What Topics Would a Writer Study?

[Colonel Travis]

Interesting, polymath. I can think of a handful of people who may come close to what you're talking about: Dorthea Brande, Jerry Cleaver, James Frey, Donald Maass. Lots of others out there (geared toward fiction writers only, not screenwriters or playwrights). But - since this is March - I'd consider them my Final Four, and they are the ones I believe you'd have to leapfrog. Actually, those would be my non-celebrity Final Four. King was mentioned, you've got Orson Scott Card, Dean Koontz, Sol Stein, etc.

Actually, I think the reason I'm having trouble thinking of what I'd like to see in a how-to guide is because there are already a ton of them. Not saying you couldn't produce something that stands out. How many grammar books exist in the world - 40 billion gazillion? But how many of them are as powerful and compact as Elements of Style? I think what you're proposing is challenging but by no means impossible.

[polymath]

So far, any poetics handbook publication is just a pipedream. Though it's a thought exercise for now, a thought exercise spawned it. I asked the question years ago whether storytelling adapted to an era's needs or evolved over time. I have no doubt storytelling adapts to the times. I wasn't clear if it evolved over time.

To answer the question, I examined literary movements beginning from the Attic Orators, Lyrical Poets, Epic Poets, Dramatic Poets, oral folklore traditions, oral history traditions, playwriting, the Age of Enlightenment, when the modern forms of novels and short stories emerged from oral traditions along with the introduction of Gutenberg's press, and on through modern movements, Romanticism, Realism, Idealism, Impressionism, Surrealism, Dadaism, Modernism, Postmodernism, etc., Feminist literature movements, and the assorted paralleling literary schools of thought, Structuralism, Formalism, New Criticism, Marxism, evidentiary literary analysis, Historicism, etc.

Looking at each's central premises, I noted a strong philosophical thread related to existentialism. Enlightenment challenged the predominance of predetermination and reintroduced free will, after a long absence in existential thought. Romanticism reacted to Enlightenment with a strong poetic justice underpinning favoring predetermination. Realism reacted to Romanticism and contravened predetermination without favoring free will. Impressionism, Surrealism, and Dadaism reacted to what all had come before and challenged literary and art conventions in general. Dadaism denied art conventions entirely in an iconoclastic manner.

I noted a sea change in the mid 19th century emergence of Modernism. Modernism orients on self-enlightentment, perhaps resuming the forward progress of Enlightenment, but from a black and white individualist approach to the absolutes of reality and authority with coping strategies oriented toward addressing the boundaries of absolutes and authorities.

Postmodernism orients on self-aware questioning and challenging absolutes and authorities.

Not to place too precise an analogy on what I've deduced, but the earlier movements seem child-like in their need for teaching, moralizing, preaching, and decoding the mysteries of existence.

Modernism resembles an early young adult identity formation onset, kind of black and white regarding confirming absolutes and authorities. Treating any given something as is or isn't an absolute. Coping with the realities of absolutes seems the central plot engine of Modernism. Modernism is perhaps comparable to the reading skills acquisition stage of reading for learning information.

Postmodernism dives headlong into the young adult stage of self-aware self-identity reinforcement through questioning and challenging authority. Postmodernism certainly is a reflection and influence adapting to the times, the tumultous middle 20th century. Postmodernism seems comparable to the young adult reading skills acquistion stage of evaluating, processing, and responding critically to external viewpoints. The ramifications of disestablishmentariansim continue to emerge today.

The explosive diaspora of marketplace categories and out of category genres and crossover genres emerging since the early 20th century strongly suggests to me there's a new movement afoot. I've grasped at the edges of an idea and come close to seeing a possible answer from the life stage analogy. Full adulthood? Proxy realities' existentialism brought about by advanced technology is having a large impact on life as we know it. I see a possibly coming new literary era as comparable to the reading skills acquisition stage of construction and judgment, where readers learn to read selectively and form independent opinions and develop an ability to effectively construct knowledge from the knowledge of others. In other words, a capacity to think conscientiously, consciously, critically for one's self.

