OK I have to say a little bit more here, but no more offensive stuff I promise :S. The nice thing about a writing forum like this is that we get to see people of all ages and literary preferences, whether we want it or not. @daemon challenged me to think about what I consider quality literature, by saying that one reads those novels in order to vicariously achieve self actualization. I feel inclined to point out this isn't really true. I will never first hand experience a miscarriage, for example, nor would I want to. I also am only one person, but through literature, I can see the world through the eyes of someone else. I have put down books feeling smarter and wiser. It's not vicarious. I could not have achieved this wisdom otherwise. This is why we communicate. To expand our views and beliefs and feelings. I believe this is better attained in some types of literature over others, and therefore, not all literature is the same or even equal. With that being said, there are worse things than living ones life enshrouded in eacapism. Better to be a LARPER than the asshole who needlessly and continuously insults one.
Yes, this. Through the rich world of literature I have learned what it would be like to be a boy-wizard at a school of witchcraft and wizardry, or to be a professor searching for the holy grail while escaping an albino monk, or to marry a vampire, or to be attacked by a crazed car. These are all things I could never have experienced without literature.
In this sentence, I interpret "to _____ vicariously" to mean "to pretend to _____ by observing someone else doing it". Which is not quite what I meant earlier. In response to your earlier statement that escapist fiction is a way for the observer to seek self-esteem vicariously (by observing characters who all have a purpose in the group and who all achieve something), I said if that is true, then it is also true that highbrow fiction is a way for the observer to seek self-actualization, not vicariously (by observing characters who self-actualize), but by basically intellectually masturbating to the story's themes and messages. In my experience, neither is true, because it is plainly obvious that fiction provides neither esteem nor self-actualization. It does not fulfill any human needs or make the observer a better person. You call it "expanding our views and beliefs and feelings"; I call it intellectual masturbation. Two equally valid ways to refer to the same thing. Which is not a bad thing -- intellectual masturbation is perfectly worthwhile and it needs no justification and there is no need to spend every waking moment fulfilling a need or becoming a better person -- but let's not pretend it is more than what it is. As you said, you put down books of ficiton "feeling" smarter and wiser. When I want to be smarter, I study math. When I want to be wiser, I study my own failures. Therefore, your point in your last post can be summarized as "some genres are better material for intellectual masturbation than others." Which is a generalization. For the purpose of understanding trends and not actually doing anything about them, generalizations provide convincing explanations. But for the purpose of deciding which book to read next, or deciding what to write, or any other useful purpose, generalizations provide no useful information. (And I am early 20s, to answer your earlier question.)
All fiction is a make believe experience. If you want to experience something real, read nonfiction or go live life; all fiction--regardless of genre--is an escape from the world around you as you bury your head in the fictional tale.
I'm a fairly young writer (very early 20's) and honestly the reason I like fantasy is because I get to make my own rules. In fantasy there's more of an opportunity to create a world where a character's reality cannot be called 'incorrect' as the writer made the rules for that reality (as long as the reality created stays consistent and all that). Perhaps what younger writers really want is a chance to shape the world around them, but there's not always too much of a chance to do so in reality for a lot of young people be it because of financial reasons or otherwise. The interest in fantasy at least for me is that it's refreshing to step away from the things I see everyday and take bits and pieces of my reality and put them together in something different is liberating in a way.
That's basically what literature is for me. It doesn't matter if it's Shakespeare or a run-of-the-mill crime story. If it enables me to be engrossed into the world the story is set in, then it's doing its job.
As I have repeatedly kept saying, there is a difference between fantasy in the actual and fantasy in the theoretical. What you're describing is awesome. Fantasy, done by the right minds, can be as awesome if not more awesome than any other genre. Except it's not really fantasy, not fantasy as we know it. That's all I can say without taking more digs at what many people here are attempting to write. But yes, mythology, religion, supernatural, metaphysics. These are fantastic things to write about and I hope you do. And this is exactly what I'm talking about, actually, regarding "higher quality" literature. Using fiction to explore exactly what you're talking about, realism and its role in our day to day existence. Human consciousness may or may not be a separate entity from the physical world, and I personally think fiction (the best of it) provides, if not insight, then at least exercise, into this sort of thinking. This is drastically different from using fiction to satisfy one's basic desires ( sex, esteem, excitement, etc).
