Reader Journal

The Fantastic: A Structural Approach to a Literary Genre
Tzvetan Todorov

 
"Poetics can help us to see the literary quality in bumper stickers, or, conversely, the lack of literariness in the classics themselves. Poetics, truly understood, is a liberation from prejudice, an opening of the mind, creating new opportunities for readers and writers" (vii-viii).
Todorov interprets Aristotle's Poetics as an early form of structuralist theory. He applies a scientific analytical approach to texts in his effort to define the fantastic as a genre. When reading, he searches for principles operating within the texts, rather than specifics. At the start of research, one formulates the question: What defines the fantastic as a literary genre? This raises other questions, such as must one read every work in the genre in order to study it, and how many genres are there? Todorov states his intent to read broad sampling of the works and use the scientific method to make deductions and test hypotheses to verify theories. He further states genres are relativistic, akin to binomial classification. His initial conclusion is theory of genres cannot be strictly confirmed nor invalidated.
That stated, Todorov posits his theory of the fantastic as ambiguity. "The fantastic occupies the duration of this uncertainty. Once we choose one answer or the other, we leave the fantastic for a neighboring genre, the uncanny or the marvelous. The fantastic is that hesitation experienced by a person who knows only the laws of nature, confronting an apparently supernatural event" (25). This definition breaks down into three conditions: (1) the reader must presume the fictional world obeys the same scientific laws as objective reality, so hesitates between natural and supernatural explanations for the story events; (2) a character may also hesitate between the two possible explanation; and (3) the reader will not mistake the text as poetry of allegory. The last defining characteristic of the fantastic in literature is its transitional nature.
At or by the end of a fantastic tale, the story enters the realm of the uncanny or the marvelous, leaving ambiguity behind. The hesitation is over. The uncanny is the realm of the natural, as evidenced by rational explanations for the event. The marvelous is the realm of the supernatural, as evidenced by explanations most often found in science fiction. While there are several types of marvelous, their commonality is based upon the idea that such factors could exist, but do not. Poetry and allegory differ from the fantastic in that there is no hesitation between possible explanations because the situation is at least one degree from acceptable consensual reality.
The main reason poetry and allegory don't work as examples of the fantastic is readers don't wonder about explanations for events in an unreal world. Reader perception is key to the fantastic. The reader must hesitate between the possible explanations as much or more than the characters. Writers of fantastic fiction make this happen by using diction and the speech acts of narrators and characters. Diction allows the writer to make the figurative literal ('go to Hell – there's the door'), to exaggerate for effect, and use figurative language ('if', 'seemed' 'would') to heighten doubt. Literature allows no test for truth, so the writer's responsibility is to craft a tale with validity and proof of internal coherence. When the reader looks back, he or she must be able to see the clues add up to the final explanation, with no contradictions. Writers can work around this through utterances of narrators and characters. The 'I narrator stands for the confused reader. This means, in all but a rare exception, the statements made by the 'I' narrator are not lies. The most popular exception is the narrator in Agatha Christie's The Murder of Roger Ackroyd . Thus, the narrator doesn't lie, characters can lie, and a character who narrates can lie. Overall, the syntactical aspect only works once, as is the case with mystery novels; once you know the answer, you no longer question. There is no tension.
Todorov maintains the themes of fantastic fiction are those of the self and those of the other."The self signifies the relative isolation of man in the world he constructs…The other, in contrast, refers precisely to that intermediary, and it is the third relation which is at the basis of the network. The opposition is asymmetrical; the self is present in the other, but not conversely" (155). Themes of the self center on the relationship between man and his environment via perception. Reality is more subjective than objective. This is often represented by glasses and mirrors. Themes of the other center on man's desire for what is outside of himself. He may not be aware of his desire, but it drives him, transforms him, and becomes increasingly excessive. He wants the other, but he can never have it. A part of himself is missing and he'll never get it back. Still, he desires them and those desires drive the quests of the fantastic.
Why write stories of the fantastic? This genre allows you to write about the forbidden, the taboo, without alienating the reader. The fantastic is a safe zone, were readers can look at racism, bigotry, and other dark aspects of their society from another perspective. When a writer creates a world of the fantastic, the fantastic swallows the world and the reader with it. The writer can raise any question, so long as he or she does not answer that question too soon.

