Does Formula Fiction Suck?

[NOIRTRASH]

I read an article that condemns fiction in which the story and plot are predictable.

That's the story of my entire sex history. And job history. And damn near every other pastime plus college and the military.

My thinking is. when I slip my hand up a skirt I don't want any surprises.

 

[FortySixtyFour]

How predictable something is could be considered variable depending on the context of the reader. The longer you stay in any particular convention or genre, the more patterns you're going to see emerge and the more similar traits you're going to identify.

I was on a Japanese light-novel kick for months and months last year, and to me all of the stories were definitely converging into the same basic premise and execution, over and over and over again.

Then I switched to Wuxia-style web novels this year, which should have been the same sort of wish-fulfillment tripe I was accustomed to... but it's been a whole new adventure, and I've been pleasantly surprised at how many interesting new takes on material I've discovered.

 

[NOIRTRASH]

I embrace a theory for novelty that seems true.

That is real novelty within any form is distributed like prime numbers. At some point real novelty is too few and far between to be worth the candle for pursuit.

 

[FortySixtyFour]

I was actually thinking about that the other day in terms of the relationship between how much a reader likes a story and how much exposure the reader has to stories in general.

There's two very vocal fans of Fifty Shades of Grey in one of the departments where I work, but when asked about what they normally read, the one answered "pretty much only vampire smut" and the other boasted that she'd literally never finished a book, and that the last one she'd started was for a class in high school (this woman was in her late thirties/early forties).

The best way to read only original stories that don't ever seem to follow a formula is clearly to cut way back on how many stories you expose yourself to.

 

[NOIRTRASH]

I was actually thinking about that the other day in terms of the relationship between how much a reader likes a story and how much exposure the reader has to stories in general.

There's two very vocal fans of Fifty Shades of Grey in one of the departments where I work, but when asked about what they normally read, the one answered "pretty much only vampire smut" and the other boasted that she'd literally never finished a book, and that the last one she'd started was for a class in high school (this woman was in her late thirties/early forties).

The best way to read only original stories that don't ever seem to follow a formula is clearly to cut way back on how many stories you expose yourself to.

As a psychologist I see aberrant form ( non-formulaic) as excursions down schizophrenic thought disorder. Schizophremic word salad is fundamentally paranoid concealment. To my way of thinking James Joyce was schizophrenic rather than genius. When I treated schizophrenics who spoke word salad I usually asked them to say the same thing with different words, and the new words usually expressed logical coherent thought.

I began life as a poet, and the soul of poetry is saying something profound in few words with a beautiful effect. LIT poets post schizophrenic word salad.

 

[someoneyouknow]

Go ask Danielle Steele. She has admitted her stories are pretty much the same. All she does is change names and locations.

 

[Desiremakesmeweak]

Well people generally all like the same kinds of stimuli - commercial marketers know this, the Rolls Royce Motor Company knows it, even the Germans who own Rolls know it and they simply say they are 'custodians' of the brand.

If you want to re-invent the wheel, you'd better make sure it is round, with a hole in the center where the axle goes... And so on.

 

[NOIRTRASH]

Well people generally all like the same kinds of stimuli - commercial marketers know this, the Rolls Royce Motor Company knows it, even the Germans who own Rolls know it and they simply say they are 'custodians' of the brand.

If you want to re-invent the wheel, you'd better make sure it is round, with a hole in the center where the axle goes... And so on.

One of the chief canons of every industry is: DONT FORGET WHAT YOU DO.

Media, movies, pubs, and carivals are all of them ENTERTAINMENT.

 

[Desiremakesmeweak]

'It's all ENTERTAINMENT.'

Absolutely exactly!

 

[NOIRTRASH]

'It's all ENTERTAINMENT.'

Absolutely exactly!

Plenty of providers forget what industry they belong to.

Back around 1900 most newspapers featured 'news" that no way could be real. Mencken and others spilled the beans, news writers got together for beer at a convenient saloon and made the news up. The more fantastical the better.

Kenneth Roberts was a journalist who made up news when he missed the train to the hanging or fire or flood.

I discovered that the guaranteed way to kill a news story is make it fair and balanced.

 

[RubiDia]

thar's yer probem rat thar

... with you up in it

 

[NOIRTRASH]

I was actually thinking about that the other day in terms of the relationship between how much a reader likes a story and how much exposure the reader has to stories in general.

There's two very vocal fans of Fifty Shades of Grey in one of the departments where I work, but when asked about what they normally read, the one answered "pretty much only vampire smut" and the other boasted that she'd literally never finished a book, and that the last one she'd started was for a class in high school (this woman was in her late thirties/early forties).

The best way to read only original stories that don't ever seem to follow a formula is clearly to cut way back on how many stories you expose yourself to.

At his best James Ellroy builds novels from distinct stories that are loosely connected. Like, in chapter one the principal character is raped by two guys he knows. In chapter 2 the PC murders a serial killer racist, in chapter 3 the PC stalks and murders promiscuous coeds, and in chapter 4 new PCs join the story (whatever the story is) buy theyre detectives busting drug lords. I'm not invested in the original PC so I don't care he went away.

 

[RubiDia]

SA when

http://thisvid.com/videos/eat-fried-egg-mixed-shit/

 

[PervOtaku]

"There's nothing new under the sun."

Plus various literary theories that all stories are variations on four/six/whatever basic plots.

I'm just polishing up a story where the entire point is an homage to the formulaic
"monster of the week" genre of anime.

And besides, everything is new to somebody at some point. Lots of groundbreaking fiction seems trite and clichéd if you see them after seeing all the stuff from afterwards that copied what it did.