Style over substance?

[Eluvianii]

So, first of all a bit of a disclaimer/apology. This is just a rant, it will mostly be a string of poorly made arguments I'm thinking on the fly before bed, so feel free to ignore the post, I just like to get these things out of my system. If you want to discuss or call me out on something though, that can be fun too. 

So, everyone remembers the whole "fantasy isn't literature" deal, right? I don't think I was alive back when that was the accepted opinion but you can still see the sequels now. It's mostly a thing of the past but I see something along those lines these days that can be, grating.

See, I feel like sometimes we ask too much out of things. If an author has symbolism in their story, they're good. Everybody likes them because they're thoughtful, they can add meaning to the simple things. But then there's the "unnecessary" stuff. I'm developing a strong dislike for that word. I'm going to use A Song of Ice and Fire/Game of Thrones as an example here because by virtue of its popularity, it's one of the cases I see more frequently. 

People speak highly of the writing in that series. The good balance for such a big cast of characters, the gritty realism, the different faces of morality portrayed through difficult situations without a clear right answer. But then I often see people talking about how the violence and/or sexual themes go overboard, even in the name of realism. They talk about how the story doesn't need all that blood or bedroom scenes to be good or to get the message across, and by the end of the argument they've taken all the merit out of the story simply because of those things. Suddenly it doesn't have strong characters, the story is cliche'd, this is just a teenager's perverted fantasy. But mind you, that wouldn't be the case if it was less violent or less sexual. 

Now, making a pause there, maybe they're right, maybe the violence and sexual themes go overboard, maybe they aren't strictly necessary for the story. But why should that be considered a flaw? If the story has elements that can be justified through a philosofical message, or a commentary of some sort it's a good thing, but if the author puts their personal tastes into the story, without tying them to any particular theme, it's immature and bad writing. And there seems to be people who can't accept both substance and style can coexist inside the same story, so if they see the latter, they disregard any presence of the former. GoT is overly gory and explicit so it obviously can't have good characters or strong themes. 

Creators shouldn't need to justify everything that goes into their story to be taken seriously. Why is your story so gory? What's the train of thought behind it? I like bloody fight scenes, there's your train of thought. People should be able to write about dragons simply because they're cool without being disregarded as kids.

Stepping into a wildly different topic for a bit, you can also see that recently with the "forced inclusion" debate. I get that the spectrum is wide and there are some genuinely bad writers out there, but you still see a lot of comments speaking badly of any story they find that has lgbt characters, or maybe a wider race ratio than you commonly see. 

Without going into the whole argument (because as I said, that would be off-topic in this case and that's one beast of a topic on its own right), let's say some writer thinks "Hey, these two would make a good couple", and decides to make the characters gay for the sake of the ship. The story can be great, the prose as artistic as it comes, but because they let their personal tastes play into the character pairings, someone will speak against it because we have that whole situation going on. And even if they read the thing, they will hate it, because again, they can't conceive a story with an element they consider unnecessary having any good points. 

So, all of this boils down to, why is writing whatever the heck you want considered bad writing now? I know this isn't really the case for every reader/watcher/player. Heck, maybe only one in a thousand is like that, but I still see it and it's kind of unnerving. How easily can one confuse "I don't like this, I should look for something else" with "This is clearly bad, literally no one should read/watch/play it"?

Anyway, that's just been on my mind recently. Feel free to slap me back to my senses if I'm way off base here. Good night. 

[CryoZenith]

Hm. Couple things on my mind. Some in direct disagreement with your post, some in somewhat of a contrast.

1. Style and substance can both greatly benefit a book, but they're not equal. Think about it this way: what you get when you combine a ton of style with almost zero substance is something like James Joyce's Ulysses, which is widely considered one of the best pieces of literature ever. On the other hand, what you get when you combine a ton of substance with almost zero style is a Dungeon's & Dragons supplementary DM's book, arguably not a piece of literature at all. Being able to present something, no matter how mundane, in a very flowery and interesting and intricate way, is what makes a writer a writer. Now, writing about a something that happens to be extraordinary rather than mundane is a cherry on top, it helps, but it's not the point.

