Quality Isn't Subjective, But Aesthetics Are · 5:50am Feb 8th, 2014
If you pay any attention to this community we exist in—outside of one’s own stories whether they’re being written or read, and or a close circle of friends or similar like-minded individuals—then you might have noticed that a recent series of events has indirectly caused a particular topic to rear its head yet again. Of course, I’m talking about what indicates any given story’s “quality,” and whether it should be framed over the fireplace for its accomplishments instead of being discarded into the flames itself for its “quality.” So if long rambling blogs are not your particular taste, then feel free to stop reading now. But if you want to see me potentially embarrass myself in what’s likely an unnecessary attempt at insight, then keep on reading. Just be sure to take what I say with a grain of salt.
There’s a special story I’ve been working on lately. I started writing it a few weeks ago as a matter of fact, and I’m a little less than halfway there with completing it. The process has been slow lately, especially considering how quickly I was plowing through the beginning parts of it. I’m certain most of us would give a chunk of their livers for the ability to will themselves to write whatever they want, whenever they want. Undoubtedly, there’s several people in this community who can do just that, but for a number of us, the process of transferring imagery from the mind onto paper is difficult.
And we’ve all got our excuses. For me, it’s trying to keep the flow of a story I’m writing seem natural. This process consists of me actually writing at a brisk, wonderful pace, only to suddenly stop like I’ve hit a dam. Like a river, the natural flow has stopped, and I realize the story is becoming something I don’t like despite the fact it’s what I’ve laid out to happen from the beginning. I just can’t pull myself to move onwards in such situations, so the story either meets the fate of several and gets shelved so I can have another try at overcoming this obstacle in the future, to push myself against this dam with the vain hope that if I were push hard enough, it’d collapse and I could finally continue; or, as I’ve recently come to discover myself, I can purge everything, rethink my outline of the whole story, what I am trying to write, and then rewrite from the beginning. Sounds like a lot of work—it is—and it’s certainly disheartening to lose two thousand words, but if this means I can get to three thousand words and move farther than I had before, then I think it’s a worthwhile sacrifice.
The point of this being that I apparently hold a story’s aesthetics to the highest regard above all other points. If this story I’m writing cannot convey to a reader exactly what I intend as I intend it, then I cannot rest easy knowing that the story being told in my head is not the one being presented on paper. Granted, there’s stories that are entirely open-ended and leave the reader drawing their own conclusions (I’m definitely guilty of that myself), but if that’s what the author intended to do, then great! But this is beside the point.
I often hear how a story’s quality is subjective, and I must say that I disagree. “Quality,” by how it’s often defined in this community, is of the technical variety. It can be measured, therefore it isn’t subjective. I’m talking about things like grammar, spelling, characterizations, and the list goes on and on. Several omnibi even have bulletpoints saying what’s good and bad in writing.
I’m going to drop a link to RBDash47’s blog here about the technicality of writing so I don’t have to. But I will summarize the valid points he raises: While it’s not everything, the technical quality of a story does matter, as it indicates an author is trying their best to tell their story in the best way possible, therefore minimizing hiccups and maximizing the reading experience. And this is entirely true. But while I also wholeheartedly believe it is important to have excellent grammar and great characters and the like, I cannot say that the quality of these individual aspects is what makes a “quality” story. Or, rather, an “aesthetically pleasing” story.
Aristotle had said, “The whole is greater than the sum of its parts,” and I fully believe this idea can relate to writing. A story can—and should—be as excellently written as it can, but while this certainly attributes to making a story “good,” the individual technicalities of said story pale in comparison to each other. I have never heard any rational person say a story is meaningless just because of a single comma splice. I have never any rational person say a story is terrible just because they used Applejack as the protagonist instead of Scootaloo. I have never heard any rational person say a story is utter garbage on the sole basis that its ideas are unoriginal. In total, how an author presents their story is not nearly as big an indicator of how good the story is as how the story presents itself. A story’s quality is not subjective, but it’s “goodness” is, insofar as how aesthetically pleasing it is.
When I say “aesthetically pleasing,” I’m talking about the things a story’s quality heightens. Things like word flow, pacing, writing style, dialogue, and so on and so forth. A story can be error-free in every possible way, but still be boring from its slow, lackadaisical pace. Similarly, a story can be riddled with typos and misplaced commas, but still come off as a great piece on account of how well its words flow together. The former of these examples is more common, however, and that’s because a story’s writing (technical) quality plays a great factor is conveying that word flow, keeping that pace steady, et cetera. It’s difficult to write a story to be very poorly written but still be aesthetically pleasing, on account of the lackluster quality dragging down the imagery and messages the story wishes to direct.
This is where mediums like Equestria Daily and the recently birthed Royal Guard come in. These folks don’t necessarily care for how aesthetically pleasing a story is, though the Royal Guard is likely more lax towards this technical quality than Equestria Daily is. But these folks care more about quality because they have guidelines to follow and omnibi to adhere to. They have standards of writing quality because that’s what they look for because quality is measurable and not subjective. Imagine you’re going in for an exam because that’s what submitting to a publishing service is like: it isn’t worth whining over your story getting rejected from these places on account of technical errors simply because it’s the technical errors these places are looking out for and care the most about. Without a doubt, a great number of aesthetically pleasing stories do get posted to these places, but that’s largely in part of the high quality that went in writing them, which in turn allows for the story to be read easily and as the author intended. I feel like I’m repeating myself.
