I'm in a fiction writing class in school right now. It's literary fiction, of course, because people at school seem to have a really low opinion of genre fiction. Even though that's where all the fame and money and respect is. If you write literary fiction, you get branded as a hipster.
Anywho, I'm in this literary fiction class, and we're talking about characterization. We've spent so much time talking about it without mentioning the most important aspect of it, in fact, that I think I'm going to flip. It's related to the suggestion that genre fiction doesn't have good characterization, and that makes me upset as well.
I mean, yes, typically everyone in genre fiction (more in fantasy than sci-fi) is based on some kind of trope. But that doesn't mean there's no characterization in the story. It just means most of it is related to inanimate objects.
This is most prevalent in sci-fi, I think. Obvious examples are the Serenity and the starship Enterprise. Obvious examples from Fantasy would be the one ring of power or the Millennium Falcon. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that Sauron's ring has more characterization than pretty much any person or thing in the rest of Middle Earth's lore.
So don't tell me that I can't write genre fiction seriously. Don't tell me that "oh, all the characters are so two dimensional." Because my ship is better developed than your entire book. Seriously. I've got blueprints detailed enough to build a scale model of the thing, and pages upon pages of bizarre quirks and flaws that give it it's own personality.
Thoughts? What's your favorite inanimate "character?"
Anywho, I'm in this literary fiction class, and we're talking about characterization. We've spent so much time talking about it without mentioning the most important aspect of it, in fact, that I think I'm going to flip. It's related to the suggestion that genre fiction doesn't have good characterization, and that makes me upset as well.
I mean, yes, typically everyone in genre fiction (more in fantasy than sci-fi) is based on some kind of trope. But that doesn't mean there's no characterization in the story. It just means most of it is related to inanimate objects.
This is most prevalent in sci-fi, I think. Obvious examples are the Serenity and the starship Enterprise. Obvious examples from Fantasy would be the one ring of power or the Millennium Falcon. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that Sauron's ring has more characterization than pretty much any person or thing in the rest of Middle Earth's lore.
So don't tell me that I can't write genre fiction seriously. Don't tell me that "oh, all the characters are so two dimensional." Because my ship is better developed than your entire book. Seriously. I've got blueprints detailed enough to build a scale model of the thing, and pages upon pages of bizarre quirks and flaws that give it it's own personality.
Thoughts? What's your favorite inanimate "character?"
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