Better Fiction

Back in 1962 I was one of several aspiring writers who got together by

mail to critique each other's manuscripts, with an eye to perfecting them

so they would become publishable, much as you folk of Better-Fiction are

doing now. In the end most of us succeeded and I regard it as an

excellent process that significantly helped me finally break into print

after eight years of trying alone. So I applaud what you are doing here;

it can help.



However all was not always positive. Ambitious folk - and what is more

ambitious than seeking publication? - can have strong drives and extreme

sensitivities. You can praise a writer's effort, but the moment you

suggest it is flawed, he/she is wounded and apt to strike back at your

manuscript, and the fight is on. Writers should know better, but somehow

don't. This happens even among professionals. We had some beautiful

quarrels, and in the end became alienated to small or large extent. You

have to watch that.



Another thing I encountered was the challenge of success. When it became

apparent that I was placing more of my pieces than the others were, I

became more of a target. Each person feels that he should be the

deserving one, and privately resents the success of others if they are

greater than his own. It seems impossible to avoid. I have been there,

and in retrospect have to say that I was as mean spirited as any.



Another thing is honest difference in perspective. For example, the

males in our group liked sexy fiction; the females didn't. One woman

wrote to me when commenting on my story "Ship of Mustard" wherein the men

are shy flowers and the women are sexually agressive, in essence: "Of

course sex is part of life, but can you look yourself in the mirror after

writing this?" She thought she was being objective. So I plead for

special tolerance: try to respect the material of others on its own

terms, even if it annoys or unsettles you. You can say, for example "This

piece is not to my taste; I don't like the idea of raping children. But

it might be more effective if you showed it from a single consistent

viewpoint, instead of three at once." Sex is by no means the only thing

that can set people off.



Mainly, steel yourself, knowing that if the process is to succeed, you

will have flaws and outright blunders pointed out to you. Don't get mad -

revise them. And if you see one person making an unfair comment on

another's piece, don't hesitate to say so, politely. "With all due

respect, I do not feel that her story is worthless trash simply because

it has no sex; there are other things in life." Always try to be polite;

I speak as one who learned that the hard way, by alienating worthwhile

writers. No one view is likely to be definitive; cross-critiquing of

comments can be extremely helpful, even if it leads to fights.





Piers Anthony

Wade,

Tell Mr Anthony thank you for us. His thoughts and tips are very much appreciated.

Many thanks to Piers Anthony for taking the time to lend us some very useful advice, and also to you, Wade, for all the hard work you do around here.

I loved so much of what Mr. Anthony had to say. I think his experience has been shared by many over the years. The paragraph that begins with "Another thing is honest difference in perspective", however, is one point that I don't fully agree with.

There are two different sides to this. One is Mr. Anthony's, the side of a writer whose work was judged for its subject matter instead of it literary quality. The other is the side of a writer friend of mine who said she was compelled to leave her last writer's group because some of the others were submitting (semi-)pornographic material that even embarresed the authors.

If every writer's group was obligated to be open to every possible type of fiction, then people like my writer friend (or myself, for that matter) would have nowhere to go. If we didn't want to read such material, we would be forced to go it on our own. I think, rather, a group can set a simple, reasonable standard. Those who don't like that standard have a world of options before them. This group, on the other hand, is all we have.

The standards by which this writer's forum are run should be open to debate, but we should not be expected to drop those standards entirely.

As I said, I appreciate what Mr. Anthony had to say, and he was more than gernerous to take the time to write to us. In the end, however, I felt it was important that I explain where I differed in opinion on this point. I look forward to hearing your thoughts on this.

Thank you for being a part of this workshop. Your input has made this a special place to be.

Wade Ogletree

I've got very little experience in the workshop approach and no actual creative writing training. I don't remember the rules of grammer at this stage, assuming I ever actually knew more than the most basic of them. Never took a literature course and, though I've always wanted to write for publication, I never did much to prepare myself for it. There are always reasons for these things and looking back I guess mine were pretty good, a few people convinced me that learning to write was a low priority because it would never pay off financially.

Maybe that's so and maybe it isn't but I'm glad now to have found people with a similar interest and to be able to work in this environment.

When Mr Anthony discussed his own early sixties writing group and it's tie in to this site it filled me with encouragement, as did many of the other things he said.

Essentially, what I came away with is, work hard, and honestly, at it and the thing will happen. A good message, I'd say.

-- Regarding sex, profanity and violence, I guess I'm getting old because I find myself not overly turned on by erotica for the sake of erotica. Violence -- I've seen a lot of it during my life and it turns up often in my stories, but I don't think it's ever the focal point, nor is it ever described beyond the bare minimum. What's to describe? It isn't actually an interesting subject on it's own. Profanity, I believe in an explanation I read from Charles Dickens, that it should be used only to realistically represent a specific character. And sparingly even in that instance. I've seen a number of movies on cable that I've turned off because the cursing was really irritating for me. I'm certainly no stranger to it, not after having spent years working on a busy lower Manhattan loading dock. And the truth is, not even the least educated blue collar type I've known curses as much as the salesmen in Glen Gary, Glen Rose.

