I think the only thing I don't at least partly agree with here is the idea that Atlas Shrugged has any redeeming literary value. It is a pure Objectivism fanfic, and written in very poor form as well. That monologue.

117190
>because people who agree with the points of philosophy in these works will often find themselves utterly inspired, and the people who disagree will often loathe the story with a >seething passion
If you want to talk about a boring read, Atlas Shrugged is far from the standout on the list.

And I think it might be more accurate to call Objectivism an Atlas Shrugged fanphilosophy, now that I think about it. In any case, a lot of people are still talking about it, sixty years later, so it clearly belongs on that list. I make no assertions as to the philosophical value of anything I mentioned in that tier 4 category, lest I rustle an unending torrent of jimmies.

I am doing it wrong.
I write the stories I want to tell. I edit to make stories others want to read.

"Writing" a story I want to tell - if you don't count actually transcription from mind to 'paper' takes me around 30 seconds. After that, the editing starts. Storm started as nothing more than the fervent wish that Rainbow Dash existed and could make me and my family safe. I guess I immediately hit type three when it entered my mind to, you know, tell someone this story. I edited the story before it ever hit notepad (Text Edit actually, but they point is the same). I then edited it to make it not suck. Then it was posted.

I need t go, my lunch is over. I'm not sure if the above proves or disagrees with your point. But I don know writing a story that you don't want to tell will lead to utter trash. So maybe my second line is more truth than I first thought.

117193 Do you want to discuss this or do you want to just talk at the audience.

117206

Oh, discuss by all means. Unfortunately, I have to go to bed now, but I'd love to hear your opinions; I'll probably check fimfic first thing in the evening when I wake up.

117210 Good Night. I'll reread and comment after this.

(Edited)

I agree with the spirit of your assessment, but I think you might be connecting intent and process too closely. It's not impossible for someone to write a story with an inspirational message because that's the story they want to tell, or for someone to ask "What if I wrote X?" and later on ask how X can affect or enrich the reader--also, X can be an emotion or message.

Also, I would argue that the second and third tiers are two extremes of the same tier. Excitement is an emotion and I believe it's a very rare situation when any work of media can attract and maintain someone's interest--entertain them, in other words--without triggering some kind of emotional reaction beyond excitement. There's a big difference, of course, between the kind of emotional reaction one gets from a funny joke or two in an otherwise completely forgettable story (Incorrect Assumptions) and the kind of emotional reaction one gets from a story that truly grips the mind and takes the reader on a journey (Yours Truly).

So few things can be said with true certainty, so I will say I write to get better at it. I wish to get better at it in the hopes that one day I might write something genuinely good (the third or the fourth). I will endeavour to affect or enrich my reader with my work, of course (at the end of the day one must make the reader turn the page, but those who truly care about the work and the craft will also be concerned as to WHAT makes the reader turn the page) but there's always the chance that simply won't happen. I also can't accurately determine whether someone would want to read my story or not even if it is something that would affect or enrich them because that comes down to their perception. Those things have nothing to do with intent.

Ebon Mane;

I have to say that this post is a pretty darn good summary of purpose in writing and why it's important. The only part I might beg to differ on is that writing because you have a story tell is important, but as a first step to being a writer. I guess that's less a difference of opinion and more of a qualified agreement. A desire to tell a story isn't going to mean much if you cannot connect with the intended audience. Plus not showing much regard for the intended audience suggests you're not showing much regard for the craft of writing.

Certainly that's been my experience from the number of poorly written stories I have seen in both fan fiction and even professionally. The authors usually don't understand what it takes to make the story meaningful to the audience. Oddly enough I find many of the stories in the first category relatively benign because they are such hollow piffle that they barely register. Too much of the time I find that some of most badly written stories fall in the second category because the author paid such scant regard to the basics of their craft that the story is an affront to both the reader's intelligence and moral sensibilities. Not only do those stories lack internal story logic, but they engage in utterly transparent attempts at emotional button-pushing, which usually involves handling sensitive topics in utterly ham-fisted and inappropriate ways. And in none of these cases was the author necessarily trying to be offensive. It's just that so little thought was given to the story, the purpose of writing it, and how to communicate it that author ended up stepping right into a manure pile.

117193

Yes and no. Rand fervently advocated for Objectivism as her pet social theory, and wrote Atlas Shrugged (as well as The Fountainhead, and several other lengthy novels) to espouse it to the public.

The thing I find hilarious is that despite her continual support of 'rational self-interest' and hatred of even the concept of taxation to support the public welfare, she spent the last years of her life living on social security and medicare to treat the lung cancer that her choice to spend decades as a smoker brought about.

Her works are 'life changing' for the set of people who have never experienced enough hardship in their lives to understand that people cannot survive by their own works alone in the modern world. Even the richest person (as Warren Buffett is often heard to say) could never have achieved that level of success without the resources they were given by previous generations and the social framework to allow for exploitation of those resources.

Atlas Shrugged really stood out to me in that list simply because I have such an utter antipathy for it as a novel. The plot is pure wish-fulfillment, and the writing itself is unspeakably dry and long-winded.

117202
"I am doing it wrong.
I write the stories I want to tell. I edit to make stories others want to read."

Saying this as someone who has not read your stories yet: since you're obviously concerned with the basics of craft and how communicate the emotions you feel to the audience I'd say you're on the right foot.

117210 The Best of Stories are well crafted traps. They open as level 2s to draw in a general readership, and then hold their audience by developing into level 3s nearing the body. Their final impact is when they achieve level 4,by seamlessly blending a theme or significant notion into the emotional build up and climax.

I'm honest enough to say that my best is a mid to low level 2. I say this because I am certainly ignorant of how to emotionally connect with my readers. 3 may be out of my reach,but I come ever closer to grasping it with fervor and heart.

So far my personal method of adding value to my stories is through using detailed environmental and magical set pieces to represent large challenges or great evils. I've only begun to write but it seems to be garnering a bit of positive response. I really need to build my characters and dialogue if I want any lasting effect,however.

I don't know to which degree I find the four-way split useful as a model for personal use, but it's a very interesting thoughtpiece - and topic. It makes me feel terribly plebeian, decidedly un-intellectual to admit that while I may aspire to inspire emotion, I write for the drug-like rush of writing. The fact that some others seem to enjoy what I write is sheer luck.

dl.dropbox.com/u/31471793/FiMFiction/emoticons/misc_TwilightWut.png

117284

Acknowledging the artificial nature of the schema (but hey all human classificatory schemes are artificial!) I do find some truth in your statement. A well crafted story usually has a strong hook to draw in the reader and then builds it's matter up from there. I wouldn't have gotten past Graham Greene's The Heart of the Matter or William S. Burroughs' Naked Lunch if there wasn't a strong hook, even from sheer prose style, grabbing my interest.

Of course then there's works like Lord of the Rings which start out decently enough but continually lose my interest due to the author not having a firm enough grasp of pacing, narrative concision, or proper prose style.

117302

I think just about any writer does it simply for the sheer rush of producing their own work, no matter how much they intellectualize it or have thought through the processes of writing. One of favourite comics writers, Warren Ellis, has certainly made that apparent when talking about his own writing, which he often describes as "speaking from the gut". (Among other things his long form graphic novel Transmetropolitan had him pasting up whatever crazy nonsense came to mind based on his interest in science and fringe culture.) And out of all of the writers working in comics, he's spoken the most explicitly about the mechanics of comics and the process of getting into the biz. Plus, English SF writer Michael Moorcock used bash out 60,000 word fantasy novels over four days. Many of those are considered classics of the genre. And he was doing it for the money too. (Well because that is his living, and he had a SF mag called New Worlds to keep in print.)

