"I'm just going to write because I can't help it."- Charlotte Brontë


Saturday, November 12, 2011

Saturday morning swot

If you've ever wondered fictionwise what 'weird' is, or you'd like some impressive phrases to use when trying to convince more hidebound folk of the legitimacy of the fantastika literatue, pop over to this interesting piece on templates for understanding shaping how we engage with narratives, and the tolerance for ambiguity that each reader brings to a story. It states:

Fantastic and weird stories explicitly eschew, to varying extents, the dualism of real/unreal and often genre-mapping as well. They utilize metaphors to contextualize the ineffable so that the unexplained and the unfathomable become a part of the story, not a distraction.

Not a distraction. Exactly!

I love stories full of crunchy bits set in outlandish universes as long as the internal logic holds up to scrutiny. But if the writer glosses over serious structural errors, or cobbles together strange scenes and happenings just because they're pretty or interesting but have no real foundation, or tries to hide that he/she is winging it with bags and bags of cheap, hi-falutin fudge, then, well, hell hath no fury like a reader deceived.

No comments: