I go to Uni. That’s short for University. Apparently that’s not readilly apparent to anyone overseas, anywhere, so obviously, Australia’s the only place that calls it that. Which figures, because we shorten everything to nicknames. Even things that are already nicknames. Take the name nickname Pete: short for Peter. We add an O to it, to make Pete-o.
Okay, no, that only happens in certain heavy-on-the-Australian-ism bars, which I totally don’t spend my Friday nights in.
“Get back to the point!”
I’m doing a Creative Writing degree, and I’ve realised a couple things lately, firstmost and most-primary of which is, that “character stories are good” ie: Literary novels > commercial novels. Do commercial novels count as Literature? How about literature with a small ‘l’? Well, at my Uni, apparently they’re not that good. Sure, they make lots of money and are extremely well-known in the here and now – take J.K. Rowling, Dan Brown, Terry Brooks, Alastair Reynolds, etc. But do they matter? The short answer is: no. They don’t get taught in schools (that I know of) because they weren’t written in the 1700′s and they don’t examine characters and they don’t pick apart a theme until there’s nothing left to say. They don’t have an amazing first sentence that makes a point about the human condition. Mostly though, it’s the character-driven-ness that they don’t have. These are all things that my Uni wants us to write about, always.
But what if I had no idea character was that important until I started this course? What if I want to just write better so I can get my books on shelves and selling? I for one never knew that classics had such intellectual importance, if not the kind of things that appeal to me: everything genre fiction tends to have. Don’t get me wrong, they’re classics for a reason and you never know what will become one unless you know what separates classic from commercial. 1000 years from now, I doubt Dan Brown will be on the Great Classics booklist. I could be wrong. Charles Dickens wrote for money, but we still teach him – we preserve him. I guess it comes down to just that: preservation value. Is it worth preserving, that is the question!
My Uni has a tendency to teach almost exclusively classics. Which is fine. But everything they go on about is applicable to character stories… but not necessarily books with a focus on plot. Obviously, this division is a binary one, and things are always much more complicated than that. But do you know how hard it is to do a ‘character study’ with explosions, gunfire, spaceships, aliens, dragons, werewolves, terrorists, cyborgs, ninjas and the like flying at you? Me either, but that would be… interesting. It certainly wouldn’t fit in the genre, that’s for sure.
Obviously, some attention and care towards characters is important – characters are what makes any story happen. In genre fiction, that’s less of a driving force, but things still come down to personality and interpersonal conflict between the protagonist and the vampires, or the protagonist and the aliens, or the protagonist and the terrorists. If the protagonist does nothing, or worse, fails, the bad guys win. That’s a simple formula, and I have to admit, my stuff is along those lines. I’m not aiming for Wuthering Heights or Hard Times material. I have more in common with Jim Butcher and even John Birmingham than I ever will with anything my friend Melissa reads (Bronte, Austin, Dickens, etc). Granted, we both hold Alice In Wonderland in high regard. So does my brother. I understand the message in Lord of the Rings is an important one.
But at the end of the day, I write for the more immediate kind of appeal, not for lasting Literary importance. It would be nice to travel into the future and see that I’m being taught in schools. And just because I’m writing for money, doesn’t mean I have to churn out utter bilge, filth, child poison – like certain authors I’ve had to read, and despised with a passion that defies reason. But I never considered myself the snooty elitist cliche, and never wrote as such. As such, it’s hard to escape the feeling that there’s a serious divide between me, and the rest of the people in my course, other than say Jake and maybe Tiffany (though she uses a lot of them big words).
Phew, that went on a bit didn’t it?
In summary, my course, while awesome, doesn’t really apply to my kind of writing. It certainly helps me write better though, and that’s money well spent. I just don’t believe certain types of writing are inherently better, quality aside. Which is why I’m seriously considering Open University’s speculative fiction course (I think it’s they who offer it). Maybe that way I’ll be able to learn how to write better explosions.
