Notes and Errata of Mark of the Asphodel

OK.  My brain has snapped back into writerly mode after a hiatus.  So, onward with the rules of fiction per Samuel Clemens.

10. They require that the author shall make the reader feel a deep interest in the personages of his tale and in their fate; and that he shall make the reader love the good people in the tale and hate the bad ones.

I'd modify that.  A lot of us are into nuanced portrayals of good and bad, wherein outright love and outright hate of a character isn't really the key reaction.  This is one thing that did really excite me about anime (and carries over into Fire Emblem)-- principled antagonists who aren't merely "bad" people.  And honestly, there is some really successful fiction, like The Crying of Lot 49, wherein deep emotional investment in the characters isn't really... the point.  Oedipa Maas is something of a successor to Nick Carraway, but the reader probably doesn't identify with her the way they're invited to identify with Nick.  But, yes, generally speaking, a successful book is one wherein the reader takes a deep and personal interest in the characters.  Harry Potter didn't get to be so popular because the magical meta was well-constructed, after all.  Character love and character hate in the Potter fandom is a thing to behold... even of some of them seem to be reading Bizarro Land copies of the books.

And, in a worst-case scenario...

But the reader of the "Deerslayer" tale dislikes the good people in it, is indifferent to the others, and wishes they would all get drowned together.

I've read books like that, oh yes.

11. They require that the characters in a tale shall be so clearly defined that the reader can tell beforehand what each will do in a given emergency.

This was the rule that made me sit up and take notice.  It's an awesome rule.  I've held for years that the writer ought to know what their characters will do in an emergency, but that's with cheat sheets and pages of character ruminations and all kinds of background info.  To have all that communicated cleanly to the reader so that they know that it's right when the by-the-book character gets flustered and the sensation-seeking screw-off buckles down under pressure, that one character copes by deliberately focusing on one static moment at a time and another processes it all on autopilot... that's impressive.  That's something to aspire to, if not as a main goal than at least as some secondary or tertiary goal in the back of the brain.  I like that idea.  A lot.

 On with the next three rules of romantic fiction!

#5: They require that when the personages of a tale deal in conversation, the talk shall sound like human talk, and be talk such as human beings would be likely to talk in the given circumstances, and have a discoverable meaning, also a discoverable purpose, and a show of relevancy, and remain in the neighborhood of the subject at hand, and be interesting to the reader, and help out the tale, and stop when the people cannot think of anything more to say.

Oh, baby. Let’s break that one down...

“[T]he talk shall sound like human talk,”

Ever read dialogue that was utterly unconvincing, and you came away thinking, “Nobody talks like that!” Just listening to a range of actual people speaking-- students, academics, lawyers, priests, tradesmen, ballplayers-- helps immensely with this. For period pieces, recourse to period documents (not just letters and diaries, but snippets of transcribed conversations) is helpful. Yes, some people talked with flowery flourishes in, say, 1862. But colloquial speech back from back then sounds remarkably familiar. And just because we may hear Jacobean English as grand Bible language doesn’t mean that there wasn’t Jacobean gutter speech. We just don’t always recognize it.

“and be talk such as human beings would be likely to talk in the given circumstances”

Another important point-- compare the public addresses of Abraham Lincoln with the “lowbrow” stories he liked to tell in private... or
Churchill’s public statements versus his private witticisms. Or the phrases of the Declaration of Independence with what Jefferson liked to say about his enemies... no, wait, the Declaration is full of well-phrased pot shots. The same character can have very different modes of expressing himself/herself, depending on whether the scene is a courtroom floor, a battlefield, or a bedroom.

“and have a discoverable meaning, also a discoverable purpose, and a show of relevancy, and remain in the neighborhood of the subject at hand, and be interesting to the reader”

All good points-- unless a character is meant to be irritating as hell, digressions are not welcome. Example: a mystery novel I picked up out of
boredom at my grandmother’s house. It was set in a tea shop in Charleston, SC. The shop assistant would, at no apparent cue, go off on info-dumps about tea varieties. I love tea, and I neither learned anything of substance from these digressions, nor did I enjoy them.

As for “interesting to the reader,” I suppose this is where the recommendation for a beta reader comes into play... but I am an author-offender
who throws ‘fic unbeta-ed into the world. Sorry.

“and help out the tale, and stop when the people cannot think of anything more to say.”

Word.

#6: They require that when the author describes the character of a personage in the tale, the conduct and conversation of that personage shall justify said description.

OK. Few things aggravate me more in a story than when a character depicted as “brilliant” is, well, not brilliant. I don’t mean geniuses with no street sense, I mean master plotters who can’t plot their way out of a paper bag, eloquent diplomats would couldn’t resolve an argument over pizza toppings, FBI agents who apparently never took basic training, and physical scientists who confuse silicon with silicone.

No. No. NO.

And I don’t mean a fanfiction G-man or physicist or diplomat needs to be vetted by an actual G-man, physicist, or diplomat to pass. But some degree of real-world familiarity helps with this, far more so than just, well, reading other works of fanfiction. Knowledge of how people actually operate in real life is one of the best tools in a writer’s toolbox. It’ll help keep your prodigies brilliant, your seducers seductive, and your madmen certifiable.

