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Current Trends: Yea or nay?

V

Violanthe

New Member
What current trends have you noticed in fiction? Changes in the way stories, characters, settings, plots etc., are written or produced? Which of these trends do you applaud? Which ones are you hoping will go out of fashion?
 
There seems to be a trend lately to leave speech marks out of novels -something which I really hate. Quotation marks were invented for a reason, people!
 
Lately I have noticed a decline in descriptive prose... or at least in the books that I've been reading. I just want to know more about what the rooms that characters are standing in look like, or things along those lines. Not just locations, but more about what the characters look like. Rarely do I find anything more than basic information so they seem like cardboard cut-outs that all look the same...
 
MonkeyCatcher said:
There seems to be a trend lately to leave speech marks out of novels -something which I really hate. Quotation marks were invented for a reason, people!
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Yes I've noticed that too. It pisses me off. A Nobel prize does not excuse you from grammar! I'm looking at you Saramago!
 
ions said:
A Nobel prize does not excuse you from grammar! I'm looking at you Saramago!
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Bear in mind that his books are written in Portuguese, not English. Their grammar is probably exemplary. I think it's more a question of style than grammar.
 
True, but I've seen it in a couple books recently. Other than Jose's I can't remember which though. Joyce didn't use them but at least he hyphenated. Damn, I can't remember any other examples.
 
Could be. If I think of it I'll take a look while at work tomorrow. I leafed through a few of my unreads here and don't have any examples.
 
They were left out in A Million Little Pieces, I think. I read the first page. Got a headache for my trouble.
Sorry I don't have anything else to add to the thread. I can think of a couple things about copycat work, but I don't think that's what you're really looking for.
 
As steffee said, the dead narrator. But, that plot device is already going away, I hope?

Novels composed of "conversations" written as exchanges of e-mail.
 
Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood had no quotation marks, either. The Blind Assassin was also missing them in the "Blind Assassin" bits (if I remember correctly). It doesn't matter so much with Atwood, because she still ensures that you know who is speaking. It was with books like Blindess and Angela's Ashes that I got a bit confused (and frustrated) at times. Is it really so hard just to include a wee bit more punctuation?
 
Leaving out quotation marks CAN work - at least if the book is narrated in the first person. I thought it worked well in "A Million Little Pieces" for instance; it really blurred the line between internal monologue and dialogue, between what the narrator actually hears and what he thinks he hears, between what happens and what he just imagines...

...which, of course, is ironic.

But what it did do well is draw at least me as a reader into the narrator's head. Once you start using very clear-cut he-said-and-then-she-said styles - whether with quotation marks or with dashes - you claim objectivity as a narrator. Which isn't a bad thing in itself, but I've always liked the idea of the unreliable narrator (I think that's a Nabokov term, actually?)
 
but I've always liked the idea of the unreliable narrator
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That is literally what you get with "A Million Little Pieces".

I think if the narrator of a memoir is unreliable, I tend to not care for his/her story at all.

I do like the unreliable narrator concept in fiction. It adds a dynamic for the reader; for instance Poe's a tale tale heart...can you believe the narrator in this one...I believe him absolutely-at least he believes himself! That is the fun part... it is up to the reader to decide.
 
MonkeyCatcher said:
Any examples?
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The way every novel must have some new great schematic structure and the way every chapter must be named after a saint and begin with an obscure quotation. The constant and often pointless and obscure wordplay found in some texts is also a bit irritating, as well as the poor attempts at stream of conciousness writing and magial realism found in literature today. Don't get me wrong, I like some postmodern novels and all, but a lot of them just seem to sell well nowadays because theyve got some great new gimmick, much in the way that scifi books sometimes sell well because they've got a new idea for a new race of aliens rather than because they're well written.

...sorry for the rant, just had to get that off my chest I suppose
 
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