I think that stepping back and intellectualizing the process is largely useful if you need to step back and grasp the mechanics of writing fiction. I've found it necessary in my own fictional writings (none of which I've carried to completion so feel free to disregard this point; non-fiction is another matter) and I think that writers who have trouble with craft might find it useful to, especially if they are continually blundering over their story.

Of course I have no idea whether you do such a thing when you get to, say, revising the first draft of a story or chapter. Or even how conscious this process is in revision beyond, "Nope. That's bollocks. It should go this way..."

While your assessment – that people should think not only about stories, but also about target audience – is true, I think you're leaning a bit too much to the other extreme.

You ask: “Does your story inspire emotions, or merely express it?” My question would be: “Do you inspire emotion for the sake of these emotions alone? Or is it because you have a story to tell, and you know that there is only one way of doing that successfully – connecting with the reader." The story is the flesh behind your work, if you want to inspire sadness it's not just some random sadness. It's sadness directed at the specific situation, at the specific character.

I may even go a bit further – though this is just a wild guess – and say that the elusive “fourth kind of writers” are so successful exactly because they do have a really great story to tell. Not a mere concept of “It would be cool to...” but a fully fleshed story that shows the reader some truth about our species. Of course I won't deny that eliciting emotions is playing big role in this as well, but it serves “some greater purpose” (I know, that sounds awfully cheesy).

Taking your example with 1984 – it's great not just because it stuns you with the horror of the totalitarian system of government, but because it exposes the system for what it really is. The strong emotions it triggers only serve as a way to get to that philosophical part, and that philosophical part is something located deep within the story, not in the awesome writing style or rich emotions.

Half the posts tell you this, the other half tell you, "Write for yourself and readers will come." It's hard to figure out exactly what to do.

I can definitely understand the "write for myself, edit for others" concept. I call it "the curse of a good memory." I can read a sentence that I've written poorly ten times over and still pass it because I say, "Yeah, I know what I mean." Never mind that no-one else may know what I mean, but I do. But I like writing and some people seem to not hate it, so I guess I'm doing something right.

117240

Rand is one of the two writers that I've seen have the biggest anti-fandom for, the other being Robert Heinlein. Not coincidentally, they're also the two who most, in their fiction, advocate for an ego-driven life, saying that we're not all in this together, and that material success shouldn't preclude spiritual success. That ticks off a lot of people.

117439

I've always found that the difference is that Heinlein can at least tell an interesting story, and write dialogue that isn't like sandpaper on the brain to read.

117453

Well, then if you really want to get that nails-on-chalkboard feeling, go see the Atlas Shrugged movie. You haven't lived till you've heard an uptight woman in a business suit passionately speaking these stilted lines without contractions, like she's Data or something.

Personally I love it, in the same way I love Human-in-Equestria stories. Both are about leaving the humdrum world behind for something that's both simpler and greater, and [strike]magic[/strike]atmospheric electricity makes it all complete!

So that's what i'm doing wrong. I should think about what readers think when they read it not just simply about it's coolness. Thanks ebon mane

117439
"Half the posts tell you this, the other half tell you, "Write for yourself and readers will come." It's hard to figure out exactly what to do."

I think the best idea is to consider a middle-ground: your primary consideration should be writing for yourself and pay attention to the craft of writing, particularly when presenting your work for an audience. And there is a difference between pay attention to and respect for the audience by crafting a good story that gets its point across, and merely pandering. You can give people who want a giant punch-up with space aliens just that. However, it might be utter rubbish and not make a lick of sense like a Marvel Comic called Secret Invasion, where aliens whose power is infiltration decide to invade the Earth by YYYAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!!!! PUNCHING THINGS! And then heroes stop this global by PUNCHING THEM IN NEW YORK! Oh yeah and there's some nonsense about their fleet being defeated off-panel and this dragged out for 248 pages.

