Holly Lisle vs. RTD

[rabid1st]

Holly Lisle has an ax to grind against what she terms GLS, Genuis-Level Suckitude. She points out that many Pulitzer Prize winning works actually suck. And she's right about that, in my less than humble opinion. But her rules for Suckitude have a particularly telling rule for most of the SciFi "genius" writers out there. She has a rule against hope and one against coherence. There is even a rule against plot. But I immediately think of Rose and Donna and for that matter the Tenth Doctor when I read this rule...

XII. Thou shalt equate self-determination with heresy.

Self-determination is hope on steroids. Self-determination states that things could be better than they are, and believes the individual can do something to make them get better. In permitting your characters to express self-determination, you would be suggesting that your characters -- those malcontent bastards -- might in some way wish to see their worlds improve, or might even take a hand in improving them, or might have confidence in their own competence or the functioning of their own minds.

Read the rest of the rules or more stuff by Holly Lisle at her site...

http://hollylisle.com/index.php/Workshops/how-to-write-suckitudinous-fiction.html

Comments

[phdelicious.livejournal.com]

I haven't read much of Lisle's work and I was only moderately impressed with what I have read, but boy howdy did she nail RTD (and a couple others) with that list.

[rabid1st.livejournal.com]

I don't know that Lisle is that good myself, but she is a good writing teacher. She knows her pretentious "genius-level suckitude." And RTD and Ron Moore and Joss Whedon are all masters of the art of suckitude.

[phdelicious.livejournal.com]

I had to think about RDM and Joss for a while. I agree that RDM, when you consider BSG as a whole, certainly qualifies in more than half the categories. I'm still undecided about Joss.

[rabid1st.livejournal.com]

It is possible that Joss doesn't quite qualify in some of these categories. I tend to lump Joss in with the crowd, because he reset Buffy back to 15 years old after all we had been through with her. And I could see that lack of development in his other shows to the point that he became very predictable (for me, at least).

[phdelicious.livejournal.com]

My problem with placing Joss is that I haven't actually seen all of Buffy or Angel and Firefly, Dr Horrible and Dollhouse straddle the lines/categories.

[thisficklemob.livejournal.com]

Funny! Though, I do detect a hint of degree/award envy. ;)

[rabid1st.livejournal.com]

There is definitely a hint of that. She gets a bit nastier than I would about a few of the literary failings. But speaking only for myself, I really do not envy the Pulitzer Prize winners or literary darlings very much at all. I honestly can't stand much of their work and would only read it if I was forced to do so. I do feel that if it wasn't honored and the authors lionized by the literary world it would never be read. The only thing I do feel bitter about is that the authors are lauded, when, in my less than humble opinion, they are producing pure (and often tedious) drivel.

Which is not to say there are not authors who make me green with jealousy...they just don't write literary fiction.

I recently read both the Pulitzer Prize winning "Olive Kitteridge" and then the "fun, light book" called "Major Pettigrew's Last Stand" and I found that the way the same issues were dealt with in both books clearly showed Major Pettigrew to be the superior work. My point was simply that no real people resemble the people in Olive Kitteridge. All of the characters are one dimensional and drift aimlessly through stories with no real plot to them. I couldn't make myself care. And yet, somewhere, someone was thinking, "Now, this is the book of the year." SIGH!

[thisficklemob.livejournal.com]

I admit, I probably haven't read a Pulitzer-winning novel since college... if then. (I'm sure some of what we read were award winners, but who knows what kind. The Book Award, maybe.)

But it sounds like these books are written by/for/about people with anhedonia. :) (And, hey! You've compared my writing to Joss's. Should I be offended?)

[(Anonymous)]

I think the books are written in the mistaken belief that there is something lofty in recognizing the futility of human endeavors. One of the reasons I hate that these books are prized is that the fatalistic view isn't particularly sophisticated at all. It is the shallowest level of existence to simply observe that "It is a hard life, a hard life, a very hard life. It's a hard life wherever you go." I would rather writers at least moved along to the second idea in that song and tried to do more than observe and report on the obvious. I will agree that the reporting on the obvious was stellar in Olive Kitteridge, but I began to be impatient with being told over and over again that Olive was petty and mean-spirited and oh, by the way so was everyone else so let's all just except that these people are very, very human.

