Speak Stiltedly and Wear a Yellow Shirt

I felt like a how-to-write book, so I browsed through the library shelves. I didn’t spot the book Mike recommended, but I did find Novelist’s Essential Guide to Creating Plot by J. Madison Davis. I’d barely started it on the T when I found the section on Spectacle and decided this was the book for me. Spectacle is one of the six basic dramatic elements, according to Aristotle. Aristotle rates it the least important.

Spectacle is the flashy stuff, like invisible rabbits slamming doors or helicopters landing on stage, or, as I tried to explain on a mailing list once, basic biology lessons:

Again, that was J. Madison Davis, award-winning novelist, not yours truly. If it had been me, all that qualification (”might be,” “usually,” “may be,” “may,” “usually” again) would be replaced with definite, vigorous absolutes.

Speaking of public vindication of previously unpopular opinions of mine, the recent VVS9 implosion was quite gratifying. You wonder (if you’re an INTP) how so many people can be so clueless about so obvious a pattern over so long a time, especially when you saw the writing on the wall (or you were the writing on the wall) so early on. I admit, another disgruntled VVS8 writer egged me on to make some less-than-over-it comments on the issue, but I don’t feel vindictive about VVS8 this long after the fact. I’m just happy to see clues sprouting up all over. And it’s hard, too hard, to pass up the opportunity to say…

I told you so.

The examples of non-feedback motives in my last post were not meant to
be exhaustive. Lori and Mike gave some better examples of motives, to wit,
some people post just to be read and some people post for emotional sharing.

Mike’s essay led me to wonder whether emotional feedback counts as feedback proper. I was surprised to find that I’ve been in
fandom so long I’d forgotten that our usage of the term feedback is rather
unusual. It can be found in business English (which might be better called
corporate slang), but not in Webster’s:

feedback n. (1920)
1 : the return to the input of a part of the output of a machine, system,
or process (as for producing changes in an electronic circuit that improve
performance or in an automatic control device that provide self-corrective
action)
2 a : the partial reversion of the effects of a process to its source or to a
preceding stage
b : the transmission of evaluative or corrective information
to the original or controlling source about an action, event, or process;
also: the information so transmitted
- Merriam-Webster OnLine

I’m not looking for correction. Although I wouldn’t mind improvement and
I never object to constructive criticism, becoming a better writer
has not been my goal in writing fanfic. So on a deeper level than just rah-rah
email, I’m not in it for the feedback. Or rather, I provide all the
feedback I need - I fix what I want fixed, and I leave broken what I like broken.
(Said-bookisms, anyone?)

I get the most feedback, in the 1920 sense of the word, from my hit
tracker. I would have no idea how many
people were reading my fic on the web without the sneaky little perl script that
logs visitors, and I’ll never know what my readership on ASC is, between the
newsgroup proper, the mirror mailing list, the Trekiverse archive and Google
Groups. Hits are just a “partial reversion”, they’re nothing like a corrective
process. I put my stories on line before I started tracking, so I’m not
in it for the hits.

Then again, rah-rah email is just positive feedback, too. I’ve said in the
past that you can tell a lot from positive feedback - from what people say they
liked, even if they’re too nice or controversy-aversive to say what they didn’t
like.

I think I’ve finally wrestled the yellow into the format I want. When I reactivated comments, I took the opportunity to tweak the stylesheets one last time. The font sizes got out of whack back when I tweaked it to work better with Jurassic Netscape. There’s a massive WinIE5 bug for font sizes that I haven’t fixed, because the work-around is the ugliest hack I’ve ever seen. It’s an insult to CSS to hack them that way; I refuse. If you insist on using IE you deserve whatever you get (in this case, fonts that are one size too ).

Pardon the geekiness. On to the peeve of the day: a while back the partial logic test spread here from Lori’s blog (If P then Q). Today, I realized that one of my biggest fandom peeves is an example of the very same bad conditional reasoning.

Everybody has words or catch-phrases or old saws they can’t bear hearing trotted out time and again - the fingernails down the blackboard of the English language. I cringe whenever Catherine Asaro uses “gentle” as an intransitive verb, and I want to strangle someone whenever I hear, “If you weren’t in it for the feedback, you’d lock your fic in a dark closet somewhere instead of posting it on the Internet.” This classic of bad conditional reasoning starts with a good (which is to say, true) conditional:

(1) If you particularly want to get feedback, then you post your fic somewhere public.

