Fluff it Up
As usual, I’m late linking the latest
zendom article, on lovin’ fluff.
Jungle Kitty said
something on-list about fanfic shortcuts that I just can’t get out of my mind.
She was kind enough to quote a whole article:
It’s
Like a Movie, But It’s Not, which otherwise you have to log into the NYTimes
page to read. In it, Neal Gabler claims that movies today skip all the work of
entertaining and expression, replacing it with cues that the audience knows -
so that you get the outline of a movie, rather than an actual movie.
So yes, sometimes you have the outline of a fanfic - formulas that
substitute for a story of a more traditional form. This is where I lost track of the
conversation, though. I’m still not sure what a formula is or how to know one
when I see one. Does shortcut mean that anything classifiable under the
Borg Plot Classification is a formulaic
story? Do you have to write a new plot to avoid formula, or is it enough to
write a certain way?
I gave as an example the
tried-and-true J/C formula of Janeway finally realizing after an unspecified
number of years that she can’t live without Chakotay any longer. I think
those who said that formulas no longer satisfy them would dislike
such a story because of the formula itself. My only criticism of the
Sudden Realization formula story is that the Sudden Realization itself is rarely
justified. If someone makes me believe that Janeway can’t live
without Chakotay any longer, then I consider it a good story, however
popular the plot.
On the other hand, you can fail to motivate an original plot - it’s not only
formulas that get sent out into the ether without sufficient verisimilitude. I’m
rewriting Colony because it’s the outline of a novel, rather than the novella
I wanted it to be. Yet some people liked it - sci-fi fans more than others, I
suspect, because sf is a genre where originality vs. formula has long been more
important than showing vs. telling. You can, in other words, tell
all you want as long as the story you’re telling is new - Foundation,
a novella-long set of dialogues, is a good example of just what you could
get away with once upon a time.
Well, that was a roundabout and oxymoronic way of saying I can’t blog
right now because I’m busy rewriting Colony.