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1980's magical realism

Anarchist-libertarians reach a point in which they don't care to have the real reality get too much in the way.

Sometimes if you have to ask, it is not for you to know.

Did you understand this much? There is a point in a story when Sci-fi may become magic should the author let it.

Agree? or Disagree? or Don't care?

Do you understand "plot hole"?  If a sci-fi writer creates his way out of a situation by using a sci-fi speculation that is no more than magic, he is a bad writer.  The rest of what I said relates to the fact that not only writers who are not scientists but many scientists themselves simply want to believe in magic because it is fun to believe in magic, but real science dictates that the condition: you do A and you do B you will always get C applies to very few (and some say no) processes in 100% certainty of outcome, and magic basically says that all one has to do is do A (wave a wand) and do B (say: abracadabra) and you will get C (a pot of gold).

My sense would be that you would have to break up the vehicle, like take off the tires and glass bits, or you will get unpredictable results. 

The combination of hydrochloric, sulphuric, and nitric acids will dissolve about anything inorganic and you will generate a lot of explosive hydrogen gas.  The final solids (in solution that will have to be evaporated) will be the salts of the metals dissolved.  Reversing, getting the metal from the salts is a long, difficult process of electrolysis whereby there will a mess of impure products.  When I hear of such a Sci-fi scheme, I can only think, good luck with that.

http://www.docbrown.info/page03/AcidsBasesSalts04.htm

Okay, this practical advice (although, frankly, I don't think it applies to TNBW) is depressing because it re-enforces the reality etched into the back of the mind that quality of product is a form of mass hysteria as far as a successful marketing scheme is concerned, and the sale of book is thus tied to irrationalism.

There is no free market in "literary fiction"  It is a status market. Updike went to Harvard. I read one book of Updike, from a sense of duty to my education, and I don't remember it being a bad book in any sense except that it was completely forgettable. Literally, I do not remember a single thing about it -- even the title (though not Eastwick).  C.P. Snow (Cambridge, U.K.) recommends Updike over there, and Updike recommends Snow over here, and it is a done deal.  There is some musing that self-publishing on the internet will change things, but to sell a book is and will be always all about marketing, and in that sense the internet makes things worse with the "review" postings that have suspicious origins, but even so, the status market for literary fiction cannot change because unless a verifiable Harvard man will positively review a verifiable Cambridge man's book at Amazon, the book will not sell.  On the internet it is possible that those actively looking for literary fiction will find literary fiction via search engine but for two problems: (1) an author may (sub)categorize his book as literary fiction when it is no such thing according to the standards listed in my OP; and (2) the sample provided by the online seller is of the first XXX words and by definition a work of literary fiction is impossible to judge by those first XXX words.

And don't let yourself be fooled into thinking that writing to the rules means there are rules for story-telling.  There are none for that. Strunk, CMS. etc.  lay down the rules for good writing as much as a bureaucrat lays down the rules for good living. There are those other rules for fiction which constitute writing to a formula for selling popular commercial fiction. These rules are as useful as might be the rules for making the best rotary phone. 

________________
consider: Lee Child Debunks the Biggest Writing Myths 
http://www.writersdigest.com/whats-new/ … ting-myths

Show, Don’t Tell

Picture this: In a novel, a character wakes up and looks at himself in the mirror, noting his scars and other physical traits for the reader.

“It is completely and utterly divorced from real life,” Child said.

So why do writers do this? Child said it’s because they’ve been beaten down by the rule of Show, Don’t Tell. “They manufacture this entirely artificial thing.”

“We’re not story showers,” Child said. “We’re story tellers.”
_______

Rules are for setting yourself within a social context, for comprehending how you as an individual will fit in with others. Anyone advising you to "fit in" regardless of your desire to "fit in" comes from a collectivist culture that gave us oriental despotism and Chairman Mao.  A writer or any artist from a Western European culture, and especially an individualist culture like that derived from England, is acting counter-culturally, that is to say: against the broader rules for social conduct, if he "fits in."

The thrust of what I said goes back to my original post (that was stolen off of Wikipedia) on the meaning of "literary fiction." It is *not* really well written fiction that may or may not sell commercially.  I thought you might agree because you wrote (or I inferred from what you quoted New Yorker once claimed) that there is a qualitative difference between literary and genre fiction; literary being like peas and beets and all that yucky stuff which is good for you and genre being like chocolate and whiskey which will make you feel good.  I opine that for three generations (pretty much since literary fiction became a label) peas and beets has been socialist propaganda, and I would like to point out that even if one is in that mindset, the meaning for literary fiction as "good for you" (socialism is good for you and capitalism is bad for you) is limited and not interesting. However, judging from your response I gather you think literary fiction just means well written stuff, to entertain (chocolate and whiskey) and inform (peas and beets), that may or may not sell, but you believe well written stuff to entertain and inform can sell for some reason unexplained, just like selling whiskey and beets together is rather dependent on a good advertising agency and not on any characteristic of whiskey and beets sold together in the same fun-pack for all the family.

I disagree that a chapter in a novel is comparable to a scene in a play.  The chapter is more like an Act in a play for it is permissible and often desirable to have scene breaks within a chapter. Moreover, this analogy to a play argues for longer chapters, not shorter.

Chapter 1. John is talking outside his house with his neighbor. He invites the neighbor inside.
Chapter 2. John is talking inside his house with his neighbor.

No.

Plays/movies/TV are inherently limited by practicalities (expensive and time-consuming scene breaks) that novels are not.  The novelist and his readers are freer than the playwright and the screen adapter.

"Scenes represent a progression along a character arc as well as movement along a plot and act(three act or five act) structure"

Substitute "Chapters" for "Scenes" (and I say: "Acts") and  one must realize that such chapters, if the novel is not to be dull and formulaic, ought to vary and flow with the demands for character arc and plot progression and not remain fixed to idiotic notions (even if true)  that editors prefer consistent chapter lengths.

I am leaning toward breaking things up according to chapters if only as a benefit to the reader. It is a writer's conceit to think that his work is so masterful and captivating no reader ever has reason to put it down.  I was thumbing through Saul Bellow's Humboldt's Gift for some tips in style for long dialogue and noticed he has no chapters in 487 pages but rather section/scene breaks designated by diamond rows -- amounting to the very same thing as chapter breaks without benefit to the reader for referencing to himself or others  named source such as "I have finished chapter 4 and my favorite is the second, not at all the first so far . . ."  The book is a first-person ramble suited to such lack of organization through chapters and in my opinion gives itself over to the dull monotony first-person narratives have.

Publish One - no points
Publish Two - points
Publish Three - points
Publish Four - no points
etc.
in sequence of chapters of the same book appears to not work but "versions of the same book" requires literal creation of two separate books one (One, Four, etc.) -no points- and then another (Two, Three, etc.) -points-
rather than one book with different versions of chapters according to points, or no points attached.

It also seems that publishing a chapter when several chapters already exist requires adding up all points for every chapter (rather than those points only for that one chapter) to publish.