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Mel Mudkiper posted:I feel like its fundamentally depressing for a writer to believe their book is of so little value to not be worth writing well. The idea of a writer setting out to create a product that doesn't provide anything other tha base and indistinct entertainment is painfully capitalist. For me, if there's a difference, it's less capitalist and more consumerist. However linked they are. I've seen it quite a bit, especially with YA authors and librarians, where they proudly exclaim the virtues of reading. My brother reads quite a bit but when he was very young he refused to read. He was started off on comics (The Beano and The Dandy) and from there he went on to read more traditional stories and now he's as much a reader as any other. This is definitely a valid strategy. However, there's a presumption, and a very middle class one at that, that reading is a noble pursuit. That reading is the end in itself rather than a tool. There's people happily tweeting links to studies saying reading makes people more aware, knowledgeable about the world and more empathetic (the big one.) It may very well be true that any reading of fiction will do that, but just reading isn't the zenith of achievement. There's often a pride expressed in reading. "I looked around the hospital waiting room and everyone was on their phone! Not ONE person, [apart from me is implied,] reading a book!" I'm fine with reading being escapist. I'm fine with trash fiction. There are plenty of people who work hard all day long, they're tired, stressed, and their night with a book is a relief. These people might work physically active jobs, thought intensive jobs, they might be standing in one spot giving a pre-written response to the same question from a series of hundreds of people. A book that helps them switch off is fine by me. The difference is people somehow put that reading above watching a procedural crime show. They see that as somehow more worthy than watching a crime lab technician solve a murder. Language and prose might be one way to value a story (keeping in mind, as you pointed out, the difference between Hemmingway, and Joyce and Faulkner.) The ideas present might be another. The exploration of the human condition, loss, grief, joy, hate, anger. The exploration of human interaction. All of this can have value for making greater (humanity.) But there still needs to be a line drawn between books which set out to achieve this, and books that are written for other purposes. Not all reading has the same goal, and not all writing is a grand achievement of human creativity, thought or ambition. The idea that books are a good thing, that reading is a valuable thing, no matter what, is having a horrific effect its environment.
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Apr 18, 2018 15:31
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Mel Mudkiper posted:I don't think the emphasis on style and prose is because of some deeper belief that books are sacred and magical. For me, its just the simple belief that things should be done well if you are going to do them. Its why Raymond Chandler is better celebrated than Michael Connelly. It's not just books. Take Steven Spielberg. The dude has worked exclusively in schlock for his entire career, but one of his defining features is that he does schlock WELL. He is a master of the craft of filmmaking, and its that mastery which elevates his films from the generic mass his stories arrive from. That's fair. I think the simple answer is that it's difficult to do that, and in many cases it's not demanded. If you're talking about schlock entertainment in other media then yes, there's absolutely well crafted mindless popcorn turns. But that craft elevates them even if the story or core meaning doesn't (Westworld comes to mind for me.) If everyone was discerning we might get a lot less stories published. TV would run after school for children and from 8pm to 10pm for adults. You want it to reach a certain level. Not everyone does on the consumption end. From the authors end I think they want quality but again the highest levels are beyond the reaches of most. At least once someone has come into the Thunderdome thread, asking where are the people trying to write serious, literary fiction. I think everyone is taking their attempts seriously but serious fiction isn't the goal of everyone. It never has been, rather stories that some people or many people will enjoy. For me that ends up in a separation of what the aim of fiction, film, TV, etc. is. You may want the best as a reader. A writer may want the best from their stories. Yet there needs to be a recognition that not everything is "art" and not everyone wants that. Once you recognise it's easier to focus on your own enjoyment and dismiss other matters. Even if it's to bathe in your dismay at the world (and write about it on highly topical and relevant internet discussion pages.) (A common refrain in a professional rugby team I follow is, "Have you no pride?" Calling on each other to work their hardest in recognition they can do more. For some people their pride, their achievement and goal, is writing a story people fully switch off with, for others it's changing the direction of modern literature.)
