The Nature Of Novelty

[NOIRTRASH]

Things don't change much after a while.

Take your basic automobile. I cant name any significant change since 1940 or so.

Real novelty seems to correlate with the distribution of prime numbers. Theyre common at first but come fewer and further apart as time passes. The search for new prime numbers is a waste of time unless you have a fat grant from Uncle Sam.

Art seems to be self limiting, too. There truly seems too be nothing new under the Sun when it comes to music, painting, or fiction.

 

[oggbashan]

...

Take your basic automobile. I cant name any significant change since 1940 or so.

...

A short list:

Generators replacing Dynamos
Sealed beam lights, halogen lights, LED lights
Disk Brakes
Screen washers
Radial tyres
Efficient diesels
Seat belts
Air bags
Computer engine management
Fuel injection
Electronic ignition
The original Mini - Transverse engine, gearbox in sump, front wheel drive - all adopted by most smaller cars.
Crumple zones...

You just aren't looking or aren't thinking...

 

[NOIRTRASH]

A short list:

Generators replacing Dynamos
Sealed beam lights, halogen lights, LED lights
Disk Brakes
Screen washers
Radial tyres
Efficient diesels
Seat belts
Air bags
Computer engine management
Fuel injection
Electronic ignition
The original Mini - Transverse engine, gearbox in sump, front wheel drive - all adopted by most smaller cars.
Crumple zones...

You just aren't looking or aren't thinking...

Most of what you list already existed. Youre arguing paper and pencil is fundamentally different from chalk and slate.

 

[Desiremakesmeweak]

Novelty is what I do.

We're talking about in 'writing,' here. Novelty IN WRITING.

To be 'innovative' let's call it, you simply HAVE to play by the rules; in other words, you have to be utterly orthodox and conservative: IE you have to do something new. That is the absolute rule of novelty.

It has to be surprising and in a good way. Otherwise it is shock fiction, which is a different category of thing.

If you merely do 'bizarre' in order to be 'different' (as far as you know), that is not actual 'novelty,' that is deliberate freakishness for want of genuine creativity.

It has also to be able to ACHIEVE something that has NEVER been done before.

For instance, there's people who say 'show, don't tell...'

And that's good but it isn't novel. You have to go beyond that.

I mean to do serious 'novelty' takes a lot out of you - it's a massively energetic thing, or, 'energy-demanding' anyway.

'New' does not mean throw away the rule book.

'New' means never before seen.

But also 'good' or enjoyable at some important level - entertaining.

It's a very hard thing. To do something 'never before seen' you have to take a level of risk that some people 'won't go there' or 'won't try it,' or even 'won't quickly like it' or it won't be understood over the short term. You have to take the risk that people might not even 'get it' - not to begin with, at least.

Novelty is risky even when the pay-off 'might' be stupendously huge and satisfying. You have to be VERY ambitious and adventurous and a gambler to do the truly 'new.'

 

[SimonDoom]

I couldn't disagree more. Just on the subject of cars, to add to what oggbashan wrote: climate control, high quality sound systems, computer control of all aspects of the car, Internet access, navigation systems, and, more recently, improved electric batteries and cars, and driverless cars. The automobile experience is undergoing profound change right now. It's very likely that transportation one generation will be quite different from what it is now.

Music, art, and literature have seen profound changes since 1900. Think of all the types of music that exist now that didn't exist a hundred years ago. Think about movies, and, more recently, television and video and social media.

It's hard to appreciate how much change there is on the ground level, but from the perspective of human history, we live in a period of unprecedented change. And novelty.

The pace of change is quickening, not slowing down.

Writing is a little tougher because the basic elements of writing a story haven't changed, and the form imposes certain restrictions. But the subject matter of writing changes as society changes. There always are new things to write about.

 

[NOIRTRASH]

You folks confuse new with re-arranging the furniture and new carpet. I', speaking of novelty.

 

[oggbashan]

Get back into a 1940s car.

The list I gave above except disk brakes didn't exist. They are all innovations.

 

[NOIRTRASH]

Get back into a 1940s car.

The list I gave above except disk brakes didn't exist. They are all innovations.

So are 12 volt batteries that came along in 1955.

 

[My I]

Novelty is what I do.

We're talking about in 'writing,' here. Novelty IN WRITING.

To be 'innovative' let's call it, you simply HAVE to play by the rules; in other words, you have to be utterly orthodox and conservative: IE you have to do something new. That is the absolute rule of novelty.

