I've been puttering around on these boards for a few months trying to learn more about the craft of fiction writing. I've read a dozen or so books on writing, investigated a few methods, and read countless articles online. And I've read scores of novels in the genres I'm writing. I've come to an impasse.
Much training is about how to write sentences from particular POVs, develop scenes to create tension, signpost character emotional arcs, and weave character arcs into plot arcs. But when I read well-constructed books that follow all these guidelines I can hardly remember the pages I've turned despite being interested in turning the next one.
All I have to do is read, and then the book is over. It's like a slide for my eyes. So much of the craft focuses on issues like smoothing seams between sections of the slide, making it clear where on the slide a reader is, and increasing the slope of the slide.
It's like the books are about nothing other than engaging the reader long enough to be read.
This is immensely different than my previous forty years of novel reading. Yes, I read lots of fantasy and sci fi as a child, but it really made me think--I devoured LOTR in 4th or 5th grade, everything Asimov in jr high, Heinlein, Le Guin, etc. I even read a lot of westerns in high school. But I also started reading the classics--Dickens, Joyce, Dostoevsky. For the next thirty years, I read everything from Gilgamesh to Kafka, from the San Guo (romance of the three kingdoms) to the Ramayana, Cooper, Hawthorne, Melville, James, Hemingway, Howells, Austen, Sedgwick, Tolstoy, Endo Shusaku, Morrison, Wharton, Baldwin . . . And not just read--I'm a literature professor, so I also studied, analyzed, and grew to love those works even more for their complex engagement with what it means to be human, to be alive.
Occasionally, I come across genre novels that engage me as fully as those I teach in lit classes--N.K. Jemisin's work, for instance. I just reread Heinlein's Starship Troopers and was blown away by how little happens in the book. I loved it, of course, but that's because it is about moral philosophy and father/son reconciliation. The fighting in metal suits is a relatively small percentage of the book.
My preferred reading style is ruminative. I'm happy just being in a fictional world. Action is great, but so is interiority.
I've never before felt a tension between genre writing and the classics I study and teach. There's great stuff out there in genre writing, but what makes it great in my estimation is its ambition to capture and mold our world, not merely to engage the eyes of the reader long enough to get them to the bottom of the slide.
I understand entertainment value, and I'm glad some people turn to books rather than just binge on Netflix. And I spent over a decade reading aloud to my four kids every MG and YA series I could get my hands on, from Harry Potter to the Inheritance Cycle, Prydain to anything by Angie Sage. I found those works to be delightful for what they were aiming to be.
What are the right search terms to gain more insight into what makes for great writing and not just great craft? I'm a noob as a fiction writer and am continually discovering new vocabulary for phenomena I've studied for decades from a different angle.
Much training is about how to write sentences from particular POVs, develop scenes to create tension, signpost character emotional arcs, and weave character arcs into plot arcs. But when I read well-constructed books that follow all these guidelines I can hardly remember the pages I've turned despite being interested in turning the next one.
All I have to do is read, and then the book is over. It's like a slide for my eyes. So much of the craft focuses on issues like smoothing seams between sections of the slide, making it clear where on the slide a reader is, and increasing the slope of the slide.
It's like the books are about nothing other than engaging the reader long enough to be read.
This is immensely different than my previous forty years of novel reading. Yes, I read lots of fantasy and sci fi as a child, but it really made me think--I devoured LOTR in 4th or 5th grade, everything Asimov in jr high, Heinlein, Le Guin, etc. I even read a lot of westerns in high school. But I also started reading the classics--Dickens, Joyce, Dostoevsky. For the next thirty years, I read everything from Gilgamesh to Kafka, from the San Guo (romance of the three kingdoms) to the Ramayana, Cooper, Hawthorne, Melville, James, Hemingway, Howells, Austen, Sedgwick, Tolstoy, Endo Shusaku, Morrison, Wharton, Baldwin . . . And not just read--I'm a literature professor, so I also studied, analyzed, and grew to love those works even more for their complex engagement with what it means to be human, to be alive.
Occasionally, I come across genre novels that engage me as fully as those I teach in lit classes--N.K. Jemisin's work, for instance. I just reread Heinlein's Starship Troopers and was blown away by how little happens in the book. I loved it, of course, but that's because it is about moral philosophy and father/son reconciliation. The fighting in metal suits is a relatively small percentage of the book.
My preferred reading style is ruminative. I'm happy just being in a fictional world. Action is great, but so is interiority.
I've never before felt a tension between genre writing and the classics I study and teach. There's great stuff out there in genre writing, but what makes it great in my estimation is its ambition to capture and mold our world, not merely to engage the eyes of the reader long enough to get them to the bottom of the slide.
I understand entertainment value, and I'm glad some people turn to books rather than just binge on Netflix. And I spent over a decade reading aloud to my four kids every MG and YA series I could get my hands on, from Harry Potter to the Inheritance Cycle, Prydain to anything by Angie Sage. I found those works to be delightful for what they were aiming to be.
What are the right search terms to gain more insight into what makes for great writing and not just great craft? I'm a noob as a fiction writer and am continually discovering new vocabulary for phenomena I've studied for decades from a different angle.