genre fiction | CW Hawes

Style’s the Thing

Raymond Chandler wrote:

… the formula doesn’t matter, the thing that counts is what you do with the formula; that is to say, it is a matter of style.

While Chandler was referring to writing mysteries, I think his observation applies to all genre fiction. This is because genre fiction, commercial fiction, follows a formula. Whether we’re talking about romance, or space opera, or adventure tales, or mysteries, or sports stories, genre fiction is formulaic.

Which brings us to Chandler’s key observation: what’s important is what the writer does with the formula. And what the writer does with the formula is what he called style.

Style differentiates one urban fantasy author from another. Style is the difference between one romance writer and another. And it’s style that differentiates a writer of cosmic horror, from another writer of cosmic horror.

As readers, it’s style that draws us to one author over another. It’s style that moves me, as a reader, to give one writer five stars and another four.

The mystery formula is pretty simple. A kills B. The police think the killer is C, until the sleuth clears C and puts the finger on A.

Erle Stanley Gardner, to shake up the routine, directed his efforts towards the formula. Things such as start with a mystery, the murder should be planned, and the reader should be sympathetic to the victim. Which also means the victim cannot be killed before the story starts.

The end results were very complex plots, but his stories remained formulaic. Perhaps the epitome of the puzzle mystery.

Raymond Chandler, on the other hand, focused on the characters in his novels. Particularly that of Philip Marlowe, his detective. The end result is that Chandler’s mysteries read like literature. They are some the finest novels I’ve read. He brought Marlowe to life. He enables me to experience a California that no longer exists. A California I’d love to live in.

And ultimately it is due to style that Chandler gets five stars from me, and Gardner doesn’t.

It’s all about style. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, they say, and so too is style.

Comments are always welcome. And until next time, happy reading!

Share This!

Literary Fiction

Were Ernest Hemingway alive today, would he make it as an independent author/publisher? I don’t think so.

Why do I write that? Because literary fiction is a tough sell to the indie reader. Not that a reader of indie books won’t read literary fiction, because some do. I for one.

However, Lit Fic is not the main diet of the indie reader. Genre fiction is. And genre fiction written in serials.

When we look at Literary Fiction in comparison to genre fiction, we see the problem immediately: most Lit Fic is standalone, and how the heck do you categorize it to get a reader’s eyes on it?

With genre fiction, it’s easy. There are all manner of tags one can use. For mysteries there are: crime fiction, serial killer, detective fiction, police procedural, cozy, amateur sleuth, along with the general mystery and murder mystery.

But what category does a book like The Remains of the Day fall into? Or The Old Man and the Sea?

Amazon does put The Old Man and the Sea into the Sea Stories category, but is it really a sea story? It certainly isn’t what I think of when I think of the sea story category. I think of Patrick O’Brian, and the Horatio Hornblower books. I might think of Moby Dick, or a book by Joseph Conrad. But Moby Dick isn’t really about the sea or whales, and while many Conrad stories involve the sea, they aren’t actually sea stories either.

The Remains of the Day is in an even more difficult place. Classic British Fiction. Now that tells me a lot. And therein lies the problem with indies selling Lit Fic — what the heck do you call it?

Since the indie reader basically demands genres and serial fiction, I think therein lies the answer. And the indie writer of Literary Fiction has no better a model than Anthony Trollope.

Trollope invented the novel series with his Barchester Chronicles: six novels that take place in and around the cathedral town of Barchester.

The six novels loosely follow each other. Although they can be read as standalone books. What they share is a locale and a set of characters that show up in each of the books, but with each novel having a different main character.

Because Trollope touches on so many different aspects of mid-nineteenth century British society, we can fit these books into many categories.

The books are historical fiction and religious fiction. They could possibly be called Christian fiction, although they aren’t evangelical in nature. They are about small town life, church politics and specifically Anglican Church politics, middle-class life, and married life. There is a fair amount of romance, always a campaign for Parliament, so we could call them mildly political novels. They could also be called comedies of manners. And they are filled with humor.

Trollope, as if he had foreseen Twitter, made it easy of us to tweet his books. And therein lies the key to an indie author’s success in writing Literary Fiction: write a series of standalone novels that involve the same locale and a general set of characters.

The old format for the TV series works well here: a main trio of characters, a supporting cast of around nine, and a uniform locale; each week one character is the focal point of the episode. Gunsmoke ran for years on such a formula, as did every other series when I was growing up.

And Anthony Trollope gave us the formula over a century ago.

