The problem of extruded story product
Extrusion is a manufacturing process that forces material
through a hole and then slices it up. It’s cheap, fast, reliable, and made
purely for identical products. Nothing else.
Terry Pratchett used the term ‘extruded fantasy product’ to
describe how much of the fantasy genre is ‘Tolkien frozen and reheated’. If
you’ve been around the genre long enough, you know what he’s talking about. If
you’ve been around just about any story genre long enough, you know what he’s
talking about.
This goes beyond Tolkien, you see it in every genre of story
that becomes popular enough. Western films fell into this trap, which is why
Sergio Leone’s Spaghetti Westerns felt so different. The same happened in
mystery stories, which I’ll go into more later, it happens everywhere.
The process is pretty simple, a work in a genre creates
conventions, which are then copied by other writers who are then copied by
other writers, and then they fossilize long after their intended purpose was
originally served.
Like a photocopy of a photocopy, each iteration loses
something of the previous version and becomes less distinct and more detached
from the original. Publishers like it because it’s a pretty sure way to get
profits, for as long as the trend lasts.
When inspiration is copied from copiers from too long, a
genre becomes like a stagnant pool. Festering, dull, and not at all like what
first drew people towards it. This is also a large part of what makes people
tempted to go the ‘subversive’ route, something you should not do, please see
my last blog post for why.
Isekai, the subgenre that has taken over so much of anime,
is a particularly bad offender in this regard. It’s gotten to the point that,
despite literally meaning ‘other world’ or ‘different world’, the story type is
completely predictable.
Ground zero for this particular issue seems to be Sword Art
Online, which caused so many imitators in its wake and all but killed the very
different type of isekai that came before it. The result is that it is
currently one of the most stagnant genres of all time, and has become far too
self-referential and predictable to be anything but a parody of itself.
So, what is one to do when their beloved story genres are
faced with such a problem?
The cure to stagnation
Anyone who has been in writing circles long enough has come
across the idea of the ‘Hero’s Journey’ as codified by Joseph Campbell.
As a disclaimer, I don’t take the ‘the hero’s journey be all
and end all’ approach to this structure that some do. Campbell really oversold
the ‘monomyth’ idea and simply ignored anything that didn’t fit the narrative.
But it is an interesting structure and not without merit, even if many parts
are far too specific to be applicable to half of what we’ve been told it is.
We won’t go over all the details of the cycle but the most
relevant to this post:
1. There is some kind of issue in the normal world for which no solution is at hand.
2. The
protagonist(s) have to leave the normal world for an alien world in order to
find a solution.
3. The main body
of the adventure happens with challenges, growth, etc. along the way.
4. The
protagonist returns with the boon he gained on his journey and shares the
blessing with the normal world. This boon is often in the form of an elixir,
from which we get the step name ‘return with elixir’.
What does this have to do with writers in a meta sense? More
than you might think.
A unique perspective
“No man who values originality will ever be original. But
try to tell the truth as you see it, try to do any bit of work as well as it
can be done for the work’s sake, and what men call originality will come
unsought. Even on that level, the submission of the individual to the function
is already beginning to bring true Personality to birth.” – C S Lewis.
Originality cannot be grasped by force, but it also requires
a healthy, strong mind in order to come about. Forcing it gets a kind of ‘stunt
originality’ at best, and lead to the subversive mindset at worst.
We’ve all seen a work written by someone who has spent far
too long in their particular genre at the expense of other facets of life, both
literary and otherwise. This is like a mind on an unbalanced diet, it’s not
going to work the same way as one on a balanced diet. This is a large part of
what brings about the stagnation of extruded story product. You won’t bring
your ‘true Personality to birth’ without fixing this issue.
Sometimes, it’s as simple as a different perspective on the
same genre free of the old trappings.
Super-author Adam Lane Smith channeled the grief he felt at
the suicide of a relative into a story he later marketed to the Christian
fiction crowd. The result was nothing like the usual, hallmark-style, feel good
stories in that genre. It was brutal, dark, and raw.
The result? Last time I checked, Gideon Ira: Knight of the
Blood Cross, was his most successful work.
Adam is not the first to go this route, nor does it require
something like that level of grief, thankfully. Raymond Chandler wrote ‘The
Simple Art of Murder’ (which can be read for free online) to describe this same
issue happening in the world of mystery fiction, and proudly trumpeting the
‘hard-boiled’ school as a solution to the problem. This method wound up
creating an entirely different subgenre with its own foibles and follies to
come later.
The real father of the ‘hard-boiled’ school of detective
fiction was Dashiell Hammett. Someone who worked as a Pinkerton detective
himself and so knew a bit more about the reality of crime than most writers in
the genre.
An even earlier example was G K Chesterton’s Father Brown,
Chesterton, consummate professional that he was created the very abnormal
detective in the priest Father Brown to meet the demand for detective stories.
