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McAnally's (The Community Pub) => Author Craft => Topic started by: Dom on October 09, 2006, 12:44:21 AM
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Yikes, I seem to be posting a lot on this board. If I'm being annoying, tell me to stop!
I just keep getting ideas to talk about, and everyone here tends to have good replies. :)
Anyway, every so often, on this or that subject, someone mentions how they don't like labels. Particularly artists of any stripe--"I don't think my art can be labeled", "I don't think I fit in this category". They don't like people using words for what they do. There seems to generally speaking be antipathy about someone else daring to describe something of theirs.
And I CAN see why that happens. When you have a word for something, you stop thinking about it, and just apply the word, along with your own pre-defined notions and thoughts about it, to the next thing it fits, and boom! The artist or person or whoever it is applied to is seemingly stuck in a box--which is suicide for any artist.
But on the flip side...how do you talk about something if you do not have a word for it? Are you supposed to tiptoe around things, and get confused when you are in a discussion about it because people aren't agreeing on the jargon? Should artists of any stripe expect other artists and fans to behave in this way? Even though it's the nature of language to exchange ideas, which means you need to have words to stand for those ideas?
As someone who writes, I like words for things. I especially like new words for things that need a word for them, or need a better way to say them. My favorite example is "frex". A lot of my friends on Livejournal have started to pick this one up, because it's better and easier to type in a blog entry then "For example" and "IE" (which are the two I used before then). And of course when I write about some fantasy or alien thing, I need a new word because there isn't one. It becomes second nature for anyone working with SFF to creature new words. So on a personal level, I don't understand completely, or perhaps I just don't agree with, the antipathy towards labels.
Of course, I also understand (as someone into SFF) the malleability (sp?) of words. Language changes. And even though the written language is usually a step behind spoken language, it changes too. "Live with it!" So perhaps my outlook is different because I feel as if I have a possible influence on the language just by sitting here typing things that other people will read and perhaps, if they like how I write something, pick up. Someone else might see words as cold, rigid, something they can't change, and with that outlook I could see labels as being much more problematic for them, because they'd feel powerless in changing them.
So I suppose I see both sides, but ultimately feel that labels are needed if anyone else is able to discuss something and exchange ideas as people are wont to do. Tiptoing around it and refusing to pin down the right jargon for something just complicates understanding between people.
Anyway...my thoughts on labels. What are your thoughts?
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Stop.
Just kidding. ;)
I don't really know what you're talking about. I think most authors are just clamoring to be part of one genre or another. It seems like every writer I talk to these days is writing 'vampire cyberpunk' or 'post-apocalyptic new age hyper speculative semi-fiction' and endless other meaningless variations of meaningless labels.
I consider these people to be in love with the idea that they're a writer to the point that they cease to actually be one.
What's more, the premises for most books these people come up with are ludicrously simple and overdone. Things like: "A vampire falls in love with an alien who eats the brains of children to survive. Together they travel the universe, solving mysteries and sampling the sentient cuisine of various planets."
That would probably be called, "metahorrorenigmapunk,' by the way.
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I've been running into a problem with labels lately. One of my friends is having problems because some people don't like her art, labeling it as "anime-style crap." It's gotten to the point she gets upset anytime anyone refers to her drawings style using "anime" as an adjective. However, her drawing style pretty much a simple anime style that focuses more on the feeling or idea she's trying to get across than form. There's really no other way to describe it. We need labels to categorize stuff. It's just how things are. A problem only results when people start expecting everything with a certain genre or style label to be exactly the same, and that if they hate one thing filed under that category, that they'll hate them all.
terroja, I haven't really met anyone claiming to write 'vampire cyberpunk.' Instead all the people I meet like to claim that they're amazingly deep, dark poets! It's gotten to the point I refuse to help people proof-read anymore because everything they give me is all about death, somehow relating a muffin to the apocalypse or something similar. It's not because they're trying to express something, no, it's all because they're writing to be labeled a certain way. [begin rant about poetry you are welcome to skip] And people wonder why I refuse to read most poetry... they use it as a license to make no sense at all because they are being "artistic." Never mind THEY can't even tell you what the heck they're saying. [/end rant about poetry you are welcome to skip]
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That's not really a rant. A rant should be at least 5 or 6 sentences (or 1 whopper of a run on sentence) long.
You've never met anyone who made up annoying genres for their work? You must travel in totally different writer circles than I do, because it's rampant.
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All right, so it's a mini rant on poetry. Picky picky. ;)
You may just hang out with more actual writers than I do, terroja. I have only found a grand total of two people that honestly write stories in my neck of the woods that I can talk to often- most of them either write songs or poetry and put story writing on the back burner. A majority of them refuse to even explain what they wrote, let alone assign some sort of genre to it.
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I don't run into too many authors like that, but then I tend to stick to writer communities that have a good portion of serious amateur authors. And I also tend to ignore the strange ones, so perhaps they are doing this, but because they're metaphorically on fire and doing cartwheels, I don't see it because I'm ignoring the drama.
I do run into a lot of artist types who hate labels, though. It's rampant in the music world, I know. And I know of a digital artist who hates to be called "goth" (although...well, she is, sorta...).
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Well, to me, "labels" are merely genres and subgenres. A label would tie one story to another story, not to another type. A label would be more like "This is just like Buffy, only mixed with Terminator." A "cyberpunk vampire story" would be a subgenre of paranormal. [shrug]
Knowing what you write is truly critical to an author who wants to get published. It's difficult to find an agent or a publisher if you don't know where in the bookstore a book is going to be shelved. At LEAST you have to know the shelf. It HELPS to know the type of books being put out by a line. A mystery is a mystery--expect when it's a police procedural, or a cozy, or an amateur sleuth. You won't sell a Wambaugh true-crime fiction to a cozy house. Won't happen. So, yes, labels matter. Genres matter because it's what the industry recognizes.
I like to push boundaries with our books. But first you have to know what the boundaries ARE. Words have power. So I'm happy to push an "edgy male POV werewolf story without much romance" to a romance line. If the writing is good, the publisher will FIND a home for it. A good friend with a book out this month was regularly publishing mysteries with a large publisher. But she wanted to do something new--something darker. She proposed a new urban fantasy, but it's not QUITE an urban fantasy because it's got both dark and light elements. And it's sort of steam of consciousness writing, from both first and third person. But the editor loved it and it found a home in a brand new, shiny line that the publisher started just to house it. And now they're looking for more as the book is starting to resonate with readers.
So new authors in this new line are going to be "labeled" by the first book. And I think that's an AWESOME thing! Labels are wonderful things! ;D
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"This is just like Buffy, only mixed with Terminator."[shrug]
Oh god. Anyone who descirbes their work as something meets something else should be dragged into the street and shot. I remember I was at a small writing conference a few months back when someone told me that their work was like "Jaws meets Dances With Wolves" Needless to say, I cursed him out and threatened him with bodily harm.
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"This is just like Buffy, only mixed with Terminator."[shrug]
Oh god. Anyone who descirbes their work as something meets something else should be dragged into the street and shot. I remember I was at a small writing conference a few months back when someone told me that their work was like "Jaws meets Dances With Wolves" Needless to say, I cursed him out and threatened him with bodily harm.
LOL! I thought that was "high concept" and what everyone was looking for as a way to sell their work.
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Yep. A high concept of a novel is a label. I'm not terribly fond of them, but it seems like editors at group pitch sessions are. [shrug] Go with what works when you only have five sentences to interest an agent or editor at a group session.