Purpose of Fiction...Or Fictional Purpose...?

While my own opinion of my writing is I write very well (and, when it comes to things such as technical documentation, articles, and the like, the consensus has always seemed to agree with me), when it comes to the fiction I've written I confess to being entirely incapable of making a sound judgment as to its value or worth.

Of course, when discussing the 'value' or 'worth' of fiction, I know that's a broad enough area that each person could think of and probably has their own definition(s), and I'm not one to argue that, as I've little desire to get lost in the endless terrain of general semantics.

When I refer to fiction as having value, what I mean is how well it serves the purpose of entertaining. Period. Conveying lessons, espousing philosophies, etcetera etcetera -- sure, one can stick some of that into fiction, if so desired, though if it's not organic to the work itself, the reader will spit it out in annoyance much as a cat will a pill which is hidden so ‘dexterously (if ineffectively) in their favorite food’, which brings me back to my main point, that being the primary purpose of fiction is to entertain, with the pinnacle of achievement being to write something so enjoyable the reader cannot put it down, and which they find themselves blissfully immersed in, so much so, ideally, that they are likely to bother reading it more than once.

As a reader of some years, when I think of my favorite fiction books, regardless of genre, those are the qualities which define the truly great books from all the rest: the ones I can read and re-read, and never tire of despite knowing how they end; the ones I happen to glance at and, within minutes, am utterly swept back into; the kind I’d love to simply step into and never leave. 

Kindly note my visual memory is exceptionally acute, to the point where I can generally quote lines of text verbatim (or nearly so, though no, I do not have an ‘eidetic’ memory) directly from books I've read, even many years later; that, combined with my disdain for any story regardless of medium which I can figure out where it’s going/how it ends within the first few minutes of reading it, and that should illustrate what I mean when I say for me, to read a book I’ve already read before is one of the surest signs I enjoyed it above all others.

I remain unconvinced I've yet to write anything which meets the above standards, which is to say, I'll just have to keep trying.


~J

I do so wish I had even the faintest vestige of graphical talent; if I could draw merely a fraction of the things in my head, Holy Fucking Mother of bat-piss!

If a picture is a worth a kiloword, then I’ve a head crammed full of photos jammed every-which-way which makes a trillion-petabyte drive seem little more than an over-exposed Polaroid - you know, one half-ruined along the diagonal because it was left out in the sun by a couple of under-aged retards after they were done sucking fuzz-encrusted day-old gummi-bears off the bottom of it.

There’s just so much I don’t even know where to begin; I mean, really - pick a Galactic branch, an arm, a cluster, a system, some planets, and we’ll go from there.

But I don’t think that’s where it’s at, at ALL; nosirrebob. Not when I’ve got a whole mess of characters ready to go, so let’s line up ‘em up, and I’ll go from another direction entirely.

More Later...Of that, I feel most certain.


~JMB

"Accordingly, the [author] should prefer probable impossibilities to improbable possibilities. The tragic plot must not be composed of irrational parts. Everything irrational should, if possible, be excluded; or, at all events, it should lie outside the action of the play […].

“The plea that otherwise the plot would have been ruined, is ridiculous; such a plot should not in the first instance be constructed. But once the irrational has been introduced and an air of likelihood imparted to it, we must accept it in spite of the absurdity.”




                                                                                       --Aristotle (Poetics)



I was considering documenting some of the strange thoughts which go through my head, yet I find many almost too strange to be properly documented; just in the sense that a picture says a thousand words, a single constructed universe, complete with characters, peoples, places, even a visual reference which remains in my head -- it would take me untold thousands of words to begin even describing it (which is precisely what one should NOT do when writing fiction); to set it down here, or even elsewhere, in print, would be a phenomenal waste of time...Wouldn't it...?


I suppose that's the point of my writing, here, in this poorly light, dusty little corner of the Internet; perhaps some of what I may come to say may serve someone else, or find purpose which others are yet to discover.

Still: it remains that, as I am doing writing elsewhere, less will be done here, and the reverse. Given I have a finite amount of time, that cannot be helped.

While it is tempting to comment further, I still await to hear more, so I shall attempt to exercise the virtue of silence, preferring neither to damn myself with excessive criticism nor false praise, both of which are equally pernicious if opposite sides of the same filthy coin.

There is something to be said for writing in silence; that is, creating in silence, free from critics, whether one's own internal one or critiques of others, and writing into a file (or into an otherwise quiet, audience-free blog) satisfies that well enough. Once creation is done, however, one must have criticism. That, or -- I suppose -- supreme confidence that everything one has created is perfect in every way. I am positive countless number of people have had such confidence; I am equally certain the larger share of them were wrong. For every William Blake, there are millions of us with nothing particularly useful to say.


~JMB