(Plot+Characters)*Voice^2=Literature?

[Lindolirian]

Speaking of the definitions of literature, there is something that has been growing on me for some time. My AP English 12 teacher is somewhat of a mathemetician when it comes to literature and it really bugs me. For her, a good story comes from the Five Act Formula (she doesn't really call it this) with an exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution. Add a protagonist, conflict, and antagonist, a few side characters (better if it includes a pretty woman), throw in a pinch of what my teacher likes to call "narrative voice" which includes tone, diction, syntax, and word choice. Foreshadowing and flashbacks give it some zest, too. And voila! Without even trying, you have plugged and chugged a New York bestseller! Funny, I had always considered writing to be an art rather than a algebra formula.
I of course realize all of those factors are rather necessary to a story and it would be unintelligible without them, but the way that she teaches my peers and me to "plug and chug" (as my pre-calc teacher says when it comes to formulas) really bothers my sense of literature and what it could become if this is really to be believed and followed to the very word.
Now as for classifying books as "epics" or whatnot, (clickey) it's perfectly understandable to analyze the content of them once they are written, but to look for the final product before you begin is not something most (good)writers do. Look at Tolkien. "In a hole in the ground, there lived a hobbit." We all know he had no idea where that was going and one look at the Histories of Middle Earth will dispell any doubt.
My point is really to ask you whether or not you notice this in some writers and whether or not it affects how much you enjoy reading their works. And also to probe for other unfortunate students who have teachers like mine...those who could really use a good lesson from the greats who frequent these misty graves.

[The Saucepan Man]

It sounds to me like your teacher's "Five Act Formula" is more suited to Hollywood blockbusters than literature.

My understanding is that LotR is replete with examples of how, in literary theory, one is supposed not to write a book. I am sure that I will be corrected if I am wrong (Bêthberry? ), but I believe that the separation of TTT and RotK into two distinct halves (Frodo and Sam/Aragron and co) would originally have had literary theorists tearing their hair out. His use of "archaic" language too has, I believe, been criticised as inappropriate in a "modern" novel. I am sure that there are other examples.

Of course there are tried and tested formulae, but it is in challenging and redefining traditional structures that the most groundbreaking works can arise. Tolkien started out writing for his own pleasure, to provide a setting for the languages that he had invented, and therefore had no mind to resort to literary formulae. The fact that LotR has become one of the most popular novels of modern times rather gives the lie to the argument that there is only one way to write a book.

I would add that the need for "blockbuster" films to fit the preconceptions of studios and investors as to what audiences want lies behind many of the changes made in the adaption of LotR to the silver screen. Jackson does rather "buck the trend" in one or two places (such as in insisting on the inclusion of Frodo's departure to the West and, indeed, in carrying out much of the filming for all three films in one sitting), but on the whole, he had to stay within established boundaries in order to get the financial backing that he needed.

[tar-ancalime]

Ooh, this sort of thing really frosts my muffins!

What some teachers don't seem to be able to get across to their classes (I'd say they don't understand it, but I'm feeling a little too charitable for that today) is that while many works of literature exhibit some structural similarities, and while it's always important to study the basic ideas that recur again and again in things like form, character, plot, etc., adherence to some "formula" dreamed up by an analyst is NEVER what makes literature great. Students must have a grounding in the language of the art form, which is why teachers tend to focus on these things, but teachers are sorely remiss when they discuss conventions of form at the expense of probing into what makes each individual work of literature great. That's where a literature class can really soar--a teacher guiding a discussion about the individuality of a work.

EDIT: Hear, hear!

[Boromir88]

"plug and chug"

My Geometry teacher would say the same thing!!!

Anyway...

His use of "archaic" language too has, I believe, been criticised as inappropriate in a "modern" novel. I am sure that there are other examples.

Very true SpM, I remember Tolkien having trouble with them editors. With the whole "Elfin" "Elfish" fiasco.
I say Elfin you say Elven. I say Elfish you say Elvish.

There's two keys to being a "good," author, as I was taught. You either "go with the flow," and continue on with the popular trend at the time. Whatever the literary trend be at that time you continue to write in that fashion, and tweak it just a bit to your own likings.

Or you do something completely opposite from the trend and just go off on your own thing. Sometimes people want to see something knew, and therefor it starts your own trend. For example:
The Reformation thinkers wrote about how we are born being capable of evil and it was society, government, laws that kept us being "good."
The next literary change brought something totally opposite, called "romanticism." They believed we are born good but it is society, government, laws, that corrupt us.

[Feanor of the Peredhil]

My understanding is that LotR is replete with examples of how, in literary theory, one is supposed not to write a book. I am sure that I will be corrected if I am wrong (Bêthberry? ),

No need for Bethberry to assure you of your correctness, I can confidently inform you that you have successfully avoided splitting that infinitive.

My Geometry teacher would say the same thing!!!

My Calculus teacher likes "Now you take these numbers, and plug them into that equation, and see what happens." Math class is like a Glade commercial... plug it in, plug it in.

