Breaking The Rules

     One of the pleasures I take from writing fiction arises from my fascination with “the rules:” the rules of fictional construction and depiction, and whether and how tightly they actually bind the writer. I’ve occasionally gone off on great and windy tirades about “the rules” – as I understand them, of course – often regarding blatant violations of them committed by other writers. It can make me seem pedantic. Candidly, that’s a longstanding fault of mine.

     But in truth, my fascination with “the rules” goes deepest when it concerns how they might be broken to advantage.

     Sometimes, an approach “the rules” seem to forbid is really just something that hasn’t yet been done successfully. Over time that can lead to a certain rigidity:

“We don’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“It’s not done.”

     Should the questioner ask “Why not?” a second time, his interlocutor might say something snippy and apply the Cut Direct. This is especially prevalent among “established” writers, who are ever ready to dismiss the parvenu: “He’s not one of us.”

     But time marches on, and sometimes a writer who has muttered “Why not?” in privacy will resolve to try out a particular rule breakage and see if he can make it work. Those who loftily proclaimed that “It’s not done” might sniff, but that’s ultimately of no moment. Indeed, on rare occasions a rule breakage becomes a part of the adventurous writer’s mystique, even a reason to proclaim him great:

     “Shakespeare never breaks the real laws of poetry,” put in Dimble. “But by following them he breaks every now and then the little regularities which critics mistake for the real laws. Then the little critics call it a ‘licence.’ But there’s nothing licentious about it to Shakespeare.” [C. S. Lewis, That Hideous Strength]

     Until fairly recently, one of the “little regularities” was that first-person and third-person narration don’t mix. Yet it can be done, if properly structured, and if enough care is taken not to jar the reader unduly. I’ve done it a couple of times. Another narrative technique disdained until fairly recently is first-person multiple: having more than one first-person narrator, their viewpoint sections interleaved. Yet Ursula Le Guin succeeded brilliantly with it in The Left Hand of Darkness and Robert Silverberg used it to tremendous advantage in The Book of Skulls.

     Another group of pseudo-rules concerns mandatory elements in particular genres. Such a rule is of the form “If you’re writing in genre X, you must include element Y.” This is an indirect attempt to define the genre, which I don’t disagree with in principle. However, let it be said at once that genres of fiction, like many other things, have nebulous margins. Their edges are not at all hard or fast. Anyone who’s ever delved into the interminable arguments about “fantasy versus science fiction” (or the more recent and much more acrimonious arguments over romantic science fiction) will know how such debates usually run.

     Now, I’m hardly one to counsel young writers to ignore “the rules.” Rather, I advise knowing them as completely and thoroughly as possible. One way to do that is the method prescribed by Lawrence Block: Read a great deal in your target genre, such that you subconsciously absorb what makes it the kind of fiction you want to write. Once you’ve read five hundred murder mysteries, you’ll have a pretty good sense for what’s been done in that sub-genre and how well it worked.

     But that doesn’t mean you can’t break the rules when you think it will work for you. You can strike out on a completely new path, if you’re willing to take the risk that you might not find a readership. However, you must be ready for the sneers of the “established” set, ever ready to defend their turf against an interloper.

     For example, I have a great affection for the romantic science fiction of Linnea Sinclair. Her “Dock Five” stories, in particular, strike me as near-perfect blends of two seemingly distinct genres, with all the appeal of both. Not everyone will agree; as a colleague of mine once said, “That’s why there’s chocolate and vanilla.” But by dismissing a pseudo-rule that spurns the inclusion of a major romantic element in an SF tale, Miss Sinclair has done something new. Whether you like it or not is up to you.

     However, some writers don’t feel that De gustibus non est disputandum is a sufficient guide. They want “the rules” to bind tightly, with hard edges around “their” genres. Their immediate reaction to stories of Miss Sinclair’s variety will be “That’s not SF!” Others, of course, will exclaim that “That’s not romance!” They probably want to burn her at the stake for her three-way blend of fantasy, SF, and romance in An Accidental Goddess, a tale I find particularly inventive and charming.

     If there is any rule that really does bind tightly, it would be this one:

Know clearly what you’re trying to do.
Accept that not everyone will like it.

