# Can fiction be art?



## At Dusk I Reign (Jun 3, 2011)

The writer's lot is, by and large, a solitary one. It's not an activity that can ever truly be shared, even in collaboration. Ultimately every scribe works alone, his thoughts his only companion. Some people find this a challenge and come up with all kinds of ways to avoid doing the obvious. They spend uncounted hours researching minutiae, convinced that while the Devil may not be in the detail, he can at least be subdued and tamed through the application of, well, application. 

This misses the point, I feel. Fantasy should never be bogged down by 'facts'. It's _fantasy._ Internal consistency is important, but slavishly transporting real-world methods into an unreal setting is, to my mind, an exercise in futility. I can't see the point of writing imaginative fiction if every move a character makes is filtered through a real-world lens.

Applying the mundane to the extraordinary, I contend, dilutes both the medium and the message. The fantastic should never conform to rules and regulations: it's too important for that. 

Apart from when we're swept up in the tempest of a vivid dream, writing is the one time our minds are truly free, when the fetters of reality are loosened and our spirits can roam whither they will. It's a glorious feeling to be embraced by the whirlwind of creation, almost god-like. Of course it can be maddening and chaotic too, but that's just part of being human — we're maddening and chaotic creatures. At its best, though, the writer invests a part of his soul in each and every word; his life-force makes each page pulse with vitality, each sentence shine with an inner light. 

However dull my wits, this is what I aspire to whenever I commit words to paper. I don't expect to succeed - I'm an uneducated pleb after all. But I try. Even if greatness is totally beyond my capabilities, it's something worth striving for - why continue breathing if transcendence is forever out of reach?

I believe great fiction to be on a par with the work of the Old Masters. Am I alone in my delusion?


----------



## AParker (Jun 3, 2011)

I'm not quite sure your argument is what you think it is.  You mention the Old Masters, and say that fiction being an equivalent to there work is part of why you feel that painstaking research adds nothing or even detracts from fantastic fiction.

I would point out that many of the Old Masters weren't prone to shy away from research.  Da Vinci's instructor in painting insisted that he study anatomy before he even picked up a brush.  Michelangelo approached this issue on his own, dissecting corpses in a church basement to teach himself.  I'm not saying if you want to write a story about doctors you have to put yourself through medical school first, but I don't think some basic fact checking would be a bad idea.


----------



## At Dusk I Reign (Jun 3, 2011)

AParker said:


> You mention the Old Masters, and say that fiction being an equivalent to there work is part of why you feel that painstaking research adds nothing or even detracts from fantastic fiction.



The only equivalence I recognise revolves around how each work is perceived as a final product. I used the Masters' work as an example of what many people consider art to be, that's all. I could've used Damien Hirst but I'm not into formaldehyde. Painting and writing are two different disciplines.



AParker said:


> I would point out that many of the Old Masters weren't prone to shy away from research.



You're missing the point. My problem with copious research doesn't pertain to painting, it pertains to fantasy fiction, with the emphasis being on the word _fantasy_. The question I pose is whether such a work of fiction can hold its own against what the majority consider to be a work of 'art'.


----------



## tjwell01 (Jun 3, 2011)

Ya, I think you're confusing fiction with non-fiction? Of course fiction is art, and it's not all that factual in nature.


----------



## Donny Bruso (Jun 3, 2011)

I think that art is what we're all striving for every time we put pen to paper or open up the file on our computer. I know I'd certainly like to be able to create the kind of work that people would regard among the 'classic' writers, such as Twain or Dickens.

Unfortunately, I think that is about as far as fiction can realistically go; to be considered as a classic and studied by people as time goes on. I don't see it being preserved in museums and such as painting or sculpture is. And to do so would be meaningless. Each painting or sculpture is unique. Even if Michelangelo were to sculpt the David again, there would be subtle differences between the statues. Books, however, are ideally all alike. Every word is identical in each printing, so there is nothing unique and inherently valuable about any particular copy, save the story that it contains. And the way that is remembered is through 'classic' literature.

