Can fiction be art?

[Lord Darkstorm]

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]

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.

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]

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]

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.