Spillt Ink

Been thinking about a thing.  Distance.  Distance in a story.  How distanced does the writer put the characters.  In today's literary field, the distance is a far far away thing.  There is the expectation that the reader will bridge the distance and not feel alienated from the character/s or story.  What they do is paint a picture and silently say, "Here it is.  Here is the story.  Here are the characters.  You are a wise and intelligent reader, you can put the pieces together.  I need not speak aloud about heartache or joy.  You will know."  In other fiction, plot rules.  Plot gets you involved with the story.  What happens next.  Identification happens because, gawd dern it, you gotta know what happens to that character/s next.  Then, there is fiction somewhere where the character involves the reader so that the story is about themthem period.  Well, mostly.  How are the writers of that fiction doing that?  How are they drawing the reader in, making the reader identify and sympathize and love their little toe-tapping main character?  Oh, I can think of a few ways this is done, but I'm drawing a blank on the intensity of connection.  Or if it even that possible in short fiction.  

Mostly, I'm of the present opinion that in short fiction, some pieces are combining distance and elements of plot.  Despite the fact, I've been told that in character-driven short fiction the story is about what a person wants more than anything else in the world.  Maybe because of the fact, I'm not finding that premise in any of the fiction I'm reading today.  In an essay by one of the Grand Master of SF, he said, that the main character of a story should be always be alone, lonely.  I don't see that much either.  Or maybe I do.  Maybe loneliness is the burden, unstated and distanced, I'm missing in the fiction or one that I see and that I am calling  alienation.

Which brings me right back to the uncertainty I'm sensing of where is the fine line of distance and identification.  Or maybe it doesn't.  Maybe there is more than that going on in my little red head.  But, that's what I'm thrashing through at the moment.

This week, upon one of my friend's journal, I once again heard the lament that the writer of the journal was verily tired of reading stories where the protagonist does nothing.  

I have heard this complaint from genre people who dislike literary stories, either in or without the genre.  Well, particularly within the genre.

It always makes me feel less.

Because, I am one of the people writing these stories.  My protagonists are princesses wandering the castle.  They travel from room to room usually running their fingertips against tapestried walls, cold stonework, carvings made upon dark, heavy wood.   They are the quiet ones working upon their embroidery as the others gossip about each other and tell fine, tall tales about fine, dark men.  They wander the gardens, or sit prettily upon garden benches, appreciating the green leaves and the delicate flowers, but never looking for the secret door that would lead to a secret tunnel that would lead to adventures and misadventures and perhaps, despair and woe.    They are about as passive as passive can be.  

There has to be a place for them in the world of stories, don't you think?  Not everyone takes up the sword, swings the axe, pursues the monster.  Not everyone is a hero or a herorine in real life.  Why shouldn't passive people share the world of fantasy, or horror, or even science fiction?  Why shouldn't they have their own stories?

 Not so long ago, JVM had a post about how ocs characters are flawed characters.  Crazy.  Insane.

Today, Jonathan Carroll had a post quoting Steve Almond about how writing is about obcessed characters and that is what is important.   It isn't bad.  It is necessary.

These are a few of the things that I've discovered tick me off in a story:

Too much: too many bits and pieces using other literary work within a single story (some of this and some of that, and, phooey, it doesn't work because it's confusing), too many bits of bizarre and strange sentences following each other (really, it's as the the writer had the magic wand and was waving it all over the place), heavy-weaving plot lines (too many characters, too much going on for the character, too much substance for a short piece of work; ah, write a novel).

Not enough wisdom: the writer uses an important detail for the work or within the work and that detail is wrong. For the most part, female deer do not grow horns, just the male. In April, a corn field's crop in Indiana may only be a few inches out of the ground, not tall enough to be waving about and against one another in a tornado. There are song birds and there are chirping birds and there are birds that make cooing or moaning sounds, there are birds of prey that scream, there are birds that mock other birds. A swallow is not a startling or a red-winged black bird.

Transparent plot line: Particularly true for genre fiction, the plot follows standard formation. If CHARACTER and SITUATION isn't strong enough in the opening, behold, the same old SF story formation is the skeleton in the closet stepping out to wrap its bony hands around my head.

Openings: Descriptions of the setting. Sorry. That's a novel for sure. And, boring for me. Also, philosophy. Talking aloud about the world, the future world, where is the story in that? Also, the combination of the setting and its philosophy. Oops. Double whammy.

Character: In a genre story, even if it is a genre story on the fringes, should include some wonder in its world, or the character's immediate world, otherwise, why not just write it mainstream.

Women: some stories are stories without women, or without women who are people, not to mention the stories where the women are just toys for men who are mental midgets. Sad.

Gadgets: I'm not a rocket scientist all I need is enough information to know the device is logical and that it works or won't work, but it's more about the consequences of it that matter.

Awhile back, I finished reading, one story after another, BAF. It took a week or two, maybe longer, but I hadn't read twenty-seven of the twenty-nine stories. After the reading, I was going to review it (sorry Chance), but there wasn't enough to say about the collection. Or there was too much. Or someone had said something similar and gods how I hate repetition.

And, now, what can I say? The majority of these stories come from venues I do not read, or have not read recently. The majority of them have that aurora of the literary story with fantasy elements. Nothing wrong with that. In fact, I enjoy such works. But, I should mention that a number of genre readers disagree with me about the literal fantastic story. In such a story, imho, there is a focus upon character/s or a focus upon mood/s or emotional explanation with an alienation of that emotion. It is given to the reader without overly heightened sentiment. Also, the work could be called plotless, if one is speaking about goal achievement. Actually, these stories aren't really goal oriented at all, but do contain movement from one spectrum of being to another spectrum of being. They are about people or a single person or a community and a passage. Emotionally or unemotionally. And, the fantasy can be, well, not too fantastical. An element of the fiction, sometimes, not even a very remarkable or memorial element. Sometimes, though, even that unremarkable fantastical world or element, underplayed, makes the story a wonder story.

Okay, enough on that, it isn't want I wanted to look at here. What I wanted to look at was the neverending story. The story that goes on and on, seems to last forever and forever, and I'm reading it and reading it and it feels like my head is going to explode. I can readily point to three stories in this collection that fit this description. If these stories hadn't been in a best collection, I wouldn't have finished them. Instead, I would have sent them aside, disgruntled and disgusted in my opinion of the work and my opinion of a person that wrote such a work. (Sometimes, I have no patience whatsoever.)

Okay, so maybe the length of the stories, and my personal ennui towards them had to do with tone or pace or, perhaps, even style, but mostly those works felt/read overly too long. For what the story was, they could have benefited from a goodly amount of red ink editing.

But! of at least two of the three stories, the conclusion, the ending, the last paragraphs/paragraph/sentence was perfect. Perfect. Wonderful. Thrilling to read. Rewarding.

So, ah, my personal confusion, my problem of the moment, is dealing with this as a writerly situation. Is a tome worth of wordage, sometimes dry, sometimes with the cloud of excessive wordage, worth that perfect ending?