Returning to simplicity

I'm a big fan of simple storytelling.  But while I've been researching SF short story markets I've come across several magazines that want 'leading edge' and 'experimental' fiction, whatever they are.  Or 'stories that play with form and expectations', whatever that means.

The thing is, a story only is a story if it has a recogniseable structure.  Basically, it needs a boring old beginning, middle, and end.  That's very old-fashioned, I know, but plot is driven by event/action/result/new event/action/result.  The tests and challenges pile up and get steadily harder while we wonder how our heroine is going to overcome this latest impossible challenge.

The very simplicity of simple storytelling structure hides the power of effortless storytelling.  This is particularly so in young adult SF.  There you'll find fast-paced, logical stories, but you'll also find strong SF ideas being well worked out. Which is more than can be said for some of the adult SF stories I've read.  Some of these seem no more than a mish-mash of clever scenes cobbled together with no narrative thread, no obvious connection, and sometimes no obvious storytelling purpose.  They're the sort of thing beginner writers produce thirty years before they learn to write a story.

Perhaps that's why I love YA quest stories.  The little child inside me wants to go on a adventure, wants to face danger (but in a controlled way), wants to struggle alongside the hero/heroine (but not too much.). That's why I wrote my own YA novels The Code River, Geneship, and Auroradawn.  These characters are all people on a quest to find the truth.

To me, far too many adult SF novels are too complex.  They have several viewpoints, jumps in time, alternating first person viewpoints that don't identity the viewpoint character.  All this clutter gets in the way of telling a good story.  Maybe that's why Anne McCaffrey is one of my favourite authors.  Among young adult writers I like Scott Westerfeld, Teri Terri, Anthony Horowitz. All these books have fabulous and hard-hitting ideas, but great storytelling too.  Statistics tell us that more adults than young adults read YA books.  Maybe the simple storytelling is one reason why.

It's time we followed YA's lead in adult SF.  It's time to focus on good old fashioned storytelling, putting over our dazzling ideas without pretentious forms of writing.  And if we returned to simple storytelling maybe more adults would be drawn to SF stories.  Maybe, just maybe, the genre would go mainstream.

The 'not good enough' demon

Reading reviews of Kameron Hurley's The Mirror Empire and Anne Leckie's Ancillary Sword, it struck me how far away from my own work these two books are.  I tussle constantly with whether I can make my name as an SF writer. I came into the genre in what seems like a much simpler age.  I read a lot of Anne McCaffrey, and Elizabeth Moon's feminist military SF.  These are writers who write a straightforward story, with a clear narrative style.  They may have multi-viewpoints, but it's always clear who's speaking and thinking.

The same can't be said about some of the more recent published SF.  Confusing, viewpoints jumping  everywhere, switching first person viewpoints without making the change clear, all seem to be in vogue.  I wonder if publishers are looking for clever structure and complexity - a "challenging read" - over simple storytelling.  

Ambiguity, and concepts so high they're stuck in the stratosphere, don't do it for me.  Despite my two Master's degrees, I'm still a five year old kid at heart. I want you to tell me a story, dammit.  Which leaves me wondering if my straightforward style is a disadvantage in the current market.  I'm having an attack of the 'not good enough' demons.

Every review I've read recently has focused on gender representations in the text.  Yes, there's an issue with female invisibility in the genre, but sometimes this smacks of point-scoring.  "My book has characters with three genders".  It almost seems mandatory to consider gender issues in texts.

But I don't want to focus on that.  Yes, most of my protagonists are "strong" female characters with lives and careers of their own.  They pay their own way.  Men and women are pretty evenly scattered throughout my stories, and often the women are in charge of the men.  But they don't spend their time thinking about that.  It's just how things are.

But I get the feeling that reviewers are "keeping score".  This politicisation of story almost makes me afraid to put pen to paper, for fear of judgement.  I'm not interested in exploring gender issues, it's  wildlife and the natural world that fascinates me.  Am I wasting my time writing about deforestation, overpopulation, and species extinction if all anyone's interested in are gender counts and the Bechdel Test?

I want to tell a simple story focusing on the politics and issues that interest me.  And if that's judged not good enough, then so be it.  That's who I am, and what I care about.