This is a great thread. I love how it's far more discussion than argument, and everyone has tons of good points! @123456789 I agree that some fiction makes readers use their brain more than other fiction. I find your opinion on escape interesting, and it's given me a bit to think about. I don't agree or disagree with it just yet. I find it a little hard to digest your overall concept, though, because all fiction really is just fiction. Life is more complex because drama and conflict are a lot harder to pin down and identify. As @Jhunter pointed out, memoirs and autobiographies nonfiction [edit to broaden term] is far more enlightening than fiction, and much more worth your time for what you want out of reading. Fiction is doomed to tie everything up into themes and reasons and answers and entertainment, with a nice little bow on top, and characters that make sense. I don't care what kind of fiction it is; the depth of a fictitious character or experience versus that of a real person/experience is always going to be the difference between a glass of filtered water and the pacific ocean. If bettering knowledge is sought, the yield from any fiction on a per/hr basis is a lot lower than the real world's stories, especially the one's you've waded through yourself. It all depends on what you seek, I guess—maybe you're trying to balance knowledge with entertainment (and non-fiction just doesn't make the cut?). I've probably really missed the boat on your point. Regardless, I applaud the level of detail in your thesis. Basically I agree with you, @daemon, for the most part, at least when it comes to the words you use that I can manage to hunt down in my vocabulary. My caveat with your argument is that fiction doesn't help people at all. You said: In my opinion, reading damn near anything is very good for the mind, and helps you on the path to being better than the past you. I'm one of those people who will say of twilight or Harry Potter: "I don't care if it had cardboard characters or is fundamentally unrealistic; it got the kids reading! Victory!" Further, I think there's enough evidence that at least romance and erotica do fulfill human needs. That's what they're designed for, and it's why they sell like crazy. EDIT: slight change for clarity
I never said that. I meant all of nonfiction--not just memoirs and autobiographies. But yes, you got my point--basically.
I emphatically disagree. Good fiction - fiction by good writers with the ambition to write well - can be much more enlightening than memoirs and autobiographies. This is incorrect, or at least incomplete. There is no requirement of a memoirist or autobiographer to portray themselves completely, or even truthfully. It's natural for people writing about themselves to whitewash the portrayal - to make themselves appear better, more heroic, loftier. Nobody wants to write about what a shithead they are and have been all their lives, and it takes a lot of courage and dedication to truth to do so. Appearing in public without makeup scares many women; appearing in public without proper grooming and decent clothes scares many men. Besides that, most autobiographers don't have the writing skill to portray themselves - or anyone - completely and truthfully. You say a fictitious character is to a real person as a glass of water is to the Pacific; this may be true, but it's not relevant. The real person never emerges from the pages of an autobiography. Any written work, no matter the length, cannot encompass everything about the real person. The bandwidth of human language simply isn't sufficient. In any work, fiction or nonfiction, you get broad-stroke approximations of people, and the fictional characters often have much more depth than the so-called real ones when portrayed in those broad strokes. You say fiction is "doomed" to tie up everything into themes, etc. that make sense. This is a major strength of fiction, not a weakness. A good fiction writer doesn't just state what happened as a series of semi-random events, he interprets these events, the characters involved, and the whole story within a philosophical framework. He makes sense of the characters and their story. In doing so, he guides the reader into seeing the world in (possibly) a new way. This is fiction's power, its purpose. It does for the human mind and spirit what the ancient myths do - provide a framework for understanding the world. It's easy for an autobiography to devolve into formlessness, but fiction can't do that. Autobiography can resemble a bunch of raw ingredients waiting in a kitchen; fiction is what results when a good chef assembles them into a tasty meal. Of course, I'm not speaking of all memoirs and autobiographies here. Some attain the heights good fiction attains - some of these autobiographers are actually good and thoughtful writers. But real lives are messy and often incoherent, and if that's what winds up on the pages of a memoir, the readers will be dissatisfied. Fiction can't be that messy and incoherent - it must make sense, and that's why it's superior, in its ability to affect the reader's mind and soul, to nonfiction.
Or objectivity in terms of an autobiography. In fact I would say that you get more truth from a lot of fictional characters as authors are able to put more of themselves into it while hiding behind the "fiction" label. I agree.
Thanks for stepping in, Minstrel. Beautiful post. This seems pretty obvious to me, but I suppose people need to actually read these sort of novels to get what you mean.