#7: They require that when a personage talks like an illustrated, gilt-edged, tree-calf, hand-tooled, seven- dollar Friendship's Offering in the beginning of a paragraph, he shall not talk like a negro minstrel in the end of it.

[Friendship’s Offering was an illustrated literary magazine of the day. And seven dollars was a fair amount of money back then!]

Wait. Didn’t we just agree that a character might express themselves differently under different circumstances? Not quite the same thing-- note emphasis on switching in the middle of a paragraph! A character ought to have a distinctive mode of speech, based on their background/upbringing/class/etc. Queen Victoria is not going to be lapsing into Cockney flower-seller speech... not unless she’s trying to be funny. A Cockney flower-seller might learn “proper” speech then lapse out of it at times, but context is what makes this convincing. If characters are doing a conversational about-face, there ought to be a reason, implied or explicit, for it. There’s code-switching, and there’s just plain sloppy writing.

You can, OTOH, make good dramatic devices out of these sorts of inconsistencies-- in The Alienist, Caleb Carr’s team of detectives analyze a letter written by their target and determine that he’s an educated individual who is pretending to be unschooled. They figure this out through the target’s own sloppy mistakes. Again, a lot of it comes down to learning how people actually operate. You don’t need a natural “ear for dialogue”-- get out a notebook and pen and jot down what the funny, brilliant, crazy, or dull people around you actually say.

Rules eight and nine tomorrow...

I dislike grand pronouncements, so rather than explain what the new order of business is around here, I'm just going to do it.  

Anyway, I don't know about you (really, I don't), but when I write something that's going up on public display, I want it to be the best I can write.  Not the best Fire Emblem fanfiction around or the best any kind of fanfiction ever, but the best I can do with that story at that moment.  Otherwise it goes in the slushpile in the deep recesses of my hard drive where I hide the Marth/Melissa pr0n.  

And maybe I do want to get something published some day.  Anyway, consequently, I've spent a lot of time thinking about writing and reading about writing and writing about writing.  It's what I do for fun.  Well, that and give public talks on the Russian space program (betcha you didn't see that one coming).

So, having come across Mark Twain's so-called rules governing literary art in the domain of romantic fiction, and having enjoyed them greatly, I figured it was worthwhile to have a look at them and see how they apply to amateur fiction, if they apply at all.  Tonight we cover:

#1: That a tale shall accomplish something and arrive somewhere.

Well, I guess that blows PWP out of the water.  

Anyway, Twain uses this first rule as a springboard for some later rules, and as he doesn't define his terms, we have to guess as to what he means by "accomplish" and "arrive."  Whatever he means, it's the opposite of what the Leatherstocking Tales do.  :)

This is followed immediately by:

#2: They require that the episodes in a tale shall be necessary parts of the tale, and shall help to develop it.

OK.  So a "tale" (I'm thinking he doesn't mean flash fiction here) is constructed of episodes that develop it so that the tale "goes somewhere" and, in doing so, "accomplishes something."  I think we can translate this to mean that a story has a plot that follows a recognizable structure (conflict-climax-resolution, argh), whose denouement evokes something in the reader-- preferably the feeling the author intended.  I'm not going to argue with that; it has a pedigree in Western Lit going back to Aristotle, and that's because it works.  Yes, you can subvert it or invert it or chop it to bits, but it helps to know beforehand what you're turning inside out and why.

Now, since I'm agreeing to run with #1 and #2, a violation of #2 in particular would mean that a narrative is cluttered with episodes that are unnecessary and don't develop the plot-- filler, if you will.  Or perhaps subplots that don't reflect back on the narrative in any meaningful way.  An unsuccessful sequence of episodes leaves the reader screaming, "Nobody cares, get back to the main story!"-- or, worse, they're dying to get back to the subplot because the main characters are bland and/or unsympathetic.

One of the great unfinished Utena fanstories, Alan Harnum's Jacquemart, has so many damned plot threads running that it's obvious why Harnum couldn't finish it-- he's admitted that he'd bitten off more than he could chew.  A good plot-subplot structure should be as elegant as a molecule of DNA or collagen, and Harnum ended up with what looks more like Grandma's yarn basket after my cat got into it.  This doesn't invalidate his effort-- what there is of Jacquemart is compelling and sometimes brilliant.  But the various episodes of the narrative didn't cohere.  

Now, a short story/one shot doesn't necessarily need any subplots, but if you're writing in a smaller framework, than working toward your end as concisely as possible becomes even more important.   Basically, the shorter the word count, the tighter the focus. Which brings us to flash fiction.  Do drabbles have to arrive somewhere?  How do you go anywhere in the space of 100-500 words?  Well, a good piece of flash fiction still evokes something in the reader, so I'd say that qualifies for going somewhere and accomplishing something.  I think we all know at least one favorite drabble that "arrives somewhere," no matter how sparse the word count.

Rules #3 and #4 tomorrow!