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aseFor the Related Works category of the Hugo packet we have "John C. Wright's Patented One-Session Lesson in the Mechanics of Fiction", an essay from Transhuman and Subhuman: Essays on Science Fiction and Awful Truth. I want to burn it and take a shower.
Wright's fiction has a persistent obsession with sex and the female body that is both gross and makes me sad for the writer. His go-to metaphor for how to tell a story is a strip tease, of the sort which explicitly invokes the classic relationship of "nubile young doxy" (= story) and "filthy voyeurs" (= readers).
In the immortal word of Carolyn Hax, wow.
I was not expecting "plot = sex" outside of the romance or erotica genres. (Two genres which I associate with being very up front about the package matching the contents. Unlike this essay, which could have been titled, "The Mechanics of Fiction, With Unexpected Degrading Sex Metaphor".) I really was not expecting the writer to insult his readers. That's not very respectful of the pool of people who might read your work, give you ego boosts, and put money in your pocket.
I can't say it's entirely wrong advice about "the mechanics of fiction". The writer's relationship with process is almost unique to each writer out there. So it's possible that a sexually-charged metaphor contrary to most writing metaphors of my experience will speak to a new writer, and will not lose him - or her - in the woods of how not to write. But I can say that there is an important element left unstated in this piece, where Wright's advice will get new writers in major trouble: the unspoken implication of community and conventions within the community. The opening paragraphs assert that "Unlike every other field, my value as a writer goes up, not down, the more competition I have, because more science fiction writers means more science fiction readers, a larger field, and more money in the field." Leaving aside the optimistic assumption that science fiction does not have a saturation point, there is a second assumption about the community of writers and readers. Where there's a group of people there are expectations, which in writing are called genre or tropes. The essay does not notice it's picked a surprising and disturbing metaphor which is likely to get writers in trouble if they use it in conversation with the community of other writers. A genre mismatch, if you will.
Think about it: if you drop conversations about stripping into the places where technical discussions occur (cafes and restaurants, science fiction conventions, people's homes with their kids running around) you're usually committing a social faux pas. If Hypothetical Dudebro Newbie Writer tries to use this metaphor in conversations with Hypothetical Woman Writer, or Hypothetical Guy Writer Who Just Wants Someone To Double Check His Fake Science, the conversation is likely to be rapidly derailed by the "uh, what?!" violation of social conventions. There are other metaphors to get at the concept: if revelation is the important component, you can talk about unwrapping gifts, and shaking presents; or unveiling a new painting; or chipping out a statue from marble; or curtain-up at an opera or stage play.
The technical advice might seem belabored and tedious to me, but also might speak to someone out there. What I can say with high confidence is that you will have difficulties integrating into the larger non-Wright community of writers in most genres and subgenres if you listen closely to him.
Not to mention, this isn't good writing.
The actual title is "John C. Wright's Patented One-Session Lesson in the Mechanics of Fiction". The title evokes patent medicine, of the sort where the seller is hoping the buyer will remember that a patent is issued for demonstrating a novel solution to a challenge without recalling that patents make no statements about the efficacy of the product or process. Instead, it leans on the illusory glamor of restricted access: "here is something I have exclusive rights to! But I will give it to you for the value of your time."
Time not well spent: the target audience seems to be people like a friend of Wright's mentioned in the opening section, a nonfiction writer who is considering making the move to fiction. It's a funny little niche: people who have strung words together, but have not made things up wholesale (we hope). Yet Wright doesn't connect or contrast the way writing nonfiction works to the way writing fiction works. Or, if one argues Wright is generalizing for the general "people who have not written fiction before" audience... why? Why is he writing this piece that deconstructs a little of his own writing, and the opening paragraphs of The Lord of the Rings, and bitterly invokes midichlorians as an example of genre failure in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, without mentioning the "get beta readers or an editor" part? Oh right, because this is how to write, not how to assemble your toolbox and learn to write well, using all the tools - including the community - to master your craft. Again, the patent medicine appears: when it doesn't heal you, you'll go to the same sales person to get more. "Oh, Mechanics of Fiction didn't cure your ills? Here, have my other product, Mechanics of Improving Fiction". There are fourteen pages of mediocre advice - wait, twelve pages of mediocre advice and two pages of bad fiction - including such gems as Wright on tools for characterization:
Leaning on "stereotypes", rather than fleshing out chosen stock characters or tropes, explains a lot about Wright's fiction. It also goes along with Wright's strip-tease metaphor: unlike most writing metaphors of my experience, which talk about construction or accumulation to tell a story, Wright's dominant metaphor is storytelling as removing.