And then there's Independence Day, a movie with about the same ambitions (probably less) but works because: a.) the way the aliens invade makes sense, b.) they are beaten in a way that makes sense given the story's internal logic, and c.) doesn't stretch out its scenes needlessly to hide the fact that there's barely any story at all. And there are still cool explosions and stuff.

Which seems like an odd way to make a good point about writing, but I guess the answer is entertaining your audience and writing for yourself by writing a satisfying story may not be divergent goals after all. Writing fiction is a skill and good writers know how to grab their audience's attention, even if they weren't primarily writing with an audience in mind.

(Or maybe I'm just fussy.)

Criminy. That was impressively well worded. Up until this point, I had never considered literature within those four different categories, I had simply cut them into two, and it was very ala Batman. There's the literature that people want, and the literature that people need. Appealing to the first makes you popular, as fleeting and trivial as the word is. But taking to the latter...it makes you something more. It makes you, as you said, an Orson Wells, a William Shakespeare, a Charles Darwin. I would refute this point longer, but you've already so eloquently stated it that I'll simply smile and nod. May all authors aspire to the fourth category. I know I do.

117582
"But taking to the latter...it makes you something more. It makes you, as you said, an Orson Wells, a William Shakespeare, a Charles Darwin."

Pfffftttt, Darwin cheated massively by making key discoveries about biological life on Earth. Did he try to describe the rock pigeon's soul?

117439

That's probably because writing is different for everyone, and what makes one writer successful might not work for another. I certainly won't claim that my way is the only way, or even the best way, but it's the way that works for me.

117426

I've got to wonder whether George Orwell knew the story he wanted to tell or the message he wanted to convey first. I could imagine it either way, but in either case I think it takes a genius to make the leap from one to the other, from a message to a story that conveys it beautifully or from the seed of a story to the lesson one can teach with it.

117302

That makes you a lucky bastard.

117233

I know what you mean, and perhaps the best metaphor for these levels are a series of hurdles; the higher you can go, the better, but if you try and fail then your story will fall flat on its face.

117202

Perhaps you were lucky enough to be one of the few with a story worth telling for its own sake.

117690;

Re: Orwell

From what I know, it was primarily the message he wanted to convey but I still know scant details about the composition of the novel itself. Then again my perspective is shaped by being one of the relatively few people who knows Orwell more as a journalist and an essayist than the two famous novels he produced. His concern about intellectuals embracing and white-washing the Soviet Union were an omnipresent concern for him the late 1940s.

“If you truly write just for yourself, just because you have a story to tell, you will never write anything worth reading. It wasn't until I stopped telling stories and started trying to touch people that I became a writer whose works are worth reading.”

It was here that I stopped stroking my chin going “hmm” and started shaking my fist and saying “them’s fighting words” (in a very bunnies and rainbows sort of way). If I’m interpreting your point correctly, then you’re saying that there are two kinds of authors, the good: those who make a conscientious effort to evoke something from their audience, and the bad: the authors who write for the simple enjoyment of putting their story idea to paper. My question: when did these two kinds of authorship shake hands, tip hats, and go their separate ways?

When an author sits down at his computer (or typewriter, I won’t judge) and actually puts his fingers to the keyboard and produces words, he or she doesn’t do it mindlessly. Everything we do has a drive behind it. Ideas flow across the mind’s eye both consciously and subconsciously all the time, what makes the story that gets singled out and put to paper different? There’s a real, honest drive to write it. That drive can come from a myriad of things, but in its base, it comes from the author feeling strongly about it in some way or another. What’s more, they feel strongly enough about it that they want others to feel what they feel.