Sadly, I don't see anything written in the fantasy genre being elevated to the level I mentioned earlier, save among the people who genuinely love fantasy. Even in school, _Lord of the Rings_ wasn't considered to be 'literature'. Fantasy and Sci-Fi have a stigma attached to them that makes teachers of 'real' literature treat them like the spores of a particularly nasty form of plague.

That being said, I disagree to a certain extent with your statement that Fantasy shouldn't be bogged down by facts. I don't think it should be completely subservient to them, but I believe that a certain commonality with reality is necessary to the story. If your setting and people and flora/fauna are all completely dissimilar, you lack a foundation to start building your disbelief on. I feel an author needs to get the reader to trust you initially with something similar, or very small differences, and then start layering in the more fantastic and outlandish changes. To do so immediately I think it a turn off to the book. It reads like a dream rather than an alternate reality.

Just my opinion of course. I could be wrong. It has happened once or twice before.


----------



## Behelit (Jun 3, 2011)

Questions arise:

Is a work spawned from an unfettered imagination necessary to be deemed art? One man's trash is another man's treasure, no? 

Is the real world truly mundane? How many of us have traversed the globe, TRULY experiencing much of what the world has to offer?


----------



## Ophiucha (Jun 3, 2011)

I think there are several points being made, each of which I would address separately.

Firstly, the nature of the fantastic in fantasy, versus the realistic. There is no universality here, of course, but to an extent, I agree that the fantastic elements are what best serves the works. I get weary reading a story that relies too much on facts. That said, I think people interpret that to mean I love just the magical and unreal elements of the otherworldly. I think the fantastical should also define situations that, even without magic, are just unearthly. This is why a good deal of alternative history is seen as fantasy. A world where communism is the norm as opposed to capitalism. A world where there never was a religion, let alone hundreds. A world where heterosexual romance is looked down upon and would lead to a stoning. Something inherently foreign, even fantastically absurd, to us - it doesn't need to have dragons to accomplish that.

That said, fiction is there to tell a story, and there have been many good stories set in beautifully researched Edo Japan, or "Goshima" or whatever fictitious version the author has come up with it. Though it may not be my preference, it is nonetheless no less viable a setting to tell a story in. Because, inevitably, the setting is an accent to what defines something as art: the story, the themes, the feelings. Though the fantastic greatly serves us, as writers, in showing these things, there are many themes to explore in a mundane world where something - maybe only one thing - is just not _quite_ right. The presence of dragons in an otherwise identical-to-Earth setting has its purpose, and factual inaccuracies (anachronistic technology or social policies, for instance), could break the illusion. You distance the setting from Earth and it becomes less powerful for it.

And, of course, not everyone is writing for the sake of art or exceptionality. Let's be honest, modern fantasy and science fiction have their origins in pulp fiction. People who wrote for the cash, at best just for the fun of it. Not to tell a story, let alone convey anything of interest. Buxom babes, swords and sorcery, that's where modern fantasy started out and no matter how much we might look back to Homer and the Victorians, we're influenced by that history.


----------



## Derin (Jun 4, 2011)

An author needs to communicate, and fantasy is possibly the most difficult genre to do this with, because you can't rely on a lot of the assumed information that you can in other genres. The thing is, you can't describe every detail of your world before getting to the story, so the audience will have to make certain assumptions that things are like our own world. We can't stop that. We need to work with it.

The audience will assume that any difference in the acceleration of falling objects is due to wind resistance, and if we contradict this without explaining, it looks like a mistake. If we use Greek gods but don't know any Greek mythology, differences will look like mistakes, because the audience will assume Greek unless otherwise explained. If we heavily base our naming conventions on those of a certain culture and then violate them for a handful of names, or get a description of smithing a sword horribly wrong, or give a detailed but completely flawed explanation of how sailing works, they don't look like differences; they look like mistakes.

Fantasy is not a free-for-all. We need to know how things really work for our worlds to make sense. At worst, giving a horribly flawed explanation of electricity makes us look lazy and disrespectful to our audience. If the fake version is a plot point, they may feel cheated. At best, it leaves them confused, because it affects so many other assumptions they have to make about our world. 