In this context I must also note the casual dismissal of People Not Like The Writer. At one point Wright notes that "A mystic energy field is something everyone sort of recognizes from New Age ideas, or Theosophy, or Oriental humbug."
Again, wow. It's not just a sweeping judgmental statement, it's such a casually sweeping judgmental statement it speaks to me of the author's worldview in ways that make me question his fitness as a guide in how to write in a genre of speculation and open-ness to new ideas. The "Oriental humbug" in particular could even be called racist.
I will bypass Wright's utterly tone deaf prose, except to note that Wright has a consistent and unfortunate capitalization quirk. Observe the following:
Well, shouting is one way to get your point across. What worked for J.K. Rowling in the fifth Harry Potter novel must work elsewhere, yes? (No. Fans have mocked capslock!Harry for more than a decade. Even well-regarded authors sometimes mis-step.)
When an artist has mastered his or her craft and does amazing things with it, it's possible to have engaging debates about the merit of art versus the artist's personal failings. Sometimes there are good people who are not great at their chosen craft, but we'd like them to find success to reflect the quality of their character, even if their work isn't to one's taste. My exposure to Wright's fiction and nonfiction work fulfills neither of those categories. In fact, I'd characterize his fiction as amateur work unworthy of the Hugos, and the nonfiction I have read as actively harmful to building a vibrant community of high quality writers capable of engaging with the questions of speculative fiction, be those extrapolation of contemporary hard science, examining the human condition, exploration of space and the future of humanity, or... take your pick. Wright's advice on writing is lacking as his fiction is lacking.
In light of what I interpret as bad writing and a general vibe of "off", I won't be reading anything else be Wright for this year's Hugos and will be leaving his work off the ballot.
Wright's fiction has a persistent obsession with sex and the female body that is both gross and makes me sad for the writer. His go-to metaphor for how to tell a story is a strip tease, of the sort which explicitly invokes the classic relationship of "nubile young doxy" (= story) and "filthy voyeurs" (= readers).
In the immortal word of Carolyn Hax, wow.
I was not expecting "plot = sex" outside of the romance or erotica genres. (Two genres which I associate with being very up front about the package matching the contents. Unlike this essay, which could have been titled, "The Mechanics of Fiction, With Unexpected Degrading Sex Metaphor".) I really was not expecting the writer to insult his readers. That's not very respectful of the pool of people who might read your work, give you ego boosts, and put money in your pocket.
I can't say it's entirely wrong advice about "the mechanics of fiction". The writer's relationship with process is almost unique to each writer out there. So it's possible that a sexually-charged metaphor contrary to most writing metaphors of my experience will speak to a new writer, and will not lose him - or her - in the woods of how not to write. But I can say that there is an important element left unstated in this piece, where Wright's advice will get new writers in major trouble: the unspoken implication of community and conventions within the community. The opening paragraphs assert that "Unlike every other field, my value as a writer goes up, not down, the more competition I have, because more science fiction writers means more science fiction readers, a larger field, and more money in the field." Leaving aside the optimistic assumption that science fiction does not have a saturation point, there is a second assumption about the community of writers and readers. Where there's a group of people there are expectations, which in writing are called genre or tropes. The essay does not notice it's picked a surprising and disturbing metaphor which is likely to get writers in trouble if they use it in conversation with the community of other writers. A genre mismatch, if you will.
Think about it: if you drop conversations about stripping into the places where technical discussions occur (cafes and restaurants, science fiction conventions, people's homes with their kids running around) you're usually committing a social faux pas. If Hypothetical Dudebro Newbie Writer tries to use this metaphor in conversations with Hypothetical Woman Writer, or Hypothetical Guy Writer Who Just Wants Someone To Double Check His Fake Science, the conversation is likely to be rapidly derailed by the "uh, what?!" violation of social conventions. There are other metaphors to get at the concept: if revelation is the important component, you can talk about unwrapping gifts, and shaking presents; or unveiling a new painting; or chipping out a statue from marble; or curtain-up at an opera or stage play.
The technical advice might seem belabored and tedious to me, but also might speak to someone out there. What I can say with high confidence is that you will have difficulties integrating into the larger non-Wright community of writers in most genres and subgenres if you listen closely to him.
Not to mention, this isn't good writing.
The actual title is "John C. Wright's Patented One-Session Lesson in the Mechanics of Fiction". The title evokes patent medicine, of the sort where the seller is hoping the buyer will remember that a patent is issued for demonstrating a novel solution to a challenge without recalling that patents make no statements about the efficacy of the product or process. Instead, it leans on the illusory glamor of restricted access: "here is something I have exclusive rights to! But I will give it to you for the value of your time."