His unique little detective was very different from his contemporaries. Rather
than deduction, science, etc. Brown’s skill came from his immense knowledge of
the human psyche and soul. A guy who spends so long in the confessional is
going to notice patterns eventually. Chesterton’s deep faith and worldview
brought about this character who still endures past so many of his
contemporaries today.
Such is what it looks like when an author returns with an
elixir, as it were.
What this does not mean
There are lots of medicinal scams out there, both literal
and figurative. Don’t fall for the following.
This does not mean Hollywood style shenanigans like forced
diversity and proud perversion. Nor does it mean English class forced reading
style ‘this but with whining involved over a thin story’. A unique perspective
is not done by effort, it is a side effect of a healthy mind and a willingness
to be a little adventurous in writing.
Neither does this mean throwing the baby out with the
bathwater. Tropes are tools and a fear of being too conventional is just as
bad, and financially worse, than being too shackled by them. We love story
types for good reason, and readers want a level of familiarity as well as
novelty. Trust what is trusty in your genre, you are presumably writing in it
because you love it already.
Nor does it mean you have to live a super-interesting life
of your own. While it probably would not hurt your writing, most of us don’t
have too interesting lives, and are largely glad of it. But you do need a
healthy mindset.
Outside genre inspiration
Not all genres stagnate the same way, and they’re not always
the same level of stagnant. I’ll let you in on a little secret, genres are
really more about selling books than anything else. They’re a large part of
what causes the extruded story product effect. They’re not necessarily bad, but
going further afield in the literary world can be a fine journey in and of
itself. You won’t just see different stories, tropes, etc. but get a clear look
at new styles and literary techniques from a very different perspective to
boot.
The old pulps were NOT afraid to be weird and dangerous
outside of genre norms, and were better stories for it.
Super-Author Kit Sun Cheah’s thriller flavor of fantasy and
sci-fi, aided immensely by his great knowledge of martial arts and tradecraft,
are a pleasure to read. Sometimes, the inspiration for a new perspective is
just a bookshelf away.
A wider literary pallet will have more options and a deeper
understanding than a narrow one. Which brings us to.
Going back to roots
Finally, we have simple literary backtracking. We’re in a
sad state where the idea of a literary ‘canon’ is all but dead. Cut off from
the roots, a plant will wither and die. I honestly think this situation is by
design, but that’s a subject for another post and others have written on the
subject already.
Going back to the original photo instead of a photocopy can
undo much of the extruded story product effect right there. It will also open
up doors that those who don’t know their heritage simply cannot access. Knowing
what trends happened and when may also help you get a handle on future ones to
boot.
For the genre writer’s, I strongly recommend Jeffro
Johnson’s “Appendix N: A Literary History of Dungeons and Dragons” as a
starting point for your ‘canon’. Going back, and understanding why conventions
become what they are and when, you can easily find inspiration for changes for
the better for your own story. There is a much deeper history to fantasy than
many realize, going well before Tolkien himself, much less all his copycats.
For others, do a little digging and find your own genre’s
history, and you may be surprised at the wealth of stories that you weren’t
aware of.
This can and will lead you out of the genre itself. Fantasy
will lead to folklore, history, religion, etc. Even devout atheist H.P.
Lovecraft recommended writers read the King James Bible. Which brings us to my
final point.
Principle informs examples
In my post ‘Martial Wisdom for Writers: What is the Best
Technique?” I noted that good technique followed good principles. The fractal
nature of reality means that not only are the principles of one man defeating
ten are the same as ten defeating a hundred, but that the importance of
principles is true in all stages of writing, not just simple technique.
Don’t aim to be the next whatever name author comes to mind,
inspiration is fine, but this is simply too limiting a way to go about things.
Just like no student of the martial arts will be a copy of their teacher, nor
should they try if they want to reach their full potential, no writer should
try to be another writer’s clone.
Instead, aim for what they aimed for, the creation of a good
story, and do so to the best of your particular abilities. Ideally, fiction
should help us see deeper truths and help us move towards them rather than away
from them. Escapism as a journey to the otherworld can be very good for you and
leave you stronger than before, so long as you are not trapped by a danger
there. Old folklore knew this very well.
Ask yourself: What inspired the people who were the biggest
names in your area of fiction and biggest influences on you? What did they
seek, find, and show? Can you journey to the same goal and perhaps through your
own perspective see the truth and express it in a way only you can?
Perhaps, or perhaps not. I’m not you, so I do not know, and
I won’t make silly promises to people on the internet.
But if you go on this journey, your elixir cannot come from
within the genre that is suffering so much under the extruded product effect. A
stagnant pool will only continue to stagnate, and this can be a tragic thing
indeed. It has to come from outside the normal world, and there’s a slew of new
and strange ones out there to be explored. And they offer an infinite number of
possibilities to bring back home.
-
If you want to see my effort to bring a western elixir to
the fantasy genre, check out my book, A Stranger in Sorcererstown for what a
recent review on goodreads called ‘a breath of fresh air’.
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09KWBV4LY?ref_=pe_3052080_276849420
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