Structure in genre novels
Katharine Kerr June 19th, 2006
(Alis suggested that I bring this over from Live Journal, where I originally posted it.)
Some thoughts on what “structure” might mean in a genre book:
Too often I’ve heard someone say, “Everything in a book should advance the plot.” No one is ever very clear on what they mean by this, however, because it begs the Big Question, “What do we mean by plot?” There may be a vague consensus that plot in genre means “action,” but again, “what kind of action?” is the next logical question.
For me the action that really counts is changes in character on the micro scale of things and in the fantasy-world on the macro.. I don’t write battles just to be adding “action.” I want to reader to see how being in the battle has changed the characters fighting it, and how its outcome will change the political, religious, and social world in which the battle’s taken place. I have run into, however, readers and editors who don’t understand my goals, and who when they find them out seem a little disappointed. They want physical action involving physical danger, apparently, even if it means excluding the kinds of consequence and changes I’m interested in.
Now, if an author wants a straight-forward Action of the Physical Kind plot, then the structure that suffices is often “first they did, then they did, and then they did ” and so on to the end. What will count there are craft points like proper foreshadowing of a dramatic turn or surprise, a clarity of motivation for charactesrs, and a very clear time line.
Howsomever, since I’m interested in character and the like, often what advances my plot are small scenes, the odd little action that shows perhaps that a Bad Guy is beginning to have regrets, or that a Good Guy is getting a little crazy, or that a pair of people are falling in love. Thus any structure I set up has to accomodate this sort of scene, incident, or bit of dialogue — or of course in the Deverry books, a past life that explains the forces of Wyrd or Karma acting upon the characters. The result is a structure that seems to meander over hell and gone. It’s turned off a lot of potential buyers, too, because they can’t grasp what we might call different “standards of relevance.”
All structure comes down to giving the reader what’s relevant in the right order. The physical action standards for relevance ncludes things like how did the war start? why are the main characters fighting in it? how are the odds stacked for and against them? The actual batttle won’t be very interesting to the reader if the reader lacks that kind of information. The scale I tend to use involves things like how did the person come to be this way? have they shown any signs of change before? what is their reaction when they realize they’ve changed?
But in either case, the structure of the book has to deliver the goods in the right order — and with the right quantity of words for each step. What’s more, the reader generally will need roadsigns, as I call them, to what’s going on.
The roadsigns are the point of that oft-maligned part of writing, symbols and themes. Too many genre authors turn up their nose at such “lit’ry” goings on as symbolic objects, metaphor, and the like, dismissing them as “just pretty words.” This is like refusing to use a hammer when you’ve got nails to drive. Again, to use Deverry as an example: in a number of places I describe the knotwork patterns on clothing or furniture, the line of knots which, upon a close look, turns out to be made of a single line. This is the structure of each book, too, of course, and of the series as a whole, a tip-off for the reader who knows where to look. I often use metaphors drawn from the daily life of the country too, a dodge I learned from reading Homer, whose homely metaphors of shepherds and farmers fill in the picture behind the warrior heroes in his foreground.
As the metaphors progress in a story, they give the reader other roadsigns. If the image of a fire in dry grass, for example. occurs as a character hears something that’s going to drive him into a jealous rage, it gives a nice clue to the motivation for a murder.
Does any one have other examples from your own or others’ work?
I heartily agree, Kit. Plot is only of tantamount importance for a reader the first time through. Ideally you need enough plot to satisfy the casual reader who may never pick up your book again. But the reader you’re really trying to satisfy is the one who’s going to read the book over and over again, the one who’s going to take in the larger meaning of what you’re trying to say. (Or in more crude commercial terms, the one who’s going to push your books onto her friends.)
Do they really? It seems to me that symbolism, metaphor, simile, etc. are integral parts of the very act of story telling, and that you can’t find a story without them. I think what they’re objecting to is the amateurish writer that tries to stuff literary tricks in where they don’t belong.
One real problem with genre fiction, and fantasy in particular, is its readers. We need a better class of readers. That is, there are readers who don’t know how to read for anything but plot, who simply can’t see, don’t know how to look for, stuff like symbol and metaphor.
And I think that publishing, as a business, is working at cross-purposes to the betterment of the genre as a literature. In seeking the best-seller, publishers tend to market to the less effective classes of readers, so that more sophisticated readers get the notion that genre stuff is beneath them, wouldn’t be caught dead reading a book with a brass bra on the cover.