     And yes, that “should” be “obvious,” though it seldom is.

     Sometimes that involves a conception of “what the reader is there for,” which is pertinent to writers striving to address a particular kind of reader. Is he “there for” the technological speculations and elements that characterize what’s commonly called “hard” science fiction? Or is he more charmed by the sociologically oriented stories told by Heinlein and similar writers? When it comes to fantasy, there are many sub-categories. Their elements distinguish them more sharply than “hard” versus “soft” SF. Is your target reader there for elves and wizards, or for vampires and werewolves, or for angels and demons? While these elements are occasionally combined in a single tale, such crossbreeds are rarer than the hybridizations that occur in science fiction.

     Mind you, there’s a good reason traditional publishing houses and the agents that serve them (a.k.a. “Pub World”) disdain such genre-crossing experiments: they’re tough to market. As the typical genre reader really is looking for his preferred elements, you’ll have a hard time winning him over. You must hope that there are readers who’ve been waiting for what you have to offer. If there are some who’ve been praying for an innovator such as yourself to arise, you might get lucky.

     Just be braced for the reactions, whether they’re screams of dismay, yawns of indifference, or thunderous cheers for your brilliance. And don’t spend the proceeds until the check clears the bank. That, too, “should” be “obvious.”

     (Cross-posted at Liberty's Torch.)

To See Your Way Forward, Try Looking Backward

     Sometimes the clearest vision of what’s ahead comes from a frank look at what’s behind us.

     Does anyone here remember Philip Wylie? In his day he was a successful writer of fiction and non-fiction. His 1930 novel Gladiator is believed to be one of the seminal influences on the comic-book character Superman. But most who are aware of him today remember his two novels When Worlds Collide (1933) and After Worlds Collide (1934), which he co-wrote with Edwin Balmer.

     Literary style has changed greatly since the Thirties. Many who stumble upon these books today find them uncongenial. Even in its time, reviewers were dismissive of When Worlds Collide. In part that was a criticism of Wylie’s overt use of the Great Deluge and Noah’s Ark, one of the most famous stories in the Old Testament, as his inspiration for the story. But in equal part it was because he was unashamed to quote the Bible in the text. Consider the following segment, from shortly after the scientists at the thematic center of the story confirm that the Earth is doomed. The speaker is Eve Hendron, daughter of physicist Cole Hendron and beloved of the major protagonist, stockbroker and man about New York Tony Drake:

     “We’re in a very solemn time, Tony. I spent a lot of to-day doing a queer thing—for me. I got to reading the Book of Daniel again—especially Belshazzar’s feast. I read that over and over. I can remember it, Tony.
     “‘Belshazzar the king made a great feast to a thousand of his lords, and drank wine before the thousand.
     “‘They brought the golden vessels that were taken out of the temple of the house of God; and the king, and his princes, his wives and his concubines, drank in them.
     “‘They drank wine, and praised the gods of gold, and of silver, of brass, of iron, of wood, and of stone.’
     “Isn’t that a good deal like what we’ve—most of us—been doing, Tony?”
     “‘Now in the same hour came forth fingers of a man’s hand, and wrote over against the candlestick upon the plaster of the wall of the king’s palace; and the king saw the part of the hand that wrote.
     “‘Then the king’s countenance was changed; his knees smote together. The king cried aloud to bring in the astrologers, the Chaldeans and the soothsayers.’
     “And Daniel, you may remember, interpreted the writing on the wall. ‘Mene, Mene, Tekel, Upharsin. God hath numbered thy kingdom and finished it. Thou art weighed in the balances and art found wanting. And in that night was Belshazzar, the king of the Chaldeans, slain.’
     “It is something very like that which is happening to us now, Tony; only the Finger, instead of writing again on the wall, this time has taken to writing in the sky—over our heads. The Finger of God, Tony, has traced two little streaks in the sky—two objects moving toward us, where nothing ought to move; and the message of one of them is perfectly plain.
     “‘Thou art weighed in the balances and art found wanting,’ that one says to us on this world. ‘God hath numbered thy kingdom and finished it.’ But what does the other streak say?
     “That is the strange one, Tony—the one that gives you the creeps and the thrills when you think of it. For that is the afterthought of God—the chance He is sending us!
     “Remember how the Old Testament showed God to us, stern and merciless. ‘God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth!’ it said. ‘And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth. And the Lord said, I will destroy man, whom I have created, from the face of the earth; both man, and beast and the creeping things, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them. And then, God thought it over and softened a little; and He warned Noah to build the ark to save himself and some of the beasts, so that they could start all over again.
     “Well, Tony, it seemed to me the second streak in the sky says that God is doing the same thing once more. He hasn’t changed His nature since Genesis; not in that short time. Why should He? It seemed to me, Tony, He looked us all over again and got disgusted.
     “Evolution, you know, has been going on upon this world for maybe five hundred million years; and I guess God thought that, if all we’d reached in all that time was what we have now, He’d wipe us out forever. So He started that streak toward us to meet us, and destroy us utterly. That’s Bronson Alpha. But before He sent it too far on its way, maybe He thought it all over again and decided to send Bronson Beta along too.
     “You see, after all, God had been working on the world for five hundred millions of years; and that must be an appreciable time, even to God. So I think He said, ‘I’ll wipe them out; but I’ll give some of them a chance. If they’re good enough to take the chance and transfer to the other world I’m sending them, maybe they’re worth another trial. And I’ll save five hundred millions of years.’ For we’ll start on the other world, Tony, where we left off here.”

