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Ink Odyssey Transcript

Welcome to Ink Odyssey, a podcast for creative . My name is Stephen McCumber, and I am a . I’m here to share my experiences and thoughts with you. Being creative people who endeavor to imagine and dream, let’s get started with a little practice, shall we? First, imagine some music, calm and low. Can’t hear it? Try again. [Cue music] Our vessel sails along a great divide in the sea. Waters along our starboard are pale with mottled hues of blue and green. To our port the waters are dark, almost black without the sunlight upon them. The deck jerks and pitches without pattern. Sailing the divide is a dangerous thing, yet it is the only way to gain entrance to a place of great mystery. Look forward, and you just might make it out. Ahead, shimmering in the distance like a mirage, a rainbow of colors sparkle and glisten. If we can stay along the divide long enough, we will gain entrance. We will see the elements of the sea in all their glory and mystery. Can you see it? Are you with me? Good. Get comfortable and let’s talk. Today I would like to talk to you about a great debate in the world of fiction. vs Literary work.

Any field comes with camps and parties and sides and divides of all kinds. Within , there are several areas of contention among authors. Outlining vs discovering. Traditional publishing vs self publishing. Academically taught vs self taught. Fan fiction. Nanowrimo. There’s a lot. Today’s focus, however, is on literary work vs genre work. I’ll be going over them and breaking it down for you.

1 Ink Odyssey Transcript First, let me take a moment to give you a definition for both so we have some common ground to move forward from. has several boxes it strives to tick before we can count a work among its ranks. One such box is the , it aims to have prose that reads more like . Words and sentences aim to have a cadence and rhythm that invoke beauty in and of themselves beyond what meaning they convey. Let’s call this kind of writing metrical prose. Another box is for an original story driven by character rather than . Another is that the work must pose a deep philosophical argument about humanity, society, or some other existential question philosophers have debated and argued since the beginning of our species. Let’s leave it at those three for now. has boxes of its own to tick off. The work should follow the rules of the genre it falls under. Those rules are plot based, for example, a must end with lovers united. A mystery must end with questions answered. There’s more standard plot points genre fiction has to follow than just the ending, but the point is there’s a general structure it has to follow to become a romance, a horror, or , so on and so forth. Another thing it strives to do is to be entertaining. There are a few other tidbits to this debate for each side, but they have nothing to do with work itself, rather how that work is perceived. It’s claimed that literary work can be harder to read. Literary fiction claims to be more artistic and pure, whereas genre work is commercial and for the masses. Genre work is accused of being plot driven, formulaic, and a few other things that all mean the same thing, that it has a plot structure it needs to follow. This is like calling cast iron heavy, no shit, that’s how it is, it’s a fundamental part. Literary fiction is labeled as harder to sell, but better for awards. Genre fiction has concrete endings while literary work has more ambiguous endings. We’ll address these later. Some articles claim that genre fiction has a happy ending, but that’s bullshit. Horror is genre fiction, but it doesn’t have a happy ending. are genre fiction and their entire purpose is they don’t have a happy ending. I mean, it’s a claim that’s just blatantly untrue. What about the concrete endings and more ambiguous endings? That’s entirely up to the author. Here’s the thing, more concrete endings are appealing because they offer closure. An ambiguous ending leaves us with questions and a bit unsettled depending on just what we leave unanswered. Closure is a pleasant thing to have, and with a lack of it in the actual world, it’s nice to have it in our entertainment. Now, I want to break all this information down for you. I already started with the last bit, but let’s dive in deeper. Genre fiction claims to be more appealing to the masses and easier to sell and meant for commercialism. All that this means is that we create it with the purpose to be entertaining. Which it should be. Why read a book if it’s not entertaining? Literary work appears the antithesis of those things by claiming to be hard to read and sell. Part of that problem lies in the prose, so let’s talk about the differences in that between genre and literary work. First, a definition for prose. Dictionary.com defines it as follows, “the ordinary form of spoken or written language, without metrical structure, as distinguished from poetry or verse.” In literary work, we try to give it words and sentences that metrical structure you get from poetry and prose. Genre work doesn’t have the requirement, but it doesn’t mean a genre writer can’t do it. It’s a stylistic choice on the author’s part, and it’s not held solely by literary writers or literary work.

