12% of ebooks are self-published; most are rubbish, claims editor

[speakingtohe]

Originally Posted by tompe

Well, I have read a lot of short stories that are not stories as such. They are more vignettes. They only want to give a feeling for the reader.

I recently read Gravity's Rainbow and I doubt there was a story in that book.

I take your point now when you mention vignettes. Coincidentally, late last night I was reading an anthology containing an entry that was a software licensing agreement called Devil's contract. ( I can't call it a short story as there was no story) I didn't really enjoy it or find it particularly amusing, but I know some that would.

I'm not to keen on vignettes either although I am sure there are some I have enjoyed in a small way. Nothing memorable.

Perhaps I will read Gravity's Rainbow as it had much critical acclaim and perhaps I will enjoy it and agree that there is no story, although I am not at all sure of either

I don't agree that almost all poetry is fiction. Many poems are written to depict actual events, and some are pretty accurate in as far as they go according to other historical accounts.

Most fiction contains some facts that are true, and/or refers to events that have actually happened, and IMO a lot of non-fiction is coloured by the authors viewpoint and opinions and can be pretty inaccurate or fictional in spots.

Helen

[caleb72]

I'm currently reading a novel in which I really like the story. It's not amazingly original, but it hits several sweet spots for me. However, the quality of the writing itself has consistently hampered my enjoyment to the point where I think the book is not of a publishable quality.

I'm not specifically talking about simple spelling at grammatical errors, I'm talking about poor word choice and klutzy descriptions that have me constantly cringing. If I divorce the story from the writing I would say the story was very enjoyable, but how could I possibly divorce the story from the writing? The idea is absurd. If I could do that surely all I'd really need is a bullet point list or a simple timeline of events rather than a novel.

On the flip side, I can sometimes enjoy a novel that does not focus heavily on story - as long as it's written well. It can be a bit hit and miss for me as I like a good story, but I can appreciate novels that are more about setting moods, or exploring ideas outside of a simple timeline of events. There's usually a story element, but it feels like it's more a backdrop rather than the focus.

[Katsunami]

Originally Posted by caleb72

I'm not specifically talking about simple spelling at grammatical errors, I'm talking about poor word choice and klutzy descriptions that have me constantly cringing.

Can you give some examples?

I've recently played an RPG game on the computer, and it was often said that the dialog was "cringeworthy". However, I didn't see anything wrong with it, except for it being a bit cliché at some times. (Yeah, the world is in danger, you're the Big Hero, and yes, you Get the Girl, assuming that you don't tell her outright to go and *** ***.)

[murraypaul]

Originally Posted by tompe

What it says is: "Traditionally, fiction includes novels, short stories, fables, fairy tales, plays, poetry, but it now also encompasses films, comic books, and video games."

So, following that logic, you would think that the statement "films are fiction" is true? So documentaries don't exist?

I have always thought that a written text considered as a work was either fiction or non-fiction. So I do not see how nearly all poetry can be anything else than fiction.

So some isn't.

[caleb72]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

Can you give some examples?

I'll give an example. It's certainly not the worst, but it happened to be on the page I was up to:

He walked further in and was nearly bowled over by the stench. The smell hit him out of nowhere, like an invisible curtain that slapped him in the face. A scent of rot and decay filled the place. It was so strong that he felt his stomach buckling and was aware of a slight gorge rising in his throat.

This is the kind of thing I'm talking about when I mention poor word choice and klutzy descriptions. It feels like the author is really trying to put "oomph" into his writing at crucial moments, but he hasn't learned how. It ends up sapping the strength from the scenes, which is pretty disappointing.

It's not like this all the time. I will often click through a few pages without the invisible curtain of his efforts slapping me in the face, but it's usually because he is just getting on with the story without focusing too much on mood and imagery.

But in the end, I wouldn't bin this effort. I just think it needs to go to a pedantic editor to challenge the author on his choices. It's a manuscript that feels like a first draft to me and as a draft it's quite good, but now it needs to go through a few more stages to bring it up to a publishable standard.

[Prestidigitweeze]

Originally Posted by murraypaul

So, following that logic, you would think that the statement "films are fiction" is true? So documentaries don't exist?

