What is the Purpose of (Written) Fiction

[Sexual Ally]

I was just wondering did she really say books (of fiction) should resemble movies?  Because the two offer story-telling devices uniquely (or necessarily) distinct from each other.  At the very least, films must silently "speak" in a visual, cinematic language unique to that medium.   Both have unique leeway in which they may tell a story, but the best means for that tell are generally quite different.

[Guest Jetsun Milarepa]

At the moment I think the purpose of the book I'm reading is to keep me on the edge of my seat.

[Jusey1]

Essentially, to teach lessons and open one's eyes to different viewpoints as you get to read a story happening in another character's eyes. For example, back in early 2012 I was still in highschool but I did got a printed copy of a fanfic story that was fairly lone (over 600,000 words). Read it all in a weekend because I got invested into it and was entertained by it but it does raises some interesting points I've never thought before, such as corrupted morals (Basically, a corrupted moral is when you put your own morals above your own life and the lives of others).

[iff]

On 2/11/2019 at 2:47 AM, Sexual Ally said:

I was just wondering did she really say books (of fiction) should resemble movies?  Because the two offer story-telling devices often distinct from each other.  At the very least, films must silently "speak" in a visual, cinematic language unique to that medium.   Both have unique leeway in which they may tell a story, but the best means for that tell are generally quite different.

The novel man in the dark by Paul auster makes some observations on this at the start as one of the characters is a film studies. Film is a more passive form. I like both film and books but prefer books. I find in books, there is a lot more emotional attachment to the characters but this emotional attachment is mostly lacking in films (there are occasional exceptions. the skin I live in haunted me for a week after seeing it and when I think about it. Both after Elena and inside out made me really very sad for the main character and what they want through. Although two of the three films I mentioned are subtitled so maybe the emotional attachment is from reading)

 

In one book I read convenience store woman i read it in an evening as I really wanted to see that the main character got on ok and was concerned for her.

 

Why do I read? Because I like it and honestly I'm not sure how else to fill the time, apart from my second favourite hobby, procrastination, which too can be very time absorbing

 

[AceyMacey]

I think fiction can be whatever the author wants as long as it's something. I think good fiction can entertain or make you think or something else or all of the above, but some fiction can't do any of those and that's what makes a bad fiction story: something that has nothing to say and says it poorly.

[fuzzipueo]

On 2/6/2019 at 4:49 PM, A. Sterling said:

The thing for me, personally, is that it's the "message" as it were that I find entertaining. For instance, I enjoy Victorian literature very much but many people don't seem to. I do think it's better for writers to write something they would enjoy reading more than what other people request, though.

A thing about Victorian fiction to keep in mind: the authors of such fiction were being paid by the word and the more words one could write in the story, the more money one would make from the publisher. This was true of the pulps of the 20s-50s also, so sometimes the overly long descriptive passages about food, landscapes, ships, or long, drawn out, philosophical passages were driven as much by the need to cover the bills as much as a writer's desire to get his thoughts out on paper. An excellent example of this sort of writing is actually one of the more popular writers of the Victorian Era - Charles Dickens (or if you want a genre example, the author of the fantastical and nowhere coherent, Varney, the Vampire).

 

That said, you should write what you enjoy. I've come across a number of authors who started writing because they weren't finding the type of stories they wanted to read about, so they decided to write their own. Someone, somewhere, will want to read those stories. However, I do think there should be a balance between entertainment and long rambles into a character's head and mindset. I know of at least one SF author who's taken such ramblings to the point that reading his space operas have become slogs and thoroughly un-enjoyable.

 

By the same token, it is possible to write a story that is thought provoking while still being entertaining and a form of escape from everyday life. Some may disagree with me, but one such work is one of the best selling SF books in the history of the genre: Dune by Frank Herbert.

 

As for writing a book like a film, unless you're writing a script format, I really don't know how that would work. What works in written fiction doesn't always work on film and vice-versa.

[fuzzipueo]

A writer I follow on FB likes to give out writing advice on occasion and this is what she said yesterday:
 

Quote

 

Keep track of time in a book/story. What happens in the first hour of most books will impact all the rest of it.

 

So do not waste a minute of that hour on your character waking up and having coffee, no weather reports, no landscape descriptions. Writer better than that, sheesh.

 

As for time outside the book, you've got-if you're lucky-about 30 seconds to engage a reader browsing the shelves in such a way that they HAVE to keep reading.

 

No pressure.

P.n. Elrod

February 18, 2019 Facebook Post

https://m.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10155958218971434&id=679251433&anchor_composer=false

I wonder if maybe this is what your teacher has been trying to explain?

[IrishArcher]

Personally, if I had to characterize "fiction" as a whole genre, I would do it in terms of comparison to "non-fiction." Non-fiction, to me, is based on conveying facts. It can tell a story and be entertaining, but at the end of the day, it has to be true and concrete in order to be considered non-fiction. Fiction, on the other hand, is a way of conveying ideas, regardless of facts. It creates a hypothetical situation in which to explore certain questions/thoughts/ideas which, ideally, ultimately reveal a greater truth about the world that is less concrete and more subjective than that of non-fiction. These lines can be blurred (memoirs are usually written to convey a subjective rather than objective truth, for instance), but ultimately non-fiction conveys a message using concrete evidence, while fiction conveys a message using hypothetical evidence. Within that general rule, I don't think there necessarily are objective rules for what constitutes "good" fiction.

 

Using this model, I feel like essays would be their own category, separate from fiction or non-fiction.