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odd_buttonsThe following is an excerpt from Part III of the book Making Shapely Fiction, by Jerome Stern. The first two parts are very much worth reading as well. The book is available in paperback.
Romance
Despite the apparent dominance of the realist novel, you can still write a romance. The question, though is: What is a romance today? Romance has a long history in which it has meant a number of things: something not written in Latin, chivalric tales in Old French, stories of extraordinary and unusual happenings, and, lately, formulaic stories about love. Romance gives you the freedom to delve into the exotic, the bizarre, the fantastic, and the improbable.
In 1957, the critic Richard Chase in a book called The American Novel and Its Traditions made an interesting argument. He proposed that the romance is the basic American form of fiction. By romance, he meant works that are filled with "radical forms of alienation, contradiction, and disorder." He found plenty of examples in great American writers like Melville, Hawthorne, Twain, James, and Fitzgerald. Chase contrasted that with the tradition of the English novel, which shows "harmony, reconciliation, catharsis, and transfiguration." It's a shrewd and imaginative observation. Many major American writers in the last thirty years seem of alienation, contradiction, and disorder. Flannery O'Connor, John Hawkes, John Barth, Thomas Pynchon, Ursula Le Guin, Ishmael Reed, and Kurt Vonnegut have wide apocalyptic streaks. On the other hand, some of the best writing in America today seeks reconciliation and catharsis. You can see that in Anne Tyler, Toni Morrison, and Walker Percy. The moral for writers is that America is complex and contradictory. There is no school but the school you want to enroll in.
The romance, whether primeval, medieval, futuristic, zoological, or magical, whether based on the quest for love, power, or sheer adventure, has to deal with the problems all fiction must face. Your characters (whether heroes or monsters) need to be emotionally engaging. You need to create a continual sense of development and change in situation. Your story must be true to its own premises (whether natural or supernatural). And your language should be fresh and vital (though commercial fantasy writing seems to have a high tolerance for purple prose and clichés).
See Melodrama, Realism, Sentimentality.
Romance
Despite the apparent dominance of the realist novel, you can still write a romance. The question, though is: What is a romance today? Romance has a long history in which it has meant a number of things: something not written in Latin, chivalric tales in Old French, stories of extraordinary and unusual happenings, and, lately, formulaic stories about love. Romance gives you the freedom to delve into the exotic, the bizarre, the fantastic, and the improbable.
In 1957, the critic Richard Chase in a book called The American Novel and Its Traditions made an interesting argument. He proposed that the romance is the basic American form of fiction. By romance, he meant works that are filled with "radical forms of alienation, contradiction, and disorder." He found plenty of examples in great American writers like Melville, Hawthorne, Twain, James, and Fitzgerald. Chase contrasted that with the tradition of the English novel, which shows "harmony, reconciliation, catharsis, and transfiguration." It's a shrewd and imaginative observation. Many major American writers in the last thirty years seem of alienation, contradiction, and disorder. Flannery O'Connor, John Hawkes, John Barth, Thomas Pynchon, Ursula Le Guin, Ishmael Reed, and Kurt Vonnegut have wide apocalyptic streaks. On the other hand, some of the best writing in America today seeks reconciliation and catharsis. You can see that in Anne Tyler, Toni Morrison, and Walker Percy. The moral for writers is that America is complex and contradictory. There is no school but the school you want to enroll in.
The romance, whether primeval, medieval, futuristic, zoological, or magical, whether based on the quest for love, power, or sheer adventure, has to deal with the problems all fiction must face. Your characters (whether heroes or monsters) need to be emotionally engaging. You need to create a continual sense of development and change in situation. Your story must be true to its own premises (whether natural or supernatural). And your language should be fresh and vital (though commercial fantasy writing seems to have a high tolerance for purple prose and clichés).
See Melodrama, Realism, Sentimentality.