I haven’t heard of any authors who write a story without any intent to ever make it available to the public in one way or another. If a lot of authors write stories only to “tell a story,” then why do they publish it? The story’s right there on the paper, looking all nice and shiny. If prodding someone was of no interest to them, then it’d stay in the folders of their hard drives (or desks, I won’t judge). Yet they do publish their stories. They publish them with cliché plots, with Mary Sues, with Chernobyl-level grammar decay, yes, but they publish them with the desire to have their readers feel or think something. I’d be amazed if you could pick out one of these rough writers and, when asked if they were trying to make their audience feel something, they'd say, “Nah, I don’t care if the audience does or doesn’t feel anything while reading my story. I was just trying to tell a story, man.” Perhaps if Data wrote a story…

Bringing things to a boil in a downward direction, what I’m saying is that I don’t think your “tier one” story exists.* All stories revolve around tier three because all stories are trying to bring about the reader thoughts and feelies. Those that don’t were trying to, but due to poor craft, failed to.

Which I suppose is the real Rubber/Road Meet-and-Greet. A lot of writers fall short of evoking a reader reaction but that’s a matter of skill and not of an author’s conscientious decision not to try and get a reaction. Being able to touch a reader goes hand-in-hand with being a good author. One cannot simply be a good story crafter without also being a good marksman of hearts and minds. Those authors that “will never stop sucking” are not those that refuse to build bridges, but are those that refuse to put in the time and effort to improve their craft. If the former applied, then they wouldn’t be authors.

*(Along those lines, tier two doesn’t exist either, in my opinion. I don’t think something can just generally entertain without also pulling some sort of string. There’s no such thing as “mindless entertainment.” Granted, there’s what I want to read when I want to relax for a few hours and what I want to read when I’m in a deep-thinking mood, but I don’t just choose anything of the shelf for the former. The story still needs to hit me on some level. Also, just so I can go whole hog here, tier four is nothing but tier three done really, really well. I don’t think an author ever consciously decides, “I’m going to write a game changer.”)

With all that being said, I'm not here to grind my heel into your thoughts on the subject. Just as you have a disclaimer saying that it's an amateur opinion, I need one of those too, perhaps of the lowly slug variety. The fact that you're a pre-reader means you already have nothing but respect from me. The fact that you have some well-respected fics under your belt means that I'm surprised I even had the guts to so boldly oppose. (Ha, "boldly." As if.) Thank you for writing something that made me think and spend far too long typing a response to.

117995

If I’m interpreting your point correctly, then you’re saying that there are two kinds of authors, the good: those who make a conscientious effort to evoke something from their audience, and the bad: the authors who write for the simple enjoyment of putting their story idea to paper.

It doesn't need to be a conscientious effort. Some people do it without thinking, to one degree or another. Many authors are quite successful simply because they are similar enough to their intended audience that they don't have to go out of their way. Though I haven't read her works, I would speculate that Meyer falls into this category; Twilight has touched many readers, but it does not seem like it would be worth reading, to my perception.

I think a better way of putting it would be: there are two kinds of authors, the good: those who make a conscienttious effort to evoke something from their audience, and the bad: those who do not. Preoccupation with one's own perspective is the hallmark of a bad writer. No great work was ever created without a conscious effort on the part of the creator to respond to the needs and desires of the audience.

Don't mistake me, there's nothing 'wrong' with being a bad writer; it takes a lot of work to become a good writer. I'm much closer to bad than good at this point, but I'm trying to move in the right direction; many people are not, and that's fine. Not everyone has to be great. Still, those people should not be surprised when the audience they didn't really consider doesn't ever appear.

If a lot of authors write stories only to “tell a story,” then why do they publish it?

Because they're attention whores. That's just human nature.

Perhaps if Data wrote a story…

Data would either be a great writer or an utterly terrible one. He has made a point of studying human nature. I think the show implies that he has more understanding of emotion than he realizes, in a Wizard of Oz way; the brain and the heart and the courage were there all along, even if their bearers didn't see it yet. If that's the case, he would definitely be a great writer.

All stories revolve around tier three because all stories are trying to bring about the reader thoughts and feelies.