Fantasy must be bogged down by facts because we are writing for people who know more than we do. There are historians, linguists, physicists and surgeons in our audiences. They all know different information that we don't and make different assumptions that our world will operate like the real one. And we have to communicate to all of them, as clearly and easily as possible, so if a real-world detail is relevant (either because we're using it or we're subverting it) we need to know it, so that we can take into account other people who do. "Art" does not mean "easy" or "a work in which reality is irrelevant". It never has.


----------



## At Dusk I Reign (Jun 9, 2011)

Donny Bruso said:


> That being said, I disagree to a certain extent with your statement that Fantasy shouldn't be bogged down by facts.


I did say, in my defence, that internal consistency was important. I don't suggest that anything goes in a work of fiction, merely that those slavishly devoted to 'realistic fantasy' (an oxymoron if ever I heard one) would be better suited to writing historical fiction.



Behelit said:


> Is the real world truly mundane? How many of us have traversed the globe, TRULY experiencing much of what the world has to offer?


I've been most places, barring the poles and the Great Steppe, and had a ball. There are indeed plenty of moments of transcendence to be garnered, but they pretty much depend on a personal point of view. As you suggest, one man's  life-changing experience is another's waste of time. This is why I feel personal vision is important. If we as writers aren't prepared to look at life from a different perspective then why be a writer at all?



Ophiucha said:


> And, of course, not everyone is writing for the sake of art or exceptionality.


That's what's so tragic about modern fiction. 



Derin said:


> Fantasy must be bogged down by facts because we are writing for people who know more than we do.


I disagree. No one knows your imagination better than you do. Once you start worrying about how others may view your work you automatically fetter yourself. Fantasy should always be free, regardless of how others view it. Once it bows to expectation it loses its appeal.


----------



## Chilari (Jun 9, 2011)

Define "art".

Art is a complex term. Art is, some say, what you make of it; it is what people say is art, it is a mixture of technical skill and imagination, it is the ability to capture a moment, a feeling, a motion, or an ideal in something tangible. It is what is pretty, what is decorative, what pleases the eye; it is what conveys an emotion from the painter to a viewer who he or she has never met. It is all of these things, and at the same time, is it only one of them, or some of them, or none of them. And in saying what is art, you also say what is not.

Depending on what definition of art you're using, fiction has the capacity to be art. It depends what you're trying to convey, and how good you are at conveying it. They say a picture paints a thousand words, but to tell a story without words you would need so much more than the eighty or ninety or whatever pictures that would be the equivalent to a novel by that calculation. I think that if you've got a story to tell and you are dedicated to telling it, that could be called art, even if your goal is not to achieve something great, but merely to tell a story. Even if your goal is to sell the story, and you centre your characters and plot around what sells, that could be considered art, in the same way that the decoration on bronze age pots or the Roman marble copies of Greek bronze statues is considered art. It might not be considered as valuable, but it remains art.


----------



## Derin (Jun 9, 2011)

At Dusk I Reign said:


> I disagree. No one knows your imagination better than you do. Once you start worrying about how others may view your work you automatically fetter yourself. Fantasy should always be free, regardless of how others view it. Once it bows to expectation it loses its appeal.


 
Once it bows to expectation it becomes understandable.

To write novel work, we must be acquainted with the standards we're departing from. (Depending on the fantasy you write, this may include other fantasy, but it always includes reality.) Writing that does not take into account the perspectives of the audience in order to communicate with them isn't novel, it's gibberish. It's a waste of paper. Fiction is not about the author's imagination; it's about communicating imaginative ideas with an audience. Our imagination is the first step, not the last one; it's the raw material for a story, not a story in itself. If the audience doesn't get it, there's no point in writing it (except as a private journal if you like that sort of thing). In fact I would go so far as to say that something that makes no attempt to convey anything to its audience is the one thing in the world that can't possibly be art.


----------



## At Dusk I Reign (Jun 9, 2011)

Derin said:


> Writing that does not take into account the perspectives of the audience in order to communicate with them isn't novel, it's gibberish. It's a waste of paper.



No. Really, no. Audience perspective should be taken into account, but it should never be a driving force in creating fiction. The act of creation should be free of such considerations: it's pandering to the masses that's a waste of paper.



Derin said:


> Fiction is not about the author's imagination...


That's precisely what it _is_ about, especially when it comes to Fantasy. Anything else is the kind of excrement that's killing the genre.