Some people may know I’m a part of Seattle’s Angels. We’re a group that finds underappreciated stories and then Wanderer D writes we write reviews of them. The goal of these reviews are to deconstruct and analyze stories for what they’re worth, not necessarily for their quality (which, honestly, is just frosting on the cake), and to promote these stories and to tell prospecting readers why they should invest their time to read these stories. There are many stories I’ve reviewed myself which I can confidently say are not of the best quality, nonetheless they are delightful to read, and so that’s why they got featured in the review rounds. Because they are able to tell a good story, regardless of how well they’re written. Other like-minded places to find story reviews include Chris’ pony blog, and to a further extent the Royal Canterlot Library and the now-closed Ponyfiction Vault. All these places, to some degree, put aside the quality of a story and instead talk about its aesthetic properties.
And it should be heavily noted that these places are drastically different from Equestria Daily or the Royal Guard. There is no rubric of sorts to see if a story meets their criteria for quality, simply because quality is not exactly what they’re looking for. As I’ve said before, quality certainly helps, and lack thereof can and will certainly hinder, but a story’s aesthetics are subjective. That’s why reviews and the like are reviews... and the like. They’re opinions. They’re the thoughts of the individual.
This is a community of critics, writers, editors, and readers. Please note that all the opinions one hears are “I liked this part of the story” or “I don’t like this story because reasons” or “I wished this was written this way” or “I think this was the most enjoyable thing I ever read” or some other form of. They all talk about the aesthetics. Opinions are akin to experiences, so they too are subjective, which is something critics and readers alike heavily weigh in on. And if experiences are anything like opinions, it’s up to the reader to decide whether or not they (the aesthetics of a story) matter. That’s another thing: use of the word “criticize” generally has a negative connotation associated with it, but please bear in mind this isn’t the only way to use the word. To criticize means to evaluate, so it’s downright impossible for a reader to not also be a critic of the story they’re reading.
Conversely, editors are there to help an author improve their story’s quality, and in turn, hopefully its aesthetics. A number of authors self-edit anyway, and that’s something I think a lot of people should try and take up on their own from time to time. Yes, the help of others is greatly valuable, but at the same time, an author should be able to trust themselves. This is when prereaders can be beneficial, to read a story before its publication and assist the author in conveying the story as it had been intended, helping to refine the aesthetics.
The point of this blog isn’t to try and change one’s particular outlook, but rather to shed some light on the common topic of what makes a story “good.” Quality is not subjective and is in fact very important to a story overall, but at the end of the day, it’s the aesthetics which matter most. Quality will either help or hinder the aesthetics, but the marks of a good story should have the aesthetics to be able to stand out on their own.
More words I might regret.
I agree wholeheartedly. The handy thing about judging based on quality is that it gives an objective way to speak about something without simply devolving into saying "this story makes me feel X" with "X" being something subjective that can be easily argued.
Well, given my experience with TRG, I can safely say you're wrong.
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My bad. I meant that as quality being held higher than aesthetics, on account of quality being what they measure made evident by the omnibi. I should amend the blog to clearly say they're more lax on quality than Equestria Daily is, however.
This wasn't the ugly-headed beast I was afraid it was going to be, but that just goes to show exactly how aware I am of community events.
I kind of shifted to a bit of a rant myself, and on the whole I agree with what Raz is saying.
You oversimplify the whole label of "editor," but since that's really not the focus of the blog that's not really important. The different roles of different types of editors is a complicated enough subject for its own long-form blog, so I won't go on about my thoughts there.
Quality and aesthetic are indeed very different things, and I agree in your distinction between their subjectivity, though I would argue that even the aesthetics are far more objective than one would think. I think there's really no grounds for the community to get angry about any stories not getting proper attention in our little slice of "publishing" though. There are so many efforts made to showcase all the different things that make writing good: technical excellence, popularity, original ideas, et cetera. Even if one were to read only the recommendations from one such selection it would be such a volume of work that it would be daunting for even the most prolific readers to go through. Likewise in "real" publishing, the volume is so great as to be impossible for someone to read everything, but publishing houses are even more selective than all of these groups. Just think about the countless stories that don't make the publishers' cuts. Granted, some people do object to that whole process as much as they do the various showcasing groups for MLP fics, but there is no grounds to fault these groups for attempting to make the reading experience easier and more pleasurable for the masses. Bear in mind also that all of these groups are not getting paid, individual members languish in obscurity, and yet they provide a service vital to the continued existence of the fanfic community.
I think it is much murkier than this; there are indeed objective qualities to aesthetics, and in the end, the technical portions of writing aren't absolutely fixed, either - deliberately poor grammar and spelling even have their own places (though these places are few and far between, and need to be deliberate - sucking is not an excuse). Picasso is a very good artistic version of this - he COULD draw very realistically, but he is most famous for his bizarre paintings.
There is a great deal of objectivity tied into writing, but I think the idea that you can separate it out like this so simply is false. There are not realms which are purely objective and realms which are purely subjective; instead, it is all interwoven together into a very complicated whole. Pacing and suchlike are "objective" qualities, but pacing is dependent on the reader's interest level, and while this IS something that the writer has a great deal of influence over, the reader's own personal tastes also play into it as well, and if they aren't engaged, then your pacing will fail, even if it is "correct", and even if it is engaging for most people.