My view of writing instructors is that they tend to instruct you in the "correct" way to write based on their personal preferences for what they like to read. I got 80s on my first few papers this year for English because my teacher doesn't grade the same way as my old teacher did. His taste in literature is far different than hers, and so he prefers different styles than she did.

One "bad habit" that The Lord of the Rings taught me, and that my English teacher pounces on me for, is beginning a sentence with the word 'and'. He hands me back papers covered in red marks for where I use sentence fragments to add a little spice, where I start a sentence with 'and' because I like how it sounds, where I lost him with some random reference... All bad habits (in his opinion) that I picked up from "That stupid hobbit stuff".

I honestly wish more writers would break the rules and write something interesting, as opposed to cookie cutter books with the same plot, same character ideas, and same everything. I appreciate that there is pretty much nothing orginal any more, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't try.

Fea

[The Saucepan Man]

Originally Posted by Feanor of the Peredhil

No need for Bethberry to assure you of your correctness, I can confidently inform you that you have successfully avoided splitting that infinitive.

Actually, that gives rise to a pertinent point. I have become "conditioned" (by one of my previous bosses) not to split the infinitive. But the rule was, I believe, originally established so as to avoid clumsy sentence construction and there are many cases where splitting the infinitive will not give rise to a clumsy sentence (even though it might seem wrong to our "conditioned" grammatical sensibilities). So there will often be no real reason to not split the infinitive.

And I don't really see anything wrong with starting sentences with "and" either. Taking my cue from Tolkien (and disregarding what I learned at school), I do it all the time in my (very limited) creative writing. And in my posts here too. It makes for shorter sentences. Which is, I think, desirable. Or so the Plain English Campaign tells us. But then again, as Tolkien himself once again illustrates on many occasions, it is sometimes appropriate to have incredibly lengthy sentences, sentences which are perhaps heavy with descriptive words, or those where complex and related ideas are best grouped together, or even where that is the manner in which a particular character speaks - and so the length of his sentences enhance the credibility of his dialogue; and in such cases I see no reason not to indulge oneself in a nice lengthy sentence.

The point being that many of these rules (structural, grammatical etc) are there to be challenged. Sometimes there is no real purpose served in following them. And, occasionally, breaking them will even enhance the quality of the work in question.

EDIT: Just to be clear, I am most certainly not saying that these rules should not be taught (double negative, anyone ). But it should also be acknowledged in doing so that there is scope for flexibility in their application.

[Elven-Maiden]

If you're still in school, don't do this until your graduation ceremony. If you've finished at that school, do this next time you see her: Ask her how many of her books are on the NY Best Sellers List because you'd like to own one of her masterpieces to pass down for posterity.

I have no respect for teachers like yours.

[Kuruharan]

My AP English 12 teacher is somewhat of a mathemetician when it comes to literature and it really bugs me. For her, a good story comes from the Five Act Formula (she doesn't really call it this) with an exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution. Add a protagonist, conflict, and antagonist, a few side characters (better if it includes a pretty woman), throw in a pinch of what my teacher likes to call "narrative voice" which includes tone, diction, syntax, and word choice. Foreshadowing and flashbacks give it some zest, too. And voila! Without even trying, you have plugged and chugged a New York bestseller! Funny, I had always considered writing to be an art rather than a algebra formula.

I think the (or a) secret to the art is the setting of the stage for a story and how the author links all these elements together in pursuit of this goal. This is not an easy challenge, as several threads on the Downs on the subject of crappy fantasy attest. Sure, one can plug and chug all they want (and likely as not, sell books too) but that does not make it worthwhile. All of the elements you mentioned I believe are tools in the quest to help “realize” the story, but they are not ends in themselves. Writing the story can follow some accustomed forms in utilizing these tools, but bringing the story to life is the art that does not fit into a formula.

For whatever reason, Tolkien succeeds while many do not.

[Encaitare]

My Geometry teacher would say the same thing!!!

Ah, well, my math teacher last year would always say of large equations, "Okay, so you take this mess and multiply it by this mess..." etc. Amusing. (<--Blatant Sentence Fragment!) I think once his said "this mess" five times in one period.

But on topic, English teachers seem to believe it is their solemn duty to educate us about these literary elements and techniques, and then have us spit information back at them regarding how they affect the story. Oftentimes I am given assignments which consist of the analysis of tone and diction and such-- granted, they are important, but contrary to what my English teacher tells me, I don't believe most writers sit down and say to themselves, "Hmmm... I think I'll use this sort of tone here..." or "Aha! I shall characterize this person through the thoughts of another person about him!" Of course, for example, if one is writing something satirical, the tone will be a little humorous or caustic. But still, I have to wonder how many of the things we must analyze in school were actually done intentionally. I tend to think that things just develop on their own more than anything, as was the case with Tolkien's writing. Personally, I find certain unintentional elements in my own writing -- for example, I put a symbol in something I wrote without even realizing it. It makes me wonder, if ever I should write a great novel, if high schoolers would read it and their teachers would say, "Ooh, just look at that diction! Now why do you think she did that?" And it would be rather silly, because I probably wouldn't have done it for any particular reason at all; I probably would not have even realized what I was doing.

