Comments on Craft

The other day I read an article on writing craft entitled, “25 Essential Notes on Craft from Matthew Salesses”.

I found the article both thought provoking and disturbing. Thought provoking in that it gave me a sneak peak at how other cultures view craft. Disturbing in that it was a typical academic rant condemning Western culture in the promotion of diversity.

Why academics, and the Left in general, feel the need to promote diversity by bashing the West baffles me. In so doing, they strip diversity of the very diversity they are trying to promote. We cannot embrace diversity (which I see as a good thing) if we condemn a part of the human community. If we truly are one, then all cultures and people are one — and all approaches to the craft of writing have value.

In my own writing journey, I am deeply indebted to the Japanese outlook regarding storytelling. The, by Western standards, “plotless” approach of Japanese craft suits me. And in discovering the so-called plotless novel, I found the freedom to write fiction.

I learned much of my craft from the poets Basho, Saigyō, and Ishikawa Takuboku; the movies of Yasujirō Ozu; and the novels of Kazuo Ishiguro. Yet, I’d say I write very much in a Western style.

What the above artists gave me was an appreciation for the impact that under-telling has on the reader. Of course Elmore Leonard said much the same thing when he advised writers to leave out the parts readers skip over.

The Japanese writer also views himself in partnership with the reader. For example: a tanka poem is said to be the middle of the story. The reader is expected to supply the beginning and the end. Both writer and reader contribute to the wholeness of the poem.

Both of the above aspects of Japanese writing remain with me. I don’t have to write everything. The reader can (and will) fill in.

Cultural exchange has been going on ever since there have been cultures, and I think it’s a good thing. We all become richer by adopting the good aspects of each other’s cultures.

Sure, there are purists in all cultures who want to isolate their culture from all outside influence. That leads to stagnation. And there are plenty of examples in history. And none worked in favor of the isolationists.

What’s worse, though, to my mind, is the hypocrisy of one-way appropriation: one culture taking from others, while at the same time being opposed to anyone taking from them. Unfortunately, we see a lot of this going on today.

Salesses makes a point regarding audience: that craft is tied to audience expectations. The two reinforce each other. I think this is true and inevitable. Especially with regards to popular fiction. Lit Fic writers have a much freer hand to experiment.

In my opinion, Salesses is merely stating the obvious. And in doing so, I can’t help but get the feeling that he doesn’t like it. That somehow readers should divorce themselves from their culture.

If I’m writing in a particular genre, if I wish to communicate to my audience, I must write in their language. That is, I must use the conventions of the genre that the reader expects to see.

I can’t write an urban fantasy action-adventure novel using a sweet romance formula — it won’t communicate. We especially see this in book covers — which are the first tool in the marketer’s arsenal.

Craft dictates that I meet my reader’s expectations. 

At the end of the day, a writer must be true to himself or herself. He or she cannot be something they are not. I cannot write an honest novel from the perspective of Native Americans, or Americans of African descent. Because I’m not Native or Black. We need writers from those cultures to tell their story.

In addition to being true to themselves, writers must also be true to their audience. If they aren’t, they will fail to communicate and they will fail to entertain.

And in the end, fiction is about communication and entertainment.

Comments are always welcome! And until next time, happy reading!

On Anger

Let’s be kinder to one another. After all, we’re just wicked people living among wicked people. Only one thing can give us peace, and that’s a pact of mutual leniency.

                           —Seneca, in “On Anger”

Seneca’s treatise, On Anger, even though written 2,000 years ago, is very much an essay for today.

Over the last 4 years, I’ve observed anger and hate and vitriol on a scale that I’ve not witnessed in my lifetime. Not even the 1960s were as bad.

What the left has done during the Trump administration, I’m afraid has set a precedent for the right to follow during the coming Biden administration. A spiraling cycle of anger and hate and vitriol no matter who is in the White House or who controls Congress.

I’ve seen people publicly say that they no longer wanted to be friends with anyone who supported Trump. And those who publicly said they weren’t friends with anyone who didn’t support Trump.

Politics is a pretty small reason over which to destroy a friendship.

Just think about this: name 10 presidents from before you were born. Presidents are here today and gone tomorrow. Can you name 5 speakers of the house, or 5 Senate majority leaders. Or 10 vice presidents?

