Today’s post on how to transcend genre in fiction is authored by Igor da Silva Livramento, friend and fellow writer, academic, and creative-writing advisor. He’s also a composer, music theorist, and producer. You can find him on LinkedIn, and also take a look at his blog and his page on Bandcamp.
In today’s entry, I will discuss (albeit quickly) something that has bothered me for a long time: The genre/literary fiction split. I’ll try to propose solutions for that, including some writing exercises to get those creative juices flowing on our way to transcending genreBy the way I phrased it, you may notice I consider literary fiction a genre too. Food for thought, eh?.
The light, the composition, and the colors of this photo, all point in specific directions in terms of affective response. Genre isn’t very different. But just as we can transcend the qualitative nature of affective responses in a photo, so we can transcend those of genre(more…)
Literature in the audiovisual era. Can it survive, and how? I’m bouncing ideas off Igor da Silva Livramento, friend and fellow writer, academic, and creative-writing advisor. He’s also a composer, music theorist, and producer. You can find him on LinkedIn, and also take a look at his blog and his page on Bandcamp.
Chris: The idea behind this post began as a series of what-if thoughts and musings. We were talking about a generational disconnect in terms of readers’ ability to fill in the gaps.
Igor: Younger-generation writers grew up with (anglophone) young-adult fantasy and science fiction. Literally everything is spoon-fed to them, all details, all plot points, everything. I don’t like that. I wholeheartedly believe in strategic holes and unexplainables.
Igor: Suggesting is much more powerful than showing, because the imagination is boundless, thus filling the vacuum with something truly intense. This is the tactic I’ve found for my literature to survive in a predominantly audiovisual era.
How can literature survive in the audiovisual era, where vision & sound give the illusion of everything?(more…)
Virtually every man-made thing you see around you right now is likely produced because of capitalism. It’s capitalism that has allowed me to write this post on my Chinese-made mini laptop, and you to read it on your (almost certainly) Chinese-made device. “Awesome!” you might think. “Capitalism is freedom, then! You’re a free writer and I’m a free reader.”
No. Capitalism isn’t freedom.
It feels like that because both you and I happen to be – for the time being – near the fulcrum of the seesaw of economic exchange. And this seesaw isn’t well balanced, either. On the one end sits a hippo (capital), and on the other end half a billion ants (workers) trying to keep the thing from imploding. You and I are somewhere around the fulcrum. And because of that, most of us are stupid enough to think we’re more related to the hippo, rather than the ants.
But that’s the bubble-gum, pink-clad, rough love of capitalism. Like every system of dominance – think religion – it promises you heaven but makes sure to show you hell if you don’t fall in line. “Oh, so you don’t like the way things are, then? Well, why don’t you go and live in [insert sweatshop country]?”
Capitalism is an economic system predicated on injustice and psychological conditioning. We are all accomplices; the system works thanks to us.
How can you be a free writer in such a framework?
Wanna enslave someone? Make them depend on something. Writers are no exception – they will whore themselves for sales, clicks, likes, you name it(more…)
