Webcomic Diversity and Power to Change

@joe_galindez Joe Galindez
Fri, 09 Feb 2018 11:51:02 +0000

@joe_galindez wrote:

Rochrok:

No, but being a "good" artist is subjective.

I've had some time to think about why I disagree with this so much. You're saying that it is impossible to distinguish between good art and bad for the simple reason that people like different things. Therefore:

There is no such thing as "good."

Effort, skill, and education are worthless.

Success is either accidental or purchased outright.

This is a very bleak picture for the independent professional. If there really isn't any agreement on what makes something good, then it's useless to try to be good. It doesn't matter how many years of experience you have, your chance of success is the same as someone who just picked up a pencil. You have no career to look forward to unless you stumble upon a hit or spend as much on marketing as Hollywood does.

For many reasons (my sanity among them) I must disagree. Starting with the idea that good art is subjective. We may like different things, but that doesn't necessarily say anything about a piece's quality.

You contrast "50 Shades fans" with "the general audience". It's almost like you think that the former likes 50 Shades for the exact same reasons that the latter hates it. But that's not so. Rather, the 50 Shades fans are responding to the piece's good qualities while the general audience is turned away by its bad qualities.

This is the difference between rabid fans and reasonable fans. A rabid fan will ignore a piece's bad qualities because, for them, the good qualities outweigh the bad. For example, a rabid Batman fan will snap up anything that has Batman in it. Doesn't matter if it's a toy or a movie or a new Frank Miller comic. As long as it's got the Dark Knight in it, then the rabid fan has to have it.

Meanwhile, the reasonable Batman fan will prefer the good stuff. That is, the pieces whose good qualities outnumber the bad ones. A given comic should have decent art, decent writing, decent characterization, and so on. At no point does anyone confuse the good qualities for the bad ones.

I feel that it's better to try to appeal to reasonable fans because they vastly outnumber the rabid ones.

375:

I believe what considers a novel is the definition: a fictitious prose narrative of book length, typically representing character and action with some degree of realism.

This is also my definition. A half-finished first draft doesn't qualify. It probably isn't book-length. Worse, it is missing some of the basic parts that make up a narrative: a beginning, middle, and end. It likely doesn't have a middle and it definitely doesn't have an end.

I stand by what I said. @ChristodeBoyet shouldn't expect success at this point, not when he doesn't even have a complete first novel. Generally speaking, people shouldn't ask too much of their first works. (And I mean that as an encouragement.) Focus on getting it done and don't worry if it doesn't win awards.

It's really important that you finish your first work. You'll learn so much more than if you just keep tinkering with your first chapter. If practice is all about getting the mistakes out of your system, then refusing to advance the plot only means you'll never encounter the late-game mistakes. You'll become an expert at starting novels but never at ending them. And endings are more important.

If writing a novel is like climbing a mountain, then tinkering with your first chapter is like stopping short of the summit to go back and try and make a better approach.