Which leads then to authors who want to reach out to a more sophisticated readership to eschew the “fantasy” label and make up silly terms for what they are doing, much as horror became a Label of Death and terms like “dark fantasy” were preferred to avoid the negative associations with a failed genre.
As a writer, though, you look at a book very differently from a reader. To the majority of readers (I think) plots and roadsigns are virtually invisible. They don’t ‘notice’ them rather than absorb them as they read, which is a subtle difference. Writers tend to plot as they go along. They plot when reading others wip, at least I find myself doing that. What lifts a book up for me are the characters every time, and why I will go back again and again to the same book. If a writer captures emotions I can resonate with, as Carol did with Transformation and Alis does with Prince of Dogs; those are the kinds of books I will go back to again and again.
Of course the plot is important and I will notice if it doesn’t make sense, isn’t linear etc, and I spend a great deal of time concocting my own. And that’s the thing. I think many folk read to escape the reality of day to day life and to read about extraordinary people. You say you want a better class of reader who can see through to the metaphors and symbols but from my own experience many fantasy and sci fi readers are deeper of thought because they are already looking for something different. If I want ‘fluff’, which certainly has its place, I won’t look in the fatnasy aisle.
I would have to disagree about needing a “better class of readers.” If I’ve done my job right, I can entertain many different sorts of readers, and really, I want them all if I can get them (which, so far, I’ve not been able to).
Theoretically, I would like to write a book that can be read on the surface by a reader who seeks plot and emotion, and read at various layers beneath depending on how deep I as the writer was able to go and how far different sorts of readers, some more patient and perspicacious than others, are willing to go with me.
But I certainly don’t want to discourage any sort of reader, given how manifold are the temptations to lure them away from reading at all.
But perhaps that’s not what you meant?
makoiyi, thanks. Of course, Prince of Dogs is the only book I’ve written in which I really go out of my way to make one of the male protagonists suffer.
Uh Oh….
Tough question.
First, I don’t think it’s “The readers”. Me, as a ready only myself, ain’t looking either for symbols, metaphors or simply “plot”.
This all depends on the author!
(Ok, in my case on the one doing the translation too, since I think they have 50% or more impact if I like an author or not in german…)
See, I read Jane Welch book different than one from Kate. As I do read a Stephen Donaldson different too on from George Martin. A Tolkien different to a McKillip. A Feist different to a book from Piers Anthony. And this list goes on and on and on.
I DO NOT read every author the same. I start with different expectations, different feelings if I already had read a book from the same author. I don’t WANT a Feist to write like Donaldson. And I don’t WANT a Asprin write like Pratchett.
A always use the McDonalds – Steakhouse metapher. Sometimes you want a Burger, sometimes you want a steak. Or some baked beans or whatever…
Acutally Katherine, I am not really sure what you statement is. I THINK Metaphors are a tough one. Those MIGHT work in other languages, but sometimes they simply dont. (At least I think so).
See… people tend to write differently, but I don’t buy books because they write LIKE THIS or THAT. I either like the writing or I don’t. But to file it this way, doesn’t make any sense to me….
Urgs.. I hope I somehow managed to say what I wanted to :/
Sorry for the engrish!
Bernd
There’s also the vexed question of covers, though going into that here would be less than useful as most of us have little control over covers.
But Alis had some interesting things to say about sales and covers the other day, leading me to wonder if, say, the fantasy mentioned above with the chick with the bronze bra on the cover were repackaged with a cool graphic font and blank except for maybe a highly stylized spider, or something like that, would it get bought by more readers/
Well, FREEZE FRAMES had a cool graphic cover, and that seemed to have contributed to the way it tanked. Of course, of all my books it’s probably the most “difficult” which is really the reason it tanked.
I bring up FREEZE FRAMES because it’s actually relevant, though, to this discussion, not just to grumble. The book is a linked series of shorter pieces, based on an underlying “aliens invade Earth!” plot that’s become a standard trope (or cliche, depending on how well done it is. Tropes you find in good movies and books, cliches in bad ones. My rule.) The title was the big tip-off — freeze frames from a video being the image, of course — or so I thought.
From talking with readers over the years, I learned tha t most utterly discount the titles of fantasy and SF works because most are meaningless. They are variations on a handful of words or phrases chosen by editors or marketing people to help the book sell: planet, dragon, fires, star, crown, sword, rage, ship, etc etc. That the title of the book would tip you off to the structure within just plain hadn’t occured to many readers.
And these are intelligent, careful readers, not some “lesser sort”. It’s the titles that have been debased by marketing principles, if “marketing principles” isn’t an oxymoron. In fact, this example could stand in a definition of what I mean by “debasement,” or the Gresham’s Law of Literature.
