[Laer Carroll]

There are stories about ORDINARY actions and events, and there are stories about EXTRAORDINARY happenings. The first are more often found in "literary" and "mainstream" stories, the second more often in the genres.

But this division is hardly absolute. It's more of a tendency. For that matter there's room for disagreement about what is ordinary and what is not.

Ordinary is what is common in our lives. Most common are the involuntary functions of breathing and circulation. We ingest and excrete every day - if we are healthy and lucky. We wake and sleep. And work at jobs that rarely involve danger to ourselves and others - at least in modern societies.

Extraordinary is not an absolute but a continuum. Most of us are involved in winning and losing dates and mates. We have and raise children, or have ties to family and friends who do. We are born and die; surely extraordinary once-in-a-lifetime events. Yet we all experience them, so in one sense they are ordinary, normal, commonplace.

It's not usual in modern societies to be victim of accident or crime, but it does happen. So in a sense to be a victim is ordinary. In many or most mainstream stories we survive and adjust to these tragedies and continue with our lives. In many or most genre stories we fight back, sometimes in very dramatic and passionate ways. Which might include epic fight or flight scenes, with lots of car chases and gun-fire and fiery explosions.

What does this mean to us as writers?

Some agents and editors are only interested in stories of the extraordinary. Those agents and editors who work in genre often want stories which instantly suck readers in and rapidly move the story along. They often want just enough character to support the plot but not interfere with it, just enough social problems to provide obstacles between the heroes and their goals.

Bucking this tendency in some (but hardly all) agents and editors lessens our chances of being published. But as always a fresh approach and excellent writing can excite agents or editors to ignore their preferences and prejudices.

Stories of the ordinary often include much detail about work and family life. They began to be more frequent in the 1800s with the "realist" movement. Jane Austen from the early 1800s was early realist writer. Examples from the middle 1800s include the works of George Eliot and Charles Dickens. One of the more popular in the early 1900s was Anne of Green Gables which might be thought to be the culmination of that part of the realist movement to celebrate rural life. The Catcher in the Rye from the middle 1900s was and still is very popular. Another recent popular example are the works of Jonathan Frantzen, especially Freedom published in 2010.

A subset of realism is "naturalism" which focuses on the negative aspects of real life. This includes many books about the tragedies and injustices of life, some of them written to stimulate people to fight against the negatives. Naturalistic characters are often stupid, selfish, and spiteful.

What does this mean to us as genre writers?

It is a rare SF and fantasy book which is not full of the extraordinary, especially violence. Detective stories, military fiction, thrillers, and horror are even more defined by violence. That other great human force, sex, is the center of the romance novel, often hidden or mixed with the yearning for love and family.

Yet even the most "action-packed" stories must have mini-vacations from tension. Reading is, contrary to stereotype, NOT a passive activity. Readers are active participants in the imaginative creation in their minds of the alternate reality of each story. They also physically participate, though only the careful observer (perhaps armed with biological sensors) can detect this. Our bodies react with hormone secretions and tiny muscle actions. We can actually grown physically tired as we read, even the most adrenaline-addicted adolescents.

Shakespeare in his tragedies used humorous interludes to give people these mini-vacations. Detective stories may have humor, but they often also have periods of puzzling over evidence or waiting (as in stakeouts). Military and spy stories may have their characters training or gathering weapons or data before or between action sequences. And in every story surveying or sensing the environment can take away tension when it needs to be taken away.

The writer then becomes like an orchestra conductor, commanding softness in this passage, loudness in that

There are other reasons to include the ordinary in stories of the extraordinary. One is to be convincing. The more bizarre the event the more everyday nitty-gritty may be needed to foster the "willing suspension of disbelief."

Another is artistic, as a painter might contrast plainness in clothing with the beauty of a subject's face and figure - or dress the ugly in beautiful and fashionable attire. Noir detective stories have a lot of (sometimes literally) dark descriptions of places and people and actions. Horror stories do too. Both can benefit by having contrasting scenes full of bright cheery colors which make the darkness seem even darker.

Another reason is to play upon the craving many of us have for happy, comforting places and times which we have experienced, or longed to experience. In our field Robert Heinlein was a master at this.

For more on the history of the novel see the following web site of Dr. Agatha Taormina. It contains several pages of overview of authors and movements important to this history in a clear, brief set of outlines.

http://www.nvcc.edu/home/ataormina/novels/history/ (http://www.nvcc.edu/home/ataormina/novels/history/default.htm)

Professor Taormina also researches sci-fi and fantasy and teaches a college-level course in SF. For more see her web site on that subject.

http://www.nvcc.edu/home/ataormina/beyond/

[Mickief]

Laer,

Thanks so much for this post. It's especially interesting for me because this is exactly what I tried to explore in my short story entry for the Aug-Sept competition, with a rather grim overall situation and intervals of humor as contrast and psychic relief. (At least, that was my intention.)