Comments are always welcome! And until next time, happy reading (and writing)!

Share This!

Commercial Fiction

Commercial fiction has existed ever since that first storyteller figured out he could get paid for telling stories. Paid on a regular basis, that is. That genius is lost to the mists of time, sad to say, but his legacy lives on.

The seeds of modern commercial fiction began in the 1700s with such money making gems as Pamela and Varney the Vampire. And continued into the 1800s, first with anonymous potboilers, such as those written by Louisa May Alcott, and stories from the pens of Poe, Dickens, and Trollope; and then on to the penny dreadfuls, the five-cent novels, and ten-cent novels of the later 1800s.

Commercial fiction blossomed in the 20th Century beginning in the 1920s and it continues unabated to this day.

So just exactly what is commercial fiction? H. Bedford-Jones (dubbed King of the Pulps) put it this way:

Look at magazine fiction. Has it any pretensions, any purpose, other than to entertain the reader? Absolutely none. A fiction magazine shuns in horror all propaganda, religious controversy, and boresome highbrow effusions. Its business is simply to make its readers forget their troubles and come again for more.

Edgar Rice Burroughs was even more straightforward:

No fiction is worth reading except for entertainment. If it entertains and is clean, it is good literature, or its kind. If it forms the habit of reading, in people who might not read otherwise, it is the best literature.

The bottom line is this: commercial fiction’s sole purpose is to entertain. And I would add — make money for the writer.

The writer of commercial fiction is an entertainer. No different than a singer, or a magician, or a carnival busker, or any sort of performer.

However, we writers aren’t told this. At least not by our English lit teachers in high school or college. And certainly not by creative writing professors.

Why? Well, the establishment only values what’s called literary fiction. That is, books and stories that have a message and are written with the message foremost in mind, not whether or not the story entertains. It may entertain, but that’s not its purpose.

Now the irony of this view lies in the fact that much so-called “literary” fiction was in its day commercial fiction.

One need go no further than Shakespeare. Bill did not sit down and write Hamlet or MacBeth or The Taming of the Shrew with the literary value of these stories in mind. He was writing to make a few quid to keep a roof over his head, food on the table, and to make sure his wife and mistress were happy.

Yet while making a buck, Bill wrote some great literature. Funny how that worked out.

Louisa May Alcott turned to writing anonymous potboilers to put food on the table and pay the rent because her head-in-the-clouds father, Bronson Alcott, didn’t have a clue as to how to support his family. Louisa May also wrote Little Women to keep the wolf from the door. The rest, as they say, is history.

Edgar Allan Poe wrote commercial fiction. He told stories for money. So did Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Rudyard Kipling, and H. Rider Haggard. And for that matter, so did J.K. Rowling.

Yet the academics, even for JKR, try their best to hide the filthy lucre aspect and dub the writings of those folks as great literature.

Even JRR Tolkien wasn’t trying to write great literature. He kind of thought of himself as this reincarnated Norse bard who was telling a story in the king’s great hall. And why did bards do that? To entertain their host as payment for a meal and a bed.

Robert E Howard wrote stories to make a buck. He was writing to entertain. In the process, he wrote some very fine literature. The same with Dickens, and Trollope, and Alcott, and Wells, and Dumas, and Verne, and most of the writers who wrote what is today called great literature.

I’ve been thinking about this distinction between literary fiction and commercial fiction, because of my interest in the writers who wrote for the pulp magazines. They wrote for money. They weren’t writing great literature. They were writing entertainment. Yet sometimes they did indeed write great literature, or at least fiction that came close to great literature.

One of the best statements on religious belief that I’ve read is in the second Tarzan novel. Who would’ve guessed?

H. Rider Haggard’s She was written as entertainment, but the story drives us to think about the purpose of life. And that is exactly what great literature is supposed to do.

Commercial fiction isn’t bad. It’s what most people want. So why shouldn’t someone write it for them?

Quite honestly, I mostly read commercial fiction. I think Hemingway’s “Hills Like White Elephants” is a fabulous story. So much is said by not saying anything. It’s a thought-provoking and memorable piece of fiction. But I’d much rather read Robert E Howard’s Solomon Kane stories. Why? Because they’re fun.

This exploration of mine into the writers of pulp fiction and the stories that they wrote has given me a lot to reflect on concerning my own path as a writer.

Given my present course, I see myself in a kind of fictional no man’s land. I’m not writing literary fiction and I’m not writing commercial fiction. As a result, I’m not making much money. And I do want to make money. At least enough to cover my expenses.

I’m not sure what the future will bring. How this exploration will affect my writing if it affects it at all. Because the actual writing is only one piece of the puzzle. There are also the other pieces: catchy titles, catchy cover art, catchy blurbs, effective marketing (both paid and unpaid). And who you know.

We can’t forget the who you know factor. If Mark Dawson, or Michael Anderle, or Agatha Frost, or Scott Pratt suddenly started promoting my books — why, my problems would be over.

All of the above, plays into the end result.

So I’m off to have a think. Not a heavy think. Just a let it simmer think. In the meantime, I’m going to have a cup of tea and read Ganbaru, written by Matthew Cormack, who’s one of my favorite post-apocalyptic writers. He entertains, and makes me think. What can be better than that?

Comments are always welcome! And until next time, happy reading!

Share This!

In Praise of Short Fiction

It seems readers are divided into two camps: those who like short reads and those who like long reads. In forum after forum and Facebook group after Facebook group, I notice people writing that they don’t like short reads. Very few complain about long reads.

For myself, I’m firmly in the short read group. I grew up reading short stories and short novels — books that many today are labeling novellas (even though the Science Fiction Writers of America defined novels as 40,000 words and up). So maybe it’s just force of habit. But I can’t help myself asking the question, how did these short novels come about anyway.

Back in the Victorian era, the “triple-decker” was the standard novel format. That is, essentially every novel was a trilogy. A novel of one volume was considered a “short” read.

Why were Victorian novels so long? Mostly because publishers thought the reading public wanted long novels. And perhaps they did. After all, they would read novels aloud as a form of family entertainment. And just as movies used to be an hour and a half, now they are approaching 3 hours in length. People want more bang for their buck.

Yet, after World War I the Triple-Decker went out of fashion. Novels became shorter. More lean and taut, more focused. Which was perhaps due to the discarding of the third person omniscient point of view. Stories and novels became more intimate with the adoption of first person and limited third person points of view.

The proliferation of pulp and slick magazines in the ‘20s and ‘30s were the result of a reading public wanting stories and novels to read. Serialized novels were typically around 30,000 to 40,000 words long. A story of 20,000 words was called a short novel.

These novels established the formats and formulas for genre fiction, and also to a degree for literary fiction.

When the pulp magazines died in the ‘50s and were replaced by the mass market paperbacks costing a quarter, the length of the novel didn’t change. And rarely went over 50,000 words. Search out some of the old paperbacks. They are slender little books. Truly a book that would fit in a pocket. One that could easily be carried with you.

Dean Wesley Smith has an interesting article explaining why the New York publishers fattened up the novel after its lean period during the pulp era. And I’ll give you a hint: it had nothing to do with literary merit and everything to do with money — money for the big corporate publisher, that is.

So why did novels slim down after the era of Victorian excess? I think it was because editors and authors discovered a story could be told in 40,000 words or less. The more intimate points of view allowed the author to dispense with a lot of unnecessary back story and editorial comment. They allowed the author to focus on the characters and their story.

When a novel is bloated beyond 50,000 words, it’s frequently due to elements that don’t enrich the story. Descriptions get longer and more detailed. Purple prose is fine, often beautiful, but rarely beneficial to the story. Scenes are introduced that do nothing to further the story, they merely fatten the word count. And when getting paid by the word, I suppose there is some justification for the fat. But I, as a reader, skip over those parts.

Elmore Leonard’s advice to writers is very valid here: don’t write the parts that readers skip over.

I’m reminded of the story concerning Raymond Chandler, I believe. Chandler’s editor returned one of his novels because he wanted it a little longer.

Chandler went over the book and sent it back. The editor returned the manuscript with a note saying Chandler had misunderstood him. He didn’t want the novel shorter. He wanted it longer, and was returning the manuscript so that Chandler could add a few thousand words to it.

Once again Chandler went over the manuscript and sent it back. This time the editor decided to leave it, because Chandler had cut the text even more. And the editor felt if he kept on he’d have a short story on his hands instead of a novel.

When I consider our contemporary western lifestyles, I think a shorter read makes a lot of sense. A majority of online content is now read on the smart phone. Writers are advised to make sure that everything is shorter: sentences, paragraphs, chapters. And to make sure there is plenty of white space instead of a mass of text.

In addition people are very busy. A short novel can be read in one or two sittings, which seems to me to be just about right. Read half of the book on the morning’s commute and read the other half on the evening’s commute.

