I need to rant.
Some may be aware that I’m currently taking a Creative Writing course. In this course, we have to write “Literary Fiction”, which the teacher only defines by negation (eg, it is not Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Horror, or Romance). Naturally, this is a poor definition, as all definitions by negation are. It’s taken me a while, but I think I’ve discovered what “Literary Fiction” actually is.
It’s fiction which has no plot.
Seriously, the one continous similiarity in all the stuff I’ve read for that class has been this: none of it has any plot whatsoever. None. They are all, without exception, random bits of someone’s life which go nowhere and do nothing.
Now, it’s still early in the semester, so maybe I’m jumping the gun here. Maybe there is fiction out there which is “Literary” and also has a plot. I’m pretty sure if anyone knows, it would be DrScotto.
But that, dear friends, was only a gentle segway into my real rant: Terrible Stories.
It’s naturally a danger when you sign up for a creative writing course that you will be subjected to bad writing. But I still expected there to be some minor baseline. Apparently, I was wrong.
This particular bit of fiction takes place in an airport. The main character is stuck there for hours with his girlfriend and her mostly absent-tee friend. While plotless and pointless as all “Literary” fiction has been so far, the sheer number of jaw-dropping idiocies in this waste of dead tree is astounding. It’s not quite as bad as someone attempting to write a novel in 3133t, but close.
There are at least seven severe and obvious grammatical errors on every page. Spelling errors abound. The prose is jarring and fractionary, with pauses in odd spots and lack of pauses in even more odd locales. Worse than this, though, is that the author inserts himself as a narrator at random points into what is otherwise an entirely third-person perspective! Here, let me provide an example (share in my pain!):
“Grabbing the candy he made his way to the register, but not before stopping to look at the cover of the latest Playboy magazine on the rack. Rack… Ha! I said rack!”
Yes. Yes, you did. Now get the fuck out of the story, dumbass, or choose a person to tell it in! These little breaks are littered throughout the piece and each one breaks any semblence of immersion the reader may have.
The title of this story is related to a bit stuck at the end in which the main character is cavity searched by airport security then not allowed in first class on his standby ticket because his shoes are too worn. I suppose he was going for some kind of inner meaning with this, but it’s just lost on the fact that the airline couldn’t do that sort of thing legally. All it would take is one dirty hippie filing a case with the ACLU and they’d loose millions, plus all the damage to their reputation. It’s not really something I can see realistically happening.
This terrible piece is made even worse by the fact that it’s not utter and complete trash; there are some interesting bits in it. The small little fantasies that the main character has regarding the pretty cashier at the counter, followed immediately by his jealousy when he returns to his girlfriend to find her flirting with some French dude is really a very interesting way to tell the events. But, of course, it’s marred by the horrible execution in the rest of the piece.
Now I have to write a critique of this thing. Thankfully, this rant should stop me from phrasing things in the worst, most vitrolic way possible as I would no doubt do. It’s rare (outside of things on Fanfiction.net) that I have this much deep-seated hate for a piece of fiction. I don’t want to crush the poor bastard’s dreams just yet, so I must be tactful.
I couldn’t be tactful unless I unloaded all by bile here. Thanks for reading.
Did somebody say Dirty Hippie?
I’m there!
I too am in a creative writing class this semester, but mine is great. It is the second time I have taken the class with this professor, and he does not disallow science fiction, and in fact loved the science fiction piece that I wrote last year. I highly recommend taking a better creative writing class, so that you don’t have to put up with this crap.
College-aged creative classes are real mixed bags. Every idiot in the class tends to focus on things from ‘personal experience.’ Being little more than children for the most part, most of these tales focus on adolesense, but without the proper distance and depth to make a meaningful statement and/or story. I wrote two stories for mine; one a poorly thought out tale about a relationship, complete with a SWERVE at the end. It was alright, good moments, but ha dsome overarching problems. Generally, it was well-recieved by everyone except the teacher, that thought it was trite.
Then, I wrote a bizzare science-fiction account. It had all sorts of strange things. My Prof said, “it was the most complete story of the semester.” The class hated it. The lesson you might ask? Well, its that you aren’t alone, welcome to self-involved college kids writing about their little lives…
I’d like to point out that “loose” and “lose” are not the same thing. That is in the paragraph about losing a case to the ACLU. Also I imagine you were unloading all your bile, not “by” bile.
I also had a similar experience except it was with a poetry class. I honestly thought I wouldn’t be able to recognize bad poetry because of the subjective nature of any kind of artistic criticism but I was wrong.
One thing alot of sci-fi writers lack is any ability to develop characters (case in point Isaac Asimov). You may be able to learn how to develop and write about a particular type of character better from a different genre. Literary fiction is generally character driven as opposed to much sci-fi which is idea driven.
What’s interesting is that the people who join these things are generally prepared to take criticism. Also, a good way to criticize something like this piece (which sounds pretty awful) would be to just pick out the good things and get rid of the bad. Point out that it is possible to tell a story, make a point, and remain realistic. It took me a while to start criticizing but as soon as I did start becoming increasinly critical of my peers’ work I in return got better feedback. The most maddening thing for me was the poetry that got submitted with lots of typos and spelling errors. RUN A GODDAMN SPELLCHECK!
If you want some decent literary fiction to read I have a small grouping of books I could lend you except I think some of them may have been borrowed by mystery people at my last apartment and never returned.