Your synthesis is outstanding and very pertinent for all of us here.

Mickie

[KatG]

Well you know I'm going to argue again, don't you? :)

First off, realistic ordinariness is not a tendency/hallmark of literary fiction or "mainstream" fiction which seems to be used in this case to mean non-genre, even though genre is also presented as mainstream and commercial. And it's the assumption of these things as tendencies that then define the terms that causes much of the confusion and much of the dismissal of SFFH fiction with the claim that SFFH works are not literary and the dismissal of SFFH works that are considered literary as not real SFFH by definition. The bulk of fiction, of all kinds, deals with extraordinary events, not ordinary ones -- the ones that change the characters' lives dramatically. This is not required; it is simply common and from that, literary ability is not determined either way.

Further, romance -- in the modern usage -- is arguably usually about two people falling in love which is quite extraordinary for them, but in the broader context of life, perfectly ordinary. It's not a car chase or a dragon. And yet romance is regulated to the exaggerated, extraordinary, etc. stream because it's convenient to put it there as it has a section in bookstores in some Western markets. In other words, it's analyzing the history of novels according to modern bookselling packaging, not the actual history of novels.

Second, realism is a specific writing technique and literary movement in fiction, not just a term applied to any book that doesn't have suspense or SFFH elements in it. Realism was a 19th century into early 20th century view of writing in a less formal, more colloquial sense about the grubbiness of the middle class and occasionally lower classes. But while realism was supposed to get at the kitchen sink, it often really didn't. The Russian authors were considered realists, yet they wrote grand soap operas about war, Cossack nobels, murder, duels, various other adventures. George Eliot's The Mill on the Floss is consider a prime example of a realist novel, yet it concerns a hunchback, a massive flood, dramatic deaths, etc. Dickens certainly didn't write realistically about his characters and indulged almost constantly in suspense elements -- dire doings of fraud, theft, murder, etc. Mark Twain is sometimes called a realist as he wrote colloquially about grubby people in America, but he wrote grand adventure stories, wrote a novel about British princes, and a fantasy novel about King Arthur's court.

So realism is a term that really describes a narrow slice of fiction that is written colloquially and studies very mundane events. And naturalism, focusing as it does on the very negative events of life, also is often dealing with suspense and violence, as in the works of Emile Zola. While these things can be said to be "ordinary" events, as they do happen in life, suspense novels then get hauled over the coals as extraordinary for covering the same territory with often the same types of characters. And this again is effected by views of packaging and social status. As we know, many authors we consider literary heavyweights were seen simply as sensationalistic or inconsequential in their day.

Jane Austen's work might seem to fit the bill as realism, but is actually satire. Her characters were deliberately exaggerated to take digs at upper middle class gentry society, and her works were considered by gentry to be highly sophisticated, not really grubby or colloquial.

Two box systems, as I've said before, don't work for me, whether you're trying to classify groups of books by them or just aspects of storytelling. They do not allow for nuance, accuracy, or how our perceptions are often shaped by social biases. And they usually, though I know you're not doing so Laer, assign negative and positive attributes to the boxes, always making a light box and a dark -- heaven and hell over and over.

Obviously, SF and fantasy are making use of elements that extend well beyond our real world, but the use of these elements in stories, the many ways they can be employed, is much more complicated than either/or.

[Laer Carroll]

Two box systems ... don't work for me, whether you're trying to classify groups of books by them or just aspects of storytelling. They do not allow for nuance, accuracy, or how our perceptions are often shaped by social biases.

Ordinary is what is common in our lives. ... Extraordinary is not an absolute but a continuum.

Ordinary to extraordinary goes from very common (breathing, eating, etc.) to very uncommon (9/11 kamikaze attacks, Nagasaki, Hiroshima, Lincoln's assassination). Most definitely not a binary system.

[KatG]

Yes, but that still isn't attached to literary movements in the historic development of the novel. :)

What you're really talking about, if you're going with the spectrum of mundane to unusual, is intensity.

[Laer Carroll]

What you're really talking about, if you're going with the spectrum of mundane to unusual, is intensity.

This statement seems completely counter-intuitive. All sorts of ordinary things can cause intense reactions. Many extraordinary ones can cause a ho-hum response.

In the last few years I've found several uses of the usual and the unusual in writing. I doubt I've exhausted all the possibilities!

I've noticed that some parts of sci-fi and fantasy stories excite me because they are strange and wonderful. I call this the Tourist Effect. (Strange and terrifying I avoid. I'm NOT a horror fan.)

