AN EXPERIMENT IN APPLIED IDEAS
THE ODDS against easily solving the dilemmas the literary art finds itself in may well be astronomical. The question is: what are the alternatives? Continued artistic stagnation– writers recycling in tired variations the already been done? Domination of book markets by floods of AI literary slop care of hustlers producing hundreds of bot books, saturating Amazon and other outlets with their crap then bragging about it? A Big Five publishing establishment as devoid of ideas as the movie business, pushing out millions of copies of variations of generic fantasy, covering everything from medieval knights to space sorcerers, to unreal romances relying on caricatured situations and plots?
The solution is Breakout. Shock of the New. Creating a story or novel so different, accessible or exciting it will overturn the status quo literary world. But: how to do that?
FOUR TACTICS
1.) CLARITY. In this hectic age the writer no longer has the luxury of self-indulgence via endless sentences and paragraphs. The reader needs to be grabbed as quickly as possible through a sense of–
2.) IMMEDIACY. Stunning action or emotion from the first page. With an overarching sense of–
3.) RELEVANCE. Call it ideas, call it politics or polemics, the new story and novel need to be part of the culture’s greater conversation. Literature needs to matter. Recognition of reality– of social happenings which affect every one of us. This is no time to remain locked within aesthetic bubbles, a coterie of the insulated and protected, not recipients of economic body blows inflicted on the bulk of the public. NOT witnesses up-close-and-personal to class war including attacks on immigrants, the poor, the disabled and the homeless.
In 2012 I wrote an ambitious novel, The Tower, which sought to portray the beginnings of American disorder and collapse, depicting a variety of social and economic classes; influenced by the Occupy protests of 2011, as well as several previous experiences. A narrative of impending chaos.
4.) MULTIPLE VIEWPOINTS. The advantage of multiple viewpoints, whether used casually as in The Tower, or at a quick switching pace as in my political novella The Loud Boys, is to present a rounded view of a society or situation. To break out of the narrow linear “autofiction” perspective of so much of today’s literary writing. Removing tunnel vision in order to showcase an entire world.
Every one of these four components needs to work together, maximized, to create a breathtaking reading experience.
A path forward. Opportunity awaits! For the aggressive and the ambitious.
-Karl Wenclas