     Who, among the speculative fiction writers of today, would dare to use the Deluge and Noah as the pattern for a tale, much less to quote the Book of Daniel? Is there anyone with the courage and willingness required to look to the Bible for his inspiration? Never mind whether the tale of the Deluge and the Ark is literally true. No one knows, and no one can. The tale itself is the thing: its open paralleling of God’s wrath as narrated in Genesis to an astrophysical calamity that would make all the rest of human experience seem trivial.

     Wylie’s other fiction includes similar stories of world-girdling disasters. But his explicit use of a famous Biblical narrative, and the implications it held for Mankind’s past, present, and future, are what I find most striking today – more than eighty years since the publication of When Worlds Collide, and more than fifty years since I first encountered it.

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     Time was, a Hollywood producer might bring out a movie about the ministry, Passion, and Resurrection of Christ and title it King of Kings, or The Greatest Story Ever Told, release it to the theaters, and “pack ‘em in.” People were inspired by such movies, as well as being entertained. Movies founded on Old Testament tales, such as The Ten Commandments, were equally popular. These stories were acknowledged to be important elements in Americans’ cultural heritage. We weren’t embarrassed by them; rather the reverse.

     Thigs are different today. Mel Gibson’s movie The Passion of the Christ was greeted by dark and ominous forebodings from critics before its release. Many a theatergoer was derided for saying he wanted to see it, or for praising it afterward. The Old Testament tale of the Deluge was rewritten as an enviro-Nazi tract for Noah. The moral and ethical elements of the original tale were absent from it. Despite the presence of Russell Crowe, Anthony Hopkins, and several other big-ticket stars, the movie was about as large a disaster at the box office as the Deluge of which it spoke.

     The Bible’s various stories are morally and ethically aimed. Such things make producers uneasy in our time. I trust I need not thrash this into the magma layer for my Gentle Readers to get my drift.

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     When Worlds Collide doesn’t depart from contemporary practice solely in its antecedents. Wylie had a point to make: the one that Eve Hendron made in the segment I quoted above. Beyond that, it stands as an example of unabashedly dramatic storytelling, told in a fluid and grandiloquent style that critics have dismissed as “florid.” Rereading it after a fifty year hiatus has reminded me of what’s possible to a writer who ignores contemporary fads and fashions and hews resolutely to his own conceptions, preferences, and style.

     Sometimes, to get a sense for where one should go, one must look behind: at where he has been, but also where others have gone before him.