Ah, I see you have misinterpreted me, or I did not make myself clear. It's not about what a story tries to do, it's about what a story succeeds at. I do not give partial credit for effort; do or do not, there is no try. Of course everyone trys to write a meaningful story, but if they only make it meaningful to themselves, then it will have no impact on the audience. My point is that the key to succeeding in making a category three fic is considering the perspective of the reader. If you like, I can take ten minutes to look through the front page of fimfic and no doubt find a tier one story that was trying to be tier two and a tier one story that was trying to be a tier three. Whether or not you agree that category two exists, you've got to admit that there are stories that are just plain boring, and that's category one.

A lot of writers fall short of evoking a reader reaction but that’s a matter of skill and not of an author’s conscientious decision not to try and get a reaction.

An author is skilled precisely to the degree that they are aware of and are able to accurately guide the audience's reaction, no more and no less. Every step of skill, from first learning how to write, to correctly spelling words and correctly using grammar, to knowing how to put together characters and plots, to knowing how to provoke an emotional response, to knowing how to teach the reader something, all of it is of necessity focused on the reader's ability to perceive, understand, and interpret the writer's story. That reaction IS skill in writing. There is no separation between the two. You cannot write better prose without making the reader react to it more, and a change cannot make your reader react more to your prose in the way you want without that change being a change for the better. A skilled writer is able to tell a better story, and the only judge of whether or not a story is better is the audience.

Doing all that without conscious effort? That's talent.

I don’t think an author ever consciously decides, “I’m going to write a game changer.”

I disagree. When I wrote The Cough, my thought process was 'This fandom has terrible grimdark. I should show them what horror looks like.' It's no tier four by any means (nor was it intended to be), but I went in with a conscious effort to demonstrate implicitly that grimdark can be better than Cupcakes.

The fact that you have some well-respected fics under your belt means that I'm surprised I even had the guts to so boldly oppose

Never be afraid to voice your opinions. Disagreements can be productive; a lack of mutual understanding never is.

117242

Kits is a better writer than me, I think. He's definitely more talented.

Very interesting piece. Although I might say that "writing for yourself" and "writing for others" can be a fuzzy distinction, and perhaps not the neatest way to classify people's motivations.

I generally write because it's entertaining in general, regardless of the target audience. However, if I'm not amazed with what I've put to paper, I'm probably not going to show it off to anyone else.

But as with all things, YMMV.

First off, I'll say reading this post made me think. My initial reaction was, "I'm not sure I agree." But I needed to figure out why I didn't agree. So, I'm going to ramble for a moment.

I'm horribly ambitious. There aren't many things I really get into, but when I decide to do something, I aim to be nothing less than one of the best. I don't think I'm arrogant enough to believe I could be the best, but that won't stop me from reaching for it. When I write, I aim for the 4th category you mentioned, but not quite how you stated it. My stories are born from a battle of emotion and rationality raging inside my head. There are times, rare times, when something incredible erupts from that storm and inspires me. My thoughts when I write are, to a degree, as you described them. I do ask "What does the reader see when he looks at this sentence?" and similar questions... but I don't do it to 'inspire emotion' or 'better the reader' specifically. Those things I believe will come IF I achieve my goal: to let the reader feel what I feel, see what I see. If I could just show the reader this cacophony of emotions and logic, if I can make him or her understand how I see life and what this axiom I write for means... then the reader will grow and learn and be a better person on the other side. You could say I have a strong degree of faith in my writing and my beliefs... ironic, for an agnostic like me, I think.

Did I actually achieve this in my first fic? I doubt it. I certainly tried though, and the feedback I got makes me think I was at the very least on the right track. Maybe I am setting the bar too high. Maybe impossibly high. What I've discovered in my time writing, however, overrides these doubts.

You see, I don't care.

And that bit of rambling is my thoughts on the subject. I aimed to make it at least somewhat comprehensible; a group of ideas which lead up to why I don't quite agree with you when you say, "If you truly write just for yourself, just because you have a story to tell, you will never write anything worth reading." Nonetheless, I'm glad you posted it. I always enjoy the chance to get my feelings in writing. Helps to flesh things out.

