Why do you write this stuff?

[truepenny]

The Eternal Question. Answered brilliantly here by Marissa Lingen (who got asked the damn question in the first place), here by matociquala and here by katallen.

And here by me.


Sturgeon's Law: 90% of everything is crap. Just keep it in mind.

First of all, I don't buy the idea that one genre of fiction is inherently "better" than another. Some genres are more limited in what you can do with them--if you play them straight. But even so, that doesn't prevent brilliant things from happening. The Name of the Rose is a mystery; Unforgiven is a Western. It's not the genre itself that makes a story good or bad; it's what the author does with the materials.

I'd also like, and perhaps if I keep shouting this loudly enough, someone will notice, to differentiate between genres that are marked by plot, and genres that are marked by other kinds of characteristics. A romance qualifies as such because two people fall in love. A mystery involves attempts to solve a crime. But we recognize science fiction and fantasy for what they are because of a very different set of markers. Swordspoint, The Lord of the Rings, and The Last Unicorn are all fantasies, but they have no commonalities of plot or character. We recognize them as generic cousins because they all have elements of the fantastic (in the case of those three examples, it's explicable as setting, but add Tamsin to the list, or Watership Down, and you suddenly need a new rubric). With certain genres, the marker is what happens; with fantasy, sf, and horror, I think the marker is much more about how it happens.

But I have digressed. The question before the meeting is: why do I write sf/f/h?

The flip answer, but also the true answer, is: because those are the ideas I get. I've written one mainstream story that I would regard as even a very qualified success. I wrote it through sheer bloody-mindedness, to prove to myself that I could, and I only made it work because I went all stylemonkey with the PoV.

On the other hand, I've written twenty-four short stories in the past four years (we'll just leave the novels, finished and unfinished, completely out of the calculations if it's all the same to y'all). One of those sprang from a determination to write a particular kind of story (although even at that I missed the target; I was aiming for H. P. Lovecraft and pinked M. R. James). That story was also the first successful short story I wrote and, moreover, led me to write eight more stories in the same mode and with the same narrator (including "The Wall of Clouds" [/shameless plug]). The things that kick my story-engine into life are always and inevitably the things that are weird, impossible, fantastic, or otherwise going to end up tagged as part of the specfic genre family. It's not a choice I made; it's just the way my brain is put together.

That being said, I love specfic. I love writing it, love reading it, love talking about it. I don't know how to judge the circularity at work here; possibly if I loved "mainstream" literature the way I love specfic, I'd be getting published in Atlantic Monthly instead of Tales of the Unanticipated. It's true that I was exposed to fantasy very early (my father read me L. Frank Baum's Oz books and the Alice books and The Hobbit--although he also read me Sherlock Holmes ... although mystery is my other favorite genre). But, even leaving aside the fact that most children's lit is fantastic in one way or another, I read with mad omnivorousness as a child--when you read fast and addictedly, you have to be an omnivore--and when the winnowing process started in my later teens, it was the mainstream authors who dropped by the wayside. Specfic and I just kept on walking.

I'm tired of the ghetto-ization of speculative fiction. I was tired of it before I was old enough to read, if Ursula K. Le Guin's passionate pleas against it are anything to go by. And I think things are getting better, although as the fact that Marissa Lingen was asked the question in the first place (and the manner in which she was asked) indicates that we are not even within sight of the edge of the woods.

Comments

[supergee.livejournal.com]

The ghettoization of sf goes back at least as far as Hugo Gernsback in the 20s.

Re:

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Great. I was tired of it before my parents were born.

*sigh*

It's one of those things I'm never going to be able to wrap my head around, I think. I just don't get it. What is the threat that requires such militant suppression?

Re:

[larryhammer]

Without stretching too much, you can blame it on the division of highbrow and lowbrow culture as a result of Romanticism.

---L.

Re:

[(Anonymous)]

I hope you don't mind a LJ-less stranger commenting, but I happened across this and just can't help myself...

While it is in some ways true that Romanticism had something to do with the divide, genre literature has very little to do with that - after all much of what the Romantics themselves wrote would be considered fantasy today. Nevertheless, genre fiction *per se* is mostly considered "not high literature," as if genres didn't exist there. They plainly do. The problem seems to be that most people apparently don't understand what "genre" really means and that it's not a synonym for repeating established clichés ad nauseam. In addition, a problem specifically with scifi and fantasy seems to be the utter inability of large numbers of readers to understand an extended metaphor. "But it doesn't exist in real life!" is an argument I hear all too often myself, often from people (*coughmyfathercough*) who have no qualms accepting the most outrageous genre conventions in other places.