TechDragon, that post is aimed at writers, mostly, not readers, so don’t worry if it doesn’t seem relevant to you.
Over the past 20 years I have taken part in many discussions about prose, metaphor, etc, with other genre writers. Often these discussions turn really nasty when someone dares suggest that we all still have things to learn about writing — as if there ever was a writer on earth who didn’t still have ways to improve their craft, even the alleged Greats. I have stopped being surprised at being flamed, and I’m still stubbornly trying to get a few points across.
I’ve always heard that every sentence/paragraph/scene should
– forward the plot
– develop character
– elaborate the world/setting/milieu
which covers a whole lot more ground and allows for much more than action. I certainly agree with the idea of action as more than mayhem – though I do enjoy occasional mayhem. I like to think of “action” as “movement.”
I’d offer examples from my writing but, well, I’m working in a different genre, and in poetry (even in narrative verse) threading the imagery through is one of the prime tools for getting the compression of good poetry. It’s intrinsic, not extraneous.
Though I confess, I’ve always thought associating imagery from particular domains with a character was part of characterization.
—L.
Yes, makoiyi, I agree entirely about the importance of emotional resonance (and thank you very much). The books I go back to when my well seems dry are those which satisfied that need for me. Two examples: Ellen Kushner’s Thomas the Rhymer and Edith Pargeter’s The Heaven Tree.
Like you, Bernd, I certainly don’t go looking for symbols and metaphors when I read. This is probably a result of hating it when teachers would “intrude” on a good story by insisting we look for such things. Of course I learned later that stories that I enjoyed the most worked on multiple levels.
It still amuses me to find myself working hard on foreshadowing events, not to mention encountering that great revelatory moment (usually near the completion of the book) when I realize what the dad-gummed thing is ABOUT, ie. that elusive theme.
Like Kate, I don’t want my readers to see the building blocks of my stories unless they want to look. I’m ok with readers who enjoy any level of involvement. I just want readers to be adventurous and try a few authors who don’t appear on the shelf at Sam’s!
Well, there is some truth to genre writers getting more flack than mainstream writers, and that explains bristling reactions when people start talking about craft, since the old assumption is that genre writers don’t have any.
I still remember back in grad school when my old eighty-something professor came in with a pile of magazines he’d just ordered but not yet inspected, which he proceeded to divide into what he called “Slick Fiction” and “Quality Fiction.” “Slick Fiction” as he defined it was all genre work, and was sold to magazines with slick glossy paper for lots of money. “Quality Fiction” on the other hand was literary work, was done for the love of it, and came out in small quarterlies and chapbooks.
I proceeded to go through the pile and separated out several science fiction fanzines from the pile of “Quality Fiction,” then pointed out that the New Yorker had slick paper, and asked if a story suddenly lost its quality if you got paid more for it by selling it to a larger market?
His face fell as his old definitions crumbled and he realized it.
That said, people do judge books by their covers. You get a trashy cover, you expect to find a trashy novel inside. If novels with trashy covers sell better than ones with austere and respectable ones, sensible editors will put the trashy covers on everything, even if the book contains no women with remarkably large breasts.
I do take makoiyi’s point, because many readers do absorb such elements as symbol and metaphor without doing so consciously, without annotating the text: sun = symbol of God, thorns = symbol of Christ, etc.
In fact, ofttimes the author may place such elements in the text w/o consciously intending to. Symbols do work that way.
BTW, I wasn’t talking about readers “looking for” symbols, etc. I was merely hoping they might notice them if there.
I can hear the “anti-snobbery” hairs rising and bristling in various posts.
.
Well, with some books *COUGH* Narnia *COUGH* it’s rather hard to miss the symbolism.
As with all things, symbolism is a good thing if done deftly, a bad thing if bungled, and rather indifferent if anywhere in between.
No, the snobbery hairs didn’t rise :smiles: I was intrigued and just offered my own interpretation. When I write a novel (I’m not published yet) I usually do about five drafts. Why so many? The first one is exactly what is in my head. I don’t know what it is ‘about’ and often the main character isn’t, if you get what I mean. Only then do I look at the structure and ask what the theme is. Only then does the outline get written and maybe the map. And I only do that for linear consistency. Everything else remains in my head. Sometimes a character’s motivations don’t come out until later.
