Can a novel be written centered around a visual aesthetic? Like can a novel properly convey a 90s dead mall aesthetic through words in a way that is interesting as something visual or is there no point in it? I think Blade Runner has a superior visual style as a movie. Could a novel ever have that? Or are words too limited? I think of novels wth strong visual symbols like the eyes billboard or green light in Great Gatsby. Yeah it was over hyped but those are images I remember years later. Could this evolve 90s nostalgia? I want to write a novel that panders to that because I care about it and want to indulge that.
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You are talking more about tone. Words carry that through means other than literal description of the space, you may describe what it feels like to be in the space instead of the visual quality of the space. This is one of those areas genre fiction tends to fail and is more the forte of lit fiction. It requires some
One of my favorite examples, a rush hour subway ride which does things film could never do.
>No fragment of time nor space anywhere was wasted, every instant and every cubic centimeter crowded crushing outward upon the next with the concentrated activity of a continent spending itself upon a rock island, made a world to itself where no present existed. Each minute and each cubic inch was hurled against that which would follow, measured in terms of it, dictating a future as inevitable as the past, coined upon eight million counterfeits who moved with the plumbing weight of lead coated with the frenzied hope of quicksilver, protecting at every pass the cherished falsity of their milled edges against the threat of hardness in their neighbors as they rung together, fallen from the Hand they feared but could no longer name, upon the pitiless table stretching all about them, tumbling there in all the desperate variety of which counterfeit is capable, from the perfect alloy recast under weight to the thudding heaviness of lead, and the thinly coated brittle terror of glass.
Lost that last part somehow. I went on to say the literary requires more from its audience than the filmic generally speaking, the visual aspect of film tends not to require much in the way of vocabulary and grammar of film although that knowledge can increase your appreciation.
Is this Gaddis’s Recognitions?
Yeah.
Film can use the dialog of lit and its descriptions as guidance but that is about it unless you want to get into cringe voice overs. So far the influence of film is quiet short lived, most people watch few movies older than they are.
I’ve been in the same boat, I’m writing and world building for a Sci-fi setting and I want to have a society that fits the 90s/pre 9-11optimism vibe. Like this society has defeated a great enemy (the country they now occupy a part of and where the story takes place) like the death of the Soviet Union, and are now in this aforementioned optimism boom. Also I like cyberpunk cities but they feel very generic at the minute, I like the dark skylines with no billboards, it feels more natural for a city.
Anyway the story is about the occupying nation rebuilding (in their own image) the part of the country they own, I thought of the contrast between their society being so advanced and happy (America late 90s) and the scenes of destruction and suffering seen in the country they occupy(most former Soviet countries/ Russia)
How do I "write" a sense of silence? It sounds impossible. because a novel is just words. and you're going to see it as a monologue in your head. so its never really silent. simply saying "its quiet" or talking about how still and noiseless something is doesnt sell silence and its also too short
Silence has been depicted many ways, there is even a lengthy work of criticism on the topic, probably more than one. Wish I could remember the criticism on silence in the novel, would like to read that again.
>the silence was deafening
>90s dead mall aesthetic
Memphis Design. Think visually, as though you're responsible for set dressing a period film.
Parataxis, and developing a sense of space and the subject(s') situation therein.
>Memphis Design
You're conflating that meme image that goes around with malls, when it really has nothing to do with "dead mall aesthetic."
i had this idea once to make vapor wave poetry but couldnt figure out exactly what that entailed
Yeah it's pretty common for people interested in memes to be talentless losers.
I wouldn't do poetry but just prose that evokes that sleek dead mall retro futurism shit would be amazing.
My novel is about some guy who remembers a punkish party girl manic pixie dream girl and how she fit the zeitgeist of a time lost to him. He wants to do something to remember her before he offs himself. Like graffiti or something. Idk it's an idea I had in a dream.
sounds sick man, dont let that other guy disparage you
Xim xom has already done it, self published a collection on Amazon in the 2010's..there was other periphery writers releasing stuff at the time on meme pages, but it died a quick and quiet death with the zoomification/politicization of online spaces..IQfy still has numerous anonymous authors writing within the framework of post-neo-irony, but with the current influx of coomerpoltards you can kiss goodbye to that movement
The future is in post-neo-romanticism, if you can capture an essence of sincerity and emotional depth in the tired communication lines of the internet, I'll tip my fedora
Ok I’d like a reading list or further explanation on all the ideas in this post, because it’s a nut I’ve been trying to crack for years.
Sure, if what we are talking about is fusing the medium of text with a techno modernist feeling, much like vaporwave, then you have to break down which core elements of a piece of artwork actually evoke that feeling.
