American Filler

Somebody linked this on my facebook wall, and it got me to thinking about food.

That's right, food.

Have you noticed the creep of fiction length? Once upon a time, a fantasy novel might have been 50k-70k words. No longer; if you don't have 100k+ words, it feels short and not worth your dime. But what is all that filler that occurs? Mostly mellow-drama, both used as plot source and characterization. We think we're getting "deeper" into the characters, but when this is based on mellow-drama, it means the characters are necessarily shallow. Likewise, a plot based upon the petty squabblings of characters (super-heroes who fight each other based on some small insult or past relationship, often endangering the whole world for their pettiness), is a sideshow about disfunction. And not interesting disfunction, not character transforming disfunction, like a good villain or hero has, but mundane disfunction, because their problems are just like our problems.

Imagine Bruce Wayne getting all icky over some squabble over a girl with some friend, risking his overall mission for petty revenge. Now, a character who did that sort of things might be interesting, because you see how shallow they truly are, and that can become a pretty alluring exploration so long as we have a notion that this is not okay, and is in fact stupid. We shouldn't be invited to "sympathize" with a character like that as we typically are. We shouldn't think that this is 'normal' or okay, or at least we shouldn't think this makes the character layered and "deep". The primary characteristic of such a character is that he is shallow.

Yet, if we don't have all that in a book to fill it up, we don't feel quite right when its done. A modern novel has to be somewhat exhausting; it must not just sate, it must satiate. We aren't satisfied unless we are overfull, which becomes more and more difficult because it gives us expanding appetites! So we pack in more and more cheap calories in the form of mellow-drama. Our meals don't have more vitamins and minerals than they did, they've just gotten bigger, more calories laden, and actually "lighter" on nutritional density.  A 1940s carrot had 40 times the magnesium of a modern store-bought carrot.

More later.

Secret in the Box

The last word of the first draft of Secret in the Box was typed at about 1:50 the morning of Monday, June 11th, 2012, the year the Mayans destroyed the universe...whew...I know that this is really just the beginning of this story, because editing is going to be a nightmare.  It certainly not the story I had originally envisioned.  I had in mind a much shorter, compact story, very fast, very compact, with some very direct messages.  I still want to get back to that, but at the moment I have what amounts to a teen coming of age epic of just shy of 100,000 words, which...okay, most books that are out now, your Harry Potter's and your Game of Thrones, tend to be longer...but its still not a small thing.  With the norm 250 words/page, it'd come out to right around 380 pages.  But, of course, even though people like longer books, I really feel I should be able to tell this story in 200-250 pages...in fact, right where I think I should be approaching the end, suddenly it turns out I'm halfway done...well, no, it only feels that way.  Its actually closer to 1/3-1/4 left at that point.  Still, I want it to be shorter.  I just feel it went on too long, got too complex, and lost a lot of the naive charm that it originally had...honestly, I didn't want it to be 'coming of age' because he's not an adult, he hasn't come of age, he's just moved past one specific hurdle. Rewrite, fuck.

Woah is you

I jumped on it and wrote 2000 words last night in Box.  Ohhhhhh my goodness its all crap.  But the show must go on.  Somebody said that to finish a book you had to ruin it, and I'm pretty sure I'm almost finished.  Need something to entertain yourselves?

Booo hisss

Its already obnoxious to me when people conflate standard cultural norms for natural laws.  One of my great fears is that globalization will create such a homogenous culture that we wont' even be able to imagine a culture that is different from our own.  All history will be read through our cultural lens, and all the more narrowly because we are convinced that since it is the only culture that exists, it is the only culture that can possibly exist.

btw, passed 80k words in Secret in the Box.  Closer and closer to completion.