I also find that reading a shorter novel requires less mental dedication to keeping everything straight in the story. If I’m reading a long novel with many plot lines and characters, then I have to take time to upload all that data into my head every time I pick up the book, after having set it down.

And then there are all the boring parts in those long novels, which I end up skipping over anyway. Because sad to say, few are the writers who can write a long novel without there being boring parts in it. Often lots of boring parts.

To see what all the fuss was about, I read the first two Jack Reacher novels. I found them fat and flabby. Continual lapses in the suspense build up of the story, left me feeling like a yo-yo.

Build up suspense, then have it deflate due to overly long descriptions. Then build up the tension again until the next several pages of needless description.

I don’t need to know all the different types of grasses and rocks and how each might impact Reacher taking out his target. Nor do I need a page long description of the flight path of the bullet as it leaves the rifle to when it reaches the target.

All that unnecessary description is padding pure and simple. And it is boring.

By way of contrast, I just finished a Seabury Quinn Jules de Grandin short novel. There was plenty of action, plenty of suspense, and absolutely no flab to the story. It was lean. And a whole lot more fun to read than Jack Reacher. And I think all because the story was a whole heck of a lot shorter.

Child took 20 times as many pages to tell his story then did Quinn. And IMO, Child’s story was the worse for it because it was too damn fat.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. And that applies to books as well as art. There will always be readers who find the short forms to be “ugly”, and those who find the long forms to be “ugly”.

However, we readers live in a wonderful age. We can find all manner of books and stories to satisfy our reading desires. For every reader there is a writer, and for every writer there is his or her reader.

I think we readers can take comfort in the fact that there are many, many writers today who can meet our needs. And often they aren’t the bestsellers. We writers can take comfort in the fact that we do have an audience. There are readers who want to read our books. We simply have to find them.

Short stories and the short novel are alive and well. For those of us who like to read shorter forms, they are out there. Happy hunting to us! And if you run across some good ones, let me know!

Comments are always welcome; and, until next time, happy reading!

Share This!

A Reader’s and Writer’s Life

I love to read. Give me a book any day. I’ll take it over TV, movies, and video games. Nothing can replace my imagination. TV, movies, and video games give me someone else’s imagination which may be truly fabulous, but it isn’t mine. With my imagination, I can interact with a book’s author in a way that’s impossible through other media.

My love of reading goes back to the beginning of my life. My mother was not a good reader, by her own admission. But she did think reading was important. She read to me before I could read and once I could read on my own, she did not stint on the books I could have.

And I had all manner of books: novels, books on science and technology, the World Book Encyclopedia, books on archeology and history and ships and the sea.

To this day, my choice of reading material is still broad. I read novels and short stories in a wide range of genres. Books of history and biography. Poetry. Philosophy. Science and technology, mostly online. Cookbooks. Travelogues. Art.

Currently I’m reading Zeppelin: The Story of Lighter-Than-Air Craft by Ernst Lehmann, who was an important figure in the history of the airship. But that’s not all I’m reading. Also on the pile of works in progress are 2 short story collections, a book on criminology, and one on the famous Route 66. And as if that wasn’t enough, also on the pile is a post-apocalyptic cozy catastrophe novel. And the occasional letter from my favorite philosopher, Seneca, might just start my day.

I almost always have a book with me. And the reason I so love my iPad is because at present it contains over 600 books and that’s a lot of books! And I can carry them all with me wherever I go. What a wonderful age we live in!

Most readers don’t have so many books going at once and that’s certainly okay. Everyone needs to read at the pace which is comfortable for them. Just as long as people read. Lots of people.

I think my love of reading played in to my desire to be a writer. Why not create the books I so loved to read? Pretty much ever since I can remember, I’ve wanted to be a writer. And now I am!

Being a multi-genre reader pretty much dictated I’d be a multi-genre writer. I write what I like to read. I read private detective novels and I write them. I read post-apocalyptic cozy catastrophes and I write them. I enjoy dieselpunk and I write it. I like a good psychological or supernatural horror story, and I write those too.

But that’s not all that I like. So sometime down the road, if I live long enough, I intend to add space opera, historical novels, fantasy, poetry collections, and philosophy to the mix.

Isaac Asimov wrote over 500 books on all but one of the major Dewey Decimal System divisions. I’ve always thought that to be a wonderful accomplishment. Something I’d like to do myself. After all, variety is the spice of life!

The reading life and the writing life are the best of lives, in my opinion. Only the imagination is the limit and the imagination is limitless.

Comments are always welcome and, until next time, happy reading!

Share This!