For any conditional statement if P then Q, there is another conditional that follows from it: if not Q then not P. It’s called the contrapositive. The contrapositive of statement (1) is:

(2) If you don’t post your fic somewhere public, then you don’t particularly want to get feedback.

Statements (1) and (2) are equivalent, although one of them may seem more obvious or intuitive than the other. They are a single, simple fact of publicity.

No other statements can be derived from (1) or (2). Most notably, if P then Q does not, in any way, imply if Q then P. So we come to the old saw,

(3*) If you post your fic somewhere public, then you particularly want to get feedback.

Statement (3*) is not true. (That’s what the star is there for.) It’s the conditional fallacy discussed at length in the results of the partial logic test. Statement (3*) has its own logically equivalent (and therefore equally false) contrapositive:

(4*) If you don’t particularly want to get feedback, then you don’t post your fic somewhere public.

Statement (4*) is the more common form of the fallacy - slightly restated, we get the original peeve: “If you weren’t in it for the feedback, you’d lock your fic in a dark closet somewhere instead of posting it on the Internet.” Starting with the true statements (1) or (2), fans apply faulty conditional reasoning to get statement (3*) or (4*). Sometimes they take the form of an innocent statement about fandom, and sometimes they serve as a vicious accusation of status-seeking, but whatever the point to be made, it cannot be made with (3*) or (4*) because they are fallacies. (Specifically, the fallacy is the converse error or the inverse error, depending on which true statement you start with and which false one you end up with.)

That’s the end of the logical argument, but the notes on the Wason test mentioned that people still believe conditional fallacies even after they’ve been pointed out. So it’s helpful to give some counterexamples for (3*), keeping in mind that anything which disproves (3*) also disproves (4*).

The Newbie Example: Say you’re a rank newbie. You read fanfiction on the J/C Index, but it never occurs to you to send feedback. Sure, you see the email addresses at the bottom of the stories you read, but you’re still in a pay-per-fic mindset where reading requires no interaction with the author. Say, in addition, that you get inspired to write your own fanfiction. You’re a geek, you know html, so you make a website and put up your new stories. You may even add your email address, because that seems to be what’s done. If you’re the sort of person who skips past authors notes and steers clear of mailing lists, you could, conceivably, write and post several stories without expecting or wanting to get feedback for it. You post, but you do not particularly want feedback, contradicting statement (3*).

The BOFQ Example: Say you’re a bitter old fic queen. You got feedback in your heyday, back when the show was young and the fans had taste. You played the mailing list circuit and won awards - been there, done that, got the graphic. One day, when you’re slightly inebriated, you write a vignette for old times’ sake. You post it, just in case anyone’s interested, but you have no newbie delusions anymore. You know exactly how little feedback gets sent in your fandom; you’ve posted short pieces before and gotten not a single email for it. Nor do you consider the vignette significant enough in comparison to your famous 800k novels to deserve a line of feedback - you’re just tossing it out there to prove you’re still in the game. You post, but you do not particularly want feedback, contradicting (3*).

I’m probably the only person who has ever been accused of not liking feedback (and it wasn’t true). No one objects to getting feedback, but that doesn’t make feedback everyone’s overriding motive for writing and/or posting fanfiction. There are plenty of other motives out there: the muse, politics, practice, spite, building up a Big Name, trading in the fanfic potlatch, individual fic gift giving, honor, glory, and so on. Feedback isn’t everything.

This concludes today’s free logic lesson.

Late at night when I ought to be sleeping I end up surfing. Tonight the great http wave took me farther than I usually go and washed me up in an old entry of naomichana’s. She and Thamiris are people whose blogs I ought to track more. It’s a long entry, so here’s a representative sample:

I don’t think I can say it better, but I can say it shorter: why do people get annoyed by discussions that don’t interest them? Is there a law about being all things to all men? Fanfiction is supposed to be about Taking Things Too Seriously, after all. The pot is calling the kettle black, and the kettle just doesn’t get it.

Pardon me while I go link this woman right now. Here’s the line that pushed me over the edge:

It hasn’t been ten minutes since I threatened to do this on ASC, and here it is:

Title:    Filk, Filk a Filk
Original: "Sing, Sing a Song"
Disclaimer:  Lyrics and music of "Sing, Sing a Song" are by Joe Raposo.  This parody is protected as such by the copyright laws of the United States of America.

*****

Filk, filk a filk
Filk it proud
Filk it long
Filk of science not faith
Filk of species not race.

