{"id":255,"date":"2016-09-21T13:09:28","date_gmt":"2016-09-21T18:09:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/?p=255"},"modified":"2016-09-21T13:09:28","modified_gmt":"2016-09-21T18:09:28","slug":"not-just-literary-fiction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/2016\/09\/21\/not-just-literary-fiction\/","title":{"rendered":"Not Just Literary Fiction"},"content":{"rendered":"

The morning’s foray onto Twitter included a tweet by Penguin-Random linking to this article, http:\/\/www.signature-reads.com\/2016\/09\/this-is-how-literary-fiction-teaches-us-to-be-human\/,\u00a0 about how reading fiction increases readers’ understanding of other people.\u00a0\u00a0 Although I agree that reading fiction from childhood on up does tend to increase understanding and awareness,\u00a0 I don’t agree with this kind of article (it’s not the first such to show up in the past few years) because it implies that only one kind of fiction–“literary fiction”–contributes to the effect, and it contains a slam at “plot-driven” and “genre” fiction.\u00a0\u00a0 Worse, some of its examples of literary fiction were written as commercial, genre fiction (L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time<\/em> for example, or Judy Blume’s Blubber<\/em>) and not as plot-free literary fiction.<\/p>\n

All fiction depends on three critical components in order to work as fiction.\u00a0 Aristotle laid them out 2000+ years ago in his Poetics<\/em>, and though he was talking about Greek drama, the principles work for all varieties of fiction.\u00a0\u00a0 1. Characters that interest the reader\/viewer.\u00a0 2. Plots that the characters inhabit and that satisfy the inborn desire for story organization.\u00a0 3. Motivation that connects the characters to the plot.<\/p>\n

Plots should move because of character motivation leading to character action.\u00a0\u00a0 Characters should act because something in the plot grabs their attention and motivates them to act.\u00a0 Motivation should arise *from the characters themselves* in response to both external and internal influences: present situation + memory, experience, thought, emotion.\u00a0\u00a0 The pure externals (setting, events external to the characters) are necessary but not sufficient to create a story.\u00a0 Failures in Character (boring, unbelievable)\u00a0 or Plot (boring, unbelievable) or Motivation (incomprehensible) ruin a story.<\/p>\n

Not all genre fiction is “plot-driven” but all commercial fiction has<\/em> a plot.\u00a0\u00a0 Properly, “plot-driven” should apply only to those stories in which the motivational connection between character and plot is tenuous or missing.\u00a0\u00a0 The writer thought up a cool series of events and didn’t figure out why the characters would do any of the eighty exciting but unlikely things they did.\u00a0\u00a0 Not all literary fiction is “character-driven” (sometimes it’s “ideology-driven,” with characters reduced to caricatures to make the point.)\u00a0\u00a0 Sometimes a work labeled “character-driven” is basically a character-study, not a story.\u00a0 The most satisfying fiction, from the reader’s point of view, has the plot and the characters and the motivations in balance…and it does not matter whether that balance occurs in a mystery, a thriller, a romance, a historical, a science fiction, an epic fantasy…it matters that the basic requirements of Story are all in there and in reasonable balance.\u00a0\u00a0 You simply cannot have a good story without all three components.<\/p>\n

So–what kinds of stories can help “make us human?”\u00a0 Many kinds, because readers are varied: age, culture, place in their society, personality, etc.\u00a0\u00a0 The eight-year-old extrovert will learn one thing from a story; the eight-year-old introvert will learn something else from the same story…because of their different past experiences and their different personalities. \u00a0 Books intended for children often include that culture’s intention for children: they include, in their story (if they’re good) and didactic info-dump (if they’re not so good) the values and behaviors they want children to learn.\u00a0\u00a0 By the time I was in junior high, teachers and librarians were already denigrating horse stories as “mere self-indulgence for girls”…but in fact the better ones had much more in them than that. \u00a0 Marguerite Henry and Dorothy Lyons were two of my favorite writers, and in both the social and economic and even political milieu in which the story occurred was laid out–the protagonists (child or adult, boy or girl) were embedded in, and reacting to, a variety of settings.\u00a0 Though well-written, these were not “literary fiction” (very literate, but not literary in the current sense) –they were commercial genre books, and yes, they had plots.\u00a0 And characters. \u00a0 And motivation that a young reader could see and feel and understand.<\/p>\n

