Showing posts with label Andre Norton. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Andre Norton. Show all posts

Thursday, May 16, 2019

Thoughts on Genre

A blog post by fantasy author Seanan McGuire on what genre is and is not, plus her own expectations for genre:

Genre Is Not a Prison

For one thing, it can be easier to tell what genre a particular work is not than what it is. McGuire cites one of the clearest examples, romance. Concluding with a Happily Ever After (or at least a Happily for Now) is essential to the definition of romance. Without that feature, a story isn't a romance regardless of any "romantic elements" it may include. GONE WITH THE WIND and ROMEO AND JULIET are not romances (in the modern sense, leaving aside the various medieval or Renaissance meanings of the term, which don't necessarily entail "love story" content). Her explanation reminded me of another component that used to be considered integral to the definition of "romance": Decades ago, a scholar of the genre defined a romance as the story of "the courtship of one or more heroines" (e.g., PRIDE AND PREJUDICE). The field has changed to make that definition obsolete; a romance novel today might focus on the love story of a male couple.

McGuire brings up the often-debated distinction between science fiction and fantasy, noting that people "can take their genres very seriously indeed" and that, for example, "Something that was perfectly acceptable when it was being read as Fantasy is rejected when it turns out to be secret Science Fiction." That potential reaction caused some disagreement between my husband and me, as well as with our editor, when the conclusion of the third novel in our Wild Sorceress trilogy revealed our fantasy world to have been an SF world all along. I worried that some readers might react with annoyance to what they might see as a bait-and-switch, and the adjustments we had to make to accommodate the editor's reservations validated my concerns. On the other hand, fiction with a fantasy "feel" that turns out to be SF isn't all that uncommon. The laran powers on Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover look like magic (and are viewed as such by the common people of that world), and a reader who starts with the Ages of Chaos novels might well be shocked when the Terrans arrive and Darkover is revealed as a lost Earth colony. The abilities of the characters in Andre Norton's Witch World series seem to be true magic, yet the stories take place on a distant planet rather than in an alternate world such as Narnia. And both authors' works are considered classics of the field, so those series' position on the fantasy/science fiction borderline hasn't hurt their enduring popularity.

I don't entirely agree with McGuire's comment about fantasy and horror: "Fantasy and Horror are very much 'sister genres,' separated more by mood than content." While true as far as it goes, this remark sounds as if all horror lurks under the same roof as fantasy. Granted, my own favorite subgenre of horror, which I encountered first and still think of as the real thing, is supernatural horror, a subset of fantasy—defined as requiring "an element of the fantastical, magic, or impossible creatures." As the Horror Writers Association maintains, however, horror is a mood rather than a genre. In addition to supernatural or fantastic horror in a contemporary setting, we can have high fantasy horror, historical supernatural horror, science-fiction horror (e.g., many of Lovecraft's stories), or psychological horror (e.g., Robert Bloch's PSYCHO).

McGuire does acknowledge the importance of mood in assigning genre labels: "Because some genres are separated by mood rather than strict rules, it can be hard to say where something should be properly classified." Does that mean we should give up on classifying fiction according to genre? Quite the opposite! I tend to get irked rather than admiring an author's bold individuality when he or she refuses to let one of his or her works (or entire literary output) be "typecast" as science fiction, horror, or whatever category the work clearly belongs to. McGuire seems to feel the same way: “'Genre-defying' is a label that people tend to use when they don’t want to pin themselves down to a set of expectations, and will often lead me to reject a book for something that’s more upfront about the reading experience it wants to offer me." Some authors seem to view the very idea of "expectations" with disdain, as if genre conventions inevitably equate to "cliche" or "formula." Do they feel equally dismissive toward the fourteen lines and fixed rhyme scheme of a sonnet?

As McGuire puts it, "And when someone wants something, they really want it. I react very poorly to a book whose twist is 'a-ha, you thought you were reading one thing, when really, you were reading something else entirely, whose rules were altogether different!' ” Genre, she says, at best resembles "a recipe. It tells the person who’s about to order a dish (or a narrative) roughly what they can expect from the broad strokes." Making it clear what ingredients the "dish" contains is one of the main jobs of marketing. Nowadays, a reader can discover works in exactly the niche he or she is looking for. On the Internet, a book needn't be shelved in only one category, and its genre components can be subcategorized as finely as the writer, publisher, or sales outlet chooses. So a fan of, to quote McGuire's example, “Christian vampire horror Western,” can find stories by like-minded authors.