My problem is that's where the author's insight stopped dead. Okay, I agree, people can be petty and mean-spirited and that's very human. But so what? If I knew that already, why even bother reading such a book? To confirm that other people can also form shallow observations? No real person would ever been so unremittingly shallow. I've known narcissist and playboys and one or two sociopaths and none of them exhibited the anhedonia in Olive Kitteridge. And that's because Olive Kitteridge has lousy characterization. The book is full of one dimensional people who will never change and never deviate from their little groove.

As for you and Joss, I probably meant that you had his way with the characters. Overall, JW and RTD were both excellent in the original creation of their characters, but they did both refuse to let the characters grow in their natural direction. Buffy was returned to helpless childhood and Rose was forced into a marriage by the one person who would never have done that to her, except that RTD wrote it that way. The one saving grace for RTD is that he admitted he's made a mistake and he knew for sure that Rose would never love the man he forced upon her. JW sadly never realized what he'd done wrong. But that doesn't mean he created a cardboard Buffy...he didn't...he just tried to stuff her back into her original packaging when he took away her self-determination.

[rabid1st.livejournal.com]

Whoops! That was me with the long explanation there.

[thisficklemob.livejournal.com]

I think you meant it in the "I shall keel you with my angst" way, but only for the one story. *g*

And, Booker Prize. Not Book Prize. I are Englush majer.

I haven't read Olive Kitteridge, but I can actually imagine a book about stagnant and petty people being well-written... because not everybody does move in a positive direction. But you have to have insight into how people think.

One book that does rather follow the "no heroes" rule that I really liked was The Penelopiad by Margaret Atwood. It's a retelling of The Odyssey from Penelope's POV, and I started off thinking it was going to be a "Odysseus is a dickbag" story, because, um, that's kind of obvious to anyone who reads the original with even a bit of feminist sensibilities. But, she didn't take the easy way and make Penelope the noble and hard-done-by wife of the original, either; it made them both flawed humans.

But, there is plot. And theme. And such. *g*

[rabid1st.livejournal.com]

Yes, well it is more than not moving in a positive direction. It is the ability to inspire the readers to care about that stagnation. The complete stagnation of the entire writing process is what sets us off, I think.

I always return to Gone With The Wind where we find a lot of petty characters who end up much the same as when they started the book, despite many character developing plot points. I think what makes that ART is that the writer understands what she is saying about these people and their world view. She doesn't keep the people sheltered from the events...instead, she shows us that these people are coping in a way that is natural to them, by refusing to accept the reality of their circumstances.

That is a completely different kettle of fish, in my view, than simply thinking that recording Scarlett's lack of development is all you need to do as a writer. Saying Scarlett is selfish, look at her being petty here, can you believe it? doesn't really help us understand selfishness. Put another way, Scarlett behaves as she does because that is part of the story and her lack of development is all the more tragic because she is a more complex character, too. If all she'd been was selfish and childish and nothing had happened to her, I think she would have quickly faded from our memory.

[sensiblecat.livejournal.com]

It occurs to me that RTD was frequently happy to sacrifice character on the altar of Rule XII. Example - Jack Harkness was the most proactive character imaginable until the end of POTW, when he meekly allowed himself to be left behind and entered a new phase of his existence as the Doctor's bitch.

And how much more powerful it would have been if it had been Martha's own idea to walk the earth and build up people's hope to defeat the Master. Instead, she endured all that hardship to carry out the Doctor's orders, only for him to beg the bastard not to die on him.

No wonder she left after that.

[rabid1st.livejournal.com]

Yes, it is true. And, needless to say, I agree with Holly that it is a sign of bad writing when your characters must act as Muppets.

I did LOL at the Comic Relief skit Moff did though when he admitted that Amy was a bit of a Muppet. It gave me some hope for the next season. However, I must say the time play aspect of the skit didn't do much to reassure me that Moff is going to stop playing his "I'm so clever" card at the expense of the show. There are only so many times viewers will put up with the time/space slight of hand as his answer to everything. He's used it several times now...and I would bet you he will be using it again to "explain" River.

Rae

[sensiblecat.livejournal.com]

I found the Comic Relief skits derivative and depressing. There was nothing about them that made me tingle with anticipation for the next series. It depresses me that SM's idea of a liberated woman (in Amy's case at least) is someone who dresses like a slut, and what little plot there was boiled down to a bit of Total Bollocks Overdrive, Amy flirting with herself and a rerun of the Garden of Eden story - the woman tempted me, so it's all her fault.

I do take these things seriously, don't I?