Children who read a lot move from “And then what happened?” to “Why did he\/she\/they do that?”\u00a0 often with the help of an adult reader who asks that question and then doesn’t answer it. \u00a0 “Why?” is the question that opens motivation, and it’s a question children naturally ask if they’re not squashed by impatient adults…and they ask it not just about factual topics, but about human behavior.\u00a0 “Why is Daddy mad?”\u00a0 “Why don’t you like Mr. So-and-so?” \u00a0 “Why did that lady yell at us?”\u00a0 “Why can’t Grandma come on the hike with us?”\u00a0 So getting them to read for the “why” isn’t hard, and the books’ answers for the “whys” of stories are what connects them to better understanding human behavior.\u00a0 Not because all books are right about why a character did something, but because enough books are close enough to a reader’s understanding for them to notice when it is<\/em> right.\u00a0 And for them to begin to see parallels between a book and their own situation–and then the situations of others.<\/p>\n

The temptation for teachers, librarians, and people who write serious essays from a literary perspective\u00a0 is to make a line between “serious” and “frivolous” reading, and try to argue that everyone should read these<\/em> books, by these<\/em> writers, instead of wandering around finding books that speak to them.\u00a0 (Something good librarians can help with, I hasten to add.)\u00a0\u00a0 C. S. Lewis, back in the early 20th century, dealt with that brilliantly in one of his essays on reading.\u00a0\u00a0 Readers come into any book like a traveler into a new town.\u00a0 For some, it will be the perfect place to observe and learn–for others, it won’t be.\u00a0 No one book is necessary; no one book is useless…because readers are different.\u00a0\u00a0 The easiest way to drive children away from books is to load them down with books they don’t enjoy and insist they get “the hidden message” out of them.<\/p>\n

And reading is<\/em> important.\u00a0\u00a0 Although drama can connect character to motivation to plot, drama is much more visual (not a bad thing in itself) and “seen from outside.”\u00a0 The character’s appearance and behavior are clear, but access to thoughts and motivations comes either through dialogue or inference.\u00a0 Those most adept at “reading” a movie or TV show already have a pretty good understanding of human behavior.\u00a0\u00a0 Reading allows the reader into the character’s head, to view the motivational vector calculus directly in the character’s thoughts and emotions.\u00a0 Internal conflicts can be laid bare, then considered and stirred around in the reader’s mind, compared with the reader’s experience, whatever it may be.<\/p>\n

So I wish the false dichotomies between “literary” and “genre,” and between “character-driven” and “plot-driven” would vanish from discussions about books.\u00a0\u00a0 If you want to “become human” by reading fiction, just read fiction<\/em>.\u00a0 Read lots of fiction.\u00a0\u00a0 Read lots of kinds of fiction by lots of kinds of writers.\u00a0\u00a0 Writers of other races, from other places, of different ages (their own) and other eras.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 And read books you enjoy.\u00a0 I still haven’t read Moby Dick<\/em> and probably never will.\u00a0\u00a0 My loss, yes, but then my gain was time to read other books.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The morning’s foray onto Twitter included a tweet by Penguin-Random linking to this article, http:\/\/www.signature-reads.com\/2016\/09\/this-is-how-literary-fiction-teaches-us-to-be-human\/,\u00a0 about how reading fiction increases readers’ understanding of other people.\u00a0\u00a0 Although I agree that reading fiction from childhood on up does tend to increase understanding and awareness,\u00a0 I don’t agree with this kind of article (it’s not the first such Read More…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[17],"class_list":["post-255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life-beyond-writing","tag-life-beyond-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=255"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":256,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255\/revisions\/256"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}