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Apr 18, 2018 16:01
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Mel Mudkiper posted:I get this mentality, but it is a wholly capitalist and consumerist mentality. It suggests books are products and readers are consumers and the book must act transactionally in its relationship with the reader. I agree, to a certain extent at least. I don't think there's anything wrong with having a balance. My problem, and maybe my problem with your problem is how absolute you seem, is it's tilted too much towards catering to people, and especially extant readerships. The balance is wrong. There's a lot of writing for an audience. Even publishers asking prospective authors, "What's your market? Who did have in mind when you wrote this?" I quite like having my fancies indulged, rarely as it happens, but that seems to be what many people expect from their "entertainment."
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Apr 18, 2018 16:12
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Mel Mudkiper posted:Yes, a capitalist society produces capitalist writers who produce capitalist fiction. Thats my point. The idea that idea that one doesn't need to concern oneself with craft because the book is meant to be a product to non-discerning audience is toxic and restrictive. It's impossible to escape the control of a system, but at least a lot of the journals I read are self-funded, not-for-profits, and at most have some state arts body funding. Even then the editorial line often falls along stories that conform to their thought, and even confirm it. This might only be confirmation for your point, and you might see it as further validation, but small journals that in theory answer to no-one aren't coming up with anything truly challenging. Some times it's adjacent to challenge, which is probably the best I can hope for from a small magazine and myself, but a lot of what I've read recently falls into the comfortable area of reading.
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Apr 18, 2018 16:47
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chitoryu12 posted:With the character Wade has in this version, he's an outsider to a greater degree than the original (where he's supposed to be friendless but still has snappy comebacks for the school bullies and instantly takes to becoming a celebrity). He has no friends in real life, a lovely home life, and no online friends except for Aech (who's a hardcore egg hunter that Wade still has trouble understanding). His social anxiety keeps him from interacting with pretty much anyone except for brief moments when necessary, leading to a sense of isolation and alienation from the rest of the world until the High Five give him a true bonding experience. This is more interesting than what you have here. If you're setting up a grand quest, give me a reason why I want the character to succeed on the quest. From the straight off there's no reason for me to care. You haven't grounded the story in anything beyond perfunctory descriptions of somewhere I have no real feeling or understanding of. There's a building, an alleyway, stacks, and I know nothing more. Give them a mood, give them feel. If the protagonist is in a desperate situation try showing that somehow. What you started off with had all the charm of reading a cereal box. And as I've grown up I don't need to read the cereal box while eating cereal (I eat porridge anyway.) I didn't get that they were in VR classrooms. I thought he was in an actual classroom that was heavily reliant on a HUD. The part about the important dude's death message interrupting was described with all the bland ability of someone who sneers at people leaving Marvel films when the credits begin before retelling the whole film to his friends. "And then the camera swooped in like this..." The telling wasn't a felt experience. It was someone reminiscing about an average meal they had on a holiday just to reassure their friend they had a good time in the sun. You were describing a scene and the filming of something without ever capturing the sense of the film or its importance. Sometimes a "camera-like" approach can work in fiction, but it needs the enthusiasm of recreating a visuality. Another problem was that you had absolutely zero interiority. Throughout all this it's a retelling of the past, but there's no (or very little) call to what was thought at the time, or felt. There's no real element of the suddenness of this, the shock, the portentous nature. Was this a worldwide calamity that's just changed a young man's life? I don't know, because I can't see any evidence from this young man's mind or emotion. If the point of this was to get someone excited about going on a magic quest, then I guess it achieved that. You've pretty much just said, "There shall be an adventure." It's just an adventure that I want no part of. "Clicking the journal for the first time, I was overwhelmed. Not merely by the possibility of wealth, but by the journal itself. Anorak’s Almanac opened with an entry from June 15th, 1979. The 7-year-old Halliday briefly mentioned how his mother encouraged him to start keeping a journal to keep all his thoughts in one place because of how many he has, and then immediately began rambling off the page about playing Space Invaders until my eyes glazed over." This is funny. I guess it is I, the reader of these rambling thoughts, who has been tricked.
