but I know what she should have written

[incandescens]

It's interesting to listen to discussions of particular books/series/whatever. One theme which seems to come up more nowadays than it used to is not only the "I think she should have written X this way" (where X is a person, or a place, or a custom, or a trope) but also the "I believe X in her setting is actually thus and so, and the author herself is writing it wrongly".

It's interesting. I suppose that in some ways it's a compliment to the author, in that she's managed to establish her world so thoroughly that people are arguing from the basic premises which she's set up, and are accusing her of inaccurate reporting or portrayal rather than insufficient/inadequate worldbuilding.

It must be very irritating for the author, though. Being told that you've got your own creation wrong.

---

A: Oooh... plenty of vinyl-clad kung-fu girls and a bladed battle yo-yo!
A: Nine-Tailed Fox: A Supplemetary Tale
A: So far one liver-eating fox-person destroyed with Buffy-like consequences: disintegrates to dust upon death...
A: Heh, heh... this series is shaping up to be what Kindred wanted to be: elder council of gumiho (Korean fox-people; not tricksters like Japanese Kitsune), with five leather/vinyl-clad kung-fu enforcers to destroy those who defy them...
A: Oh, cool! The fox-person disintegrated not because of an inherent way of dying, but because the weapon used to kill it was forged in the blood of humans...
A: Actually, they are all liver-eating fox people; the enforcers were acting against a heretical sect of their own clan... and the cop protagonist got caught in the middle with interesting plot complications :)

Comments

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

The author is dead indeed, and we spit on her corpse for good measure. No, sweetie, *she* hasn't got it wrong. *You* didn't understand what she was saying. (I believe there's a Hasidic story where a group of young disciples fundamentally tell God the same thing- You established it as such and so and therefore You may not declare it thus now. Blessed be You anyway, of course.)

[incandescens]

And now I'm trying to remember a story a friend passed on, where a group of scientists decide that God is no longer necessary, and are going to have a competition with him to create something better. And one of them picks up a handful of dirt to start with.

"No, no," says God. "You create your own earth!"

(or along those lines . . .)

[canaa.livejournal.com]

[giggles madly]

Creationer: "Sure!" [insert Abracadabra]

[shiny-monkey.livejournal.com]

What she said. Sometimes author writes what author doesn't necessarily want to write (such is working for a publisher -- publish or die, baby), but generally knows what she's on about. And the author also has the right to pull a god out of the machine if she chooses, thus mucking with all the previously-known laws of the universe she created.

I would think that it would be less irritating than outright insulting, to be accused of "writing it wrongly".

[incandescens]

Indeed. And fanfic writing does not bring any sort of ownership with it.

[mkellis.livejournal.com]

Having spent too much time on rec.arts.sf.composition, I can see where someone might have a valid point. It's pretty clear that certain authors are essentially channeling characters. The authors will come right out and tell you that the little voices speak to them, and their tongues aren't so firmly planted in their cheeks as one might wish. The great radio station of the unconscious is playing straight into their heads.

And sometimes the readers pipe up and say, 'your signal's off!'.

It's not polite, but there's enough bad fiction out there where the characters should be interesting, and the plot's not bad, but it feels like the characters aren't 'themselves'; there's a layer of gauze between how the characters 'should be' and how the writer is getting them to the page. A lot of Baen stuff strikes me this way. More strongly, Elizabeth Hayden's Rhapsody trilogy, which I never could bring myself to finish. Chock full of interesting and cool stuff, with the writer's prose (in)abilities getting smack in the way of my ability to enjoy what's set down there.

This is on my mind because as I've just finished Pattern Recognition, which is the best thing I've read in ages, and, after closing the book, I sat there and wondered why the hell more authors can't do that. At least part of this, I suspect, is the reader's (in this case my) ability or desire or inability to avoid projecting their own views onto the character, and the author's done such a good job of writing that this is a seamless process.

Another (lesser? perhaps not) writer may create a world or a set of characters that touches the reader on some level, but the process is not seamless. Or, over the course of a series, the character becomes something that the reader, having invested time and emotional energy, diverges from, possibly catastrophically.

Sometimes the brain-eater strikes the author. Witness for the prosecution: Laurell K. Hamilton. She's got a fascinating world, a really interesting character group, actual talent as an author, and she appears to be chucking it all over to write something where a dimensional portal to Gor appearing wouldn't be completely out of place.

If you accept that contributing to popular culture has an effect on that culture, and that the secondary effects reflect back on the source (sometimes regrettably, sometimes not), then a published author has to accept that the readers are going to be walking around with platonic shadows in their heads of how the world 'should be', and there's not going to be a perfect match with the author's. If either side diverges too far, someone starts shouting, 'It's not right!' Depending on where the culture is, as opposed to the author (and this is a slippery thing indeed) then I could be persuaded to side with the reader. This is at least partially the case in more collaborative media, such as television and comics, where the fanbase can actually cause the creators to try to 'fix' something.

[incandescens]

I accept Laurell K Hamilton as a valid point (while hiding her books on my shelf). I have also heard that there have been cases of authors being influenced overmuch by their fans -- a forthcoming Storm Constantine novel apparently contains characters from a series-linked novel which is (or so I hear) essentially fanfic, and the author is surrounded by a self-reinforcing group of fans.

I think what I'm actually muttering about are cases where the author has written a character/group as X, meant them as X, and groups of fans not only idolise said character/group (which is perfectly reasonable) but go round muttering that the author shouldn't have written them as X, and when the author disagrees with them, that she is _wrong_.

I mean, saying, "I don't like this," is one thing. Saying, "I disagree with this," is another. Saying, "I wish the author had written Z instead," is perfectly acceptable. Saying, "Wouldn't it be fun if Z had actually been the case, I shall write some stuff based on that idea," is entirely reasonable. Saying, "It is quite clear that Z is the case and the author is guilty of transcribing events wrongly and bad writing in stating X," seems to be going a little too far.

[mkellis.livejournal.com]

I'll certainly give you the point. As far as I know, there is no alternate reality or realities which authors really do channel, so they cannot get it wrong on that standpoint.

But we do have criticism, it's been around for a while, and, whether one likes critics or not, they serve a purpose. I posit a reader who says, 'It is quite clear that Z is the case and the author is guilty of transcribing events wrongly and bad writing in stating X' is actually fulfilling the role of a critic, albeit purely from the gut, and in an unstructured and possibly non-useful manner. And as with everything else in a medium that lacks any sort of initial screening, even so much as that of the overworked intern on the 'Letters to the Editor' page, the result might be screed and effluvia, rather than reasoned commentary.

Sometimes you want Samuel Johnson, and you get Lucius Fanboy instead.

[incandescens]

Point. Authors without editors or criticism tend to rot on the tree. The problem, as you say, is in finding the Samuel Johnson rather than the Lucius Fanboy.