Okay here it is, finally, and I must say, the comments I got on “Bestseller Fiction” represent top-notch, thorough thinking on the commentors’ part. You guys are great. Especially since the range of thought (which is pretty wide) seemed to me to finally point toward the position I already held (and have for years). It’s great to feel vindicated.
And there’s plenty to say on just the realm of subject matter you’ve brought up. For that reason, I’m dividing this post into 2, and will finished the week with it tomorrow. First, full disclosure: if you hadn’t already guessed, I am committed, deeply, to the fundamental values of character and story–and specifically that if those elements aren’t two aspects of the same organism, joined at the hip, as it were, you will have not a real story, but only a robotic imitation of a story, peopled by X’s and O’s.
It took me a long time to understand that. I remember years ago, in college, complaining to my teacher, Kurt Vonnegut, that I had no connections, so how the hell was I ever going to get published?
Ironically, I didn’t consider Vonnegut a connection; his apotheosis and transformation into an icon of popular literary fiction hadn’t happened yet.
“The thing is,” he said, pausing before adding a second “is” (Vonnegut was the first person I ever heard do that) “…is that if your story’s good enough, you won’t need connections.”
I was dumbfounded. How could he say that? Didn’t I know full well, at age 22, how the world really worked? Contacts were everything.
Decades later, a lifetime it seemed, what Vonnegut said began to make sense. The fact is, a story with elemental drawing power–even if not so well written–will cut through New York, as it were, like a hot knife through tofu. Agents and editors almost never see structural quality like that from new writers. They become conditioned to make quick work of iffy manuscripts and move on. To the writer on the outside, they look like elitist, exclusivist, “negative” literary snobs who’ll do anything to keep from reading new work. Agents!
But if you really believe that, just watch them when a truly hot story comes in. It’s like throwing hamburger under the nose of a sleeping dog. This is what they live for–and, again, they almost never see it.
So, to Terri’s original question why struggle to write well when so much best-seller fiction is written poorly? here is one simple response: Because no matter what your starting position is, good writing values will make it stronger. Therese’s experience is a good case in point. An unknown MFA, just out of school, she maximized the odds in her favor by takiing pains “to integrate both craft and marketability” into her work. She looked at her hand and played her strongest card, the fact that she had learned a full range of fiction writing skills.
But then what about those barely lliterate best-sellers that haunt Terri?
Some of them are just that–slovenliness on the part of successful authors. It may be perverse to say this, but the status gained by those authors can isolate them inside the publishing chain. Editors are reluctant to “edit” them. If they made money last time out, the front office hardly wants to change anything. And less time is available to big book authors for the careful layer-by-layer work that builds rich fiction. They must respond to a quickened pace and tighter production schedule, and as in any process, this can diminish quality.
So, then…
Assuming we haven’t yet thrown up our hands at the pain and complexity of all this and gone to work in a department store (as Erik playfully suggests), how do we come to some acceptance of the inequity that Terri’s original email identified and vented over?
Tomorrow, I’ll try to put that question to rest (and I think with your help I can), and show how, as your comments reveal, we already know the answers, and they are not at all obscure.
[CONTINUED TOMORROW...]
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