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Apr 18, 2018 22:11
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chitoryu12 posted:Can you give some examples of openings that would personally hook you into this story? Or how you'd rewrite some of the things I have in there? Flesh out the bits you've only given a small bit of attention to. Cut down on the setting up of "the quest." Add interiority.
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Apr 18, 2018 22:20
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chitoryu12 posted:This criticism doesn't tell me a whole lot that "Write better" doesn't say. Like the interiority, for example. When I look back at my own writing, I see it just fine! The tightening in his chest and nearly falling out of his chair when he hears the stakes of the game, the internal comment about the video seeming self-serving, unconsciously nodding along to the beat as he finds that he actually enjoys the old music. People are writing fairly decent sized posts explaining to you the many issues we have with your writing. If you want someone to go through each line, or pick out individual phrases that need improvement you're asking for a lot. Read your own work with some level of critical approach. A lot of us are finding the same issues with it and you're arguing how we're wrong and demanding specific examples. I've said it, Lex hinted at it, and Mel has said it. There's no detail to your piece, there's no feeling, there's very little thought. Having him say, "It piqued my interest..." is just a long line of sentences where you're flinging out information with no mind to how the piece can be evocative. If you want your story to simply spool out world details and plot pints with no mind in how that's done, that's fine, but you're not winning anyone over arguing you've done something else.
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Apr 18, 2018 22:48
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Mel Mudkiper posted:Here, I will be nice and give you a real quick paragraph example of how it could open I'm not a fan of how wrought this is, even if it's writing about a momentous event. I imagine it'd be hard to carry on throughout the story without it getting tired, but at the very least it sets the stakes for itself, has a style and says a lot with little. That's a lot more than the original piece had and any objection I have to it is personal preference rather than me recoiling from blandness.
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Apr 18, 2018 23:05
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Mel Mudkiper posted:Oh totally. I legit wrote it in two minutes just to give an example of what I meant by slowly leading you in. I imagine if I were actually trying to fit the tone I would probably cut the melodrama down a bit. The point wasn't criting your writing. More showing that it's possible to have a style and legitimate grievances with that style, such is your piece, compared to something that almost universally reads as bland and uninvolved, as is the original. There's decisions you need to make with you writing about how you're saying what. Once you've reached that point arguing for or against your voice is one thing, but when it's not gotten to the point of involving the reader it's not worth the debate. And the big thing is once that voice is found a lot of authors never leave it. It becomes theirs, with nudges and touches adding flair or reducing flourishes, but often it is them forever more. Writing is hard, chitoryu. Enter thunderdome.
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Apr 18, 2018 23:16
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You should try writing your own novel, or even a short story.
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May 8, 2018 19:47
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I had no idea this was happening until it arrived in CC. Then I tried to help. You can take a look at the "Fiction Submission" thread here and see that people are critiquing others work and finding value in the feedback they receive. I have a story there now hoping for some feedback, if you feel up to it. Crits here (and in our counterpart, The Dorkroom) can be tough, but it's better than getting non-committal, bland responses you get if you show it to friends or people in other places. There's a genuine desire to see good writing, and to help people with their writing. If you don't see that and only see people being tough on your work then share it with people who'll give you half-felt encouragement without any desire for you or your story to be its best. Edit: To further push the point, you've received a quality and amount of feedback for your writing in this thread that other authors would kill for. It may not be all gold stars and chocolate biscuits, but there are plenty of writers who have to cajole, plead and trade for critiques of their work at the level of critiques you've received. It's entirely ungrateful. Mrenda fucked around with this message at 13:23 on May 11, 2018 |
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May 11, 2018 13:12
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