Wade,

I'm a bit of a different breed. It's very hard to offend me, so I don't have that problem, but I try to be sensative to others who do. I have no problem with limiting stories on this site to PG-13 or R rated material--if I feel like writing something along more graphic lines(I haven't yet, but I won't limit myself) I just won't post it.

I think Mr Anthony's point was not so much just about sex--that was just an example of one of the things that people have strong differences of opinion about. For myself, I have strong opinions about politics, but I wouldn't bash a story that differed greatly from my own political views. Same with religion. As he said, sex isn't the only thing that can set people off.

I really like the system they use at Critters--an automated program detects adult language and posts a warning at the begining of the stories, plus most of the authors have the courtesy to post their own warnings at the beginning of the stories if they contain graphic violence or sexual content. That way people can avoid stories that might offend them.

I follow more Raph's way of thinking. While I won't limit myself - there are certain things that I write that I wouldn't post here as a matter of respect. Everybody has something they feel strongly about - sex, politics, religion usually being at the top of the list.

A sidenote on profanity - I strongly believe it's a matter of what you do and where you live and what you're parents were like. I've a fairly foul mouth myself - but so did my mom. My husband's got a mouth on him too - but he was a Marine, so were his father and grandfather. Living in CT, I didn't hear much foul language. I was a secretary and my husband was in natural foods. We moved to WV and the language here would make most people blush. Especially with my husband working in a metalurgy, it's almost as bad as the language I heard in college, where all kids think it's the only way to communicate. Profanity exists and is used on a regular basis - and there are some stories, some characters for whom it is crucial. It's not pretty but neither are a great many things that happen everyday. But all that aside, it's those characters of mine I won't post here because the edit would take too long. Honestly, if someone would start shooting at me, you'd better believe that I'm going to say a bit more than darn.

OK - I guess I've had that rant pent up for a while, scuse'.

~S

Some very good input:

Funneling the thoughts above, this is what I come up with:

1) For explicit sex and extreme violence, the "R" limit remains. (I started this site with a seperate posting section for even "R"-rated material, but I've since let that go.

2) For borderline content, author-posted warnings would be a kind gesture.

3) As far as language, my language filter may garble your best curses, but other than that, don't worry about it. Let the filter deal with it. (But, on the other hand, let the filter deal with it. Don't get tricky with charachter-substitution and outsmart the filter.)

How does that sound? Any suggestions.

Works for me.

Wade and all,
I like the intelligence of the man. I think it is the common denominator for successful writers across genres. A great deal of what we call intelligence is facility with language. Mr. Anthony certainly has that talent.

A story I sent out a while ago called for scenes in which sexual desire was a driving force for one of the characters. I did not have difficulty describing the desire in a way that the reader could feel it himself/herself. It did not require the description of genitalia or dialogue involving taboo words. Leaving things to the imagination of the reader is far more descriptive/arousing than graphic detail, in my opinion.

Cursing by characters may seem appropriate when they express anger. But in stories, curse words only distract the reader from the true emotions the writer is trying to convey, again in my opinion.

I would just like to express thanks to Mr. Anthony for coming by and sharing some experience and insight with us. I was a little girl when I read Blue Adept and it was one of those influential books from my youth that I'll never forget.
How wonderful that he took the time to come by!

~Tanya

The strange thing is, as a kid-teenager and in my twenties, I used to gorge myself on science fiction stories. Piers was always one of my favorites, along with Damon Knight, Harlan Ellison (who says he really writes fantasy), Theodore Sturgeon, Poul Anderson and all the others too numerous to name, along with the icons like Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein, Ray Bradbury and those others who, in the sixties, were seen as The Old Guard.

But the odd thing is, aside from a short novel by Damon Knight The Earth Quarter and a short story also by him, To Serve Man, I have a problem remembering the titles of their stories. I'm pretty sure that's because I read too many of them in too short a time and obscured each other.

In any event, I know I've read a lot of Piers Anthony's works, enjoyed them immenselyand they had a great influence on my love of writing.

Does a writer have something worthwhile to say about sex, or is there just sex in his story? I think a sociological perspective wherein women are the aggressors would make good science fiction, as in the case of the story Anthony mentions. A story like that would need no other sf element--isn't sociology a science? And there's what's called the "life sciences" too.

Piers Anthony has listed and reviewed our site at http://hipiers.com.

Our once and former host went down when he tried to visit, and most of the review has to do with that, unfortunately. Still, we're there.

Wade