Mixing Creativity and Formula

 

This week I’m reprinting a blog post from July 15, 2019. I originally wrote it for the Indiana Writers’ Consortium blog, where it appeared on February 21, 2018.

Mixing Creativity and Formula

I’m tired of hearing people run down so-called genre fiction because it follows a formula, as if that means it lacks creativity.  Yes, some genre fiction is only minimally creative, but that’s the fault of the author, not the genre.

Take romance, which is often cited as the archetype of formula fiction. I don’t write romance and rarely read it because I have limited time and generally prefer other types of novels. But I do read it occasionally, and one of my favorite authors fits perfectly into the romance “formula.” More about her later.

Here is the definition of the “Romance Genre” found on the Romance Writers of America’s website at www.rwa.org/the-romance-genre.

Two basic elements comprise every romance novel: a central love story and an emotionally satisfying and optimistic ending.

A Central Love Story: The main plot centers around individuals falling in love and struggling to make the relationship work. A writer can include as many subplots as they want as long as the love story is the main focus of the novel.

An Emotionally Satisfying and Optimistic Ending: In a romance, the lovers who risk and struggle for each other and their relationship are rewarded with emotional justice and unconditional love.

This “formula” leaves a lot of room for creativity. As the RWA website goes on to say, “Romance novels may have any tone or style, be set in any place or time, and have varying levels of sensuality—ranging from sweet to extremely hot.” Setting, characterization, plot twists, word choice, and many other elements of romance writing provide as much opportunity for creativity as literary and experimental fiction do.

For illustration, here are summaries of three stories written by my favorite romance novelist. All three books have (1) a central love story developed through a main plot that centers around individuals falling in love and struggling to make the relationship work and (2) an emotionally satisfying and optimistic ending where the lovers’ struggles result in emotional justice and unconditional love. See if you can identify the books and/or the author.

1. The two protagonists love each other even before the novel begins, but a well-meaning friend causes her to reject his marriage proposal. When they meet again years later, events, misunderstandings, and the romantic intentions of other parties conspire to keep them from renewing their relationship. Eventually, however, the protagonists realize that they are meant for each other and find happiness together.
2. The female protagonist is brought up by her aunt and uncle but is treated as a poor relation. When she falls in love with one of her cousins, she keeps her attraction secret because she knows his family would never consent to a marriage between them. But when the consequences of the family’s shaky values threaten to ruin their social position, the protagonist’s inner worth shines through and the lovers are united at last.
3. When the protagonists first meet, neither likes the other. They are continually thrown together, and the male protagonist falls in love in spite of himself. He grudgingly proposes, is rejected, and leaves. Soon after, the female protagonist’s sister elopes and threatens to bring disgrace to her family. After the male protagonist spends time and money to secure the marriage, the female protagonist realizes that she loves him after all. But it is too late! No, it isn’t. This is formula romance, and the two lovers end up together after all.

By now, you will have guessed that I’m talking about Jane Austin. Here are the titles that go with the summaries: (1) Persuasion, (2) Mansfield Park, and (3) Pride and Prejudice. I could have used many more examples, since Emma, Sense and Sensibility, and Northanger Abbey all follow the same formula.

I’m not saying that everyone should write to a formula. On the contrary, the world would be a barren place without any love stories that end in tragedy or authors who dare to try something new.

But I am saying this: don’t condemn genre novels that write to a formula, because creativity and formula CAN mix.

Mixing Creativity and Formula

This week I am reprinting another blog post that I wrote for the Indiana Writers’ Consortium blog. This one originally appeared on February 21, 2018.

Mixing Creativity and Formula

I’m tired of hearing people run down so-called genre fiction because it follows a formula, as if that means it lacks creativity.  Yes, some genre fiction is only minimally creative, but that’s the fault of the author, not the genre.

Take romance, which is often cited as the archetype of formula fiction. I don’t write romance and rarely read it because I have limited time and generally prefer other types of novels. But I do read it occasionally, and one of my favorite authors fits perfectly into the romance “formula.” More about her later.

Here is the definition of the “Romance Genre” found on the Romance Writers of America’s website at www.rwa.org/romance.

Two basic elements comprise every romance novel: a central love story and an emotionally satisfying and optimistic ending.

A Central Love Story: The main plot centers around individuals falling in love and struggling to make the relationship work. A writer can include as many subplots as he/she wants as long as the love story is the main focus of the novel.

An Emotionally Satisfying and Optimistic Ending: In a romance, the lovers who risk and struggle for each other and their relationship are rewarded with emotional justice and unconditional love.

This “formula” leaves a lot of room for creativity. As the RWA website goes on to say, “Romance novels may have any tone or style, be set in any place or time, and have varying levels of sensuality—ranging from sweet to extremely hot.” Setting, characterization, plot twists, word choice, and many other elements of romance writing provide as much opportunity for creativity as literary and experimental fiction do.

For illustration, here are summaries of three stories written by my favorite romance novelist. All three books have (1) a central love story developed through a main plot that centers around individuals falling in love and struggling to make the relationship work and (2) an emotionally satisfying and optimistic ending where the lovers’ struggles result in emotional justice and unconditional love. See if you can identify the books and/or the author.

