3-D writing

Revolutions in Literary Style

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IN MANY ARTS there’s a push-pull between simplicity and complexity. It happened in the rock music scene, where what started out as direct and immediate– early rock n’ roll– transformed itself into increasing virtuosity and complexity with the pretentious “prog rock” of Yes, Emerson Lake and Palmer, Pink Floyd, ELO and Company. The reaction to this barrage of bombast came with the in-your-face simplicity and immediacy of punk rock.

sex pistols

A similar situation occurs in the literary world. Literary revolutionaries like Ernest Hemingway and Jack Kerouac strove to cut the excess detritus from what they saw as a corrupted and decadent art– corrupted by the convolutions of Henry James and similar stuffy esoteric literary icons for whom direct communication with the reader was a secondary consideration.

WHY CLARITY AND DIRECTNESS?

Over the past few decades literature has been beat up badly by rival arts like movies, comic books, even video games, whose advocates place their favorite art on the same level as novels– which those of us who understand all the novel can achieve artistically, emotionally and intellectually view as an absurdity.

What those arts are able to do, and do well, is communicate. They make a direct connection to the individual experiencing them, stressing what have been the strongest parts of literary creations– character and plot. Aspects which elite writers have downgraded as they’ve retreated further into the solipsistic mind and the contortions of their writing styles.

If literature begins once again to compete, it will sweep the field of every rival. After all, comic books have their roots in the Dumas novel The Count of Monte Cristo— which in itself remains a far greater artistic work than any comic book, any superhero movie, any video game.

monte cristo

THE SOLUTION

The solution to the dilemma of literature in today’s world will be found in another stylistic revolution which simultaneously cleans up and strengthens the literary art, leaving it more readable and far more exciting.

The 3-D Short Story we’ve been advocating and constructing is only the first step.
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-Karl Wenclas, New Pop Lit NEWS

The Future of Fiction Writing?

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THE 3–D MULTIDIMENSIONAL SHORT STORY

333DDD 2-page-001 - Edited

NOW that it’s been introduced, the multidimensional story technique won’t be stopped. All attempts to shut out new ideas in art inevitably fail.

What makes 3-D Story technique unique is that it pushes against the bounds of time and space– short story limitations– in so doing working against the standard linear, one-viewpoint model which has sustained the short story form for decades.

A BETTER MODEL

The idea behind the 3-D “pop lit” short story– modernist pop– is that it’s faster-paced therefore more exciting than an old-fashioned story. Especially a finely drawn literary story. Taking advantage of rapid cognition. More complex yet still readable. A fuller look at the world but also entertaining, even thrilling.

SO FAR we’ve released for public viewing a single modest prototype.

tesla early view(Early Tesla Motors vehicle.)

Like all prototypes, it’s practice. Testing. Experiment. Example. Learning. Many more examples of the format, from both of us at New Pop Lit, will be forthcoming. We hope other writers talented and daring– early adopters– will try the technique, and go far beyond our own forays. A door has been opened. A glimpse of innovation. Once artists move past boundaries, possibilities multiply.

There’s no bandwagon for the technique, yet. There will be.
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-Karl Wenclas, New Pop Lit NEWS

Anti-Consensus Theory Applied to the Literary Game

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FOUNDATIONS OF 3-D WRITING

Teslathinker

THE PREMISE of the 3–D Short Story and the New Pop Lit project is that literature can become not only better, but way better.

We humans are at a primitive understanding of most worldly things. Including the nature of art and the waves and flows of cultural history. Yet expected consensus on this issue or that one is the rule of the day. We’re expected to agree– even if agreement is impossible. Because total knowledge for us is impossible. It’s usually one side attempting to impose its unique perspective on another side.

The classic work addressing the pack mentality is The Crowd by Gustave Le Bon. (Much studied by creators of the Madison Avenue ad industry.) Itself a primitive work, for all its insights.

We can reach a consensus on some things, sure– that the earth is round. That planets revolve around the sun. As often as not a consensus is wrong. Especially if accompanied by arrogance or complacency.

Robert-McNamaras-by Cecil Stoughton

The classic example of that is brainiac Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and his team of the “Best and Brightest” who blundered into, then misfought the Vietnam War. (Replayed forty years later in Iraq.)

JFK_best and brightest

They had their charts and computer models and “experts” generating reams of data– kinda like the FiveThirtyEight crowd in the last big election– and broke the fighting of war down to a matter of graphs, statistics, and body counts. Then were outfought or at least outlasted by impoverished bands of guerrillas. The lessons of arrogance.

The lesson is that one needs to continually search for counter narratives. Other sides.

Sometimes statistics are the counter narrative. Sabermetrics was a leap ahead in understanding the well-regulated game of baseball. But other leaps await, even there.

nixon chou

We need modesty about our understanding of anything. The kind shown by Chinese Premier Chou En Lai in 1972, who, when asked by Richard Nixon his opinion of the French Revolution, said “It’s too soon to tell.”

IN THE ARTS we can assume the current consensus is wrong. Art has always been about cultural change. Change, and more of it. Mimicking the nature of the universe. An art reaching moments of perceived perfection– then throwing the moment over in the interest of discovering an entirely new way of viewing things.
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We should strive for the imagination of a Nikola Tesla, who circa 1880 imagined fantastic happenings– who conceived then the world we live in now. The trick is to look beyond the moment, the “now”– what’s directly in front of us– to envision new ways of thinking and creating.
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-Karl Wenclas, New Pop Lit NEWS

Modernism and Editing

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FURTHER THOUGHTS ON 3–D WRITING

Paul_Cézanne_058(“A Painter at Work” by Paul Cezanne.)

Modernist art IS editing. It’s cutting away all unnecessary material and allowing our minds to fill in the empty spaces. A technique in writing pioneered by Gertrude Stein, Ernest Hemingway, and Georges Simenon.

These writers knew painting and they knew how a daub or two of paint could touch our emotions and allow us to “see” the reality of the image. In writing, a key touch of color or taste or sound to suggest something greater. To stimulate our memories, our own experiences.

This is the antithesis of standard literary writing which strives to tell you everything, overwhelming the narrative with details.

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AN EXAMPLE of modernist editing in another art form can be found in this movie trailer:

The film: the 1959 version of Ben-Hur. (Which WILL be playing in movie theaters across the country this month, April 14 and 17, to celebrate the film’s 60th anniversary.)

The trailer is a work of art, superbly edited to suggest the four-hour long motion picture. It achieves a conciseness, a modernist sharpness, not possible from the larger work it serves to advertise. Note especially how the unknown editor uses voice-overs from other scenes to make thematic points; and how he dissolves the two biggest sequences, the chariot race and the crucifixion, into each other.

All movies are shaped and “cut.” Material left out. The trailer is extremely cut.

The idea points a direction for those wishing to make fiction– the short story in particular– as sharp, angled, fast-paced, and exciting as possible.

Which we’re attempting to do with the 3–D Story.
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Karl Wenclas, New Pop Lit NEWS