----------



## Derin (Jun 9, 2011)

Imagination is step 1. It's not a story until it communicates.

That audience perspective should be taken into account is my whole point. If we don't understand the assumptions about our world made by the audience (made based on the real world and other fiction), we can't write for them. We have to take these assumptions into account to adequately explain our worlds. Otherwise, differences look like mistakes, or just laziness. If electricity operates differently, we have to know how it operates in the real world and explain that it's different, or we confuse everybody in the audience who knows anything about electricity.


----------



## At Dusk I Reign (Jun 9, 2011)

Derin said:


> Imagination is step 1. It's not a story until it communicates.
> 
> That audience perspective should be taken into account is my whole point. If we don't understand the assumptions about our world made by the audience (made based on the real world and other fiction), we can't write for them. We have to take these assumptions into account to adequately explain our worlds. Otherwise, differences look like mistakes, or just laziness. If electricity operates differently, we have to know how it operates in the real world and explain that it's different, or we confuse everybody in the audience who knows anything about electricity.


You're assuming that the writer should meld his work to fit the audience, rather than the other way around. I don't agree. If the audience doesn't get it, so what? Many works of fiction have lain forgotten until more discerning minds have discovered them. Again, I'm all for internal consistency in any given world, but if someone's dreams revolve around audience expectations they should go to Las Vegas and get mauled by tigers. Writers, as a breed, should be pushing boundaries, not willingly placing a yolk around their necks. Bowing to popular opinion is no claim to fame. At least, it shouldn't be. Fantasists have no need to explain anything. If something confuses meagre minds then who cares? Obscurity doesn't diminish an object's worth.


----------



## Derin (Jun 10, 2011)

At Dusk I Reign said:


> If something confuses meagre minds then who cares? Obscurity doesn't diminish an object's worth.


 
If an audience doesn't understand something, it's not the audience's fault. It's the author's. A story that does not communicate is a failed story. A work that lies forgotten until "more discerning minds" discover it suggests an author who has failed to market to their target audience (whether through incompetence, the fictional fashion of the time, red tape or sheer bad luck), not a treasure that must be better than its contemporaries because it took so long to come into prominence.

There are no "meagre" minds. If our work isn't appreciated by readers, it's because it's not entertaining, not understandable, or not novel (although work that isn't novel can be depressingly successful). It's not because they were too stupid to understand our wonderful art. It's not because they didn't "get it" because we're clearly so much more advanced than them. It is because we failed. Not the audience.


----------



## kennyc (Jun 10, 2011)

At Dusk I Reign said:


> You're assuming that the writer should meld his work to fit the audience, rather than the other way around. I don't agree. If the audience doesn't get it, so what? ... Obscurity doesn't diminish an object's worth.


 
Very elitist attitude. That is not what art is about, but I get the feeling that's what you are saying. Yes there are many forms and types of art and yes fiction can be art. It can also be escapism, pornography or entertainment. None are exclusive to the others.

Art in the highest sense is something that communicates something to the audience(reader, viewer, listener, etc) that is timeless and meaningful. 

If something created is only meaningful to the author/creator then I would argue that it is not art in the truest sense of the word.


----------



## JCFarnham (Oct 11, 2011)

Adding to a dead conversation but didn't someone once say something along the lines of "Art is Art, is exists with no other purpose than to be art". Truthfully, to say what is art or isn't is futile and an arguement that hasn't been solved since it start millenia ago no doubt. 

I think the better definition of "Art" is any thing with "creative" input. And yes, those quotemarks _are_ supposed to impart a sense of cynicism. haha


----------



## Benjamin Clayborne (Oct 11, 2011)

Art is anything, intentionally created by a sentient being, that is intended to express emotion or evoke emotion, or that the creator says is art.


----------



## ShortHair (Oct 12, 2011)

If I read a piece of fiction, and the author has not bothered to learn basic grammar, I tend to discount whatever artistic merit the piece might otherwise have. If I read a piece of fantasy, and the author presents something that flouts the laws of nature without either a) presenting a magical system that allows such flouting or b) foreshadowing a general breakdown in causality, then once again I may discount any merits of the piece.