Time not well spent: the target audience seems to be people like a friend of Wright's mentioned in the opening section, a nonfiction writer who is considering making the move to fiction. It's a funny little niche: people who have strung words together, but have not made things up wholesale (we hope). Yet Wright doesn't connect or contrast the way writing nonfiction works to the way writing fiction works. Or, if one argues Wright is generalizing for the general "people who have not written fiction before" audience... why? Why is he writing this piece that deconstructs a little of his own writing, and the opening paragraphs of The Lord of the Rings, and bitterly invokes midichlorians as an example of genre failure in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, without mentioning the "get beta readers or an editor" part? Oh right, because this is how to write, not how to assemble your toolbox and learn to write well, using all the tools - including the community - to master your craft. Again, the patent medicine appears: when it doesn't heal you, you'll go to the same sales person to get more. "Oh, Mechanics of Fiction didn't cure your ills? Here, have my other product, Mechanics of Improving Fiction". There are fourteen pages of mediocre advice - wait, twelve pages of mediocre advice and two pages of bad fiction - including such gems as Wright on tools for characterization:
This, by the way, is why writers use stereotypes. Far from being the evil thing all the rest of the world regards them as being, writers cannot write without stereotypes of people, places and things, and this is because our entire art consists of creating the illusion of a complete picture or a complete world out of a splinter or fragment of description, with the reader’s imagination filling in the majority of the details. One cannot do this without knowing what pictures the reader is likely to have in his imagination beforehand.
Leaning on "stereotypes", rather than fleshing out chosen stock characters or tropes, explains a lot about Wright's fiction. It also goes along with Wright's strip-tease metaphor: unlike most writing metaphors of my experience, which talk about construction or accumulation to tell a story, Wright's dominant metaphor is storytelling as removing.
In this context I must also note the casual dismissal of People Not Like The Writer. At one point Wright notes that "A mystic energy field is something everyone sort of recognizes from New Age ideas, or Theosophy, or Oriental humbug."
Again, wow. It's not just a sweeping judgmental statement, it's such a casually sweeping judgmental statement it speaks to me of the author's worldview in ways that make me question his fitness as a guide in how to write in a genre of speculation and open-ness to new ideas. The "Oriental humbug" in particular could even be called racist.
I will bypass Wright's utterly tone deaf prose, except to note that Wright has a consistent and unfortunate capitalization quirk. Observe the following:
The next few paragraphs establish the plot. Plots are about conflict. Conflict means (1) someone we like wants something VERY BADLY and (2) someone or something else whom we like less is standing in the way and (3) someone we like is going to take a reasonable step to get the something he wants VERY BADLY and (4) the reasonable step will go badly wrong in an unexpected way, but in a way that in hindsight seems logical or reasonable.
Well, shouting is one way to get your point across. What worked for J.K. Rowling in the fifth Harry Potter novel must work elsewhere, yes? (No. Fans have mocked capslock!Harry for more than a decade. Even well-regarded authors sometimes mis-step.)
When an artist has mastered his or her craft and does amazing things with it, it's possible to have engaging debates about the merit of art versus the artist's personal failings. Sometimes there are good people who are not great at their chosen craft, but we'd like them to find success to reflect the quality of their character, even if their work isn't to one's taste. My exposure to Wright's fiction and nonfiction work fulfills neither of those categories. In fact, I'd characterize his fiction as amateur work unworthy of the Hugos, and the nonfiction I have read as actively harmful to building a vibrant community of high quality writers capable of engaging with the questions of speculative fiction, be those extrapolation of contemporary hard science, examining the human condition, exploration of space and the future of humanity, or... take your pick. Wright's advice on writing is lacking as his fiction is lacking.
In light of what I interpret as bad writing and a general vibe of "off", I won't be reading anything else be Wright for this year's Hugos and will be leaving his work off the ballot.
(no subject)
Date: 2015-06-16 08:20 pm (UTC)Why is he writing this piece that deconstructs a little of his own writing, and the opening paragraphs of The Lord of the Rings, and bitterly invokes midichlorians as an example of genre failure in Star Wars: The Phantom Menace, without mentioning the "get beta readers or an editor" part?
My theory is that it's because he's never had a decent beta reader or an editor. Or, if he has, he has entirely ignored their advice.
(no subject)
Date: 2015-06-17 12:07 am (UTC)My theory is that it's because he's never had a decent beta reader or an editor. Or, if he has, he has entirely ignored their advice.
I would like to believe that, but Wright has been published by Tor in the past. Believing that he doesn't have beta readers, or that he's not paying attention to them, would be to believe he's a lone voice, when the evidence points toward a group of people with shared ideas. His is not the only work to appear on the puppy slates.
(But wow, no beta read would explain a lot.)