What is exotic depends on the reader. Thailand (or Virginia) is not strange to those who live there, so it takes judgment to decide what people, places, or events will be viewed as unusual.

I haven't been able to come up with a label for the opposite of the Tourist Effect. But I know it's a powerful tool. I enjoy some parts of stories because they are comfortingly familiar. Other stories, such as family sagas, evoke nostalgia in me for an imagined happier past. Straight romances give me a vacation from a world where 9/11 happened, or give me a world where 9/11 is an abstract passionless backdrop.

So I try to use both effects in my writing, the way an orchestra conductor might call for different effects in different sections of a performance.

Another use of the usual is to make the strange plausible. For instance, one of the ways my shapechangers pay for their extraordinary powers is by eating more. So I'll have a brother or a friend look askance at them during a meal when they order a large portion of food. Or wonder (perhaps privately) how they can keep such a trim figure despite their diet.

A related technique is to include a good deal of nitty-gritty in the midst of strange events. Stephen King seems to me to be a master of this.

Another use of the usual I've already mentioned. Book blurbs very often describe a story as "action packed." But I've found that non-stop action throughout an entire book diminishes the effect of each new exciting event. We may want the tension of a thriller, say, to increase as the book progresses. But this exhaustion effect fights against that. Bigger and fierier explosions don't do the job after a while.

It's a bit tricky to decide just how much detail of the usual to include. In one novel (a romance) I have two friends go to a new restaurant. One is a food and entertainment critic using her friend partly as a cover. So she suggests two quite different dishes so they can share and she can get a wider appreciation of the cuisine. I include two or three short paragraphs where the specific foods and seasonings are brought up. But to do so for every meal in a book would be boring.

I'm still learning how to use the usual and the unusual in my writing, so I'd welcome any additions and nuances on this subject.

[KatG]

I haven't been able to come up with a label for the opposite of the Tourist Effect.

The Eating Dinner Effect!

[Laer Carroll]

I haven't been able to come up with a label for the opposite of the Tourist Effect.

The Eating Dinner Effect!

You just might have something there. My two favorite TV shows are Modern Family and Big Bang Theory. Both are also very popular generally, consistently the number 1, 2, or 3 half-hour comedy shows every week (alternating with Two and a Half Men). Often they have scenes with everyone eating together - the BBT cast making up a sort of family.

Parenthood, an hour-long family show, also has scenes of communal or family eating.

Blue Bloods, an hour-long crime show about three generations of cops, with a fourth generation female child a frequent participant, ends episodes so often with a family dinner that critics have noted it.

So. Family Effect? No. Not quite good sound-bite quality. But Tomorrow is Another Day.

[virangelus]

Laer, if you do not mind my humble opinion:


I'm still learning how to use the usual and the unusual in my writing, so I'd welcome any additions and nuances on this subject.

I suppose if you tug and pull on usual and unusual in different directions, but do so on each element in moderation, you'll have something more than enjoyable and intriguing.

Speaking of eating dinner, to bring up your story about the food critic, perhaps you could think of story-writing as if it were food, ironically enough. I love garlic in my food, others cannot stand it. I love mass bouts of the weird and unusual in my storytelling as well, and want to see the most imaginative of elements at play, therefore do not read general fiction (it's boring to me). I do not have to have any"usual" elements to relate to a story necessarily. As long as I can easily follow the narrative, you can take me to any alien world and I will be game for it. Then you have my mother who can hardly watch the X-Files let alone read sci-fi.

People do often distrust the "unusual," however, or so I have noticed. Just as certain people cannot stand garlic.

Perhaps Laer, you should examine what your tastes are and ponder the fact that "birds of a feather flock together," (or people that read general fiction tend to like "this" but not "that"). Not that I feel it's a good idea to compare your story to others, but maybe if you feel you are going for an "Eat, Pray, Love" effect (for example), you can examine on Amazon what others have bought in addition to "Eat, Pray, Love." Perhaps you can draw conclusions that people who like this one story would likely buy stories similar in such fashion.

With this in mind, you might be able to gauge whether you've put too much "garlic" (read as: unusual elements) in your food or not.

Then again, I myself am unusual and have unusual thoughts. :cool:
Good luck!

[Laer Carroll]

[One] use of the usual is... to include a good deal of nitty-gritty in the midst of strange events. Stephen King seems to me to be a master of this.

But what kind of ordinary detail is useful? Just any random collection is likely to simply be boring.

I've noticed what works (for me anyway) is sensory detail. And rather than a lot of one sense I try when writing to include two or three different kinds of senses.

Scent, psychologists found, very effectively evokes memories. I also try to include the sense of touch, such as the feel of wind upon one's face. And our internal senses should not be ignored, such as a stomach cramp or a too-hot cup of coffee.