1. The two protagonists love each other even before the novel begins, but a well-meaning friend causes her to reject his marriage proposal. When they meet again years later, events, misunderstandings, and the romantic intentions of other parties conspire to keep them from renewing their relationship. Eventually, however, the protagonists realize that they are meant for each other and find happiness together.
2. The female protagonist is brought up by her aunt and uncle but is treated as a poor relation. When she falls in love with one of her cousins, she keeps her attraction secret because she knows his family would never consent to a marriage between them. But when the consequences of the family’s shaky values threaten to ruin their social position, the protagonist’s inner worth shines through and the lovers are united at last.
3. When the protagonists first meet, neither likes the other. They are continually thrown together, and the male protagonist falls in love in spite of himself. He grudgingly proposes, is rejected, and leaves. Soon after, the female protagonist’s sister elopes and threatens to bring disgrace to her family. After the male protagonist spends time and money to secure the marriage, the female protagonist realizes that she loves him after all. But it is too late! No, it isn’t. This is formula romance, and the two lovers end up together after all.

By now, you will have guessed that I’m talking about Jane Austin. Here are the titles that go with the summaries: (1) Persuasion, (2) Mansfield Park, and (3) Pride and Prejudice. I could have used many more examples, since Emma, Sense and Sensibility, and Northanger Abbey all follow the same formula.

I’m not saying that everyone should write to a formula. On the contrary, the world would be a barren place without any love stories that end in tragedy or authors who dare to try something new.

But I am saying this: don’t condemn genre novels that write to a formula, because creativity and formula CAN mix.

Jane Austin and Deep POV

As I take my regular walks, I listen to lectures from the Great Courses. Right now I am doing a series called “The English Novel,” and Friday’s lectures were on Jane Austin.

During the second lecture, Professor Timothy Spurgin talked about how Austin improved on the novelists of her day by finding a way to combine emotional immediacy with narrative control. By having her narrator use a central character’s speech patterns and vocabulary, the narrator remains on the scene without crowding the character out.

Professor Spurgin called the technique “free indirect discourse” or “free indirect speech,” but it sounds a lot like what many writers call “deep POV.”

Austin did not use deep POV all the time. She moved between distances frequently within a scene and sometimes within the same paragraph. They weren’t large leaps, but they were there. And if she did it, that gives me permission to do it as well.

I won’t use the same passage that Professor Spurgin used to demonstrate the technique, because that might be a spoiler for someone who hasn’t read Emma but intends to. So instead I’ll use two passages from around the middle of Northanger Abbey

The protagonist, Catherine Morland, is an avid reader of gothic novels. When she is invited to the Tilney’s country home, her imagination turns it into a mysterious mansion with a dangerous secret. Alone in her room, she spots a chest that seems out-of-place. Notice how this passage starts inside her thoughts but attributes them to her by the use of quotation marks, moves outside while still acknowledging her presence by the use of “Catherine” and “she,” and then ends with a totally unattributed sentence that comes from within.

“This is strange indeed! I did not expect such a sight as this!—An immense heavy chest!—What can it hold?—Why should it be placed here?—Pushed back too, as if meant to be out of sight! I will look into it—cost me what it may. I will look into it—and directly too—by day-light.—If I stay till evening my candle may go out.” She advanced and examined it closely: it was of cedar, curiously inlaid with some darker wood, and raised, about a foot from the ground, on a carved stand of the same. The lock was silver, though tarnished from age; at each end were the imperfect remains of handles also of silver, broken perhaps prematurely by some strange violence; and, on the centre of the lid, was a mysterious cypher, in the same metal. Catherine bent over it intently, but without being able to distinguish any thing with certainty. She could not, in whatever direction she took it, believe the last letter to be a T; and yet that it should be any thing else in that house was a circumstance to raise no common degree of astonishment. If not originally theirs, by what strange events could it have fallen into the Tilney family?

When Catherine finally has a chance to look inside, the chest contains nothing but ordinary bedding. So then she turns her attention to an old-fashioned black cabinet that fights her attempts to open it. When she finally does get it open, drawer after drawer is empty. Except one. Back in a corner, as if shoved out of sight, is a roll of paper. Events intervene and keep her from reading it until the following morning. But when she does . . . well, here’s what happens.

Her greedy eye glanced rapidly over a page. She started at its import. Could it be possible, or did not her senses play her false?—An inventory of linen, in coarse and modern characters, seemed all that was before her! . . . She felt humbled to the dust. Could not the adventure of the chest have taught her wisdom?

Again, we go seamlessly from outside to inside within a single paragraph.

To some people, Jane Austin was just another romance writer. To me, she was an innovator whose novels are timeless, whose techniques are still in use today, and whose writing teaches me how to improve my own.

Thank you, Jane.      

__________

The picture is a watercolor and pencil drawing of Jane Austin by her sister, Cassandra Austin, around 1810. The picture and the quoted passages are in the public domain because of their age.