To define a medium and mode based on one's own expectations and then to claim that the satisfaction of those expectations is based on inviolable universal laws is a tad too inductive. Films are not necessarily works of fiction, but they can be. So can poems, just as long works of prose are occasionally defined as poetry (cf. John Ashbery's Three Poems).

Of course, nearly all of our definitions of recognizable fiction are that ultimately:-- inductive. People rioted at the premiere of Le Sacre du Printemps because they had not yet recognized it as music. We've all been guilty of failing to recognize what was good about a writer whose particular kind of excellence was not apparent to us at first. Sometimes we need a bit of time and context.

Re the description of epic verse as a kind of novel (The Odyssey, Beowolf, Childe Harold, etc.): the distinction is not as rote as people are making it out to be. Even the Bible in its entirety has been translated into verse. Manuals were frequently written in verse stanzas in earlier periods. Why not a novel as well?

We can find many examples of narrative in verse which, if written today, would be conceived as novels, and we can certainly find hybrids. Nabokov's Pale Fire is one such example: A novel which consists of footnotes by one imaginary author to a poem written by another. Why circumscribe all novels according to definitions which are centuries old when the form has the capacity to change constantly?

Someone mentioned Gravity's Rainbow, by Pynchon, but from what I recall, that novel does have conventional structure. Many novels written since at least the modernist period do not. (It isn't a novel, but it is a work in prose and does use the same kinds of experimental writing that certain of her novels do: What is storyline in Gertrude Stein's Tender Buttons?)

Here's the salient fact for people who insist that any novel -- not simply a novel one likes -- must always be concerned primarily with story:

At roughly the same point in the twentieth century, key organizing principles in the arts were seen by certain practitioners as something to work against. People who work for literary, art and music magazines, and who teach in universities, can tell you that those principles/limitations were these:

• representation in art (cf. works by Kandinsky, Pollack and Mondrian which try to avoid it),
• tonality in music (Schoenberg, Webern, Krenek) and
• conventional narrative and storyline in the novel (see above).

While not everyone likes Schoenberg, Pollack or even late Beckett, elements of their artistic language are now part of everything else.

Many artists who were not purists about avoiding those principles do have periods or moments of seeming to avoid them: middle-period Bartok and early Penderecki in music, for example; Gerhard Richter in painting. The techniques that evolved from avoidance are now available to everyone.

My point is not that you need to enjoy those kinds of work. You need only to acknowledge that they exist, and that their existence shows how the organizing principles you're accustomed to saying are intrinsic to a particular mode of art are not necessarily so.

Think of a novel as having a row of faders attached to its various parts. One might be characterization, another plot, another narrative flow, another style, another the number of cultural and psychological insights per page. Any of those traits can be emphasized and any muted.

My favorite balance of those traits is for a writer to advance the plot while offering key insights into the character and moment in culture -- all at the same time (simultaneously), and all in a gorgeous and graceful style with rhythmic momentum. That for me (personally) is the ideal.

However, there exist a number of writers who are primarily concerned with style and tone -- with the poetry of narrative -- at the expense of plot or story and their work can be exceptionally beautiful regardless.

From where I sit, the true act of snobbery is not to point out that novels without stories or story emphasis exist. It is to discount them and those who read them as wrong and unimportant. If it helps you to think of the plotless novel as a genre -- albeit one you intend not to read -- then think of it that way.

Most of us prefer the sort of novel that emphasizes story and there is nothing wrong with saying so. What is wrong is insisting that other kinds of novel do not and should not exist.

We all have our preferences, and I personally would rather read any stylistically beautiful but static novel to one which is uninspiring stylistically but advances on its plot grid reliably.

You don't have to agree with anyone else's preferences in fiction. All you have to do is recognize that there are other approaches to the form, and other points of view regarding the merits of those approaches.

[frddgls]

Originally Posted by Prestidigitweeze

...
My point is not that you need to enjoy those kinds of work. You need only to acknowledge that they exist, and that their existence shows how the organizing principles you're accustomed to saying are intrinsic to a particular mode of art are not necessarily so.

...

My favorite balance of those traits is for a writer to (simultaneously) advance the plot while offering key insights into the character and moment in culture -- all at the same time, and all in a gorgeous and graceful style with rhythmic momentum. That for me (personally) is the ideal.