Reading Journal – On Writing

On Writing
Stephen King
Paperback, 2^nd Edition
This text is part autobiography, part instruction manual, and part manifesto. As he does in his fiction, King ties the elements together in an intricate weave. Ultimately, it is a love story. King loves stories, the ones he read as a child too sick to attend school, the ones he imagined and wrote when he was learning how to put words together, and those written by popular authors. King loves the language, the way you can string twenty-five words together and create something profound. King loves his wife, who also loves the language.
Are there universal constants for writers? As with King, my earliest memories is of imagining and I read early and above my age level. The stories we read the most as children influenced what we wrote as adults. We tried to copy good stories. We read a published story and walked away convinced we could write a better one. We encountered the philosophy that writing is equivalent to taking dictation from a higher power and rejected the idea. We blend two or more ideas to form the inspiration of a story. We don't always like our story people but the readers in our lives can persuade us to write the story anyway. We are passionate, obsessive, and a high risk for addiction. We are amateur mentalists, attempting to communicate the vision unfolding in our heads as we write to the reader separated from us by space and time.
King uses the metaphor of a toolbox to describe what a writer needs. His first advice is to bring the whole toolbox, not just the tool you think you will need. King's toolbox has four levels: top shelf – vocabulary and grammar; second level – style and paragraph building; third shelf- write real fiction, one paragraph at a time; and fourth shelf- not described, perhaps customized by individual. King emphasizes two differences between writing fiction and nonfiction. In nonfiction, the most important parts of a sentence should be at the end, but the reverse is true for fiction. In nonfiction, the basic unit of writing is the sentence, but in fiction, the basic unit of writing is the paragraph.
King shares his belief system, as applied to writing. "The first is that good writing consists of mastering the fundamentals (vocabulary, grammar, the elements of style) and then filling the third level of your toolbox with the right instruments. The second is that while it is impossible to make a competent writer out of a bad writer, and while it is equally impossible to make a great writer out of a good one, it is possible, with lots of hard work, dedication, and timely help, to make a good writer out of a merely competent one" (136).
To be a writer, one must read a lot and write a lot. Every book teaches a lesson. This book restated advice I already knew, but with explanations that made sense. This book also provided advice I wish I had known before entering the Writing Popular Fiction program at Seton Hill University because it would have made my life easier. I will apply what I have learned to future work and rewrites of the novel I am writing. At present, I am writing my first draft with the door closed, but I feel like I am on Closed Circuit Television.
My advice: Readers, buy this book and be entertained. Writers, buy this book and learn from a master craftsman, then do the exercise on pages 167-170.

Reading Journal – The Onion Girl

The Onion Girl by Charles De Lint

WARNING: SPOILERS

Charles De Lint's novel, The Onion Girl, is ostensibly about Jilly Coppercorn facing her past and starting to heal from injuries to her body and spirit. Jilly is hit by a car, leaving her paralyzed. During the long period of recuperation in the hospital, she gains access to the Dreamlands and searches for healing there. Meanwhile, her sister Raylene, damaged spiritually by abuse and poor choice of friends, finds her way into the Dreamlands. She and others run as wolves and hunt power animals, spilling their blood. Various characters from the Newford series are hunting Raylene and helping Jilly. Jilly sacrifices her health to restore Raylene, deciding to heal herself, while Raylene finds a path to redemption.

Newford, as imagined by De Lint, is a place where Celt and Native American mythical beings wear combat boots and thrift store jeans while they rearrange the universe. Magical creatures are in the parks, on the streets, anywhere in your peripheral vision. The characters featured in De Lint's Newford stories touch magic and are transformed by the experience. Jilly is an artist. Her paintings depict goblins in the sewers, elves hiding among the street people, and other examples of magic that goes unnoticed.

Jilly's role in the previous Newford stories is as a sounding board for those encountering myth and magic. They know they can talk to her about what they have seen because she has painted something similar and is comfortable with the fantastic. Usually the person starts out as one of Jilly's casual acquaintances and think of her as a well-meaning flake, only to change their opinions and consider her an island of sanity in the chaos they've discovered. Myth is messy, with rules that don't make sense to modern minds. No matter what, Jilly remains cheerful and positive in the face of the unknowable, which proves comforting.