Figure And Ground

     An engineer facing a communications related problem must resolve one distinction before all else: what is “signal” versus what is “noise.” In layman’s terms, “signal” is your attempt to say something to your interlocutor or vice versa. “Noise” is anything and everything that competes with the “signal” and therefore must be excluded from your attention. Of course, context matters. In a conversation in a crowded, noisy restaurant, “signal” is your voice or that of your interlocutor, whereas “noise” is any other sound, including other diners’ conversations, that the two of you are straining to ignore. If you can’t distinguish them, you can’t communicate.

     There’s a related phenomenon in visual depiction: what is “figure” versus what is “ground.” Consider the most famous painting of the Renaissance era: Leonardo Da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa:”

     The conventional interpretation of this portrait is that the “figure” is the woman depicted “front and center,” whereas the “ground” is the landscape depicted behind her. Much attention has been given to the woman’s subtle smile and the details Da Vinci captured in her expression. But were you aware that scholars of the fine arts devote as much attention, if not more, to the backdrop, and the delicacy with which Da Vinci captured its colors and shadings? To such critics the “ground” matters quite as much as the “figure” – and why shouldn’t it?

     That having been said, have a couple of deliberate attempts to confuse the viewer’s eye by making the “figure” and “ground” interchangeable at will:

     The first of these is by noted graphic artist Scott Kim. The second is from that inveterate composer of visual conundrums, Maurits C. Escher. Both eliminate any depicted “preference” for “figure” over “ground,” such that it becomes a matter of what the viewer chooses to see rather than any assertion by the artist.

     Mind you, these are not items you’re likely to have framed and hung on your living room wall. They’re essentially puzzles, or more accurately solutions to a puzzle: how to eliminate any conception of “ground” from a composition. They’re clever and thought-provoking, but very few persons would prize them as decor items.

     “What the hell is he driving at?” I hear you mutter. Well, it’s mainly about fiction: a phenomenon some of my indie colleagues have noticed as they pump out their stuff.

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     Every now and then a reader of my fiction will ask why I haven’t tried to produce anything in some sub-genre he favors. In the usual case, my answer is that “it’s been done,” sometimes with a sotto voce “to death” at the end. I dislike to have my name associated with anything formulaic or commonplace; I prefer to be thought of as a writer who boldly goes where no writer has gone before.

     Yet there is this about those “it’s been done” subcategories: They sell like beer at a ballgame in August. Why else would Harlequin be carting bucks to the bank in wheelbarrows? A popular subcategory can make a writer very well to do -- if he can get himself recognized among his competitors. Of course as always, the most important word in that previous sentence is if, but if the premise be fulfilled, the consequence is undeniable.

     (Agents and publishers are well aware of this. I once had an agent who was forever after me to “Write a nice romance, Fran.” Her love of the genre was at least partly because a romance that “catches on” will sell in big numbers. She couldn’t fathom why I kept demurring.)

     With regard to indie versus traditional publication, Sarah Hoyt mentioned an important aspect of this phenomenon:

     I’ve met young, (thirty something) indie authors making a living after 1 year. I’ve looked at and read their (usually fairly short) books, and there is no magic sauce. They read like very young-in-writing authors, who will get better in time. Some of them are eminently readable but I have to turn off the part of my back brain that groans and goes “oh, hey, I used to do that.”

     …. So, what gives?....

     This morning I realized why your traditional career might give you a little boost (or a significant boost) in indie, but it won’t be at the same level starting out. And why even those who have dual careers need to start out again in indie, even while they’re still doing fine (and are sometimes megasellers) in traditional. And also why traditional publishers think the indie market doesn’t really matter and fail to understand the significance of ebooks.

     Are you ready for this? Once you see it, you can’t unsee it: it is because traditional and indie play to fundamentally different sets of readers.

     But what, pray tell, differentiates those sets of readers? Who are the readers gobbling up the emissions of those young-but-successful indie writers and what’s their secret? Sarah will tell you:

     They go by many names from super readers to compulsive readers. To call us — yes, I’m confessing — by our real name, we’re story addicts. The threshold to be one is RIDICULOUSLY low: 3 books a month. I have no clue what they call people who in slow times average three books a week, and when on vacation or otherwise not busy can do that a day, but I know we exist, and I know I’m not alone. (Right, I’m not alone? Right?) We’re the people who sneak a book into the pocket of our formal clothes and panic because you can’t figure out how to sneak a book into your wedding dress. We exist, and we won’t live in the shadows anymore. I mean… ahem… whatever.