...


Most of us prefer the sort of novel that emphasizes story and there is nothing wrong with saying so. What is wrong is insisting that other kinds of novel do not and should not exist.

...

You don't have to agree with anyone else's preferences in fiction. All you have to do is recognize that there are other approaches to the form, and other points of view regarding the merits of those approaches.

Yes, yes, yes, yes.

[BearMountainBooks]

Originally Posted by Katsunami

Can you give some examples?

I've recently played an RPG game on the computer, and it was often said that the dialog was "cringeworthy". However, I didn't see anything wrong with it, except for it being a bit cliché at some times. (Yeah, the world is in danger, you're the Big Hero, and yes, you Get the Girl, assuming that you don't tell her outright to go and *** ***.)

I recently finished Graveyard Shift by Angela Roquet and there were word choice problems. The story is excellent, but it was occasionally marred by poor or lazy word choices. One example that occurred more than once: The setup was that someone was angry, yet the dialogue would read, "blah blah," he laughed. The "laugh" was jarring because the guy had just been described as furious. Then the woman was nervous, but she would reply and "she laughed." Or they'd be talking about some horrible event, but instead of "said" it was "laughed."

I don't mean the author was lazy on purpose, but it could have used another read-through with the author focusing on word choices, not just in these cases, but in some of the overall descriptions to make sure that characters were reacting properly with the scenes. I think it may have been a case of trying not to over-use said, but the two or three alternatives often didn't make sense or were over-used instead.

It wasn't so bad that I set the book aside and believe me I have done so if the story isn't there as well or if the characters aren't developed, etc.

In the case Caleb describes, it sounds like that author overdid the description. Instead of one or two strong sentences, the description lost the punch because it hovered over it too long. Once pointed out, the author could probably fix this sort of thing without an editor. Just a case of reading through and cutting lines here and there to keep the pacing intact and the "punch" of a smell or unexpected sight, etc.

Sometimes when this sort of thing happens a beta reader will say, "It drags here, but I can't tell you why." It about kills a writer to hear that, especially when the writer is trying to deliver tension before the big scene, but generally speaking it's pretty easy to fix. Cut half the lines and you're there.

[hidari]

Bravo. Bravo... Senor Presitidigitweeze...sino... hay mucha gente que no les gustan un mentalidad como este....Usted es in un lugar contra much gente de los Genrristas.... se como los Fashionistas... Cuidate....

Originally Posted by Prestidigitweeze

To define a medium and mode based on one's own expectations and then to claim that the satisfaction of those expectations is based on inviolable universal laws is a tad too inductive. Films are not necessarily works of fiction, but they can be. So can poems, just as long works of prose are occasionally defined as poetry (cf. John Ashbery's Three Poems).

Of course, nearly all of our definitions of recognizable fiction are that ultimately:-- inductive. People rioted at the premiere of Le Sacre du Printemps because they had not yet recognized it as music. We've all been guilty of failing to recognize what was good about a writer whose particular kind of excellence was not apparent to us at first. Sometimes we need a bit of time and context.

Re the description of epic verse as a kind of novel (The Odyssey, Beowolf, Childe Harold, etc.): the distinction is not as rote as people are making it out to be. Even the Bible in its entirety has been translated into verse. Manuals were frequently written in verse stanzas in earlier periods. Why not a novel as well?

We can find many examples of narrative in verse which, if written today, would be conceived as novels, and we can certainly find hybrids. Nabokov's Pale Fire is one such example: A novel which consists of footnotes by one imaginary author to a poem written by another. Why circumscribe all novels according to definitions which are centuries old when the form has the capacity to change constantly?

Someone mentioned Gravity's Rainbow, by Pynchon, but from what I recall, that novel does have conventional structure. Many novels written since at least the modernist period do not. (It isn't a novel, but it is a work in prose and does use the same kinds of experimental writing that certain of her novels do: What is storyline in Gertrude Stein's Tender Buttons?)