2 Ink Odyssey Transcript Why is this important? Because in order for words to gain that metrical structure while maintaining grammatical correctness, it takes an additional level of work on the author’s part. Not only is it another layer of work, but the resulting words are more complex in structure with more obscure words that quite frankly, not everyone will understand. Making it metrical, grammatical, and still delivering an accurate message is not a simple task, and it will cause a book to be harder to read. People not trained in may not have the knowledge base or vocabulary to appreciate what they wrote, and it’s not a demerit on the reader’s part. Please understand, I’m not saying literary work can’t be and isn’t entertaining, it just has a level of skill with wordplay required to appreciate it. In 1989 the Oxford English dictionary had 171,476 words in current use, 47,156 outdated words, and about 9,500 derivative words. Do you know 250,000 words? How about the words added in the thirty years since that publication? Medical jargon? Military jargon? Jargon for any profession with a lot of specialized equipment, techniques, terminology, experiences, and other things I can’t think to name. My point is this, the less common the words used, the fewer people who can read it with ease. Unfamiliar words will deter from the experience of the reader, if you can use it in a context that gives it meaning, all the better. A new word now and then isn’t bad, but having to stop reading to look up a definition is a pain, it interrupts the flow of the story and the stream of reading generates. Do this so someone has to look up a word on every page? That’s not fun, and odds are good they won’t recommend it to a friend. The reason it is better for awards is that the people handing out those awards have that knowledge base and vocabulary to appreciate the work of those words. A romance will sell better because it satisfies an emotional need of the reader. Most genre author’s use standard prose because it’s easier to write and delivers the emotional journey to their readers with greater ease. Literary work may claim that metrical prose is a requirement to be literary, but it does not have a hold on metrical prose. We can write a romance with metrical prose, that level of work is a stylistic choice on the author’s part, that’s it. What about the ? The message? The meaning? Literary works list’s an exploration of the human condition as a requirement, or in different words, a deep philosophical message about the great existential questions of our species. This could include things like what does it mean to be a human being? What is the purpose of society? What value does belief in God bring us? Big questions that really don’t have an answer, just faith in an answer. This exploration of the human condition is a philosophical debate delivered by elements within the story. Here’s the thing, all theme is, is a persuasive argument. I’ll go into this further in a defining work section. For now, let’s keep it about literary and genre work. As with metrical prose, a deep philosophical theme is not limited to literary work. Any genre author can pose these questions in their work, I’m sure many do. Be careful with it though, literary or genre, don’t beat your reader over the head with a message. No one likes that. So what have we covered? Well, literary work requires metrical prose but does not have a sole claim to it. The same is said for existential themes. Ambiguous endings? Up to the story and author. Awards, reading difficulty, and salability, most of these other things that divide the two are answered by the choice in prose and aren’t a defining element of either, they are a consequence. What remains? Plot driven vs character driven. Original vs formulaic. Predictable vs surprising. All this means the same thing, breaking it up into separate categories is redundant, yet the various words help us break it all down, so we’ll use them.

