What I Want From Fiction

I want different things from fiction than the market currently provides, at least in any great abundance.

For example, I don’t enjoy atmospherics. I especially dislike long passages describing a place everyone is already vaguely familiar with (even more so when the process is used by the author solely to demonstrate verbal wizardry.)

Though it is not recent, take this passage from Brideshead Revisited:

“Oxford, in those days, was still a city of aquatint. In her spacious and quiet streets men walked and spoke as they had done in Newman’s day; her autumnal mists, her grey springtime, and the rare glory of her summer days—such as that day—when the chestnut was in flower and the bells rang out high and clear over her gables and cupolas, exhaled the soft vapours of a thousand years of learning.”
— Evelyn Waugh

That is beautiful, highly evocative writing. It is much better than anything I can produce.

But it bores me when books go on and on that way.

(Also, please note that I’m passing up an easy ‘soft vapours’ joke about Waugh’s prose in an effort to seem mature. It is a moment of personal growth.)

What about emotional depth and backstory?

I don’t particularly wish to relate to the characters in the books I read. Nor do I overly concern myself with any character’s feelings. I certainly don’t wish to despise any book’s protagonist, but that doesn’t mean I must identify with the character in order to enjoy a piece of writing.

(This might be because I mostly read nonfiction. Most historical figures are not highly relatable. For example, I can read about someone like Julius Caesar without identifying with him in the slightest. So why should a fictional character deserve greater emotional investment on my part?)

What about literature?

I don’t want the author’s voice to disappear behind the characters. I don’t want to be moved or elevated by a story. (I suppose it is nice if a sympathetic protagonist learns or grows within a plot, but I’m not going to read a book for that thrill alone.)

And I definitely don’t want to complete a fictional work, only to sit in a corner depressed for hours over the suffering of an entirely imaginary person. If I want grimdark, I’ll catch up on world news.

What about love?

Ninety-nine percent of the time, humans interact in ways that have nothing to do with romance. We deal with one another at work, at home and in public without romantic drama. Why, then, should comedic authors feel compelled to shoehorn a love interest into their stories?

If, in the midst of a comedy, a protagonist becomes romantically entangled, that’s absolutely fine. But if the book couldn’t exist without the love story subplot, it isn’t a comedy…it’s a romance novel. And while that’s obviously perfectly acceptable, I personally don’t want to read or write romance novels. 

(Unless I’m parodying them. Then they’re fair game.)

Am I alone?

There is a fair amount of biting satire floating around, but lighthearted, farcical works seem scarce. (Either that, or I am dreadful at finding them.)

I’ve tried to figure out why nobody writes them anymore. The genre still thrives on screen and stage. The public still likes the concept. Why aren’t authors attempting them in book form?

One theory I have is that Wodehouse so dominated the market for most of the twentieth century that anybody else writing lighthearted comedy came across as a try-hard imitator.

With no future generations of writers being trained, an entire literary genre died alongside him.

(It is the Beatles effect. After they introduced a bunch of new concepts—like orchestral music—into mainstream rock, there was a period of time when people felt embarrassed for any band pretentious enough to add strings to their own sound. “You, sir or madam, are no Beatle!”)

Must everyone drop their currently successful approaches to reading and writing in order to cater to me?

No.

I make no claim that other people should want what I want from a book. That would be absurd.

Romance, fantasy, LitRPG…there are many different types of quality literature for readers to enjoy. I’m glad for anyone who finds a genre they prefer.

All that I’m saying is that I hope more books of the style I like hit the market.