Diagramming Fiction

Ever wondered the difference

 between genre and literary fiction?

Here's a helpful tool I stole from grad school. It's a bit simplistic, but I find it useful as a starting point.

In these diagrams, more weight is given to those elements located at the top of the triangle.

So, in genre fiction, the Plot element seems to be all-important, with Language and Character in hierarchically supporting roles.

In literary fiction, however, Character and Language map the bulk of the story's landscape, with Plot (or more often Conflict) rippling beneath the surface to produce a subtle momentum.

Commercial fiction, or "upmarket fiction," might look like the literary fiction triangle, but with Plot and Character taking the important top-most corners and Language taking back seat.

It's sometimes fun, when entering a new novel or short, to overlay it with the diagrams above, as with an old-school transparency sheet. You'll probably find your triangle needs turning or tilting, squashing, reforming, and/or re-labeling. But once the basic shape of the story comes into focus, it's easier to conceptualize how and to what degree the various elements of fiction fit into, on the one hand, the story itself, and on the other, the larger body of literature.

The 7-7-7 Challenge

The other day I went hiking deep into the flowering Tucson desert with a stranger.

By @CrytzerFry in Tucson 

Although, I'm not sure stranger is the right word. Just because I'd never met the person ... in person ... never seen her face ... doesn't make her a stranger. In today's increasingly unbound culture of connecting virtually with other human beings on this increasingly shrinking planet, I wonder how important "face-time" really is.

I hiked into Seven Falls with Melissa Crytzer Fry, a fabulously creative writer of literary fiction, and a fun hiking companion. She tweets here.

This morning she tagged me.

The 7-7-7- Challenge:
Flip to page 77 of your current WIP.
Find line 7.
Post the 7 sentences that follow.
Tag 7 more writers.

Alas, I'm on page 68 of my novel-length WIP. Thus I'm going to bend the rules a little.

Page 7, line 7, and the 7 sentences that follow:
My WIP is gothic literary YA with a touch of urban fantasy.

Woman Diving into Water, 1867-1870 by Paul Cézanne - Artilim

I touch the spider-cracked glass. You tried to get out.

There’s a knife embedded, hilt-deep in the seat, speared between two bony fingers. Oh, Aaron . . . They say, when you’re possessed, that you know what you’re doing, all of it, and that you remember.

I can’t mourn for him. I did my job. He’s been stranded in the Limen, trapped by his hunger for the life taken from him. Now, he’s free.
The skin-crawl of knowing touches the place between my shoulder blades.

And you're next! My 7-7-7 authors are:
1. Krista Van Dolzer
2. LisaAnn Chickos
3. Kara Lucas
4. Amber Plante
5. Jaye Robin Brown
6. Pat Esden
7. Juliana Brandt

I'd love to read what you're working on! But if you don't feel like participating, please don't fee like you have to. No worries at all, okay? Regardless, sending great writing vibes your way!

And as Melissa's tagger said: "Let me know when your lines are up because I WANT TO READ YOUR POSTS!"

Next they'll be marrying toasters!

IN THE NEAR FUTURE

Love At First Sight

Feeding The Ducks

 

Holding Your Hair Back

Make Me The Happiest Toaster Evahs!

Spooning

Home Sweet Home

Growing Old

*

*

*

Two consenting adults....

Deep Play (Part 1)

This week I finished reading The Third Industrial Revolution: How Lateral Power is Transforming Energy, the Economy, and the World by Jeremy Rifkin.

The book is shot through a with sense of urgency to break away from an obsolete industrial system that encourages unsustainable growth in all areas of economics and unhealthy competition on levels from grade school classrooms to national GDPs. It urges us away from a top-down ideology that grew out of centuries of struggle with our environment and with each other and toward a reawakening of human consciousness to the possibility of balanced and symbiotic, if not mutualistic, living with the myriad species on our Earth.

I wanted to touch briefly on this quote at the end of the book, wherein Rifkin reveals his vision not only for the practical, tangible sectors of human existence but also for a "concomitant leap to biosphere consciousness."

... We emotionally identify with our fellow creatures to the point of experiencing their being as if it were our own. In short, we empathize... It is our way of acknowledging the mystery of life that binds us together in fellowship on this Earth. To empathize is to affirm another's struggle to be and flourish.

Rifkin suggests that once we, as a conscious human race, have made this leap to thinking "as an extended global family," we will begin to rethink our understanding of "work" and "productivity." We will, in all aspects of our existence, begin to engage in what he and a decade ago Diane Ackerman describe as deep play.

I'll be talking more about this because the idea of rethinking "work" excites me. For now, I'll leave you with this juxtaposition.

From Dictionary.com

Deep play is "not frivolous entertainment but, rather, empathic engagement with one's fellow human beings. [It] is the way we experience the other, transcend ourselves, and connect to broader, ever more inclusive communities of life in our common search for universality." - Rifkin in TIR