Here's the salient fact for people who insist that any novel -- not simply a novel one likes -- must always be concerned primarily with story:

At roughly the same point in the twentieth century, key organizing principles in the arts were seen by certain practitioners as something to work against. People who work for literary, art and music magazines, and who teach in universities, can tell you that those principles/limitations were these:

• representation in art (cf. works by Kandinsky, Pollack and Mondrian which try to avoid it),
• tonality in music (Schoenberg, Webern, Krenek) and
• conventional narrative and storyline in the novel (see above).

While not everyone likes Schoenberg, Pollack or even late Beckett, elements of their artistic language are now part of everything else.

Many artists who were not purists about avoiding those principles do have periods of moments of seeming to avoid them: middle-period Bartok and early Penderecki in music, for example; Gerhard Richter in painting. The techniques that evolved from avoidance are now available to everyone.

My point is not that you need to enjoy those kinds of work. You need only to acknowledge that they exist, and that their existence shows how the organizing principles you're accustomed to saying are intrinsic to a particular mode of art are not necessarily so.

Think of a novel as having a row of faders attached to its various parts. One might be characterization, another plot, another narrative flow, another style, another the number of cultural and psychological insights per page. Any of those traits can be emphasized and any muted.

My favorite balance of those traits is for a writer to advance the plot while offering key insights into the character and moment in culture -- all at the same time (simultaneously), and all in a gorgeous and graceful style with rhythmic momentum. That for me (personally) is the ideal.

However, there exist a number of writers who are primarily concerned with style and tone -- with the poetry of narrative -- at the expense of plot or story and their work can be exceptionally beautiful regardless.

From where I sit, the true act of snobbery is not to point out that novels without stories or story emphasis exist. It is to discount them and those who read them as wrong and unimportant. If it helps you to think of the plotless novel as a genre -- albeit one you intend not to read -- then think of it that way.

Most of us prefer the sort of novel that emphasizes story and there is nothing wrong with saying so. What is wrong is insisting that other kinds of novel do not and should not exist.

We all have our preferences, and I personally would rather read any stylistically beautiful but static novel to one which is uninspiring stylistically but advances on its plot grid reliably.

You don't have to agree with anyone else's preferences in fiction. All you have to do is recognize that there are other approaches to the form, and other points of view regarding the merits of those approaches.

[hidari]

Bravo. Bravo... Senor Presitidigitweeze...sino... hay mucha gente que no les gustan un mentalidad como este....Usted es in un lugar contra much gente de los Genrristas.... se como los Fashionistas... Cuidate....

Originally Posted by Prestidigitweeze

To define a medium and mode based on one's own expectations and then to claim that the satisfaction of those expectations is based on inviolable universal laws is a tad too inductive. Films are not necessarily works of fiction, but they can be. So can poems, just as long works of prose are occasionally defined as poetry (cf. John Ashbery's Three Poems).

Of course, nearly all of our definitions of recognizable fiction are that ultimately:-- inductive. People rioted at the premiere of Le Sacre du Printemps because they had not yet recognized it as music. We've all been guilty of failing to recognize what was good about a writer whose particular kind of excellence was not apparent to us at first. Sometimes we need a bit of time and context.

Re the description of epic verse as a kind of novel (The Odyssey, Beowolf, Childe Harold, etc.): the distinction is not as rote as people are making it out to be. Even the Bible in its entirety has been translated into verse. Manuals were frequently written in verse stanzas in earlier periods. Why not a novel as well?

We can find many examples of narrative in verse which, if written today, would be conceived as novels, and we can certainly find hybrids. Nabokov's Pale Fire is one such example: A novel which consists of footnotes by one imaginary author to a poem written by another. Why circumscribe all novels according to definitions which are centuries old when the form has the capacity to change constantly?

Someone mentioned Gravity's Rainbow, by Pynchon, but from what I recall, that novel does have conventional structure. Many novels written since at least the modernist period do not. (It isn't a novel, but it is a work in prose and does use the same kinds of experimental writing that certain of her novels do: What is storyline in Gertrude Stein's Tender Buttons?)

