Narrative Drive

I was reading a bit of literary fiction just recently. It was well written. The characters were interesting. The scene setting was quite good. It was a leisurely read, meaning that I felt in no urgency to get to the next paragraph or page. When I did reach the end I found, no ending. It just stopped. In fact, it stopped at a point where I thought something dramatic was finally going to happen. I just shook my head, put that one down, and picked up Rick Cantelli, P.I., by Bernard Lee Deleo. Our intrepid P.I. is kicking back on the beach with a couple of lady friends when here come three gangsters, including the brother of one he'd just recently killed. "Uh Oh," I thought, and was instantly eagerly reading forward to see what happened next.
The contrast between the two tales was dramatic to me.

The literary fiction was fine. There was nothing wrong with it. It felt a bit like looking out a window and studying the scene there. Sometimes I like looking out the window. On the other hand, the DeLeo tale has the elements of a good "story."  In a story, something happens, then something else happens, and so on, and the things that happen are connected to each other, and they affect characters that you've come to know and love, or, more rarely, hate.

A story involves "narrative drive." At least, a good one does, a compelling one. Narrative drive is about the giving and witholding of information. You give the reader enough information to understand "what" is happening, but you withhold plenty of the "why" information. The "why" information is only slowly revealed, and only at the last possible second that it must be revealed. And, almost every time you reveal some "why" information, it ends up raising still other "whys." It is the need to figure out the answer to the next "why" that creates narrative drive, and this is what keeps the reader glued to the story.

There's no particular reason why literary style fiction can't have narrative drive, and sometimes it does. Hemingway's "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" has it. So does "The Old Man and the Sea." A lot of literary fiction doesn't though, and when I'm looking for something to read it's almost always narrative drive that I'm looking for. I want to get lost in the story to the point where I no longer know I'm reading a story. Most literary fiction simply doesn't do this for me, and most of it is not supposed to. Doesn't make it bad. But for that reason, it's never going to be as important to me as a rollicking good story.
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Writers and Genres

In talking to a writer friend the other day, she mentioned my “genre.” That seemed a little odd at first because I rather pride myself on writing in lots of genres—Fantasy, Horror, Western, Science Fiction, etc. In our discussion, it seemed that she meant, primarily, fantasy, but only a portion of the stuff I’ve written would be classified as fantasy by fantasy readers.

After I thought about it, I began to divide my fiction writing into two ‘broad’ genres. These are 1) action-adventure and 2) weird. Weird includes stuff that carries elements of horror, noir, and the surreal. Since it was of interest to me, at least, I thought I’d post the breakdown here. In part, I’m wondering if the breakdown into these two broad areas might help sales a bit. I know some folks who read specifically, and only, in one genre. For some readers, if they are looking for “X” and happen to read “Y” by a writer, then they’ll avoid that writer in the future, even if most of what he or she writes is indeed “X.”

Anyway, here’s the breakdown for myself, as I see it:

Action-Adventure                        Weird

Swords of Talera                         In the Language of Scorpions

Wings Over Talera                      Midnight in Rosary (with erotica)

Witch of Talera                           Micro Weird

Under the Ember Star                  Harmland

Bitter Steel                                  Wanting the Mouth of a Lover

Cold in the Light

Killing Trail

Harvest of War

I was thinking of other writers I admire and how they might fit into one or both of these categories. I decided to place those writers in the same categories below. This is my opinion, of course. Any discussion is welcome.

Action-Adventure                              Weird

Edgar Rice Burroughs                         H. P. Lovecraft

Robert E. Howard                              Edgar Allan Poe

Louis L’Amour                                    Ray Bradbury

John D. MacDonald                            Clark Ashton Smith

Someone who combines the two throughout much of his body of work is Joe Lansdale, and maybe Dean Koontz.

What say you?

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Why Do You Read That Crap?

I heard a story again the other day that reminded me of many personal experiences. Someone asked another person how anyone could read “that” kind of book. In this case, the book was a romance, but you could easily replace romance with SF, Fantasy, Horror, Westerns, or probably just about any genre book. The questioner continued with something like: “If you’re going to read, why not read non-fiction? Why not try to learn something?”

I used to get angry when people said these kinds of things, particularly when they said them to me. But that was when I was a kid. I don’t get angry anymore, because I just see it as a kind of uninformed provincialism. At the risk of sounding egotistical, I’ve never had anyone ask me that question who had as a big a vocabulary as I have. And despite the fact that I’ve always read and continue to read genre fiction, I managed to get a Ph.D., advance to full professorship in an academic job, and publish plenty of non-fiction myself.

And I didn’t get my vocabulary from reading non-fiction. I got it as a kid reading SF and Fantasy. I didn’t get my ability to “think outside the box” from non-fiction, nor from the classroom. I got it from reading genre fiction. Without my fiction reading habit I don’t believe I’d ever have graduated college, much less gone on. I certainly would never have discovered that the best way to reach students and teach them something is to tell them a “story.” I would never have been able to teach students how to write, a skill that sp many people desperately need.

People can learn in all kinds of ways and from all kinds of activities. And learning is not just a collection of facts. Certainly, having information is important, but being able to translate one’s thoughts and ideas into words is critical. Being able to make sense of the world is critical. Being able to see the world from a variety of perspectives is critical. Fiction teaches these things. It’s important and should not be discouraged.

Let the kids read. Let them read whatever they can get their hands on. Let them open their minds to thoughts that come from places other than their TVs. Let them learn.

You want to know the worst part of it? The person who asked that question in my first paragraph about why folks didn’t read something they could learn from... That person was a librarian. (Certainly not my lovely Lana, of course, who is a librarian herself and an extraordinary one.)