method stays in touch with one viewpoint persona's central dramatic complication, not per se the viewpoint protagonist character or even a character in the conventional sense of one within the narrative's four unbounded corners. However, staying close to one viewpoint character is the most appealing aesthetic distance for general audiences.
Creating the all-important close distance, both narrative distance and aesthetic distance, depends on too numerous a potential gamut to go into detail. Generally, though, the point of access is a dramatic persona with which readers identify for having similar moral codes and belief systems. A narrative sympathetic to Osama bin Laden would not at present stand in Western society; however, such a narrative might enjoy widespread approval on the fundamentalist Muslim street. No, it wouldn't actually. Muslim culture disapproves of and criminalizes fiction for its fabrications in the first place. And second, radically different opinions would make such a project violently controversial.
Selecting the most suitable point of view persona might choose a narrator who is remote from a narrative's central action and internal reality. The narrator might portray a pivotal viewpoint character's coping with a dramatic complication. The narrator may mediate the illusion of reality action at great length and subjectivity or objectivity or both. The narrator may be the strongest narrative point of view approach for his opinions, judgments, evaluations, and attitudes toward the subject viewpoint character's actions. If the viewpoint character's beliefs run contrary to the audience's, this might be the strongest and clearest approach, so that readers align with the narrator and not with the wicked, self-serving, vile criminal creature whom the narrative is about. That type of approach, though, is generally wide open narrative distance with potentially close aesthetic distance appeals. It doesn't generally sit well with general audiences either.
Close narrative distance approaches narrative point of view and illusion of reality imitation immediately through the received reflections of a single viewpoint character. The character experiences personal, causal, antagonizing, empathy-worthy, and suspenseful sensations, actions, emotions, conversations, and thoughts. Most of this type of narrative distance is portrayed as the reflected, direct experiences of the viewpoint character through which readers experience them as personally and immediately suspensefully intimately as the viewpoint character. The viewpoint character's sensations, language, codes, values, beliefs, want and problem antagonism dramatic complications, causes and effects, empathy-worthy emotions and suspenseful curiosities. This is the character viewpoint pivot of the distance closing recipe ingredients all in one: dramatic complication, event, setting, character. Together with illusion of reality imitation, these are all the basic ingredients for closing distance formulas.
And each to her or his own formulas according to the individual writer's and her or his audience's sensibilities.
quote:Originally posted by Denevius: [QUOTE]I would think, however, that any literary novel that was made into a movie would be considered the most popular works.
Interesting thought, though I would tend to believe that movies made of literary works are not necessarily intended to appeal to most movie goers. Consider how many of the movies nominated for the oscar for best movie are actually "box-office successes" (hence "popular"). Some movies are made to appeal to other movie people (who, after all, are the ones who vote for them for the oscars).
Case in point: ARGO was a movie about movie people being heroic. If that isn't something that would appeal to movie people, I can't imagine what would be. That it appealed to movie goers as much as it did could be argued to be incidental.
HUGO was also a movie about movie people. Again, it's as extrinsic says, a matter of audience.
Posts: 8826 | Registered: A Long Time Ago!
| IP: Logged |
posted
Thanks, Extrinsic. I wasn't being critical of the density of your posts, I was just worried I might have missed something. As always, you're a true asset here.
Posts: 823 | Registered: May 2009
| IP: Logged |
quote: Spillane's works are notable for their "bad" writing: faulty grammar, uneven style, formulaic structure, and telegraphed endings. However, their audience-targeted close character viewpoint, their voice, their close narrative and aesthetic distance, their intangible though stable depths exhibit the persuasive nature of masterful writing.
I haven't read this author, but I can't tell if you're saying that he's writing in a voice similar to what Mark Twain does in Tom Sawyer books. From your description of Spillane, that's not how it sounds, but it almost seems to be what you're implying.
Capturing an authentic voice is masterful writing, and if Spillane did this for his target audience, more power to him.
I guess my skepticism comes in when I think of a book like Carson McCuller's "The Heart is a Lonely Hunter". In this book, she captures a voice; but several. Depending in whose POV you're in is how the text reads. To me, this difference proves ones superior writing skills.
Is Spillane basically writing in his own voice? Sure, it sounds like something, but basically just him. What comes to mind in this case is hiphop, which I have a fair amount of respect for. But hiphop is basically guys talking. Yes, they capture a voice, *their* voice, but ask them to do anything else, and they can't. This doesn't make what they do bad, but it doesn't, in my opinion, make it special, or a sign of skill or brilliance.
Personally, I'm more inclined to believe Spillane writes the way he does because he doesn't know any better. And I also think that the shortcomings exhibited in his writing, as well as shortcomings of a similar sort in other notable genre fiction, has led to a perception that the writing itself in books that fall under this umbrella isn't very good.
What example of a notable literary novel has the same flawed issues in writing quality that's evident in, say, "50 Shades of Grey"? Or "Eragon"?
At the same time, I'm not implying that literary fiction is without it's own inherent flaws. "The Road" won the Pulitzer, but I still I think it wasn't a very good book. People can call it an allegory if they want, but I think "The Road" reveals the shortcomings literary authors have with plot, and I feel like calling it an allegory is a way to dismiss these shortcomings.
But I remember discussing this book with a friend of mine, and we were both unable to suspend our disbelief because not much in "The Road" made sense. What happened to cause the world to fall the way it did? How long ago did it happen? Did the entire world just suddenly descend into this post-apocalyptic nightmare, or did it take years? Is it the same in every country on the planet? Why? And if it's not, what's going on in these other nations while America has become this wasteland?
