Genre Expectations

[alanajoli]

There have been a couple of really interesting posts lately, both in livejournals I read (irysangel and sartorias) and in other blogs (Genreville) about what we carry with us as readers when we approach a work of fiction. Sometimes we as readers demand a happy ending, or "good writing" (whatever that means). Sometimes we have expectations that a work of fiction will stay true to its beginnings--in the case of John Leavitt's interesting Genreville post, that means urban fantasy that sticks close to the private investigator noir tradition, rather than fantasy roots. While a novel may not demand decisions from its readers like a role playing game does, there's a high degree of interactivity even in the printed page. Readers supply a whole lot of what goes on in a scene. My mother used to tell me she had trouble reading as a kid, because she'd imagine so many details of each scene, it would take her forever to get on with the reading instead of the imagining.

It makes me wonder a bit about the nature of sub-creation, which I've been reading and writing about a bit lately (thanks to the article randyhoyt had me ponder about earlier this month). Tolkien's description of sub-creation is quite clearly the act of an artist, or the person involved in the act of presenting a secondary creation to an audience. But I wonder, as that audience, how much sub-creation effort we expend ourselves. I've heard some writing teachers talk about students who see words simply as data. They take in the information, but don't do what my mother did as a child--they bring no imagination to it. I suspect that good writing--that a good work of sub-creation--requires not only investment from the artist, but from the audience as well. The give and take required there is a much more intricate balance than people who write off genre fiction on the whole (or really, any form of art--like the abstract visual works that I can't really claim to understand, or some forms of poetry that I don't "get") allow for.

Comments

[basseykay.livejournal.com]

To this day I often have the same "problem" your mother had. Certain types of writing encourage it more than others. If the writing is too accessible and the pace too great I may be too involved in the author's detail to explore the story universe. Other times I feel forced to enter into the story universe in this way, to try to make sense of it, or to make sense of the characters in it, and being forced can take some of the pleasure from it. But when the writing encourages you to explore on your own, choosing your own points of interest—that is always a joy.