117579 Bloody hell, Mr. Crocker, that's a very accurate way to put my thoughts into form. Now I'll just drop my opinion here, but it feels like I'm walking into a room full of writing powerhouses when I'm nothing but a fledgling English student with aspirations...

The middle ground is something I find to be absolutely important. To me, "writing for yourself" is something that I feel applies to every single fanfiction on this sight. This also includes the bad ones, the horribly written ones, and the ones that just go to places where you just normally should not. I think it's those kind of "write for yourself" sort of stories that strongly advise towards the middle ground. Your final statement about how writing can be inclusive for both is what puts the nail in the coffin.

I fear that I may have gone off on a tangent and gone completely off the rails in interpreting what you just said, but there you go.

As for the primary topic of discussion, I'm merely nothing more than the second type right now (well, obviously, given the nature of my work in crossovers at the moment), but maybe perhaps trying to go for the third one. To me, writing good stories that people like to read is what I want to do; I don't care about the fame or recognition that comes with it. Aside from that, though, I'm afraid I have nothing more insightful to offer to the bout of discussion going on here.

120054
"The middle ground is something I find to be absolutely important. To me, "writing for yourself" is something that I feel applies to every single fanfiction on this sight. This also includes the bad ones, the horribly written ones, and the ones that just go to places where you just normally should not. I think it's those kind of "write for yourself" sort of stories that strongly advise towards the middle ground. Your final statement about how writing can be inclusive for both is what puts the nail in the coffin."

Thank you for the compliment. I wouldn't say you've misinterpreted what I said in these words. I was considering examples of badly written fan-fiction when I wrote that. Additionally I was considering badly written commercial superhero comics which, despite being professionally published and sold at retail outlets, frequently commits the worst sins of fan-fiction. Of course these are the products of a highly insular niche market where editorial control has nothing to do with quality.

Of course my words probably don't give enough thought to say more experimental pieces of writing that disregard the conventions of most prose fiction such as William S. Burroughs Naked Lunch or J.G. Ballard's The Atrocity Exhibition - both of which are favourites of mine. Such works are clear examples of the author's writing for themselves and disregarding the expectations of the audience. However, both disregard narrative convention purposefully. In Burroughs' case he assembled his narrative from cutting up his existing writings and rearranging them at random which revealed certain hidden meanings in his view - namely issues of addiction and control that in his text he links to not only drugs, but law enforcement and consumerism. In Ballard's case it was him splitting up the narrative into multiple, stand-alone stories to represent the fracturing psyche of an individual.

This is quite a different proposition from writing a story where, after committing a series of daring crimes while masked, a character is now faced with a mob of angry townspeople and the authorities wanting to apprehend the person. The problem is that there is no indication in the story that the character's identity was even exposed to those parties, only the character's friends. And that was in private. If writing a piece of fiction can be said to be act of communication the author of this story (and yes that's all taken from a story I actually read on this site) didn't bother with the basics of doing so. Ditto whomever wrote this nauseous spot of purpose prose which is not only laughably bad, but obscures nearly all meaning. (Thanks to Kits' whose tumblrs' brought this example to my attention.)

117690

Yeah, I think 'hurdles' sums it up well.

I tentatively agree with the categorisation (as much as one can categorise these things), but I'm not sure I agree with only Type 4s being worth reading. Atlas Shrugged may still be talked about and have challenged conventional wisdom, but it accomplished jack in the grander scheme of things when conventional wisdom pointed out that it was all guff. I think a Type 3 that affects innumerable people on a personal level is far more worthy than a Type 4 that tries to take on the world and fails. Glory in defeat is still defeat.

Which is not to say that Type 4s are not what a writer should aim for, but that Type 3s are an equally lofty goal, just... a different one. Unless you're implying that a sufficiently powerful Type 3 would BE a Type 4.