The concept of "fuzzy sets" can be useful in thinking about genre. A book that's an unmistakable, nearly archetypal example of fantasy would fall in the center of the "fantasy" circle. A different work that has many characteristics of fantasy but doesn't check all the typical boxes might belong somewhere between the center and the boundary of the circle. Some works feel like sort-of-fantasy but not completely and may include markers of other genres. They might fit into an overlapping zone between the "fantasy" circle and the "science fiction" or "horror" circle. A historical novel with a romantic subplot might appear at the intersection between historical fiction and romance. None of this hypothetical fuzziness, however, means that there's no such thing as genre or no point in categorizing fiction.

Margaret L. Carter

Carter's Crypt

Tuesday, February 07, 2017

Cozy Science Fiction Part 2 - Style and Voice by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Cozy Science Fiction
Part 2
Style and Voice
by
Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Last week we introduced the concept of "Cozy" Science Fiction - a broad category to which Science Fiction Romance might belong.

http://aliendjinnromances.blogspot.com/2017/01/cozy-science-fiction-part-1-by.html

I pointed at a series of Cozy Mysteries -- a mixture of Mystery and Romance with emphasis on Mystery, by Debra Burroughs, The Paradise Valley Mysteries.



These are very good reading!

Woven of the same, "What is really going on here?" plot dynamic is Gini Koch's Alien Series (read them all even though they are very long).

Both pit worthy heroic Protagonists against impossible odds in a bewildering situation with cross-currents of the emotional dynamics of human (and non-human) relationship.

And we ended up at an Israeli (English subtitles) TV Series, Srugim, which is essentially Prime Time Soap -- somewhat like the TV Series Dallas, but without the ultra-rich tycoon and morally questionable wheeling/dealing.

I postulated that while Brian Aldiss may have been correct about "Cozy Catastrophic Science Fiction" in British Science Fiction of the 1840's, he completely missed the vast potential of the "Cozy" concept in genre fiction.

Now we're going to delve deeper into defining exactly what "Voice" and "Style" really are and how to perfect your own.

Lately, you've seen the emergence of the Cozy Mystery via Amazon -- and if you are an inveterate mystery genre reader like I am, you notice a wonderful difference between your standard Detective or Amateur Sleuth or Police Procedural, open or closed form, and the "Cozy" mystery.

The difference is not the presence of sex or romance or even just Relationship.  The "Cozy" dimension is much more complex, and thus has vast potential because so many aspects of "Cozy" have not yet been fully explored in novels.

The advent (in 2014) of the surprise hit series, Srugim, illustrates that modern audiences are ready for "Cozy" to spin off sub-genres from every genre, including TV Soap.

Cozy is not the same as Intimate.  An Intimate Relationship is based on knowledge about each other that is not shared with anyone else -- in other words, on Privacy.  A Cozy Relationship requires the dimension of relaxation.  There might be Intimacy (with or without sex or romance), but there might not.  A Cozy feeling is a "warm" feeling, positive emotions flowing freely at the surface, such as approval, admiration, bonding.

Cozy implies no need to be defensive - so it is a "barriers down" or "unguarded" relationship.

"Unguarded" is the Relationship the writer of a Cozy variant tries to create between the Reader and the Characters.  There can be conflict, surprise, even shock, plot twists gallore, threats, and overwhelming odds, and the adventure can still be Cozy if the Reader can feel the Characters affirming the Reader's personal traits that the Reader admires most.  In other words, the Characters validate the Reader's Self.

The Cozy genres don't require the reader to hatch an ambition to become a 'better' person -- to be tougher, smarter, faster, more self-reliant, more heroic or dominating.

Any personal growth a Reader covets after a Cozy novel will come easily, without sweat and strain -- easy and natural.

So how does a writer induce this feeling of unguarded emotion in a Reader?

The technical mechanism that sets the tone of a novel is actually inside the details of things like word choice, syntax choice, pacing, sentence length, and the rest of the components of Style.  But Cozy is not just Style, but also "Voice."

A lot of beginning writer essays have been published about how urgently necessary it is for a beginning to "Find Your Voice."  These articles don't define Voice because, though every reader can hear it, few writers have any idea what Voice is or where it comes from.