Anyway, I'll end my ramble now. Again, hope you don't mind my commenting here.

--Ziska

Re:

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

No, I don't mind at all.

And, yes. I didn't do the whole "genre is not a transhistorical concept" spiel, but it's an excellent point. In Shakespeare's day (to go with the most obvious example), the genres were poetry, prose, and drama. And drama was definitely the left-handed stepchild, much as sf/f/h are today.

Irony. Good for the blood.

lightbulb!

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

A romance qualifies as such because two people fall in love. A mystery involves attempts to solve a crime. But we recognize science fiction and fantasy for what they are because of a very different set of markers. Swordspoint, The Lord of the Rings, and The Last Unicorn are all fantasies, but they have no commonalities of plot or character. We recognize them as generic cousins because they all have elements of the fantastic (in the case of those three examples, it's explicable as setting, but add Tamsin to the list, or Watership Down, and you suddenly need a new rubric). With certain genres, the marker is what happens; with fantasy, sf, and horror, I think the marker is much more about how it happens.

Aha! This is why John Clute's recent attempts to define fantasy have been driving me nuts -- he's trying to define it in terms of plot elements and I having the uneasy reaction that the definition is *wrong* in general even if it fits the specific work he's discussing.

The only mainstream idea I've had has been a historical novel, which would use some specfic techniques for worldbuilding anyway, even without the additional layers of fantasy and fairy tale that go with this particular one. I like reading lots of stuff without fantastic elements, but the idea of writing something without them bores me. I need the fantasy to keep my interest alive.

Re: lightbulb!

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

You can't define fantasy by plot. John Clute is brilliant, but he's barking up the wrong magic beanstalk.

You can say that in some subgenres of fantasy, some plot elements may recur, but that's as far as it goes. And even then, I think you can say that mostly because Tolkien-derivative fantasy is just that: derivative.

And I agree. I get bored without the fantastic element somewhere in what I'm writing. It's something about the way my mind works.

Re: lightbulb!

[larryhammer]

Clute — at least in the Encyclopedia — is definitely not basing his ideas of what fantasy is on Tolkien, or at least not just him. He repeatedly cites as evidence Eddison, Dunsany, et al. as well as contemporary writers clearly influenced by them. Not to mention, some of his ideas are arguments with, as well as agreements with, "On Fairy Stories."

---L.

Re: lightbulb!

[oracne.livejournal.com]

The only mainstream idea I've had has been a historical novel, which would use some specfic techniques for worldbuilding anyway, even without the additional layers of fantasy and fairy tale that go with this particular one.

I've discovered many, many similarities in writing historicals and worldbuilding for sf/f. It's kinda cool.

Re: lightbulb!

[kate_nepveu]

There are a few interesting panels at Boskone on this, unfortunately I will probably still be in transit for them. But you should keep an eye out for reports.

Re: lightbulb!

[oracne.livejournal.com]

Will do.

I will make Boskone one of these years, but I figured Noreascon would be my MA con for this year.

[larryhammer]

I write it because that is what I write best. Which is packs multiple answers into one phrase.

All the prose stories I've sold have been fairy tales, because they've been the only good stories I've ever written. The key attribute — aside from their being wonder tales — is a concern for the personal meaning of the supranatural. (Gee, he talks purty this morning.) I write about people dealing with and interpretting something inexplicable, whether it is magical or numinous or the universe being weird. What does it mean for a woman to discover she loves the beast? What does it mean for a god for her to retire? What does it mean for ants to be turned into people (and what does it mean for the society that has to teach them how to be human)? What does it mean for the only sentient AI to meet a superintelligent ball of ice? I write these stories because they are the ideas that I get the most passionate about. And those stories are the province of fairy tales, and of fantasy in general.

That's part one of the answer. The another part being, it is easier for me to poke fun at things at a remove. To satirize on the slant. Speculative fiction gives me the tools, in setting and character, to do that — whether it be ancient Greeks or Paul Bunyan.