Why destroy a friendship, that can last a lifetime, over something so evanescent as politics? In my mind, that is just plain stupid. But then we are living in an age of stupidity.

In the above quote, Seneca hits the nail on the head. We the people are all the same: wicked. Or to be more contemporary, flawed. Not perfect.

If we are to have any hope of living together, we have to extend to everyone — whether we agree with them or not — a pact of leniency.

What does that mean? Leniency is “the fact or quality of being more merciful or tolerant than expected”.

If we exhibited mercy and tolerance in a greater degree than the person we’re extending it to expected — then we are being lenient. And in being lenient, we aren’t saying, I agree with you. We’re saying, I will be your friend even though I disagree with you. Our friendship is more valuable than the individual views we hold.

We are currently at a place where intolerance is destroying the fabric of our society. There is no longer a place for civil disagreement. When in fact we cannot but help disagreeing with each other over something. No two people ever agree 100% on anything.

I’ve become over the years essentially apolitical. After observing the political process for the past 50+ years, I’ve come to the conclusion that it matters little who is in power. President A does things, and then President B undoes them. It’s a case of 2 steps forwards and 2 steps backwards.

But what I do find alarming is the amount of anger I am seeing freely expressed by people in public and on social media. No society can survive if people do not extend leniency towards each other.

Seneca knew this. He was involved in Imperial Roman politics. He had to endure and survive the anger of emperors. Anger that meant instant death if it turned on you. His wise advice regarding anger is something all of us need to heed today.

You can find Seneca’s excellent treatise in a new translation on Amazon.

There is, in addition, a fine abridged version geared more towards practical application, also to be found on Amazon.

I have both, and both are good. They are highly recommended. And who knows? Perhaps we all can become less angered by what is happening all around us and with events in our daily lives, and find a little peace. And who doesn’t want peace?

Comments are always welcome! And until next time, may you enjoy peace in your life!

The Fourth Wall, aka Secondary Belief

 

Anyone familiar with drama knows about the Fourth Wall. It’s that invisible wall that separates the world of the play from the world of the audience. The Fourth Wall prevents the characters from knowing the audience exists, while letting the audience observe the world of the characters in the play.

In literature, this is known as Secondary Belief. The world of the story is separate from the world of the reader. And as long as the world of the story is believable — even though perhaps very different from the world of the reader — the reader will accept it and be entertained.

Magic acts, for example, work on this principle. The audience knows the woman is not cut in half, but accepts what it sees as real in order to be entertained.

In order for the Fourth Wall, or Secondary Belief, to work two things must happen:

• The writer must make the fictional world believable
• The audience/reader must accept the fictional world as believable.

The Burden of the Writer

How does the writer make the fictional world believable? That is the burden of the storyteller — to create a consistent world that, because of its consistency, is believable.

The operative word here is consistent.

For example, we know there are no such things as orcs, or hobbits, or elves, or a place called Middle Earth. However, JRR Tolkien created his world so that it was consistent and therefore appears real and believable to us. And we are thus entertained by the story.

The Burden of the Audience

The audience/reader knows when he or she reads a novel, or watches a movie, that the story or movie is fiction. It is not true. That is called Primary Belief.

However, if the world comes across as realistic and consistent, and therefore believable, the audience/reader will choose to believe what is going on as though it is true. That is Secondary Belief.

If the writer fails to make the story completely believable, or consistent, the audience can choose to suspend disbelief in order to continue to be entertained.

However, once the audience can no longer suspend disbelief, the writer has completely failed.

The Storyteller’s Art

A good storyteller draws you in. Sometimes without you even fully knowing it.

Saki, in “Sredni Vashtar”, starts with a sickly boy, Conradin. Saki paints us a picture of Conradin that we find believable. Perhaps because the boy is like us. We learn of Conradin’s world and of his over protective cousin, who is also his guardian. And slowly, slowly we find ourselves on Conradin’s side in his struggle with his cousin — because it is also our struggle against authority. We believe because something similar has happened to us. The author has hooked us without our even knowing it.

But he couldn’t have done that if the world of the story wasn’t consistent and therefore believable.

A poor storyteller may hit all the plot points on the head and may pack the story with action on every page, but if the tale isn’t consistent within what we understand to be believable — we will feel the story to be artificial and not ring true. And sadly forgettable.