So, yes, I conclude that literature does evolve as well as adapt. The ramifications I see are, if literature does indeed evolve, one, an emerging higher bar of audience expectations. That one seems a no-brainer; marketplace demands for higher quality literature regardless of genre are constant, perhaps increasing, and hard to meet. Two, if competitiveness originates from the bottom up, that's a good way to make room in the entrenched status quo at the top. Three, in order to stay abreast of alternative media channel competition, literature must adapt and evolve or go the way of poetry into selective obscurity. Four, if emerging authors spend a lifetime mastering their craft, are we barely reaching what's possible? Then if a young age emerging author starts from a greater knowledge base than ever before, what new heights of storytelling arts might be possible?

[Quill]

Very interesting post. I especially liked the part about where we are now, and where you think we are headed with written storytelling.

You see an evolution in the sophistication? And yet we have Shakespeare giving us a high form way back when. And we see some very sophisticated storytelling in the oral traditions. The Iroquois creation story and origination of the League, for example, requires eight full days to tell. And once upon a time took thirteen (some of it has been lost). I also think of some of the letters of Civil War soldiers, and not just the well-educated officers -- very literate, even elegant, many of them, more so than much of what we write today.

I'm not sure we are getting to be better writers now. I will grant that there is an evolution of viewpoint and belief systems. Maybe that's all you are implying.

[polymath]

I don't know about an evolution of sophistication, that has an entirely subjective appeal-worthiness in my opinion. Hypermodernity, for example, discredits all that's old and emphasizes the superiority of all that's new. I find that attitude repulsive. I have a Civil War era benchtop bookpress in my publishing workshop. I saved it from a blacksmith who was using it as a paperweight. it weighs a hundred pounds. Modern-made desktop bookpresses are less weighty, but it's got a rich historicity that's very appealing to me.

I don't believe the actual crafting of stories can change by much, nor be perfected, per se, but the possibilities have yet to be explored fully as far as I see. Deeper audience rapport is one of the most signal changes to storytelling craft in modern times. Perhaps it's evolutionary. Deeper rapport emerged about the time religious censorship of the press eroded. Gustave Flaubert introduced the Free Indirect Discourse method in _Madame Bovary_, 1857. It was his first novel and took him ten years to write. The FID method is one of the predominantly favored methods for building and maintaining audience rapport in contemporary storytelling.

[Colonel Travis]

Gustave Flaubert introduced the Free Indirect Discourse method in _Madame Bovary_, 1857. It was his first novel and took him ten years to write. The FID method is one of the predominantly favored methods for building and maintaining audience rapport in contemporary storytelling.

Flaubert certainly mastered this technique and expanded it but he did not introduce it. That revolutionary credit belongs to Jane Austen.

[polymath]

Opinions and consensuses vary widely over who introduced or mastered or perfected Free Indirect Discourse. I don't agree that Austen mastered it anymore than Flaubert did. Some narratoligists argue Chaucer circa 14th century was the first. I don't think FID's been truly mastered yet.

[Colonel Travis]

I didn't say Austen mastered it, I was just saying Flaubert certainly did not introduce it in 1857. In the grand history of the novel, a big, fat, obnoxious-green, highlighter marker line has to be drawn between Austen and everyone who came before her, precisely because of the narrative technique she used extensively in her books. Flaubert, James, Eliot, Dickens - all the greats who came right after her, even down to today, owe Austen great thanks. Whether she invented free indirect is beyond the limit of my knowledge. I'll gladly defer that history to you and scholars. But without a doubt, when it comes to novel writing, she deserves pioneer credit. Actually, let me limit that to the English novel because I have zero knowledge about it in other languages/cultures.

OK, so now you've got me curious, polymath - how could free indirect be improved beyond what's happened in the past 200 years of literature? That's something I've never thought about. Maybe a better question would be how you think authors today could create that deeper audience rapport? Are you talking about that in context of free indirect or some other technique? Or maybe how authors apply all this stuff to the digital age? Maybe none of the above?

[polymath]

Cadres of otherwise widely disagreeing narratologists, especially structuralist and linguistic narratologists, assert a need for maintaining some distance between an audience and a creative work. I've not encountered narratologists who have an opposing viewpoint asserting a need for deepening audience rapport, except for a few poetics narratologists, noteably Maass recently. Audience separation intends for an audience to maintain a sufficient degree of separation from a creative work so conscious, critical thinking audience faculties remain alert.

