Monday 13 September 2010

Is it a science or an art-form? 13th September 2010.

Sorry, pressure of work has meant the blog has bene neglected for a couple of days.

There’s a poser for you, is what we do, as writers, a form of artistic expression, or a scientific progression?
Do we fly freeform into the storyline with no heed paid to rules or do we progress from preposition to supposition to theorem to experimental measurement to eventual proof. Given that not all forms of science actually follow the latter, don’t discount it immediately.

In my last post I talked about a particular rule that is often applied to novel length works. “The reader should be introduced to both the protagonist and the antagonist within the first three chapters and preferably given a good idea of the cause of conflict between them.”

On the face of it – it’s not a bad rule. But could you run that rule over every successful book from the Twentieth Century and would every single one of them pass? Not even close. Let’s look at one of the most successful American novels of the last century – “To Kill a Mocking Bird” – where is the antagonist in the first three chapters? Not present – in terms of the final dénouement – although you could perhaps argue the Great Depression and prejudice were in fact the real antagonists.

Before anyone adds me to the effigy burning pile, I rate this book as one of my all time favourites, and make a point of rereading it every couple of years or so.

The fact remains; there is no clearly identified antagonist in the first section of the book. Take, arguably the book voted the best British book of the Twentieth Century – Tolkien’s epic – where does the real antagonist appear? Sure we meet the protagonists early, but not the enemy.
So there we have it, two very successful books that do not fit the rule as stated above, indeed you could even say they deliberately flout the rule. You can’t even class this as down to the author being well enough known for earlier works to be able to get away with it – Harper Lee was unpublished before Mocking Bird, and Tolkien only had academic credits.
So, unlike proven science, we break the rules, sometimes extremely successfully. OS ergo, this proves we are practitioners of an art from. Q.E.D.

Sorry, it does nothing of the sort. We have arrived at a conclusion based on insufficient evidence, to quote a cliché (again) “one swallow doth not a summer make”. There are many, many rules in fiction writing, from basic spelling rules, to grammatical rules (ed: note this writer can’t use commas to save his life) to structural rules.

Note – the two books discussed above both confirm to another age old writing rule – each story must have a beginning, middle, and an end. Admittedly Tolkien took three volumes to reach that point, but some authors take even longer, the late and prolific L Ron Hubbard once taking ten volumes, and Harry Turtledove these days rarely writes single volume anythings.

There are rules in writing, just as there are rules in science. There again there are rules in most forms of art.

Personally I believe it’s a craft rather than a science. Mind you, the jury is still out...

2 comments:

  1. I think it's impossible to truly separate art and science. My background is in molecular biology, and I think the structure of DNA and the genetic code are art in their elegant simplicity. All art has rules - the Golden Mean for example. Complementary colors. Mosaic patterns based on geometry. Nothing exists in isolation.

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  2. Art is a fluid concept. Writing is structured, from spelling to punctuation to grammar, it is bound by rules. There is a time and a place to break a rule like the introduction of the antagonist. Good storytellers can do it but good writers won't. There is a difference there. And I'm not saying one is better than the other because they aren't. It's simply a difference in approach. Like the difference between sculpture and abstract painting.

    And Jennie is right. The science and structure of writing offers the framework for artful storytelling. Without one, can the other truly exist? You can tell the most wonderful tale, but without the basic framework to support it, you're only going to garner ridicule and rejection letters. You can write the most perfect story and garner no interest because it doesn't have the fire of imagination and artistry. The craft requires both...

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