Fiction is Just Another Product

Fiction has to serve a purpose in order for it to be profitable, just like everything else that gets bought. It has to have a value for the purchaser. The first, best value for fiction is as an effective means of escape from reality, this is what people are most willing to pay for. Fiction, for many people, is a drug, a means to forget misery. This is the purpose of all entertainment, to alleviate the tedium and various horrors that come of being human and conscious. If it serves this purpose for many people, the way marijuana or heroin or alcohol do, then it makes money, it has to. Its profitability is guaranteed. Another purpose for fiction is to provide insight, to analyze and assess aspects of the human condition. This form is still escapism, it’s just not only about entertainment, if at all. There is a market for this, too, albeit small. Most people consider thought to be a waste of time, preferring to substitute popular religion or whatever offers the most pat explanations.

 There are easier ways to get pure entertainment. Ones that don’t involve reading skills or a vocabulary, ones that don’t take a couple days to give you a feeling of accomplishment. Ease and simplicity, that’s the major selling point of everything. People will consume that which is substandard if it is merely easy to get. Consider the quality of food purchased at your average fast-food restaurant. There is also the feeling of community, of not being alone. You read an old, difficult book and you will have a hard time finding others who have read that same book. You read a simple, contemporary, predictable novel, the simpler and more predictable the better, and your fellow readers are almost easily available. Fans of Twilight are everywhere, but relatively few people know who James Joyce is, or can name one of his books.

 The idea of effective fiction is valid. It is not an art-form that must be kept around by any means necessary, like some obsolete machine preserved in a museum for the sake of preserving it. It is merchandise, a craft item. The craftspeople vary in skill, certainly, but it is still a craft requiring that the creators put out a product that matters.

 What does this mean for the writer?
It means that you cannot write without having the market in mind. The chef cannot cook what he feels like cooking, or what his heart tells him to cook, he must cook what sells. Forget about “following your heart”. Does this mean that you must forget about inspiration? That you must contrive stories that are just like all the other stories? Yes and no. Inspiration can be trained. Once you are practiced enough in your craft, you will get creative ideas. But yes, it does have to fit some kind of standard format for your average consumer to be interested in spending money on it.