Filk, filk a filk
Make a rondel to last
The whole night long
Don't worry that it won't rhyme enough for anyone else to bear
Just filk, filk a filk.

Filk, filk a filk
Let the stars filk along
Filk of futures to be
Filk of Adam and Eve.

Filk, filk a filk
Make a rondel to last
The whole night long
Don't worry that it won't rhyme enough for anyone else to bear
Just filk, filk a filk.

Plus, a blogsticker from the blogsticker factory:

This is the list of fanfic favorites from the message board
post mentioned in my previous entry, reproduced here at Jemima’s Trek
with Shelley’s permission. It represents the opinions of a
sample of Voyager fans and so may be flawed. (I would say it’s on the
overly inclusive side for the purpose.) Many thanks to Jade and Anna
for tracking down links, but a couple are still missing:
if anyone knows where I can find Amanda Darling or Deborah Wells, please href="mailto:webmaster@jemimap.cjb.net">email me.

Jade pointed me to this unscientific collection of favorite fanfics at the J/C Index message board. The focus is on J/C, since they’re the Most Beloved Couple of Trek Time, but there are crewfics listed as well.

Someone took a poll that was, I think, restricted to five favorite fics (with no author overlap) per respondent, and made a list of them. You can see some influence of the AAA in there, as to what people have been reading lately, and some general J/C tendencies, but if, say, Zendom wanted to do a best-of list, this approach would certainly be worth consideration, maybe with a restriction that only fic that got on more than one person’s list made the final collection.

The list got interesting reactions, starting with the disappointment of someone who didn’t make the cut. To summarize for those of you low on message-board time: that author complained, mildly, that she wasn’t mentioned on the list. Someone else suggested that said author wasn’t quite up to the level of the all-time Voy favorites. Other participants called such constructive criticism cruel, objected to the existence of such a list at all, expressed dismay at a proposal of more fic discussion, and maligned a children’s book author who dared judge fanfic. There were some lovely snarks along the way, as well as a classic threat to leave fandom.

It was an exemplary tempest in a teapot, but in the end, the only good outcome is the list itself. Maybe I’ll read a few (or at least re-read The Best of Both Girls), to feed the muse.

It was a productive weekend all around. The muse spent more time than I would have wanted on the Spuffyfic - not that I object to fanfic, but the issue of what to do with a human Spike has already stopped the fic in its tracks. I could have told her that would happen.

The Wrong Novel got a bit more done to it, and another stray short story is actually shaping up on the storiness front - it doesn’t sound like much, but the word counts were surprising whenever I did them. The Seven Saga, on the other hand, was a complete non-starter. Chapter one has made no progress towards storiness.

I chalk it all up to muse fodder - she can’t ignore a dramatic scene of a demon turning Spike into a human (no, not an ensouled vamp, a human), no matter how problematic the de-Spiking of Spike will be for the fic she’s tossing at me. On the other hand, she can’t write VOY when there is no VOY to watch, no matter how many high-flown plans for Seven of Nine we had once, the muse and I. The muse needs inspiration. She needs fic to toy with and rethink and do slightly differently, or just to see what hasn’t been done so she can give it a try herself.

I could make up for the lack of screen VOY inspiration with fanfic VOY, if I had the time, but it’s not like I’m overlooking a flood of current VOY in ASC. I’d have to go back to reading the J/C Index or Trekiverse from before my time in order to find NEW2JEMI fic. I could make a public pronouncement that I’m giving up fanfic altogether - I hear that’s a good way get a flagging muse back into production - but I’m not desperate enough to use reverse psychology on her, yet.

Did I mention the novel recs are up at zendom? Also, if the blog looks weird, it’s because I played with the stylesheet a bit. I still need to force Verdana, but otherwise, it’s almost fully feng-shuied.

The muse, having been given an entire weekend to work on The Wrong Novel, decided it was well past time to write some Spuffy fic. (Spoilers warning: Look away! Look away!) Now that Spike’s all cuddly and human (not a poofter ensouled vamp, human), the muse is dying to play with him. There is a downside to the redemption of Spike, though - what are we going to do with another loser weakling dude in the crew? That’s Xander’s role, and he’s not going to want to share it with William the Wussy. So I’m stuck in the middle of my all human, all the time Spuffy episode addition. Back to the novel…

I promised some extracts from Shelley’s Defense of Poetry, so before I start on today’s storifying I’ll cut and paste them here.

