Faith in Fiction

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In the grand ongoing argument about what makes a novel good there seems to be one unassailable argument: “If you’re a bestselling author, you’re obviously doing something right.”

That bit of logic drives literati nuts, but I think they have to concede the point. Successful writing is about communication and those whose books are picked up the most are communicating to the most people.

What is the “something” that these authors are doing right?

For many, many bestselling authors, the proof can be found in the page. They are masters of their craft. Grisham can teach you much about the legal thriller. Ludlum about international intrigue. Leonard about dialogue. Sparks about emotional conflict.

But at this point, we need to admit that writing and reading are not done in a vacuum. There is the world of “book publishing” that surrounds a novel which can be mastered as well…and many of the things bestselling authors are best at are outside the nuts and bolts of “writing.”

For some it may be more in the marketing or niche they’ve gained rather than the words on the page. Others have a unique gift of choosing timely topics on which to write. (Crichton seems to have this special ability.) Others have concocted (by chance or hard work) a winning formula that draws readers back again and again. (But while you can study the power of “formula” you can’t copy it, or you’ll simply be derivative.)

These are important things to the business of publishing. They’re crucial for any writer or publisher to think through. But they won’t necessarily help you improve your story…and as aspiring writers that’s really the biggest thing you control.

So be careful and confident in those who you call your “masters.” And make sure you’re learning the right things from them.

Watched It’s the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown last night with the kids. Gotta say, the whole Linus-as-true-believer thing really undermines his credibility when delivering the words of Luke by heart at Christmastime.

I finished E.L. Doctorow’s The March this weekend. It’s a Civil War novel that weaves itself around Sherman’s March from Atlanta to Savannah and then up through the Carolinas. The novel tries a number of complicated narrative and stylistic feats, some of which have more success than others. But the place where Doctorow is infinitely confident is weaving history and fiction together. It’s seamless, rarely bogging down in factual details at the expense of story but rarely seeming thin or unresearched. It’s a vibrant world that is both history and fiction at once. (Remember this analysis of historical fiction?)

You can hundreds to go to a writing conference or thousands for a writing degree, but I’m not sure either of them offer the value that sitting down with E.L. Doctorow’s novels could to an aspiring historical fiction novelist.

So today I want to begin a conversation about the Masters. Who are the writers—working today or dead but relevant—whose books could become tutorials in themselves? Teaching us about particular genres or forms or styles. Doctorow, for instance, is a good nominee in the Historical category.

Twain’s always been held up for his use of dialect.

Could you do better than Poe, King, Lovecraft, and Straub for horror?

We could go on and on. (In fact I welcome you to do so in the comments or at the discussion board.) But besides just listing them out, we need to take another critical step—“critical” being the operative word. Yes, again we need to try to figure out the why? that makes these works and writers so successful in the facet we’re studying. We need to read and reread the books until we see the watchworks inside. So I think we’ll take a small stab at doing this tomorrow or Thursday. Just a small one.

And finally, toward the end of the week, I’d like to see who we’d look at as the master’s of Christian fiction—however broad you’d like to take that term.

I apparently have nothing to say for myself, so I’ll just keep posting lists. Here the American Society of Magazine Editors rank the most memorable magazine covers of the last 40 years.

Why some of these made it (#15, #20, #37?) I have no idea.

My favs are probably #6 (which I own), #7, and #10.

(And who knew The Economist could be so saucy? (#16) Good for the Brits.)

Ken Myers helps a student get a very good grade on her paper by providing this provocative answer to her question about how Christians should think about the arts and government support, thereof.

A fragment:

“One thing that the Church should do…is promote really good art criticism, to train people to make public arguments about art that rejects the relativism and skepticism of our time. Unfortunately, like their modern neighbors, most Christians don’t believe that art has anything to do with objective value. Most Christians have accepted the modern idea that art is purely subjective, just an expression of individual (and thus arbitrary) likes or dislikes. And so even while they oppose the NEA on allegedly Christian grounds, they advance a view of the arts that has more in common with their enemies than they realize.”

Covers are a complicated thing in publishing. They’re at once dreadfully important and somehow completely superfluous to the actual point of a novel. In other words, I could read Risk Pool or Three Farmers on Their Way to Dance or James and the Giant Peach in a coverless book and still love the story just as much. So it’s a balance on how much is at stake with a cover.

What you don’t want is a cover that turns readers off. Like this one did for me–Wide Eyed by Trinie Dalton. This obviously was done intentionally and to appeal to an audience (the folks here think they like it) but it misses me by a very wide margin.

Slate summarizes the little feud going between Ben Marcus and Jonathan Franzen. Franzen you’ll remember is the author of both The Corrections and some essays on the state of literature that we discussed: “Mr. Difficult” and “Why Bother?”

“Why Bother?” was published in Harpers to a significant amount of acclaim and was important enough in Franzen’s career that it became known as the “Harper’s Essay.” The worm has a habit of turning, however, and so it’s not without a small amount of irony that Ben Marcus recently took Franzen to task in the very magazine that helped establish his reputation in the essay, “Why Experimental Fiction Threatens to Destroy Publishing, Jonathan Franzen, and Life as We Know It.”

Slate summarizes the entire imbroglio, references a few of literary history’s other squabbles, and generally suggests everybody get a grip.

Sorry for the quiet week all. It’ll happen now and then, particularly after more intensive weeks.

I’m diligently reading through the submitted short stories. Some very good stuff so far. I’m happy with what I’m seeing. And I think it’s going to lead to a lot of interesting discussion. (At least I’m having what seem to be interesting thoughts and realizations while reading them. We’ll see if they translate.)

Best for your weekend!

Your standard water-cooler-fodder here. Why 1923? Apparently it’s the year Time began. I have very little comment on this list other than that they didn’t put their necks out too far.

(And here’s there Top 100 films. Posted many months ago.)

This came via InFuze.