3 Ink Odyssey Transcript First, let’s talk about an original story. If we really break it down, and I mean really break it down as far as we can, there is no original story left. Every story is one of two things, someone goes on an adventure, or adventure comes to them. If we really wanted to be asinine, we could say there’s a third story where there is no adventure. It’s probably been done by someone. But reading about an unending cycle of repetition isn’t appealing to me, and for it to have no adventure, that’s exactly what it needs to be. An unaltering cycle of events repeating in perpetuity. Let us define adventure as anything outside the status quo for an individual. If the usual road to work is out of order and they have to take a back road, that’s an adventure. This means that in every story our character either chooses to break the norms of their life, or something comes along and breaks those norms. What an original story equates to is a string of events and circumstances and choices that aren’t commonplace. I say commonplace, because humanity has been telling stories for thousands of years. That’s just documented, undocumented stories passed by oral history which are now long gone probably go back tens of thousands of years. Odds are good even if you talk about tree dragon spaceships with stars for eyes, the core story will have been told somewhere by someone. Why? Because a story is an emotional journey, and as far as I know, we haven’t lost or gained any emotions for a long, long, long time. That means that every emotion we can experience has been talked about, thus every story has been told. That’s enough of this, however. Let’s talk about character driven vs plot driven. When I first heard this I was confused as hell. Character driven means that our character moves the plot forward instead of being moved forward. For example, did you ever see the movie Stranger Than Fiction? In it, the main character decides to do nothing to see if his story is being character driven or plot driven. So he stays home and does nothing. A bulldozer’s claw breaks through his home to force him out into the world. That’s what they mean by plot driven. Circumstance drive them forward, not their will. For storytelling, unless you’re making a point like they were doing in Stranger Than Fiction, don’t have random things that barge into the story with no relevance to anything else, that’s just awful story telling. Why? Because things in a story should have a purpose, they should have meaning, and they should be a consequence or have consequences. What they mean when they say literary work is character driven is that it strives to showcase the characters so we get to learn what makes them tick. Once we understand all their buttons and levers and pulleys, then we get taken on a journey that shows them transforming into a different person and we understand all the nuances of what went into it and why. This distinction is ridiculous. That’s just excellent character development. No matter what work you do, reveal who your character is and why, and the events of the story should impact them and leave a lasting change. This is an episode in an of itself, so we’ll leave it here. In a story, someone should instigate anything that happens. Even if you’re doing a man vs nature story, you need to treat nature as an entity with a will that’s out to get your character. What happens is willful, planned, and desired by someone. Is your main character getting evicted despite being able to make payments? Well, it may not be their will or desire that’s moving the story forward, but it is the will and desire of the person organizing their eviction. See what I mean by being confused? In a good story, everything that happens is instigated by someone with a will and desire. The conflict in any story is the collision of wills and desires in each other’s way. The villain in any story is a character, their actions have to drive the plot forward just as 4 The villain in any story is a character, their actions have to drive the plIontk f oOrdwyasrsde yj uTsrta ansscript much as the hero character. A story caused by the protagonist’s actions while they never react to anything is boring and unrealistic. One character can’t have all the initiative. Good genre fiction will craft characters that have circumstances, values, and goals that match the vague outlines of their genre and bring about those major plot points they require. Just because it follows those milestones doesn’t mean its plot driven. That being said, if a character behaves unexpectedly or makes a sudden change without a good explanation, that means we have altered them for the sake of plot and that is bad writing. Don’t do that. Do you see why this always confused me though? Everything that happens in a story comes about because of a character’s will. Just because it follows a rough outline of a romance doesn’t mean it is plot driven. It’s a plot driven romance if you as the reader don’t believe they should be together when they get married, by that I mean from what you’ve read you don’t see why they would marry each other from their perspectives. There’s no reason for this woman to love this asshole, yet here she is marrying him. That’s plot driven. Character growth and decisions being overridden for the sake of conforming to an already decided outcome. Good writing will always make it feel natural for the character to make every choice they do. You’ll get to know them and understand who they are as a person and agree that what they do is only natural for who they are. If it doesn’t come off that way, that’s a failure on the author’s part. One last aspect of this we need to talk about is back in line with the original vs formulaic. A romance is a romance because the two heroes fall in love at the end and live happily ever after. If they don’t end up together, it’s not a romance. People want to read that, if you want to deliver that to them, excellent. Every genre is like that, there are certain expectations and norms for them that need to be met in order to be whatever genre it falls under. Why have these standards? Because a story is an emotional journey, and as human beings we have emotional needs that stories can fulfill. We want to know they will fulfill it before we invest our emotions into them. That’s why exist, and it’s a fair request and expectation. So what about Literary work? Well, the most important aspect in a story to qualify it as a literary piece is about the overarching plot of the story. If the story has no plot, then it has no plot, and that’s fine, you just can’t label it as an adventure or a mystery. If the story follows a romantic plot but they don’t end up together, it’s not a romance. If you want to create a unique plot that lies outside of standard genre or bend a genre plot for a unique twist or take or message, you can’t label it under those genres. Yet we have to label it, don’t we? Yes we do. We need to file it away somehow, that’s how our brains work. The only truly defining element of literary work is this aspect of non-standard plots. Think of it like abstract , artists can do whatever the hell they want and call it abstract. The key is, it has to be done well. An artist can do whatever the hell they want, and I mean whatever they want, if they do it well, then any trespasses on norms are forgiven. You ever read Cormac McCarthy? He doesn’t use a lot of punctuation. I’ll talk about this later, but for now, just know that it’s what he was well known for. Want to know something? A great and terrible little secret? Literary is a genre. What is genre work? A set of rules and standards we expect to be met. Literary has its own rules and standards meet, plot being the central aspect of those rules, that means it’s a genre. The only difference is the rules are more amorphous and ambiguous than other genres. Literary work is an abstract art in the form of literature. There you have it. Literary vs genre is a useless debate because it turns out literary is a 5 There you have it. Literary vs genre is a useless debate because it turnsI noku Ot ldityesrsaeryy Tisr aanscript genre. Most of the things literary work requires aren’t held solely within literary work. The only thing that is held solely within literary work is the non-standardized plot structures. That makes it an abstract construct. An abstract painting is still a painting. An amorphous story is still a story. Yeah. Quite a lot to tell you the entire argument is moot, isn’t it?

Unfortunately, our time today has concluded. For those who’ve heard my ending repeatedly, I’ll say goodbye now. I hope you enjoyed today’s installment of Ink Odyssey and to see you next time. Until then, go turn your ideas into ink.

If you would like to know more about me or connect, the easiest way is through my website, McCumberWorkShop.com If you have questions, comments, or opinions to share, you can reach me at [email protected]. I’ll answer your questions via email and voice them on Ink Odyssey. If you wish to remain anonymous or for the question to remain private, please say so. From my website you can connect to my social media accounts, sign up for a newsletter, email me, and link to my Patreon page. For social media I have Facebook, Instagram and twitter, all under SDWMcCumber. I’m not a very active social media user, but I’m there if you would like updates or to connect. Twitter is where I’m most active. If you would like to support Ink Odyssey, please tell a friend and share your favorite episodes. If you would like to become a patron, please visit Patreon.com/sdwmccumber. Even if it's one dollar a month, that’s another dollar I can support my family with and I will be grateful. My patrons can listen to episodes as soon as I finish them, get book and movie recommendations detailing what I think they can offer us as writers, template and companion materials when applicable, access to a discord community, and can even see every step of my process in select projects. Thank you again for listening, I hope you enjoyed this installment of Ink Odyssey. Until next time, let’s go, turn our Ideas Into Ink.

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