Some time ago, I started reading a novel where the main character was bonded with some sort of sentient cat and, even though they couldn’t stand each other, they couldn’t separate because of their bond. That was difficult to believe, but I accepted it and continued reading.

But when the cat kills several people and the townsfolk just stand around and look at the dead bodies, don’t call the authorities, and don’t do anything against the cat and main character, who are outsiders, the writer lost me. Where was the normal human reaction to murder? I found it very difficult to believe not a single one of the witnesses raised any manner of alarm.

That disbelief, coupled with wooden storytelling, made me put the book aside.

The key to telling a good story is consistency in the fictional world. There’s a reason for the old saying that fiction must be believable, whereas real life doesn’t.

We can accept the inconsistencies in real life, even though they might not make sense, because that is how real life is. But we are intolerant of those same inconsistencies when it comes to fiction. The fictional world must hang together. It must be reasonable. That is just how we are.

The advantage of traditional publishing is that the editor at the publishing house will most likely reject any manuscript that is unbelievable. We the reader are spared, for the most part, lousy stories. That isn’t always the case, but mostly. 

Indie authors have no such gatekeeper — other than their readers. Even if the author uses an editor, there is nothing to make the writer incorporate the editor’s suggestions.

The biggest failing I find among a significant number of indie authors is that their storylines, characters, and the world of the story lack consistency. They simply aren’t believable. Sometimes I can suspend disbelief, but most of the time the books are just too bad to do so.

Therefore my advice to would-be authors is to make sure your characters are consistent with themselves, that there are no gaping holes in your fictional world (in other words, that your world is consistent), and that your storyline flows naturally and doesn’t appear to have been written by the numbers.

We readers want to believe. You writers, help us to believe by being consistent.

Comments are always welcome. And until next time, happy reading!

2020 Reading in Review

 

We are now into a new year. All the tumult of 2020 is in the past. It is now simply memory and will eventually fade away. Today is Twelfth Night and marks the end of the Christmas season, and the beginning of Epiphany.

And even though the events of 2020 were the cause of a lot of angst for many, 2020 was a good year for me as a whole, and a very good year as far as reading is concerned. From the pens of 52 authors, I read 52 novels and novellas, 41 short stories and novelettes, and 13 works of non-fiction.

Of those 106 works, 38 were by independent author-publishers. Which is about 36%.

However, that doesn’t mean I supported the megalithic big corporate publishers with the remainder of my reading.

Of those 68 remaining works, I purchased them used, received them as gifts, obtained them for free, or they were published by the small press.

I do not, and will not support the big corporate publishers. They are not the author’s friend. Not unless you are an author who makes piles of money for the company. Then you pretty much get what you want.

The bulk of my fiction reading was mystery and horror, which seems to be what I’m gravitating to in my old age.

Of the 52 authors I read, fiction came from 45. And of those 45, 15 are no longer with us.

I put little stock in “Best of” lists. They are either a display of the compiler’s personal tastes, or they are compiled to promote a political agenda. Neither of which may match my own tastes and interests.

Of those 45 fiction authors I read, 8 very much impressed me with the quality of their writing. Those writers were (in no particular order):

Richard Schwindt

Ray Zacek

Caleb Pirtle III

Lex Allen

Andy Graham

James Vincett

William Meikle

John F Leonard

Click or tap the names to be taken to their Amazon pages.

Each of the above writers will give you maximum entertainment value for your buck. You won’t go wrong by buying their books.

So what types of books do these guys write?

If you like spine-tingling horror, there’s Ray Zacek, Lex Allen, Andy Graham, and John F Leonard.

If you like lots of action and adventure, with a hefty dollop of suspense and terror, there are William Meikle’s books — and they’re all good.

A versatile and difficult to categorize writer is Richard Schwindt. He writes humor, mysteries, occult detective, urban-type fantasy (not sure what else to call it), and non-fiction.  And everything is good.

Another versatile writer is Caleb Pirtle III. He writes non-fiction, historical novels with lots of mystery and a dollop of romance, and espionage thrillers. A superb wordsmith.

I don’t know if these guys are the best — but I found them the most memorable of my 2020 reading. And hopefully you’ll find them the most memorable of your 2021 reading.

Comments are always welcome! And until next time, happy reading!