It has to be surprising and in a good way. Otherwise it is shock fiction, which is a different category of thing.

If you merely do 'bizarre' in order to be 'different' (as far as you know), that is not actual 'novelty,' that is deliberate freakishness for want of genuine creativity.

It has also to be able to ACHIEVE something that has NEVER been done before.

For instance, there's people who say 'show, don't tell...'

And that's good but it isn't novel. You have to go beyond that.

I mean to do serious 'novelty' takes a lot out of you - it's a massively energetic thing, or, 'energy-demanding' anyway.

'New' does not mean throw away the rule book.

'New' means never before seen.

But also 'good' or enjoyable at some important level - entertaining.

It's a very hard thing. To do something 'never before seen' you have to take a level of risk that some people 'won't go there' or 'won't try it,' or even 'won't quickly like it' or it won't be understood over the short term. You have to take the risk that people might not even 'get it' - not to begin with, at least.

Novelty is risky even when the pay-off 'might' be stupendously huge and satisfying. You have to be VERY ambitious and adventurous and a gambler to do the truly 'new.'

Go read "Safety Ne"t and tell me there is no innovation. Finding something that hasn't been done before on this site is gonna be very difficult because as soon as someone does come up with something new and different, someone else will copy it. Same as anything and EVERYTHING else in the world.

 

[rjordan]

Get back into a 1940s car.

The list I gave above except disk brakes didn't exist. They are all innovations.

Mechanical fuel injection goes back to the 1920's for diesel and the 1930's for aircraft, but it wasn't really practical cars. Carburetors did a fine job much less expensively. Still, the technology was there. Electronic fuel injection changed all that so it certainly belongs on your list. I adapted a VW/Bosch fuel injection system to a Japanese motorcycle in the mid 70's.

I think someone somehow beamed from his new 1940 car into a 2017 car would be amazed by it, but I don't think it would be much of a stretch for him to drive it after a very brief familiarization. All the elements are there (steering wheel, clutch pedal, brake pedal, accelerator, gearshift, mirrors). Adapting to an automatic without clutch/gearshift wouldn't be a problem. He'd have a hell of a time with the entertainment center, but that isn't car technology.

I think it's the same with stories...sort of. Someone already mentioned that storytelling already involved certain restrictions and conventions (e.g. beginning,middle,end). But the same stories have largely been told over and over again since they were strictly oral. So an ancient storyteller plopped down in our time probably wouldn't find much in the way of innovation of crafting stories.

Innovation/novelty isn't always an improvement that is carried forward. We pretty much walk the same way we have for millenia. Innovation/novelty were regulated for a period by the Ministry of Silly Walks, but it soon became unnecessary as the techniques died out.

rj

 

[ElectricBlue]

Finding something that hasn't been done before on this site is gonna be very difficult because as soon as someone does come up with something new and different, someone else will copy it. Same as anything and EVERYTHING else in the world.

So you just gotta be first with the new ideas.

I'm quite pleased that several of my stories have earned comments along the lines of, "that's something new around here...not what you always see in Lit...refreshing..." So it can be done.

I don't know if you could do it for stroke, though. I don't know how to write stroke, but what I do write seems to get some people off, so I'm doing something right.

 

[SecondCircle]

Mechanical fuel injection goes back to the 1920's for diesel and the 1930's for aircraft, but it wasn't really practical cars. Carburetors did a fine job much less expensively. Still, the technology was there. Electronic fuel injection changed all that so it certainly belongs on your list. I adapted a VW/Bosch fuel injection system to a Japanese motorcycle in the mid 70's.

I think someone somehow beamed from his new 1940 car into a 2017 car would be amazed by it, but I don't think it would be much of a stretch for him to drive it after a very brief familiarization. All the elements are there (steering wheel, clutch pedal, brake pedal, accelerator, gearshift, mirrors). Adapting to an automatic without clutch/gearshift wouldn't be a problem. He'd have a hell of a time with the entertainment center, but that isn't car technology.

I think it's the same with stories...sort of. Someone already mentioned that storytelling already involved certain restrictions and conventions (e.g. beginning,middle,end). But the same stories have largely been told over and over again since they were strictly oral. So an ancient storyteller plopped down in our time probably wouldn't find much in the way of innovation of crafting stories.

Innovation/novelty isn't always an improvement that is carried forward. We pretty much walk the same way we have for millenia. Innovation/novelty were regulated for a period by the Ministry of Silly Walks, but it soon became unnecessary as the techniques died out.

rj

Aye, and the thing about "new" is it doesn't last very long. That is, the invention itself may stand the test of time as has the automobile thus far, but human beings grow bored of it after it has become institution anyway. All that shines will rust and all that.