2. Mind the difference between realism and internal consistency. Realism is not a requirement for good literature, but internal consistency often is. It's fine for a writer to write whatever the hell they want, but they have to include ties to the oddities in the "initial conditions of the world". So it's not a problem to have dragons, but it is a problem to have dragons without at least some lip service to "why" the dragons are there (if the dragons are pivotal to the plot, otherwise, w/e). Because it breaks immersion.

3. Mind the difference between a book being bad and a book being badly written. Somebody who dislikes a book because, say, it has too much gore, or it has too much sex, or it doesn't have enough lgbt representation, or it has too much lgbt representation, or it has too much sexism, or it doesn't have enough sexism (relative to how the in-world culture should realistically be), thinks that nobody should read it because it's harmful, not because it's aesthetically underwhelming (that's an orthogonal axis). Sure, there are readers who confuse the two emotions, but I would guess that most readers can tell the difference.

4. If too many readers have the "I don't like this, I should look for something else"  mentality (or, alternatively, the "if I don't have something nice to say, I should say nothing at all" mentality), that's counterproductive to writers. If writers *only* received constructive criticism from readers who *did* overall like their book, then they would improve at a much slower pace. We need *some* amount of respectful-but-overall-disapproving vocal readership for optimal growth.

[Eluvianii]

1. I really like this one. It implies that the quality of a work depends on the ability of the writer and not necessarily/entirely on the story being told. Two writers may be tasked with writing the same story with the same characters and plot points, but ultimately the better writer will make the better book, even if the structure itself is the same. "It's not about what you tell, but how you tell it" is the way of thinking I've been trying to use to approach stories for a while now. 

2. True. It may sound contradictory, given what my post was about, but few things annoy me more than when a story is inconsistent or contradicts itself, and someone defends it saying "It's fantasy, it doesn't have to make sense". No it doesn't, but it has to makes sense within itself at the very least. My point was only about people disregarding stylistic choices as unnecessary. The dragon may have a justified lore reason to be there, but some people need a thematic reason. If in the dragon they see, idk, a commentary about the danger of nuclear weapons, then people are cool with it, because there's a meaningful reason for it to be there. But if they only see a giant fire-breathing lizard being there for the sake of being a cool source of danger, then it's immature. Unnecessary. 

I should reiterate here that I'm not talking about a majority here, or maybe not even a big group of people. I mean, I'm talking about this in a community about a man who said fantasy was great because it can do everything other genres can, plus you can have dragons. But it's still something that I still see from time to time. Some people can't accept having elements that are fun for the sake of being fun. 

3. This one's on me. This is what happens when you don't think things through before writing but eh, I knew I would mess up my phrasing at some point. That's stepping into objective vs subjective territory which was never my intention. That's a different discussion in which my stand is that subjective should be the one that matters the most. If you like something I don't, I have zero issue with it, and no intention of telling you not to enjoy it, and I expect the same the other way around. 

4. Agreed, criticism is needed. But I guess what irks me here is people on the middle. See how I mentioned the "fantasy isn't literature" days? I feel like some people want to like fantasy, but they need some ground that they consider worth defending. A message, a commentary, strong themes. If there's none of that (or sometimes even if there is. Whether X story has well built themes or not can turn into its own argument), then the story is not mature or serious enough and they blame it on the author. The comments I used as an example are actual things I've read as criticism for ASOIAF. Yes, the books are flawed and there's both good and bad things to say about them. But at the very least I want to believe that if the quality of the book suffers, it will be because of bad character development, loose plot-threads, holes in the worldbuilding, prose. Not something that is there only to match a certain style such as being unrealistically violent. Turning something that boils down to personal taste into valid ground to judge the writer's ability or even morals doesn't feel very constructive imo.

As I said, it was a rant. I may need to do some research to actually defend this, even to prove people like that exist. Which might be interesting to be honest, I'll have to consider it. But really I was just venting. Most fantasy fans I actually meet aren't like that. Most people can enjoy fireballs and dragons for the fun time it is, and if whe learn something along the way, it's just a great bonus. Brandon is particularly good at striking a balance between the two I'd say.