My aunt had a hell of a time getting my cousin to read, until she tried biographies. He had no interest in fiction, but was really interested in the historical books. This was in the early 90’s, before even Harry Potter was around, which did increase the number of kids fantasy books for good or bad.
Also agents seem way more accepting of extremely boring autofiction when it's a minority. The biggest sin of the LGBTQA black books are more that they are just boring. The hook is that someone misgendered them at work. There's very little sense of "contract writing" as Franzen described where you are writing with the audience in mind to some extent. And they definitely don't seem to be writing to sell books but just for the prestige of being a published novelist. Very bizarre to me.
I've wondered about this. The thing is, wouldn't anybody be able to tell from the difference between the writings? Its not like the wn is hidden, anyone can read it freely and see for themselves. I'd figured editors would have a harder time, given that.
Realistic books written from a kid perspective just seem cool at certain part of life, as well. Кондуит и Швамбрания and such.
I was thinking about this, and my own reading preferences, and I've come up with a couple ideas. Obviously this isn't supposed to be exhaustive but maybe something to think about.
I imagined the editors know how to mimic the author's style as closely as possible. Besides, sometimes there's a significant change from WN to LN because the formats and mediums are quite different, so most people would probably accept that
From what I know, most changes tend to be criticized heavily and compared to the web novel, or generally very small. That being said, there's so many web novels out there, its most likely true. Kind of wonder which series are the ones where this is the case.
It's worse than that. It's one thing to have no life experience, but it's compounded by having no interests outside of [the current thing.] Howard and Tolkien both had life experience, but they were also history nerds and it really showed though in their writing. John Kennedy Toole was an academic weirdo (though he did two years in the army, thanks to the draft) and he still managed to produce the best American novel ever written simply though his powers of observation and imagination. Having a rich inner life can make up for a lot of outer deficiencies, especially in an escapist medium.
I disagree with this part. Like them, their characters have physical characteristics, because that's one of the few real traits they have. If their main character is fat, black and queer (and you bet they will be) then I hope you're braced for endless, artless description of how fat, black, and queer they are.
I forgot that part.
It also had a message, and the message was usually that modernity was bringing us inexorably towards destruction and only a complete reorientation of Mankind's priorities could show it that tradition was what made us happy.
Web novels are first draft tier.
I don't think it's anywhere near as bad as you think. As someone who is in the public library very often, the majority of books checked out go to kids. Zoomers, at least where I live, read way more than my generation seemed to. Maybe my state just has a good infrastructure for it, but I've seen bagfulls of books getting checked out at a time for tikes.
Most of them are such blatant Mary Sue wish fulfillment that it's hard to even stay entertained past the first chapter. I've had people recommend them to me but I just can't enjoy what I've seen. Same goes for a lot of Asian webcomics (those long ones you read on your phone).
Most children are interested in reading. They love being read to when they're toddlers and preschoolers, even kindergarten and early elementary. That's special time with their parents/teachers/caregivers. When they get older, they have more things vying for their time--school, extracurriculars, electronics/tv, etc. Just make sure you have a wide variety of reading material around the house (like your parents did) and take time to read aloud and to their interests. Many kids end up picking reading back up later on as adults, so there's no reason to fret.
I don't have an MFA but I do have the equivalent (and more) of professional experience, so I'll assume that MFA programs, like many books on writing craft nowadays, take a lot of the fun and creativity out of writing. I've seen so many books and programs distilling writing to a numbers game--at the 13% mark of the story comes the inciting incident, at 45% the second obstacle, at 91% the dénouement, etc. Or you have to fill out copious amounts of worksheets to understand your character, his wound, if he likes potato wedges or french fries, and does he sleep with socks on or off. It's ridiculous and takes the magic out of storytelling.
It's interesting how MFAs try to make story telling strictly empirical and mathematical. It's hard to teach a "feeling" and "when you know, you know", let alone grade it.
I wouldn't even read that deeply into it re: political commentary affecting the story, because the idea of the story is all that matters for how it feels. George Lucas himself has said that Star Wars is a specific kind of heroic journey. A man who has the world's responsibilities on his shoulders falters and fails but is redeemed by his son. He knew with absolute certainty what a truly meaningful story looked like because he had read classic European literature, and even though his movies were basically 70s scifi schlock he adamantly maintained the through-line of Monomyth through it.
As a friend of mine says: storytelling is like stage magic. You are trying to get the audience to believe something unreal. People may not be able to explain why something is a bad trick or how a trick fails, but they all recognize it instantly because they never believed.
That's what this book about worldbuilding I read talked about, believability. For your Fictional World to work, the audience must believe that it exist, somewhat. The same also applies to the story, the audience must also "believe" that the story actually happens