I can see a need for some story types to maintain audience separation, but generally believe the audience separation attitude is a patronizing viewpoint. For example, true crime dramas are very visceral experiences best told from at least some small remove. Sympathy with the devil is a controversial kind of rapport. However, narrative's strength over any other kind of media is its power to deeply engage audience rapport on an individual, intimate level. Awareness of the proxy realities of technology, fellow audience members, stage, screen, author, or lecturing narrator consciously or nonconsciously separate audiences to some great or small degree from a creative work.

Free Indirect Discourse is but one of many methods for engaging deep audience rapport. Foreshadowing or prepositioning, for example, is a potent, subtle, and difficult rapport technique to fully develop for creative writing proficiency.

One of FID's free-wheeling transference techniques from first-person viewpoint to third-person viewpoint counterintuitively creates deeper rapport by separating a narrator and consequently an author from an audience's rapport with a story. An audience interacts directly with viewpoint characters within a story's meaning space. Little or no engagement with a subjective lecturing narrator's viewpoint, little or no engagement with an author's lecturing viewpoint, solely rapport with a viewpoint character or characters' insuperable dilemmas is the ideal achievement of FID.

Pride and Prejudice has a lighthearted, ironic narrative voice. The author-proxy narrator is mostly covert; however, by taking an understated, ironical, sarcastic attitude toward the novel's topical theme the narrator takes an overt part in the story, and by extension, the author takes part. Flaubert's Madame Bovary narrator is a decidely overt one, also with a subjective attitude toward the novel's topical theme.

However, voice is a rapport engaging factor. A lively narrative voice creates some essential degree of resonance and some degree of empathy between an author/narrator/viepoint character and an audience. The purpose of a narrative voice is to take a subjective attitude toward a topical theme. I don't think stories in general can do without a voice without an attitude. The ideal of FID, though, is for a viewpoint character's voice to predominate, if not be exclusive.

An author's attitude toward a topical theme cannot be entirely absented from a creative work, nor should it if it could. A story without a message often consciously or nonconsciously disappoints audiences, though an author's attitude frequently presents as author surrogacy, a prevalent influence I've seen in more than a few published and in-progress stories. Author surrogacy can be either contributory to or distracting from rapport, depending on audience bracket comfort zones.

The underlying principle of FID's rapport value, as I see it, is objective narrative reporting in an objective narrative voice. The less subjectively involved a narrator or an author is in tellling a story, the less external bias comes into play, the less overt lecturing tell (diegesis), the less patronizing thinking for others, the more thinking for the self of an audience. I strongly believe forming judgments and drawing conclusions is best left up to an audience, at least adult audiences anyway.

How's FID done? By engaging audience interaction directly through a viewpoint character's meaning space with a story internally. Third-person indirect discourse requires a covert, unbiased narrator, a free-wheeling transference of an author's meaning space to a viewpoint character's meaning space, topical and subject resonance, and resonance and empathy with a viewpoint character's insuperable dilemma. In other words, an immediate and increasing emotional rapport between an audience and a story. However, first- and second-person indirect discourses require biased, subjective narrators. I don't see how a first- or second-person discourse of any kind can't be anything but subjective and biased. Direct or implied direct discourses are another matter entirely.

Seymour Chatman and Michael Toolan, linguistic narratologists, both comprehensively detail techniques for accomplishing the many variant indirect and direct discourse methods. One area both discuss, evocative rapport methods involve interaction levels between author subconscious > real author > implied author > narrator > close viewpoint character affinity < narratee < implied reader < real reader < reader subconscious. The FID method ideally mostly involves some author-reader subconscious interactions, and more appreciably, close viewpoint character affinity. [Subconscious and affinity interactions are my trivial contributions.]

Another potent factor of discourse is narrative distance. Direct discourses interact between real or implied authors and real or implied readers, and/or narrator and narratee. Narrative distances of direct discourses are at a greater remove from a story's internal meaning space than indirect discourses. Sometimes greater narrative distances are necessary. However, I believe the gap can be narrowed appreciably and in doing so make for more entertaining narratives that might stay abreast of competing media channels.

How to do FID better? How FID in digital technology might differ from paper technology? I'm working on the former presently as my main concern.