First, that any of this might apply to us lowly, non-rhyming storytellers:

§50 The distinction between poets and prose-writers is a vulgar error.

The bit where he implies poets are bigger than Christ:

§40 The fame of legislators and founders of religions, so long as their institutions last, alone seems to exceed that of poets in the restricted sense: but it can scarcely be a question whether if we deduct the celebrity which their flattery of the gross opinions of the vulgar usually conciliates, together with that which belonged to them in their higher character of poets any excess will remain.

His argument against realism and for romance:

§62 Time, which destroys the beauty and the use of the story of particular facts, stript of the poetry which should invest them, augments that of Poetry and forever developes new and wonderful applications of the eternal truth which it contains. §63 Hence epitomes have been called the moths of just history; they eat out the poetry of it. §64 A story of particular facts is as a mirror which obscures and distorts that which should be beautiful: Poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted.

On the transparency of ulterior motives, and their deleterious effect upon the work:

¶18
§121 But in periods of the decay of social life, the drama sympathizes with that decay. §122 Tragedy becomes a cold imitation of the form of the great master-pieces of antiquity, divested of all harmonious accompaniment of the kindred arts; and often the very form misunderstood: or a weak attempt to teach certain doctrines, which the writer considers as moral truths; and which are usually no more than specious flatteries of some gross vice or weakness with which the author in common with his auditors are infected. […] §124 To such purposes Poetry cannot be made subservient. Poetry is a sword of lightning ever unsheathed, which consumes the scabbard that would contain it. §125 And thus we observe that all dramatic writings of this nature are unimaginative in a singular degree; they affect sentiment and passion: which divested of imagination are other names for caprice and appetite. […] §129 Obscenity, which is ever blasphemy against the divine beauty in life, becomes, from the very veil which it assumes, more active if less disgusting: it is a monster for which the corruption of society for ever brings forth new food; which it devours in secret.

On the inspiration of the muse, and the unfortunate necessity of filling in the gaps she leaves behind:

§283 Poetry is not like reasoning, a power to be exerted according to the determination of the will. §284 A man cannot say, “I will compose poetry.” §285 The greatest poet even cannot say it: for the mind in creation is as a fading coal which some invisible influence, like an inconstant wind, awakens to transitory brightness; this power arises from within, like the colour of a flower which fades and changes as it is developed, and the conscious portions of our natures are unprophetic either of its approach or its departure. Could this influence be durable in its original purity and grace, it is impossible to predict the greatness of the results; but when composition begins inspiration is already on the decline, and the most glorious poetry that has ever been communicated to the world is probably a feeble shadow of the original conceptions of the poet. §286 I appeal to the greatest Poets of the present day, whether it be not an error to assert that the greatest passages of poetry are produced by labour and study. §287 The toil and the delay recommended by critics can be justly interpreted to mean no more than a careful observation of the inspired moments and an artificial connection of the spaces between their suggestions by the intertexture of conventional expressions; a necessity only imposed by a limitedness of the poetical faculty itself. §288 For Milton conceived the Paradise Lost as a whole before he executed it in portions. §289 We have his own authority also for the Muse having “dictated” to him “the unpremeditated song.” [Milton, Paradise Lost] §290 And let this be an answer to those who would alledge the fifty six various readings of the first line of the Orlando Furioso. §291 Compositions so produced are to poetry what mosaic is to painting. §292 This instinct and intuition of the poetical faculty is still more observable in the plastic and pictorial arts: a great statue or picture grows under the power of the artist as a child in the mother’s womb, and the very mind which directs the hands in formation is incapable of accounting to itself for the origin, the gradations, or the media of the process.

Reiterating the nature of the muse:

§319 Poetry, as has been said, differs in this respect from logic that it is not subject to the controul of the active powers of the mind, and that its birth and recurrence has no necessary connexion with consciousness or will.

Note that I didn’t say any of the above; Shelley said it. These extracts from the Big Name Poet are merely intended to show that neither what I have said about the muse, nor what I haven’t said but has nevertheless been attributed to me, is new. These are things people have been saying about writing ever since Plato, and saying Shelley was full of himself is no argument against his experience of the muse.

I, for one, would be better off with an ego like Shelley’s; I’d certainly write more if I believed more in my writing. On the other hand I’d probably edit less, so, tempting as it is, I won’t go on that ego trip some seem to think I’m already on. I’ll just lay out some chocolate to tempt the muse and get back to writing.