From: Maia Cheli-Colando <maia>
Date: Thu, 01 Dec 2005 07:27:52 -0800

Two elements are perhaps often confused. One element -- I'll call an orange -- is the potent story that continues, and the reader's desire to revisit a beautifully designed world lens, e.g. Charles de Lint's well-imagined Canadian city, Newford. But while de Lint's characters and settings overlap, the stories are hardly formulaic. Likewise, Anne's Green Gables and McKay's Cassons are places and friends to which readers wish to return, but the stories do not proceed according to recipe. (Except in those manners which all literature may be said to do.) It is critical for the orange element that the characters and stories progress over time.

The second element -- a grapefruit, with heaps of sugar to blot the taste -- is a story drawn over a simple plot line. The characters may or may not repeat, but the lessons are usually the same (and evident lessons of some sort are often present), the characters don't mature or evolve, and because the formulaic familiarity is preeminent, the books tend to feel shallow, and don't grow the reader. From a writerly perspective, there isn't as much room for storymaking within the formula, and based upon the formula writing I've read, I'd guess that The Flash of which Emily Byrd Starr speaks is perhaps harder to grasp in this writing process? Key for the grapefruit element: unthreatening consistency. Writing as color by number.

There is a cross-element -- a tangelo: a series of stories which do have a richness of place and person laid across a formula. Some of the better adult mystery stories qualify. Readers may enjoy these /in spite/ of the formula or /because/ of the formula -- two different audiences?

There are also the series which started out as the first element but which, upon enjoying popular success, the writer settled into a formula. Here the writer no longer challenges themself to write outside their own box, and the fourth work reads much like the first and the fourteenth in the same world.

Simplicity and patterns aren't formula. A chemistry or baking formula needs be precisely followed to attain the right results. While Cynthia Rylant's Mr. Putter books make a pattern, I wouldn't call them formulaic. Likewise with the works of Arnold Lobel. These stories are simple but extremely well thought-out, and the characters and situations are as rich as the page counts allow. But books like the Magic Quartet, Animal Ark, and perhaps most of what we consider to be "series" books, don't differ enough from one to another to have it really matter which you read when, and how many. They entertain, but they do not fill.
(Not unlike tv.)

It may be helpful for librarians and teachers to tease apart whether a kid is looking for more of just the same (nonlearning), or instead, for another visit to a beloved world view. Perhaps what is sometimes perceived as a passion for the grapefruit sort of books is actually a desire to find again a differently built world? Or it simply may be the young reader's desire for a good book, and the trust that in a series, you will get a decent writer, whose work you have found pleasant or worthwhile before? These readers may not be opposed to growth at all, but simply unsure of how to judge a new author by scanning, blurbs, and yes, even the cover. :)

Maia

*Disclaimer -- though I do value the fiction styles differently, the fruits are arbitrarily assigned and equally admired by me.*
Received on Thu 01 Dec 2005 09:27:52 AM CST