Here's the salient fact for people who insist that any novel -- not simply a novel one likes -- must always be concerned primarily with story:

At roughly the same point in the twentieth century, key organizing principles in the arts were seen by certain practitioners as something to work against. People who work for literary, art and music magazines, and who teach in universities, can tell you that those principles/limitations were these:

• representation in art (cf. works by Kandinsky, Pollack and Mondrian which try to avoid it),
• tonality in music (Schoenberg, Webern, Krenek) and
• conventional narrative and storyline in the novel (see above).

While not everyone likes Schoenberg, Pollack or even late Beckett, elements of their artistic language are now part of everything else.

Many artists who were not purists about avoiding those principles do have periods of moments of seeming to avoid them: middle-period Bartok and early Penderecki in music, for example; Gerhard Richter in painting. The techniques that evolved from avoidance are now available to everyone.

My point is not that you need to enjoy those kinds of work. You need only to acknowledge that they exist, and that their existence shows how the organizing principles you're accustomed to saying are intrinsic to a particular mode of art are not necessarily so.

Think of a novel as having a row of faders attached to its various parts. One might be characterization, another plot, another narrative flow, another style, another the number of cultural and psychological insights per page. Any of those traits can be emphasized and any muted.

My favorite balance of those traits is for a writer to advance the plot while offering key insights into the character and moment in culture -- all at the same time (simultaneously), and all in a gorgeous and graceful style with rhythmic momentum. That for me (personally) is the ideal.

However, there exist a number of writers who are primarily concerned with style and tone -- with the poetry of narrative -- at the expense of plot or story and their work can be exceptionally beautiful regardless.

From where I sit, the true act of snobbery is not to point out that novels without stories or story emphasis exist. It is to discount them and those who read them as wrong and unimportant. If it helps you to think of the plotless novel as a genre -- albeit one you intend not to read -- then think of it that way.

Most of us prefer the sort of novel that emphasizes story and there is nothing wrong with saying so. What is wrong is insisting that other kinds of novel do not and should not exist.

We all have our preferences, and I personally would rather read any stylistically beautiful but static novel to one which is uninspiring stylistically but advances on its plot grid reliably.

You don't have to agree with anyone else's preferences in fiction. All you have to do is recognize that there are other approaches to the form, and other points of view regarding the merits of those approaches.

[hidari]

will stop while behind.

[hidari]

Plus.....stop

[caleb72]

Originally Posted by BearMountainBooks

In the case Caleb describes, it sounds like that author overdid the description. Instead of one or two strong sentences, the description lost the punch because it hovered over it too long. Once pointed out, the author could probably fix this sort of thing without an editor. Just a case of reading through and cutting lines here and there to keep the pacing intact and the "punch" of a smell or unexpected sight, etc.

Sometimes when this sort of thing happens a beta reader will say, "It drags here, but I can't tell you why." It about kills a writer to hear that, especially when the writer is trying to deliver tension before the big scene, but generally speaking it's pretty easy to fix. Cut half the lines and you're there.

I think anyone who isn't a professional editor (or beta reader) would be a saint to go through all the passages like this and point them out.

My dissection of this passage alone was several paragraphs. And I didn't think this one was that bad.

[crich70]

Originally Posted by tompe

What it says is: "Traditionally, fiction includes novels, short stories, fables, fairy tales, plays, poetry, but it now also encompasses films, comic books, and video games."

I have always thought that a written text considered as a work was either fiction or non-fiction. So I do not see how nearly all poetry can be anything else than fiction.

Aside from epic poems which tell a story about a hero i.e. El Cid, Beowulf, Roland, Odysseus, etc. most poetry is about abstract ideas such as love, beauty and the like. Fiction tells a story with a clear cut beginning, middle and end. "I think that I shall never see a poem lovely as a tree..." doesn't tell a story about a particular tree or have the classic story structure. For most intents and purposes prose and poetry are two different things.

[Ken Maltby]

Hmm... when did I stumble into the PBS forum?

Look I never intended to suggest that anyone should have their incoherent counterculture expressions banned or that such drivel does not have a following. In MY opinion the lack of a coherent storyline is a fatal flaw, that makes any such work worthless. You who think otherwise are certainly supported by many in academia, and your "tastes" will continue to be pandered to (on a small [you might prefer select] scale) and your ranks increased by every graduating Lit Major.

As for me, I've had enough of this discussion, I find it too boring to endure for very long.

Luck;
Ken