So, for me, that first draft is all about ideas. Once the characters and setting become real then the themes and metaphors appear–when I start seeing the characters’ motivations. That’s when you start thinking about the real craft of writing, and, like Carol I don’t always realize in the beginning what those themes are.
Does that make for a ‘weaker’ plot? I don’t think so. It’s like learning about a friend. You don’t know everything about them in the first week.
I write character-driven fiction, myself. Plot to me is what the characters have chosen to so, though I often do set them little problems, like a hundred-year-long civil war, just to make sure they don’t give themselves airs.
Now I’m wondering about how well metaphors translate from one language into another, and why some metaphors might translate well and others just not.
Quote from article:
“Howsomever, since I’m interested in character and the like, often what advances my plot are small scenes, the odd little action that shows perhaps that a Bad Guy is beginning to have regrets, or that a Good Guy is getting a little crazy, or that a pair of people are falling in love.”
I know just what you mean!
In my novel DARC AGES, there are several key scenes where
A) The villain starts to feel existential despair, later followed by increasing insanity;
B) The major hero talks to himself in front of the mirror, and you don’t quite know if he’s possessed by a spirit, or insane, or just goofing off.
I love those little moments, and they are important to the “plot” too. Pity the writer who doesn’t bother with those…
Now I’m wondering about how well metaphors translate from one language into another, and why some metaphors might translate well and others just not.
I was just having a similar conversation last night. We both work for a large, mulitnational corporation which has a incredibly diverse population (for ex, I work for a Danish national; we have Indians, South Africans, Canadians, French, Romanian, Americans, etc.,
in the building I work in). It can be difficult at times to
communicate at work because metaphors and cultural icons
don’t always translate, or translate poorly.
We tend to spend a lot of time explaining our “in jokes” (like
“other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?” as a reference to people asking stupid questions at inappropriate moments), or understanding that when an Indian is shaking
their head from side to side (think bobble-head doll kind of
wobble), they mean “yes”, and building communication
bridges in order to establish a baseline set of metaphors
that work cross-culturally.
I would suspect that other cultures have a bit more
understanding of American metaphors (if only from/through
the export of our movies & syndicated TV shows) than the
other way around. However, imoho, I think a writer needs
to be careful of relying too much on culturally specific
symbology if they’re trying to relate to a broad audience.
I’m not saying, “dumb it down” — more along the lines of
make sure to provide some kind of explanation to help
those who aren’t from the cultural background of the author/characters understand what you’re trying to
communicate.
If other cultures are going to read in English, then some of those cultural things may slide past them. If they’re reading in translation, I’ve seen translators do wonders with metaphor, translating it tor their own cultural equivalent. When I lived in Sweden, I read sf/f in Swedish long before I’d read some of them in English. Took some doing to parse out the differences and the titles were hopeless in translation, but for the most part, little of plot was lost. I read (and fell in love with) Clifford Simak’s All Flesh is Grass (in Swedish it was The Purple Flowers). When I reread it in English, I saw the places where I would have gotten the English metaphor and completely lost the Swedish one.
Symbols, now. That’s another story. As an English Lit undergrad, I had the study of symbols and symbolism shoved down my throat to the point that we were forced to look for symbolism in everything — a failure of the last 60s, I’ve since learned. Took me YEARS to outgrow my loathing for reading and writing them. Metaphor, I’ll take. Subtext, yea verily. Symbols as a means of foreshadowing, I’ll take. Everything being symbolic of something “bigger?” Naw. Not me.
Barb
You know, lots of people talk about how their college lit classes “spoiled” reading for them by insisting on discussing such areas of literature as theme, symbol, and other such tools . Others talk about the snobbishness of said professors. Perhaps it might be time to let the past be past, and consider why the professors emphasized such . . .
If we want to write like pros, we have to read like pros. “Getting lost in the story” is a luxury. I’m not sure we can afford it, if we’re going to write as well as we’re able. That means reading with an eye to analysis. One of the things we need to analyze is how a story is structured and given depth.
No, symbols should not blatant, nor dragged in just so the author can talk about symbolism. They should arise naturally from the action, the landscape, the objects the characters have around them, and other elements of the story. The more weight every element of a story carries, the better the story will be. However, we shouldn’t turn up our nose at useful tools, either.
Too much genre prose is bald and boring — technically correct and a bare millimeter deep.
Since I’ve been writing I have a very difficult time getting lost in any story. I am editing and analying much too much. I need to learn to leave my writer hat behind sometimes. Then again, it is the mark of a really good story when I can just read it.
I believe the desire to get “lost in the story” is part of the problem with genre fiction.