Novelty is exciting when it's fresh but we soon just move on.

As far as stories go, short of just changing the entire human experience altogether, I'm not entirely sure how one would go about finding basic storylines that are entirely groundbreaking in literature anyway. Even in a storyline like the one Sons of Anarchy exhibited, which is roughly about a biker gang, it's loosely based on a Macbeth template. You can look and find examples, however complex or unique, of stories we've been telling since the campfire. Beowulf, Macbeth, Romeo and Juliet, The Fox and the Hound, Cinderella, whatever you choose, if you boil stuff down enough their base ingredients are often the same.

The number one ingredient is us. People. We are the source of the stories, and our interactions with the world around us is where they spring from. Probably even in the days of the campfire and cave paintings.

But I mean unless our own stream of consciousness or state of mind is just reinvented somehow, I'm not sure how you get to the point of finding a truly unique base story. They're all going to be about us and our base emotions in some fashion or another.

Honestly though, has this ever mattered? Any human on the planet can tell you a story, but it's a storyteller that makes you want to listen to it. Hell an alien far more advanced than I, so advanced that a simple conversation would by default render me insane, could arrive before me a tell me a kind of story I've never ever experienced on earth before. I could meet some historical figure from long ago in time, and he or she could tell me the story of their life.

But the campfire trance is what makes you tune in. The storyteller. Because it's through the actual telling of the story that makes us lean closer to the fire with anticipation. It's why we listen to a funny stand up comic, or watch movies. The base stories are often the same. Bob could tell you about the storm last night, and it be the most bland and uninteresting shit you've ever heard. Or get the story from Sherri and feel the damn electricity in the air.

Fiction is usually entertainment at the end of the day. Not power windows. Whether or not you want to actually stop and listen to the story is the key. A friend once told me that stories are generally the same, like rays of light shining down and that we as a storyteller are each a stained glass window, each unique with our own pattern in which to alter and color this light.

It's also what makes you like this romance over that romance. Ever find an author you enjoy? It's because you enjoy that author's flavor. The way they tell the story is their own pinch of ingredients. You could get the same old Shakespearean tragedy from just about whomever you wanted. But when this writer tells it, it draws you in and immerses you.

Humans are sort of tiresome things anyway. Both tiresome for me and tiresome in themselves. They grasp at shiny new things then grow tired of them and complain when they rust. They're also very skeptical of novelties in the first place. We like patterns and such boring things. We want a new style of writing, a new way to tell a story, then scoff at Second person PoV because it's not what WE would do, or we blather about same ole same ole cutout characters and stories, then beg for encores and sequels to events we've already watched run into rot. If we truly wanted novelty or something unique, we'd be daring and unafraid to try new things even if it let us down, time and again. Instead we enjoy comfort and getting what we know we already want. Like... digital news that's already catered to your own personal interests.

As times change, humans change, and the flavor and style of our stories change. But no, not many "new" stories have arrived. Perhaps that's mostly because we as humans haven't really come as far from the cave as we like to think.

 

[sr71plt]

Name a car from the 40s that parked itself or had a backup camera. In the 50s, my family had to replace a car every three years because it was costing too much in repairs to keep it on the road. The components of the 40s, even if they have the same basic functions, have changed dramatically over the years. Now I replace cars every ten years and only because there are so many new and improved safety features available within a decade that we are compelled to have the extra protection they bring. The OP premise is just nonsense.

It's nonsense in writing too. I put Hermann Goering in a dress and dancing with another man in a Ritz Paris hotel room in one of my recent stories. Sorry, but that was novel in terms of the Literotica story file. And that's just one example.

Sorry, if you feel your writing is in a mundane rut, James, but that doesn't mean everyone else's is.

 

[Desiremakesmeweak]

Nah. Some of you guys are wrong here - there's a lot of published material out there about the patents owned by automotive corporations and when they were first established. Seriously, I think you'd be shocked. The last time I looked, Citroen held the most and Rolls Royce adopted most of what Citroen owned, and Citroen had purchased a lot of these from earlier patent-holders PRIOR TO 1900!! As well as from 'prior art' even earlier still.

What turns up in the post assembly-line, industrial age world as commonplace 'innovation' regularly has come from much MUCH earlier sources in really tiny distributions-of-use, that's all.

