Is a Bad Story Art?

[jp_davis]

Imagine this: a young man, disaffected with life and its thousand daily stings, channels that raw emotion into a work of imagination. He dreams up a world where all the little cruelties of modern life are given a concrete form, where hope becomes a personified, unstoppable force, and where the future is a shining jewel whose mysteries, good and ill

Comments

[carrie_ryan]

What do I aspire to in my writing? Really great question and one I'm not sure I've really thought about. Not to be crass, but one thing I strive for is something that will sell (to a publisher and to readers) so that I can keep writing full time. I tend to approach writing from a fairly commercial standpoint

[jp_davis]

It's funny, I originally tied in the idea of "literature" to the idea of art, then I decided to look up the definition of "literature," and here's what I got from dictionary.com

[reneesweet]

Wow. Deep thoughts for a Wednesday. :)

I tend to associate the "yeah, but is it art?" question with a value judgment. As in, people who think ____ is art, think it's good. I've never applied the "is it art" question to writing, but I can tell you why I write: to evoke a reaction in myself and others. Preferably an emotional reaction that grabs the reader right in the center of their chest and won't let go until long after the last page has been turned. Those are my favorite stories to read - the ones that leave me lingering in their worlds for one reason or another and stir up my emotions. This is what I equate with "good

[jp_davis]

I do think the general "is it art?" question is a value judgment of exactly the type you describe, but I always feel as though it's leveled as though there were some objective standard or characteristic that will render it "art," and that one can dismissively chide most creative endeavors, and even entire categories of creative endeavor, as being unable to attain that level of quality and therefore not worth out attention. That's what I don't like-- the idea that "art" is an objective measure of worth as opposed to a nebulous word whose definition is so large it may well be useless.

I totally agree with your goals in fiction-writing; evoking emotion in the reader is awesome, and it's what I inspire to as well. And I think that's a way better aspiration than just saying we want to make "art."