I write narrative poetry because I'm better at it than prose. It plays to my writing strengths, for it not only lets, but encourages, me to obsess on language and image texture — it's fussfun.

And that's why I write what I do.

---L.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

I once got told by a librarian than my books were very good, had I ever thought of writing a real novel?

So I'm tired of it too.

[libskrat]

Gah! Bad librarian! Bad, bad, bad!

It happens, though. Just the stuff that gets into the library literature about reference transactions will make your hair curl.

[matociquala.livejournal.com]

*cough* You've also written half of a non-spec YA novel. *g*

But I always forget that's non-spec too, because historicals have all the same spots and stripes as a certain flavor of SFF.

Re:

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Oh like our premise isn't pure fantasy.

But, yes, the YA doesn't have any actually fantastical elements. But as you and oracne have mentioned, historical fiction does need the same kind of worldbuilding that specfic does.

And besides, mystery. It's genre fiction. It's all good. *g*

[rliz.livejournal.com]

> With certain genres, the marker is what happens; with fantasy, sf, and horror, I think the marker is much more about how it happens.

I've been ! about this point since you first told it to me, and have used it in several discussions with other uneducated-about-genre people. It's so useful, and so incredibly obvious once it's pointed out.

Why the existance of a ghetto is disquieting.

[katallen.livejournal.com]

Something like fifteen years ago I went to a local writing group. It was run by a man who wrote scripts for 'Brookside' a TV soap opera -- and who thought he might have a script for a serialisation of his unpublished detective novel 'in the early stages of production'.

We had an exercise in magical realism -- and then brought a first chapter of our novels.

And he wrote me a charming note that sounded a lot like the line Publish America was taking a couple of months ago --

"We have a genre problem here. I am prejudiced against it." [much length about how he'd tried reading some in bookshops but never 'got' it]

"The irony of course is that if you are into this genre, it may well be a more promising route to publication than the stylish, stylised fiction like your other story." [praise of other story as 'quite stunning']

"The other thing about genre pieces - trying to penetrate beyond the 'Trandal' and 'Dranmon' stuff that puts me off and be faintly objective - is, in what way are you exploring the genre in some particular way unique to yourself? What is this story about? What stimulated you to write it?"

"You obviously write well but maybe you haven't yet settled to what you want to write about?"

And he didn't stop there -- the majority of my contact with him was his running down my fantasy and SF pieces as competent and unoriginal, while continually exhorting me to write mysteries or literary fiction with a much reduced fantasy element (he was prepared to compromise -- so long as the fantasy elements could be mistaken for mental aberrations or symbols or whatever :o))

Despite the money I'd paid, I stopped going to the classes. I spent over a decade writing my drab and voiceless stories for myself because I couldn't actually stop writing altogether. In trying to save my 'talent' for serious writing he greatly discouraged me from ever showing my work to another professional. (The stuff I loved being crap, the one-off class project being lauded)

Which I guess is why I get a little disturbed whenever a specfic writer tries to pretend they're not part of that kind of writing -- and when people try and say that nothing in the genre is in any way worth the effort made in writing or reading it (despite often never having lowered themselves to read any of it -- in case they catch stupidity).

But then I turn round, read the Le Guin article matociquala has posted and suddenly the laughter track aside she makes hits me between the ears and damned if it's not gone in my ideas file and I'm not turning it round in my head and waiting for a cool story to go with it. And that story won't be literary, or part of some other genre -- although it's a seed which could grow into anything -- it'll be SF/F/H. Because that's where I'll find my best story, the one that is unique to me, that is about something, and that I'm inspired to write.

And I'm happy with that. Very happy. Happy enough that I realise I don't care what people who don't 'get it' think. After all, I'm not writing for them.

Re: Why the existance of a ghetto is disquieting.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

I want a time machine to go back and rescue you from that twit.

I had the Reader's Digest Condensed Version of that experience with the first creative writing class I ever took. (Thirteen and a half years ago, so clearly this kind of idiocy was in vogue then.) The guy in charge praised my writing qua writing, but insisted that fantasy and science fiction were not valid genres.

You know, I'm still pissed off at him about that.

But where I got lucky was that he said his piece the first day of class, before he looked at any of my writing, so I had my This man is an idiot filter in place before my ego was on the line.

So what he taught me to regard as a waste of time was not fantasy, but creative writing classes. Oops. *g*