As someone else noted, you don't have to get a medical license to research, say, tetanus and how it would affect a character. If you choose to forego that research, you're implicitly insulting the intelligence of people who know about tetanus, people who are willing to do that research, and people who actually have tetanus. Since it is fantasy, though, you can call the disease something besides "tetanus" and use it however you like.

Speaking strictly for myself, I write the kind of stories I'd like to read. Then again, I'm fairly easy to please. I don't consider my work Art because I feel that someone else should make that determination. Again speaking for myself, I don't much like Art with a capital A, I don't like paintings that have to be explained to me. In my mind, real art is something that pushes against the boundaries of what the culture considers acceptable, that forces people to think about things they've always taken for granted. It may very well lie moldering in a garret for years or centuries until the culture catches up to the artist's intent. In this postmodern world there aren't many boundaries left, so maybe obscurity is the last big boundary.


----------



## Benjamin Clayborne (Oct 12, 2011)

It doesn't have to be good to be art. There's plenty of bad, boring, uninspiring, derivative art out there.


----------



## Lord Darkstorm (Oct 12, 2011)

Then is it art, or scribbling?  Kids do drawings all the time, you could call it art, but outside of a parent, most of us wouldn't hang it on our walls.  

I bet if I took a dump on a canvas it might be called art too...I'd say it's just disgusting, but I personally feel art is something that has value to more than the creator.  Feel free to disagree, but usually it comes down to what people are willing to actually pay for.  Bad grammar, cliche dialog, along with plot, and over the top cardboard characters that are based on some movie they have watched.  Call it what you want, but I wouldn't gift it with my time to read it.


----------



## Ghost (Oct 12, 2011)

I don't know why you suggest that writers, to avoid being alone with their thoughts, turn to research. I research alone, and I don't turn my brain off when I do it. True, I spend more time taking information in, but even then I'm thinking, weighing what I've learned, and being inspired as ideas branch and take root more firmly.



At Dusk I Reign said:


> Applying the mundane to the extraordinary, I contend, dilutes both the medium and the message. The fantastic should never conform to rules and regulations: it's too important for that.



I'm not sure what you mean about not conforming to rules if you concede that there should be internal consistency. I like the contrast of ordinary and extraordinary. If everything is extraordinary, well, then it stops being extraordinary. Having the outlandish and the mundane mingling together has more of an impact for me, like painting red against a white backdrop or sounding a gong during a string quartet. What gives the fantastic more importance than the commonplace?

If your setting doesn't resemble anything on Earth and you write from nonhuman perspectives, then your argument makes more sense. It means there's nothing to tether you to your audience's expectations. As a reader, I want to relate to the people I read about and understand their motivations. I want to imagine that I could have been born there. It's not easy to do if there aren't similarities to anchor me when I visit that Fantasyland.

Why do you think research precludes greatness? Letting our spirits roam the creative ether is romantic and all, but that would feel more like a dream than a place my characters could live in. The thing about dreams is that they're highly personal, and the person most interested in a dream is the person who dreamed it. My hope is that others will connect with the things I create.


----------



## Benjamin Clayborne (Oct 13, 2011)

Lord Darkstorm said:


> I personally feel art is something that has value to more than the creator.



If someone paints a painting, and they say it's art, and nobody else finds any value in it at all, it's still art. Why does something have to have value to someone beyond its creator to be art?



> Feel free to disagree, but usually it comes down to what people are willing to actually pay for.  Bad grammar, cliche dialog, along with plot, and over the top cardboard characters that are based on some movie they have watched.  Call it what you want, but I wouldn't gift it with my time to read it.



You're talking about what's _sellable_, not what's _art_. The two are orthogonal.

Maybe you won't call it art if it's not sellable, but that's not a useful definition of the word "art."


----------



## Kelise (Oct 13, 2011)

I find some books - depending on their writing style, to be like art. But that would be totally dependant on who's reading them.

Books like The Night Circus, Power and Majesty, Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children and then, sure, why not, House of Leaves. I'm not entirely sure why - maybe because they're attempting to be more beautiful or odd or eye-catching, for a novel that's generally telling a story. I find these books are trying to be more... stylish and aesthetically pleasing about it.


----------

