Plot Is Overrated

I'm going to be salty for a hot second and say that, even though I would very much appreciate an anonymous beta reader sometimes, I don't really trust most people younger than 25 because they haven't yet developed a broad understanding of what prose fiction is and how it's different from screenwriting.

The comment I always get from amateur writers is that my stories don't have enough "action." Which is bizarre. Like, this is a short story about overcoming grief, Karen. Or let's say it's a story about the quiet dread of realizing that your parents aren't infallible; it doesn't need explosions.

This is not to say that I don't enjoy writing plot and action (and sex), but rather that I don't think it's absolutely necessary for all work at all times. The same goes for the demand to have a flashy opening "hook" to a story, which I think is a sort of brain fungus people get from reading too much YA fiction to the exclusion of everything else.

Honestly, plot is overrated. What happens in The Makioka Sisters, one of my favorite novels? 540 pages of nothing. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, one of everyone's favorite novels? 620 pages of nothing. Yotsubato, the critically lauded and award-winning manga that is universally beloved by people in every single country on this earth? 15 volumes of nothing. The reason everyone loves novels by Stephen King so much isn't because of the scary things that happen, but because of the hundreds of pages when nothing happens at all. You just want to spend time in those vaguely creepy small towns with weird and interesting characters.

Character is just as important as plot. I would even argue that character is actually more important than plot, especially for older and more experienced readers who have passed the point of being surprised by any given plot development.

I don't mean to suggest that literary fiction can't have a strong plot (because just look at Octavia Butler and Margaret Atwood), but rather that a story doesn't need "action" to be compelling to an audience. Hollywood screenwriting is fun, but prose fiction has its own distinct set of pleasures. Not everything can or should be Harry Potter.

If I were going to inch even further along this precarious branch I'm perched on, I might even say that the extreme de-emphasis of character is one of the main reasons why YA fiction writers are so awful and cruel to one another regarding matters of "representation," which is all they have to distinguish themselves when the over-saturated market doesn't allow them to write flawed characters who are actually interesting and memorable.

Listen She's Not Wrong

Twitter is garbage, and so can you.

This gets really interesting for about ten minutes around the twelve minute mark.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7aWz8q_IM4&t=2s

I'm going to get myself super canceled for a moment and say that this is one of the main reasons I stopped posting on my book review blog.

The truth is that there are horrible inequalities of power in the publishing industry, and these inequalities lead to a lot of mediocre work being highly praised and publicized, often at the expense of more interesting and (I think) more deserving work that is frequently ignored by everyone, often including the press itself. Unfortunately, the internet hate machine has now gotten to the point where saying something like "this translation isn't great" can be regarded as full-stop problematic when the original author isn't white, even if the translator, editor, and publicist are all straight white American or British men who are using "diversity" as a mask to legitimate work that would otherwise be extremely objectionable.

And even when reviewing a book I actually enjoyed, to offer a small criticism like "there's a touch of transphobia in the treatment of a certain minor character" can become a discursive landmine. I know this because it happened to me, and both my delicate feelings and my sense of identity as a nonbinary gay person took serious damage in the process.

I'm not trying to suggest that sensitivity to issues like cultural relativism isn't pertinent to reading stories originating outside of mainstream North American corporate media, but rather... Idk. I've seen people on Twitter get in prolonged debates over whether not allowing people to wear agehao clothing covered with goofy manga orgasm faces at anime cons (that aren't actually happening this year because of the pandemic) is "cultural appropriation," and I just don't think these sorts of absurdist flamewars benefit anyone other than Twitter itself.

Anyway, best line: "Actually *wink* it's about ethics in fanfiction."