And food. I read Pat Frank's "Alas, Babylon" many many years ago, and I remember something about contaminated food products in the event of a nuclear holocaust. But "The Road" doesn't touch very much on any of this. It just takes for granted that now there's hardly any food, so people turn to cannibalism. Again, like, really? In many Southeast Asian countries, bugs are a source of protein. Are all the bugs dead in "The Road"? Is there really no other source of food beyond eating the young (yes, an intriguing metaphor, but still needed of explanation).
But then, plot isn't really all that important in literary fiction, and sometimes it's as badly done as language is in genre fiction. "The Road" is a character study. In an interview, McCarthy said he saw a homeless person, and wanted to write a novel where everyone is homeless. Just that by itself seems a bit silly, because homelessness in India is a result of something different than homelessness in Japan, than homelessness in America.
Two different authors, McCarthy and Spillane, writing with different goals in mind, and both books suffering from flaws as a result of these different goals.
Posts: 1216 | Registered: Nov 2011
| IP: Logged |
posted
Spillane wrote how he talked with a degree of hardboiled cynical elaboration conventional to noir crime thrillers. McCarthy writes what McCarthy writes.
I disagree that literary fiction emphasizes plot less than convention-based genre--event, for all intents and purposes, in Orson Scott Card's MICE quotient. Plot is for me just a greater irony puzzle in literary fiction than in convention-based genre, which have a particular outcome convention generally identical from narrative to narrative that defines the genre. Literary fiction emphasizes variant dramatic structures that may not be as rigid and as easily expectable or in reader comfort zones as for convention-based genre.
Romance, the couple must satisfy their love interest. Mystery, the puzzle must be solved. Thriller, the psychological horror must be emotionally satisfied. Western, the rugged individual must serve poetic justice. Horror, like thriller, psychological and also visceral horror must be emotionally satisfied. Fantasy, some of all the above and a fantastical power must be used to satisfy wants and problems. Science fiction; some of all the above and a fantastical science, technology, or social motif must be involved in satisfying wants and problems. Literary fiction, the dramatic complication must be both tangible and intangible, emphasizing the intangible.
Cormac McCarthy's The Road is a social science fiction dystopia. The tangible dramatic complication is the Man wanting a safe harbor, at least for the Boy, among the ruins of an apocalyptic aftermath. Readers satisfied by the novel enjoy it because the symbolism, imagery, analogy, irony, and complication satisfaction suit their sensibilities. One of which is being in on the story's intangibleness, using their powers of imagination and personal experiences to appreciate the dramatic ironies the writer intends and means. They are involved by the narrative's stable intangibles: the world is a brutal, cruel, and predatory wasteland with no safe harbors.
Denevius, I've come to suspect your writer skepticism to the point of hardboiled cyncism is a bar to your reading satisfactions. I've been there. It was a dark time. I wish you best progress seeing through to the light.
One method that worked for me was to stop finding shortcoming faults and focus on strength merits. Ironically, I realized my writing frailties were as problematic if not much more so than what I read. I confronted the realization I was a hypocrite. If I could hope to at least meet my own reading and writing expectations, I had to both lighten up and buck up.
So what if the language and grammar are faulty; do they speak to the story? So what if the dramatic structure (plot) is unconventional; does it speak to the story? Minding all the while that grammar matters--conformist grammar suitable for the voice, be that formal, informal, written, spoken, or thought grammars, that structure matters.
I've read tedious narratives, more than a few, by Homer, Sophocles, Shakespeare, Nabokov, Chekhov, Joyce, Wallace, Munro, and so on. They were not read by casual choice, except to respond critically or miss the point of the exercise, angrily resistant to the exercise for not having choices except to underperform or excel for college coursework and later for my own ends.
One rule of critical response: personal sentiments cannot be the tangible claim asserted. Verbal irony became my tool for expressing that any tedious work was tedious--dreck. My sentiment position came through anyway due to the irony I expressed. My responses were stronger for subtending my personal sentiments among boisterous ironic praise--courtly irony--and not overlooked by professor audiences, noted as bold but supported subtextual claims. In the process, I uncovered from the narratives their strengths that transcended shortcomings. My critical focus was as a writer developing, not as a literary analyst, though I developed that too.
I won through back to the light of reading passion and satisfaction again by close reading and analysis and ironic response commentary. I discovered the ironies that really satisfying reading contain. I've not anymore missed the at times exquisite ironies of even the most rigid convention-based genre. Glorious.
quote:Originally posted by babooher: Thanks, Extrinsic. I wasn't being critical of the density of your posts, I was just worried I might have missed something. As always, you're a true asset here.
I felt no critcisms, only a sincere request for elaboration, which to me is a highly productive way to grow as a writer, in this case, and greatly dynamic for workshop discussion, whether online or in person. Not to mention beautiful for developing, enhancing, and sustaining mutual rapport.
Posts: 6037 | Registered: Jun 2008
| IP: Logged |
posted
Interesting that some of you say that writing in a first person is the easiest way. I find the third person writing is far more easier - you can show the whole picture, the development of the situation can come from different angles and it is easier to show the "truth", not distorted by the first person opinions and personality. First person writing is full of problems and only few of the writers manage to write professionally, developing the character without being too boring and personal.
Posts: 11 | Registered: Mar 2014
| IP: Logged |
posted
First person has strengths and challenges as does third person. Appreciating their influences is half the battle. First person's challenges orient around degree of access to events, settings, and characters and alienation from over self-involvement. First person's strengths orient around degree of subjectivity, bias, unreliability.
Third person's challenges orient around narrative point of view difficulties and distance closure. Third person's strengths orient around degree of objectivity, bias, and reliability.
Printer-friendly view of this topic