I think too many people think petroleum, for one good example, is something new - when it was around I think from memory of authoritative histories about it, in ancient Babylon(?); I think it was something like that, anyway. Yes it was naturally-percolated, surface petroleum, and not manufactured from raw crude, but it was the same substance all the same and had commercial uses back then too.

Applications or configurations are often 'new' or at least 'novel' but mostly the underlying mechanics are not.

 

[Desiremakesmeweak]

And there's a bit of 'splitting hairs' going on here too, about the actual definition of 'novel...'

Some people want to have it mean they did something different from what is common, whereas others are using the word to mean something more akin to a radical breakthrough that has never before been seen in any form in this world previously.

So, I'm assuming JBJ means like, um, 'the Star Trek transporter' REALLY happening in RL. Rather than Captain Kirk wearing a dress - because in any case, I think that has already happened. Or at least Shatner has done it in a comedy sketch years ago.

 

[Desiremakesmeweak]

'Go read "Safety Ne"t and tell me there is no innovation. Finding something that hasn't been done before on this site is gonna be very difficult because as soon as someone does come up with something new and different, someone else will copy it. Same as anything and EVERYTHING else in the world.'

I just did, dude. Plus another one of yours. Pretty competent stuff. Good writing. I actually liked reading them which is rare for me.

But you see the problem that Johnson is referring to is more obvious to old guys like him and me and all the other REALLY REALLY old people hereabouts - Albert Camus did the 'negative condition' prose thing, and you find it not infrequently in poetry; so it's not 'novel' the way us old guys are pining for. Sure it's kind of rare, that's for sure. And it works cleverly here too.

I can't REALLY speak for him but for myself I just want to say what ALL the old stage producers on Broadway ALWAYS say... 'Something new something new.' And then they piss everyone off for seeming to be dismissive of EVERYTHING they get shown and holding their heads up in the clouds or something.

The older you get, the more you begin to say it though. Trust me. You don't have to believe me now, but trust me for when you get to my age.

See the truth is neither JBJ nor I are seeking the 'new;' we are seeking Gene Tierney to re-appear, as beautiful as she was when she played against Bogart, and ONLY her name and her ID sheet would be different for the modern audience, but Johnson and me and a cuppla other people would know it was Tierney in fact. And then we would want ta see Hoagy Carmichael be the tuff guy and play the ivories as well - and absolutely NOBODY ELSE in the audience would figure it. And THEY would think it was all 'new.'

Get it?

 

[sr71plt]

Get it?

No, I don't get it, because I think James's whole purpose in life here is to upset and drop a wet blanket over everything.

 

[NOIRTRASH]

'Go read "Safety Ne"t and tell me there is no innovation. Finding something that hasn't been done before on this site is gonna be very difficult because as soon as someone does come up with something new and different, someone else will copy it. Same as anything and EVERYTHING else in the world.'

I just did, dude. Plus another one of yours. Pretty competent stuff. Good writing. I actually liked reading them which is rare for me.

But you see the problem that Johnson is referring to is more obvious to old guys like him and me and all the other REALLY REALLY old people hereabouts - Albert Camus did the 'negative condition' prose thing, and you find it not infrequently in poetry; so it's not 'novel' the way us old guys are pining for. Sure it's kind of rare, that's for sure. And it works cleverly here too.

I can't REALLY speak for him but for myself I just want to say what ALL the old stage producers on Broadway ALWAYS say... 'Something new something new.' And then they piss everyone off for seeming to be dismissive of EVERYTHING they get shown and holding their heads up in the clouds or something.

The older you get, the more you begin to say it though. Trust me. You don't have to believe me now, but trust me for when you get to my age.

See the truth is neither JBJ nor I are seeking the 'new;' we are seeking Gene Tierney to re-appear, as beautiful as she was when she played against Bogart, and ONLY her name and her ID sheet would be different for the modern audience, but Johnson and me and a cuppla other people would know it was Tierney in fact. And then we would want ta see Hoagy Carmichael be the tuff guy and play the ivories as well - and absolutely NOBODY ELSE in the audience would figure it. And THEY would think it was all 'new.'

Get it?

Let me say it a different way.

Until the new comes you cant get from here to where the NEW makes it possible for you to go.

Back in 1841 one of my ancestors did the math and got close to explaining and solving yellow fever. He knew it all (its in an old newspaper article) but was clueless about Pateurs Gern Theory 15 years down the road. My ancestor knew mosquitos infected victims but had no idea what it infected with. Germs didn't exist in 1841. Germs became new around 1856.