Gee, am I babbling much?

One thing I find a tad ironic (another literary technique!) is that I gripe about this in school and yet I dash to the CbC thread and am engrossed in much of the same thing.

And in Tolkien's case, perhaps we could call it the Six Act Formula: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, resolution, and a great number of multi-lingual super-long brilliantly-rhymed poems thrown in there for good measure.

[the phantom]

and that my English teacher pounces on me for, is beginning a sentence with the word 'and'

That always happened to me, too.

The point being that many of these rules (structural, grammatical etc) are there to be challenged.

It is this attitude (I have it towards everything having to do with school) that cements my status as an A-/B+ student rather than an A+ student.

Another thing that gets me in trouble is spelling. I'm always writing "grey" instead of "gray", "colour"- "color", "armour"- "armor", "theatre"- "theater", "defence"- "defense", etc....

Here's something I thought you might enjoy-

I have noticed that some British tend to be more particular about split infinitives and prepositions at the end of a sentence, but those "rules" came from Latin and have little relevance in English. It was, in fact, Sir Winston Churchill who put to rest the "preposition cannot end a sentence rule" with his famous rejoinder that placing the preposition at the end of a sentence is "something up with which we will not put!"

[Essex]

Lindolirian,

I have the same view point of your English teacher's theory as Robin William's character in Dead Poets Society would have had.........

[Lalwendë]

What, than, should be done to this coarse and uneducated person (that is, me), who never ever learned any English grammar whatsoever? For truly, my native is Georgian, my mother (and books I've read) tought me Russian, and French was foreign language of my choice when I've been visiting school

Words, darn words! I hope I did not come across as rude when I made my point about Grammar! I did intend my comments to cover any language - basically I mean children should learn the grammar of their mother tongue as early as possible; this then makes it easier not only to use that mother tongue but also to learn other languages. It helped me when I cam to learn German - though I'm idle (and being English, I suffer from the same thing a lot of other people suffer, and that's assuming everyone else knows English - shameful ) and haven't practised it in a long time so I've forgotten much of it.

Think of writing as being like Art. Any artist needs to know how to draw at the least - this why art schools insist on drawing classes. If you then go on to dissecting cows and displaying them in perspex tanks filled with formaldehyde, then that is where you put your theory into practice. Though why you should not be allowed some time to simply enjoy writing at school, I don't know - isn't learning supposed to be fun?

[Encaitare]

tar-ancalime said:

Well, I think that quite a lot of them probably were. One of the wonderful things about fiction (as opposed to journalism) is that in a work of fiction, absolutely everything is there because the author put it there. The author has total control over his/her world--if the main character has red hair, it's because the author wanted it that way. S/he's not bound by some external reality of blond or brown hair, and doesn't in fact have to tell the reader anything about hair color at all. So I think that we must approach literature with the assumption that anything the author chose to include is in the story on purpose, because that author always had the option of working any element in an infinite number of different ways, or of leaving it out altogether.

I agree that the author's total control over the story does mean that virtually nothing is accidental. The point I was trying to make was that an author does not exactly sit there with a checklist of all the literary element he or she ought to include (I could, of course, be wrong). If something doesn't seem right or match up with the ideas or images the author had in his/her mind, then s/he will change it, almost instinctively, you could say. S/he might just think, "I'd better change this bit of dialogue here, since this character would never say that," or something to that effect, and then fix the problem. To sum it up, I meant that the insertion of the literary elements/techniques are done more subconsciously, just by the author's judgement, than as a rigid set of rules to be followed.

Am I making any sense?

[Lindolirian]

Originally Posted by The Saucepan Man

Just to be clear, I am most certainly not saying that these rules should not be taught (double negative, anyone). But it should also be acknowledged in doing so that there is scope for flexibility in their application.

Yes, I probably should have said something to this effect at the close of my post because I heartily agree.

Lush, I don't know... even our potential valedictorian is asking that.

But love the subject you write about with passion, believe it to be 'the Truth', write to communicate the subject, not for writing's sake, but for the sake of the subject and for the sake of 'the Truth', and - lo and behold! - if you are even moderately good with language, the piece of work produced will be praised and loved.

Heren, I think I'll show that to my teacher, that's awesome!
Lalwendë, thank-you, it's nice to have another teacher's input!

[Feanor of the Peredhil]

Another thing that gets me in trouble is spelling. I'm always writing "grey" instead of "gray", "colour"- "color", "armour"- "armor", "theatre"- "theater", "defence"- "defense", etc....

My goodness! And here I thought it was just me doing that. My teacher handed me back a paper a few weeks back coated with red pen-marks, with comments such as "These archaic spellings give the impression that you are a haughty snob. Fix your spell-checker to change those automatically before I start taking points off." Grouchy old man... I say that in the most affectionate sense of the words.

I must say though, I heartily agree with Rimbaud about rule-breaking. It applies to every aspect of life. Learn the rules before you break them.

Fea