It is often assumed that Voice is a property of the writer, personally, not a learned skill.

Well, just like a singer's training, a writer's Voice is innate and trained.  Within each range of Voice, there are levels of training to strengthen and project that Voice.

In learning to sing, "voice" exercises to strengthen the vocal cords start right at the beginning -- but after puberty.  During and before puberty - before maturity - the training is more about notes, scales, tempo.

It works that way with writers, too.  You start reading lots of novels, maybe in a lot of genres, and coming back to favorite authors or genres.  You start to sing your own song, maybe with fanfic, or poetry, or just recounting funny stories over the dinner table.  Many writers start by drawing pictures with crayons when they are maybe 5 years old - telling a story in pictures before they have the words.

Sometimes a writer has had several novels published before they "find their voice" -- because it does take practice, exercise.  Voices strengthen with time.

As with a singer, the writer's voice is formed of many components.  Each component has to mature and strengthen.

When the writer is ready to master their Voice and find the Style best suited to that Voice, there is an exercise that works.

It is very simple.  Go back to the youngest reading years, find (maybe in your own library, boxes in the back closet, books you kept all this time) the novels or stories you loved the most, re-read the most, reveled in the most.  Make a pile of books that gave you the feeling that you want your readers to garner from your work.

Style and Voice are very personal -- but just as with a singer, the difference between amateur and professional is the ability to de-personalize the skills.  If you are to give, you must give-up what you are giving.  Oddly, after you've given it, you end up having more, so it is not something to worry about.

So find copies of your favorite novels -- cheap reprints, copies you are willing to ruin.

If you can't acquire paper copies, you can use e-books because color-marking words is possible in the Kindle versions.

There are two parts to this exercise workout.

1) take 4 colored highlighters and mark each sentence, each word in your favorite novels with one of the 4 colors:  

A) Description
B) Dialogue
C) Narrative
E) Exposition

STYLE is the pattern that will emerge as you color in page after page.

2) Set the book up beside your keyboard and copy-type the whole book.  Keep your eyes on the printed words, and type them into your Word Processor.  Just type your favorite book.  (note you can't SELL this copy -- you have to destroy it once you're done -- but the objective is not to make a copy, but to connect your eyes, brain and fingers in a living rhythm, choice of words, sentence length, an intangible vibrancy.

VOICE is that vibrancy - that timber and tone that transports you into the fictional world.

Characterization, worldbuilding, plot, story, theme, and all the elements we've discussed as being part of what the writer's mind does before the idea for the story pops up, all combine to create STYLE and VOICE.

That's why it is not productive to start searching for your Voice before you've plumbed the depths of these component techniques.  A level of maturity and facility with handling yourself has to be achieved before Voice Training can produce commercial grade results.

Any child can SING -- in fact, infants sing!  But that's not the same as playing Carmen in the eponymous opera!

So if you have done these classic exercises of highlighting the components of sentences in your favorite books, and then copy-typing a few books, then when it is time to "find your Voice" or develop your Style, or perhaps change Voice and Style to launch a new byline in a new genre, you just do the exercise again.

If you are looking to create a new byline in a contrasting genre, you will use a different stack of books.

One way of identifying Voice is to contrast two different authors.  I recommend using Andre Norton's YA novels for one of the pair, and contrasting her novels with any other writer you are studying.

Voice will become instantly apparent when you compare against Andre Norton.

Here is one of my favorite novels by Andre Norton:

https://smile.amazon.com/Star-Rangers-Central-Control-Bk/dp/0449240762/




I read STAR RANGERS 16 times before I lost count, and reread just parts, trying to figure out how to get that effect.

I loved the book so much that on one visit to Andre Norton's home, I challenged her to write the sequel, but she insisted she didn't intend to do that and told me to write it myself.  That story is in the introduction dedication to the first novel in my Dushau Trilogy.  You can read it using Amazon's Look-Inside feature, or read the whole novel free on KindleUnlimited.
Dushau by Jacqueline Lichtenberg
With LOOKINSIDE -- click the look inside logo, then scroll UP to read the Dedication.

https://smile.amazon.com/Dushau-Trilogy-Book-1-ebook/dp/B002OSXNM8/


Use Amazon's "smile" feature to direct a few cents to your favorite charity without paying more for the Amazon product!

Jacqueline Lichtenberg
http://jacquelinelichtenberg.com