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If you're looking for a pick-me-up today or if you're writing only for yourself rather than publication, don't read this. The rest of us, though, might want to bite the bullet.
Sometimes we all need a little douse of cold water. We get to feeling that everything clicking onto our computer screens from our brilliant repertoire of authorial genius is nothing less than literary masterpiece, classic with a capital "C", Pulitzer-worthy prose that goes where no writer has gone before. A little of this goes a long way and can be fun and ego-soothing, but too much can be a trap. If we think our work has reached some kind of pinnacle, what do we have to improve, and how dare anyone criticize us? Those editors wouldn't know good writing if it....well, I trust you get the picture.
Although this excerpt is in regard to children's fiction, I'm guessing it applies equally to adult fiction. In The Writer's Digest Handbook of Short Story Writing Volume II, George Edward Stanley writes:
quote:...fantasy, science fiction...folk tales, fairy tales, legends, myths....many of these are areas that beginning writers want to write in and in which they very often produce a lot of unpublishable material....
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And does George Edward Stanley go on to explain why he feels this statement is true?
I don’t exactly see what writing in certain genres has to do with producing unpublishable fiction, unless the writer is so inexperienced a reader in that genre that he doesn’t have a good feeling for its strengths, weaknesses, expectations, what has gone before, etc.
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Well, I would say that with rare exception, most beginning writers write unpublishable fiction no matter what genre. So it is kind of a silly statement, implying perhaps that it is because they choose those genres that it is unpublishable.
But it may also be that those genres people concider easy to write which are actually more difficult, requiring understanding of the leading edge as well as the history of the genre and the rules under which you must write.
A good example of this is "Signs". It is an intriguing story, but it is truly awful science fiction.
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I truly believe that it doesn't matter if you're new or old in the business: if you write excellent prose, have a good story to tell, and engaging characters that reach out and grab the reader, you'll be published. Regardless of genre. Good stories will sell.
Now, do you have a good story to tell, that's the question that all writers-- especially new ones-- must answer.
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Well, there's also the fact that it is more likely that aspiring fiction writers will make their initial efforts in the frankly fictional genres.
The only place that you really get a lot of unpublishable crap set in the "real world" (whether historical or contemporary) is from students in literature classes. And of course, they don't try to publish though the mainstream publishing industry.
So his perception is explained. Writers that are writing outside of the formally fictional genres (i.e. those that require actual "suspension of disbelief") tend only to attempt the 'publishing industry' after becoming successful authors (this includes successful authors of 'fictional genre' works that are trying out other genres).
SiliGurl is both right and wrong. On the one hand, "if you write excellent prose, have a good story to tell, and engaging characters that reach out and grab the reader, you'll be published." On the other hand, the more experience you have as a writer, the more likely you are to have excellent prose, engaging characters, and even good stories (as any increase in experience will increase the number of stories you have to tell). But of course, "Good stories will sell." But again, if an author is already seen by the publisher as being a salable writer, then his stories will be published (works supposedly written by celebrities, for instance, almost always sell enough to justify the publishing run, no matter how illiterate they are).
Now of course, I could never write anything but speculative fiction. My life experiences in no way qualify me to write anything that could be taken seriously as "realistic" by a human audience (I can do humor, but that is an entirely different matter).
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