     And why should the most financially successful indie writers have hit it big with those “super readers?”

     You see, Indie by its nature, the fact that books are cheap (and a lot of us lunatics are subscribed to Kindle lending library, too) and that they are varied, but mostly THAT THEY’RE IN SERIES and series that are published two to three months apart for new installments, caters to the 5% who buy 80% of the books.

     COMPLETELY different market from traditional. And one about which I can speak authoritatively because, again, I AM THAT market, or a typical member of it.

     If you write anything remotely readable and non offensive in one of our genres or subgenres, (we can now be picky) we will find you and we will read you.

     Now, this is not a uniform characteristic of the “super reader.” I should know; I’m one such. On average I read a novel a day. (Yes, all the way to the end.) The last time I spent an entire week on a single book, the book was Kristin Lavransdatter. But I’m averse to the interminable series, especially if it falls into one of the “it’s been done” subcategories, even though such a series would satisfy my reading addiction better than any standalone novel.

     The reason is the “figure versus ground” phenomenon.

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     Within a single story, we may think of the “figure” as the cast of characters and their actions as the story progresses. The setting, and some of the events to which the characters must respond, constitute the “ground.” One approach to a genre / subgenre categorization is to think of it as those characteristics of the “ground” that may (or must) appear in stories in that category. For example, within the genre of fantasy we have the subgenres of medieval fantasy and “urban” fantasy. A story of the former sort is set in a largely nontechnological milieu and will involve magic and / or non-human creatures some of whom have special powers. In contrast, an “urban” fantasy will be set in a milieu that resembles present-day human society. It may involve magic, and it probably will involve paranatural creatures: e.g., vampires, werewolves, zombies. The stories common to those two subcategories differ considerably from one another in style and tone.

     Each subcategory has a large number of dedicated readers. Those readers will read anything in their preferred subcategory if:

• It’s not too expensive;
• It doesn’t offend their sensibilities;
• It’s competently executed: i.e., not too many glaring errors.

     God bless and keep those readers! They’re getting what they want and helping a bunch of indie writers pay the bills. What could be objectionable about that? Nothing I can think of. But I’m not one of them. My immediate reaction to a new book in either of those categories is “it’s been done.”

     The “ground” against which those stories are told is simply too well-trodden for me.

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     I don’t write in those too-well-trodden categories for a related reason: Stories in them tend to be less than memorable. The problems characters face in those categories tend to be as well-trodden as the categories themselves. Now and then an innovator will come up with something novel within the category – John Conroe’s “Demon Accords” series is an example – but that possibility attracts me less as a writer than a field with plenty of unplowed ground. I want to write stories the reader will remember for a long time – hopefully not in a “Why did I waste my time and money on Porretto’s crap?” fashion.

     All the same and beyond all dispute, the big revenues are going to the hyper-prolific writers whose works are aimed at a popular subcategory and its addicts. If revenue is his goal, the indie writer should do as those hyper-prolific writers do:

• Choose a popular subcategory to write within;
• Invent a few protagonists who can move from one novel to another;
• Pump ‘em out as fast as possible: thousands of reading addicts are counting on you!

     There’s nothing ethically wrong with this. It’s just one more trade-off. You’ll make money – always assuming you can get noticed in the first place – but your stories won’t stand out or create long-term remembrance in your readers.

     It’s just not for me.

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     This piece arose in large part because of the difficulty I’m having completing my novel under construction. I’m a perfectionist; I want every word to be exactly the right one, and every sentence to ring with a rhythm that compels the reader to press onward. That costs a lot of time and effort. Add to it an absolute commitment that this tale shall be one never before told, and you’ve got a formula for slow production.

     So I manage to write about one novel a year. And I don’t make much money. Those are the downsides. But the choice was and is a conscious one. It derives from my scale of priorities, which I have no power to alter. At the top of that scale stands this mandate:

The Ground shall be fresh and fallow;
The Figure shall be new and memorable.

     You pays your money and you takes your choice.