In support of Minstrel here. The key skill of an historian is evaluating the evidence; reading the autobiographies and memoirs of the time, and weighing up whether the author was, in any way, biased, and then using the evidence with some weighting in it for the bias. Remember, history is written by the winners! And these winners will, in general, overlook their own faults and exaggerate the faults of the losers, to justify why they had to step in and defeat them.
Apologies if I seem defensive on this subject, but I strongly disagree with continued implications that fantasy is only for children. Admidtedly I move in circles which give me a skewed view on things (for example working in the MMO computer games industry) but I know hundreds of educated adults who read fantasy. My own father reads predominantly fantasy and he's in his sixties and graduated from Cambridge with a first. I'll concede that if you're looking to maximise your educational nourishment then high fantasy wouldn't be your first destination. I don't think its devoid of intellectual stimulation though. I gave @Okon a like, largely because I agree with the assertion that reading damn near anything is good for the mind. I guess maybe if you're training for a marathon then going for a walk barely feels like exercise, but a lot of other people's health would be significantly improved if they went for regular walks.
I don't think it has to do with young writers. Fantasy has always been the dominant genre and it is a hot commodity right now. My own book is fantasy. The trick is to not make it sound trite.
@123456789, I think you might want to open your mind a bit about Maslow's hierarchy of needs and where various types of fiction fit in. I dont think anyone is arguing that literature offers more to the reader than commercial fiction. But, I believe you are dismissing the virtues of commercial fiction. Decent commercial fiction provides right brain benefits to the reader. The creativity required for decent fantasy is well outside the bounds of most people's day to day life. For me, I spend my days in the finance industry, almost entirely a left brain endeavor. Creative, commercial fiction provides exercise for my brain in an area that is massively underutilized otherwise. While my daily experience might be a little more extreme than many, it is hardly unique. Second, since you referenced Maslow, the only way to truly reach self actualization is through activity. Living Hemingway will get you much closer to this than reading Hemingway. This gets you to the esteem level anyway. To truly reach the top, I think requires a level of self awareness that traditionally comes from meditation, prayer or reflection. Good literature might help prepare your mind for such a journey but there are many ways to do this. For me, given my daily experience in a narcissistic and self-serving profession, the experience of being reminded that love of others has rewards beyond selfish endeavors and that our character is the sum of our actions rather than our inherited being feeds the soul even if it comes from a weak narrative. Combine this with the creative exercise for the brain and commercial fantasy yields an experience far greater than cheap escapism. And I have no shame in saying I derive some of this from the tale of a 12 year old wizard or from a halfling on a long walk. The last thing I'll say is I've gone through several phases of seeking different things from art. There was a period where only the sublime was good enough for me, or at least outside of a few guilty pleasures. And then about the time I met my wife, I came to realize that art appreciation, like spouses, is not only about seeking the sublime. It's about finding something something so wonderful that the faults are either mere idiosyncrasies or things to be willfully ignored. Its wonderful to admire the sublime and learn from it. But if you shun all else in your pursuit of it you miss out on humanity. It will become your own white whale. That's my soapbox. Sorry for the egotistical ramblings. Good luck on everyone's journey to self actualization.
I don't think you realize how huge nonfiction is--it is much more than just memoirs and autobiographies and history. Also, I never made the comments the other fellow said about memoirs and autobiographies, so I don't know why you are quoting me here.
I would also like to add that if you are a writer, trying to better your craft, reading anything that is written well helps with that endeavor, regardless of genre. I would actually even go a step further and say that any traditionally published work of fiction has its merits--everything from Meyer to Melville. Why? Because they were published for a reason, and if they saw success, they saw it for a reason. So instead of looking down on something, why not expand your mind, enlightening yourself on why someone published these books and why some of them saw meteoric success. I don't believe that enlightenment stems from closing yourself off from part of the literary world, but comes from embracing the literary world as a whole, learning as much about it as you can. Which is why I choose to read across all genres and all points in time. (I mean this literally, my curiosity knows no bounds.) My only regret is that as a thirty year old man with life and writing constantly contending for my spare time, I don't have enough hours in the day to delve as deep as I would like. But, thankfully, since I am an old man, I have had years to delve, so I have probably dug deeper than most on this forum.
I find it rather ironic I keep seeing the word "creative" being thrown around here. The fantasy WIPs discussed in this forum are often the most uncreative works of fiction iv ever seen described. "No rules" does not make something more creative. In fact, I would argue that working within a set of rules requires more creativity than working with no rules. Second, the fantasy Iv been targeting here is basically by definition derivitive, because I am describing the Dragonlance variety.