"My words are loose theory and wild speculation and are probably laughable to professors of literature."

Well thar's yer problem, you're bringing in people having nothing to do with the point your trying to make. I say this as a victim of a short story class.

Although you made clear what you meant by the category, the idea of 'writing for an audience' still leaves me uneasy. When I think of doing that, I picture someone literally tailoring the story and sentence structure to cater to popular demand, as opposed to writing what you want because you want the world to live in your world for a while. Really, though, writing for yourself/others is only a segregated activity when you, as a writer, don't really know what you're doing.

When you talk about the first category, I think you're invoking that undisciplined and juvenile stereotype who takes the first half of the Romantic maxim to heart ('Poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings...') with reckless abandon. Of course, that's a stereotype precisely because the other half of Wordsworth's quote is so often omitted. Wordsworth also declares, 'it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquility.' The good writer applies both of these injunctions to his work, but I think he should still be self absorbed, only with a prescience made to absorb the world around him within that personal vision. I'm afraid I'm not making sense.

Your stereotypical self indulgent writer is a problem, but not because the writer's focused on himself; instead it's because he doesn't understand writing conventions. I guess you could say that's just another way of saying audience awareness, but I think there's a key difference between one who isn't concerned with his audience because he's only vaguely aware of them, and one who has learned to integrate that audience and their perception into his own characters as simply a matter of course. Isn't intuitively understanding what facets of a story will move hearts and drive minds part of what makes a writer good?

I think it's the aspect of consciously modeling stories on audience expectations which I find disagreeable. Being particularly self conscious about what others may think of your story while you're writing it puts me in the mind of someone working on jingles at a marketing firm. The great writers are always possessed of a monomaniacal obsession with their characters and subject matter that borders on the solipsistic. That depth of immersion is part of the reason why worlds as deep and autonomous as Faulkner's Yoknapatawpha County, or Joyce's Dublin have the hold on the imagination that they do. You can lose yourself in them because their authors have done the same- only in a highly disciplined way. I don't know, maybe I'm really splitting hairs, but I feel like such authors could never have created those worlds if they were looking over their shoulders at the typewriter for every disapproving plebeian glance. I think great art is usually made greatest when the artist defies expectation rather than conforms to it, and never created by reader consensus or canvassing opinion; only later agreed upon in that way by the rest of the world.

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It doesn't need to be a conscientious effort. Some people do it without thinking, to one degree or another. Many authors are quite successful simply because they are similar enough to their intended audience that they don't have to go out of their way. Though I haven't read her works, I would speculate that Meyer falls into this category; Twilight has touched many readers, but it does not seem like it would be worth reading, to my perception.

I think a better way of putting it would be: there are two kinds of authors, the good: those who make a conscientious effort to evoke something from their audience, and the bad: those who do not.

I'd put it this way: You're using the words "good" and "bad" in an overly-specific way, as pretty much all authors do. There are two kinds of readers: Those who want to read stories that challenge their thinking, and those who want to read stories that reassure them that they already know everything important. Almost all readers fall into the 2nd category. Almost all authors fall into the first category. But it's wrong to call the first category "good" and the second category "bad".

Twilight (the novel) is a good story for readers who don't want to be challenged. Meyers isn't stupid; she did a very good job of writing that kind of story. The things authors complain about, like Bella not having a character, or the dysfunctional nature of her desires and the stupidity of her actions, are probably deliberate, and serve to bolster, not detract from, what Meyers wanted to do. People who act stupidly don't want to be shown how to act intelligently; they want to see stories where things work out good for the people who act stupidly and badly for those who act intelligently (because intelligence is a sign of moral corruption).

"The Cough" is a category 4 story because, unlike Cupcakes, it poses serious questions about ethics, and can make readers realize their system of ethics has no answers for it.

You have excellent followers. How much will you take for them?