Self-consciously self-conscious

[pjthompson]

Metafiction elements have shown up in Charged with Folly. Not too much: there's nothing I find more irritating than self-consciously self-conscious fiction. But there is a device, an element, in the plot of my story that allows things to leak through now and then—ironic elements from my current reality. At least a couple of readers of chapter one when I posted it on OWW back in the misty days of yore commented on these leakages. So it remains to be seen if I can pull this off in a way that doesn't alienate readers until I can address the plot element which explains them.

My feeling is that I can address it fairly early in the story, but I don't always have ultimate control over when things appear. And I may have to scrap the idea entirely at some point. But that's why they call it a first draft! I'm on the road to Findout.

Another first draft thing that occurred to me today was, "I'll sure be glad when I can stop writing this boring stuff and get to the good stuff." Uh oh. If I'm bored with it, the reader will be, too. Maybe I'd better rethink some things. That's why I like to get about ten chapters ahead before I start posting the first drafts of novels to the workshop. It gives me time to feel things out a bit better, see if they really belong in the book, see if characters are important or just red shirts. The road to Findout.

Comments

[kmkibble75.livejournal.com]

I feel dumb. What's metafiction?

[pjthompson]

It's a shortcut way of saying: "Metafiction is a type of fiction which self-consciously addresses the devices of fiction. It is the term given to fictional writing which self-consciously and systematically draws attention to its status as an artifact in order to pose questions about the relationship between fiction and reality. It usually involves irony and is self-reflective."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metafiction

I had to look it up to make sure I was using it correctly, as I couldn't quite remember, either. I don't usually like to use jargon because I think it tends to break down communication rather than enhancing it. It tends to exclude people from the discussion who are not specialists in the field. In this case, it just seemed like a shorter way of saying what I wanted to say, which is why some people use jargon, I suppose. I still don't like it much. :-)

The way I'm using metafiction in my story is by having an alternate universe where some things are the different and other things are an intrusion from our reality; I'm consciously making anachronisms and the like pop up--for a reason. Like the term, "deadbeats." I got some criticism for using that term because of course we use that term in the current reality and it was a rather self-conscious usage of a term I knew would set people's teeth on edge, or at least, maybe, perk up their ears. I liked thinking it might make people feel the ground in my created world was a bit unsteady. I'm playing around a bit with the idea of seamless worldbuilding.

There, you see, ask a simple question and get punished with a mega-answer. ;-)

[kmkibble75.livejournal.com]

Ah, gotchya.

Hmm. I probably wouldn't have noticed deadbeat... maybe I'm meta myself?

[pjthompson]

You never know!