Jeff Mariotte

By Jeff Mariotte

Back when I was a much younger and (probably not coincidentally) unpublished writer, I believed that a successful piece of fiction could have the entertainment of its readers as its highest goal.

I no longer believe that. Instead, I’ve come to believe what the literature professors and writing teachers and books told us all along—that fiction should be about something.

This month’s essay, then, will be a kind of self-examination, an attempt to formulate (and maybe formalize) my own thoughts on the subject, in writing, which is how I do my best thinking. If it proves helpful to any readers out there, good. If any readers have counterarguments or additional points to make in comments, better. I’m not saying I’m right, I’m only saying I think as writers we need to think about this.

First I should say that there’s nothing wrong with entertaining. It’s still a primary goal of fiction, or should be. Fiction that isn’t entertaining on some level won’t be published or read. The greatest unpublished novel in history is a failed work of fiction, because sitting in a drawer or on a hard drive, it isn’t fulfilling its mission. Fiction is, foremost, a means of communication. By definition, communication involves two (or more) parties, one to send a message and one to receive it. Without both parts, communication has not taken place.

But entertainment alone is a low bar to set. Watching two beetles fight is entertaining for some people. American Idol is entertaining for others. Entertainment that does nothing more than pass the time for someone without requiring thought is forgotten as soon as it’s finished. Do I want to spend months on a novel only to have it on the shelves for a couple of weeks, read and forgotten? Or would I rather have it remembered, discussed, re-read, and stay in print (and generating royalties) for the rest of my life, and my children’s lives?

Given my druthers, I’d pick the latter.

Writing fiction involves these three aspects: art, craft, and business (and I’d take this a step further, to say that the same is true of any literary enterprise, from comic strips to movies, etc.). To make a few lines and squiggles into a character recognized as near-universally as Charlie Brown took craft on the part of Charles Schulz. To sell Peanuts into syndication, get it published in book form, and turn it into animated cartoons, merchandising, licensing, etc.—in other words, to make the strip earn money so that he could afford to spend his life making those little squiggles on art board—was business. Telling readers something about life—sometimes we need to trust even though experience suggests otherwise, because the alternatives (cynicism and suspicion) are worse, the world of adulthood doesn’t always make sense, happiness is a warm puppy—in four simple panels is art.

How much weight to give any one of the three aspects over the others remains a matter of much dispute, and one every writer needs to figure out for him or herself. Craft is probably the one most of us pay the most attention to. It can be learned, and improved with practice and experience. We can easily spot a bad example of it and recognize ways to improve upon it, in our own writing and that of others. This: “Put your hands up, you no-good, yellow-bellied dirty dog,” Ralph, the taller of the two bandits, dark haired and pig-eyed, with a week’s growth of whiskers on his cheeks, spat. is, by almost any standards one can apply, a poorly crafted sentence. If you can’t see about ten ways to improve it, then you, perhaps, need to focus more on craft than you have been.

Some writers bemoan the fact that writing also involves business, but it’s simply a fact (see “communication”, above). One can, of course, post one’s fiction online for free and still satisfy the basic definition of communication. But in our world, one needs to earn a living of some kind. And that internet connection isn’t free, nor is the “space” where the fiction is posted, generally. How long is anyone going to keep writing when every piece of fiction is costing money instead of earning it? How will that writer continue to improve, to hone his or her craft, to become the writer he or she might be, if he or she has to quit because that money might be better spent on food and shelter? Poverty is not all it’s cracked up to be, and it’s not a state to which I think any writer (excepting, of course, members of certain religious orders who have their fellow aesthetes to rely on) should aspire.

When a reader picks up a book, there’s a tacit agreement. The book will have been published by a professional publisher and edited by a professional editor. There are also copyeditors, sometimes fact-checkers, art directors, and so on involved, but the average reader doesn’t have any particular reason to think about their contributions. What the reader expects is a reasonable attempt by all involved to make the book the best it can be—free of obvious typographical errors, pages printed in order, a story that follows its own internal logic, exhibits some degree of craft and is entertaining to some extent.

All of this is part of writing being a business. Yes, you can self-publish, but take the internet example given above and multiply it by a few thousand. And yes, some people have successfully self-published and made money at it. Some people win the lottery, too, and some marry rich. You sure you want to count on those odds? Not me.

When I write a book, I want readers to read it. That means I want a publisher to publish it and to make an effort to get it into the hands of readers. That means, first, interesting an editor in it, then the rest of the people at the publishing company, then booksellers across the country. Finally, after those people have been addressed, it has a chance to be read. As with any business, I might have to make certain investments in its overall success—I might have to self-finance some promotional efforts, including bookstore signings and convention appearances, I might have to buy some ads, I might, at the very least, have to take time that might otherwise be devoted to writing the next thing to promote the last one online.

So, craft and business. But art? That’s the hard part. It’s also the part that makes any given book stand apart from the rest, It’s the part that makes it memorable, that makes readers close it and then give it to their friend or loved one and say “You have to read this.” Better yet, it makes them put it safely on their shelves and tell others they have to buy their own copies.

The art is not just in how you say what you say, but in what it is that you’re writing about. The theme, as the writing experts tell us. It doesn’t have to be complicated—in many cases, it’s probably better if it’s not, if we are able to distill complex ideas down into their simplest forms.

My next original novel, Missing White Girl, doesn’t have a simple theme that I can put into a single sentence. Maybe it would be a better book if it did. It is, in some ways, overtly political and overtly sociological, because it addresses two issues important in America society today (the phenomenon of massive media interest [and presumably public interest] in “missing white girls,” sometimes at the expense of equally deserving victims, and the question of immigration). An unstated but significant background aspect to the book is the idea that the human race migrated out of Africa, splitting into two directions, one headed east, into Asia, and the other north, into Europe (while some, of course, remained home in Africa). Very different cultures grew up in each of these places. Ultimately, they all met up ag
ain in the American southwest, where the eastern group had come from Asia, becoming what we know as Indians, met the Europeans who sailed west into what we know as Central America and then came overland into what would become the United States (accompanied by Africans). The southwest, where this book and most of my original fiction takes place, is the meeting point of all humanity. Which means, of course, that immigration is a constant, and trying to stop it with fences and trucks is kind of like trying to stop gravity by weighing blankets down with rocks.

Beyond the sociological and political aspects, however, it’s a novel about people and so it had better say something about us. What I think it says is that we live in an imperfect world, and since we can’t fix everything we need to try to fix those that are within our control and learn to live with the rest. Is that deep and profound? Maybe not, but it’s not as facile as it might be, either.

My next three originals, still in the planning stages because I’ve been working on a tie-in (see “business,” ‘above), will be increasingly complex, both in terms of the craft and the art required to complete them to my satisfaction, and in terms of what they’re really about (which isn’t fully formed yet, and sometimes doesn’t become clear until the writing is well under way).

Will they work? Will they succeed at the business part, much less the art and the craft? If I knew the answers to those questions, I could spend more time at the track than the keyboard and not have to worry about how the books sold. But I don’t, which means I’ll just have to write them and find out.