OK, I'll expand my comments away from history, memoirs and autobiographies. Let's look at scientific studies/experiments. I've recently taken part in a study into how exercise helps with bone density in the elderly. This study will be inconclusive because it's looking at how exercise helps...It specifically omits reference to the confounder of diet. This is a bias on the part of those conducting the study. A recent newspaper headline stated that "Too much exercise is as bad for you as none". Reading the original study, it was apparent that this was a massive overstatement of PART of the research. Again bias, perhaps lazy journalism, perhaps editorial intent. My point is that "truth" is not necessarily more easily found in non-fiction than fiction. It all needs to be read with a pinch of salt.
How hard is it to understand that I didn't make any of the comments that you are responding to? You should be directing this all towards Okon, which is why, you know, Minstrel responded to Okon and not me. Okon misquoted me. All I said was: "All fiction is a make believe experience. If you want to experience something real, read nonfiction or go live life; all fiction--regardless of genre--is an escape from the world around you as you bury your head in the fictional tale." This was in direct response to a discussion about escapism while reading. I never mentioned finding truths or any such thing. If you have a bone to pick, pick it with Okon.
Yes, pick your bones with me! I did misquote @Jhunter, and by all means did not intend to. @minstrel fair points, especially about fiction allowing more honesty in writing. I still believe, though, that there are enough contrasting opinions and ideas in non-fiction work for there to be a better learning experience for the reader. That's without mentioning the obvious things like learning more from a biology textbook (things you can immediately apply to life) than from a story. I'm not saying that fiction doesn't have that quality too, just that it is always restricted by a need for entertainment, which in my opinion is limiting when compared to non-fiction. If I'm setting out solely to better myself (anything other than my writing ability, of course), fiction won't be at the top of my list, simply because the other options add up to a lot more. However, if I am seeking a state of mind or pretty much any sort of entertainment, I will (and do) pick up a fiction book. I will learn things from that book, and enjoy it. Edit to add: I can think of bad fiction and bad/unreliable non-fiction (bleh, self-help) equally, so I will add that I'm talking about the good stuff of both types of writing, not the endless amount of poor writing that can be cited.
I have read bits and pieces of this thread in the last few weeks. I am going to give my opinion on it. The question being asked is not a mystery; it's not some phenomenon that we don't understand. It's obvious if we look at it and look at the connection. I don't talk much as a person and I live in my head; I think that these questions like these are easy to everyone to answer and to understand why; but I'm slowly learning that it's not easy for everyone to get it and that's probably why people talk about them and while I sit in the sidelines. People mistake my quietness for not understanding but it's because I do. I don't know why people have to come on here and post their thoughts and reasons for questions like these. I guess for the same reason that I'm doing it now; attention and feeling accepted socially in the world because being by yourself and lonely and thinking something is wrong with you isn't fun and doesn't feel good; it's better to feel accepted and your ideas heard. Just like what I'm about to say; I'm tired of just being on the sidelines. I'm going to open my mouth. I feel I know the answer. The question is why new writers write fantasy. I am writing a fantasy as well for my first novel and the more I write it the more I step away from the actual "fantasy" stuff and delve more into the actual storytelling, like the characters and theme. Fantasy provides a clear goal and obstacle for the writer that they can create out of thin air without having to come up with a character motivation or clever obstacle other than, "the dragon or dark lord came out of nowhere and started attacking the village and the young boy with the sword who was destined to become the greatest swordsman alive was the only one around who was able to defend them and defeat them. The dark lord and dragon put up a tough fight and the boy had to go on a journey to seek revenge for his village and family that was destroyed but because he was destined to become greatness, he ended up defeating the dark lord and dragon and saving the world." What is fantasy and what is not fantasy? Fantasy is being able to create something out of thin air and when in not a fantasy you can't do that. New writers don't have a lot of life experience; being able to create something out of thin air is easier to write about than it is about writing something that's real and about real people that doesn't involve already their own lives; that takes work. The question you ask is why new writers are so compelled to writing fantasy. The question should rather be why are new writers not compelled to writing something that is not fantasy? The answer to that is because new writers don't know yet how to write a story; they know it is a journey and they know that there has to be some obstacle; they don't know yet how to write about the struggle of the human spirit; sometimes the best way to learn how to do that and to start that is by writing fantasy.