Jilly has an interesting set of contradictions. She paints the world as she believes it to be, but has only seen the fantastic as a vague blur in her peripheral vision. She herself does not have a direct transforming encounter until the events in The Onion Girl. Another contradiction is more common. Jilly is a good listener who shares little about her own past, a supportive friend who fears intimacy and a straightforward problem-solver who avoids confronting her own pain. Thus, Jilly is not changed by the fantastic because she is a Teflon girl and nothing sticks to her.

Jilly's friends are a formidable network of folk with access to world-class transformative power. The Onion Girl is more their story than hers. Her changes are seeds at best. The character who changes is Raylene. Raylene is the one on a quest, although she thinks she is running away. Jilly specifically seeks a quest, but she is really running away.

In interviews De Lint admits to a fondness for Jilly that makes him reluctant to cause her pain or resolve her issues completely. So, he gave her the feature role of a minor character. Minor characters can have goals and need changes but achieve neither. Jilly is still injured and in need of healing at the end of The Onion Girl, although she does resolve to change. If any spiritual advance had been made, Jilly would have been healed by her mythic friends. If she had changed, Jilly would have reached out to Geordie and their mutual unspoken love, but she stays with her safe choice, the one who can't hurt her emotionally because she doesn't need him.

How did the author get away with this? De Lint uses Jilly's story as an umbrella arc, uniting all plots. Jilly's and Raylene's stories together take up less than half of the page count, but are almost seamlessly interwoven to make one sister's story shadow the other. The supporting characters are helping Jilly, hunting Raylene, or both. These supporting characters were once featured in other stories, so De Lint uses thumbnail sketches to establish them in The Onion Girl.

All of this interests me because I am writing an ensemble story with a protagonist who is only capable of limited change, but her actions and the motives behind them drive the story from beginning to end. I can adopt his technique to make my two main viewpoint characters have parallel quests and be shadows of one another. Every character in my ensemble story is affected by the actions of my main protagonist, so an umbrella approach makes sense.

Overall, The Onion Girl was disappointing to me as a Jilly Coppercorn fan who wanted to see her resolve her issues, mildly entertaining as a reader of the Newford stories who loves the quest motif, and invaluable to me as a writer who wants to offer a compelling tale.

Reading Journal – Self-Editing for Fiction Writers

Self-Editing for Fiction Writers

Renni Browne and Dave King

2^nd Edition, paperback

Instructional books that feature tools and techniques to improve the way you write are necessary additions to your bookshelf. This text has several modes of usefulness: (1) Read the book cover-to-cover and think about how many of the tools and techniques can be applied to your work; (2) Do the end-of-chapter exercises 1-2 hours per week and get used to using the tools and techniques; and (3) Use it as a reference when you are stuck.

These instructions will not immediately take your writing to the next level. There are two ways you can use the text to change the way you write – either slow the pace of your writing and learn to use the tools as you go, getting faster with practice; or use it as a revision tool, do the exercises and let the techniques become habit over time. Frankly, I already overthink my writing to the point of compulsive overediting. I need to write my first draft at top speed with no thought of readers or polish. I need to save that for the second or subsequent drafts.

Most of the excellent advice from Browne and King can be summarized in the acronym they provided. RUE = Resist the Urge to Explain. Convert some, but not all, narrative summary into scenes. Allow readers to interpret characters gradually through their actions. Develop characters through use of (1) other characters' viewpoints, (2) dialogues, (3) beats, and (4) character's worldview. Backgrounds and societies count as characters, so the same advice applies. Be aware of proportion and show more of what is important to the story, less of pet interests. Never explain dialogue. Convey information through dialogue by showing a character's background through word choice, cadence, and grammar. Misdirection (through characters lying, hedging, disagreeing, and misunderstanding each other) moves plot without explanation. Interior monologue is a way to tell the reader what this character would never say and beats are pieces of action that show aspects of the character they may not know they have. Use both sparingly. Eliminate repetition wherever possible.

There is good advice on every page. Browne and King use examples of what works and what doesn't. The cartoons in each chapter are funny and provide a shift in perspective that reminds us not to take ourselves so seriously.

I highly recommend this text to anyone with an interest in how fiction writing works.