With film/music it's easy to play into the audio visual feedback loop that we get from technology, such as that old windows symbol pinging onto a black screen. The clicking and clacking of a machine whirring away in the background while colour streams into your eyes.
With text it's a lot harder, so you have to think about the readers experience of your text, for me I think the answer lies in going beyond the formal structure of a traditional novel. Part of techno feeling for me relies on screens, it relies on the discovery of the reader clicking through the detritus of modern internet culture and stumbling upon treasure.
One of the purest authors in this sub-genre for me was london-frog - if you knew of him and his back catalogue, then you knew his writing instantly. But it was only there for a fleeting moment (unless you use the archive).. the fleeting nature of modern writing and the anonymity of it all is a deterrent I suppose for new writers who want recognition within the wider context of the literature world.
We all want to be a recognisable face, like the idols of lit who we see everyday on the catalog..but I think ultimately if you are a purist to the movement, then you post, forget, laugh. I have all my more significant posts saved in various places, but death to the author who names their work their own.
I am unable and unwilling to give a further reading list, not the least because it's impossible to collate the vast treasure and wealth of literature and poetry that's being pumped into the internet each day. Mostly because I think lists are lazy, the only one that matters is formed in your head over years and years of reading.
TL:DR techno-post-neo-romanticism is impossible to capture or label, it exists in my head, c**t
>Sure, if what we are talking about is fusing the medium of text with a techno modernist feeling, much like vaporwave, then you have to break down which core elements of a piece of artwork actually evoke that feeling.
>With film/music it's easy to play into the audio visual feedback loop that we get from technology, such as that old windows symbol pinging onto a black screen. The clicking and clacking of a machine whirring away in the background while colour streams into your eyes.
>With text it's a lot harder, so you have to think about the readers experience of your text, for me I think the answer lies in going beyond the formal structure of a traditional novel. Part of techno feeling for me relies on screens, it relies on the discovery of the reader clicking through the detritus of modern internet culture and stumbling upon treasure.
Not wrong, but an incredibly midwit post.
>One of the purest authors in this sub-genre for me was london-frog - if you knew of him and his back catalogue, then you knew his writing instantly.
Don't care. If he was worth a shit you would have at least quoted one line.
>I am unable and unwilling to give a further reading list, not the least because it's impossible to collate the vast treasure and wealth of literature and poetry that's being pumped into the internet each day. Mostly because I think lists are lazy, the only one that matters is formed in your head over years and years of reading.
You will continue to be a useless nonentity unless you stop being such shaky scatterbrain.
All hail the voice of the people, the voice of the sewer brained mass, the globule entity.
Tis much better to be a non-entity I find, like a snow kissed mist upon the moors of my memory, I dance within the sprung words of mine own world.
You can shaky my wiener anyday, sweetheart.
do androids dream of sheep?
Yes, fossil fueled ones
A novel can probably do it better than a movie because it can be expressionistic in how it evokes feelings. Yes Blade Runner is good but most movies are not immersive at all
>most movies are not immersive at all
lol what movies are you watching??
>A novel can probably do it better than a movie because it can be expressionistic in how it evokes feelings.
"words are better at conveying visual aesthetics than images" god you are fricking moronic.
I mean a movie can show you a character in Hammer pants while a Spin Doctors song is playing in the background, sure. But that is not as effective at evoking the nostalgic feelings that the use of the aesthetic is meant to convey.
>A novel can probably do it better than a movie because it can be expressionistic in how it evokes feelings.
A film can use the verbal qualities of lit, meaning film is entirely capable of evoking those effects. A recited passage over cinematic matter has a stronger immediate effect than lit by itself does, and the proof of this is that examples of the former have more impact and influence over society than the lit passage by itself, and are shared more often. Part of this is due to the ease of passiveness enabled by film.
The first part of Neuromancer, in Chiba City, is good at this, it is extremely evocative with its prose in establishing the aesthetic.
But I havent seen it done in novels super often, writers almost always care about plot more
>a novel written in the 80s is nostalgic for the 90s
I was going to refute this but then I realized this is the most perfect definition of hauntology.
I tried writing a vaporwave / backroomsy novel and it didn't work out.
>Backrooms novel
See Blanchot's Aminadab
People trying to put vaporwave into text media are idiots, not because it's not suitable for the genre--because it's definitely fully apt for it, the way Neuromancer is for its cousin genre--but because they are indeed talentless hacks entering a lower cost of entry medium. Because they weren't good enough to join crews that make all the real electric dream genre mediums. And that's because while text media works for electric dream genres, the talents of the generation know combining it with visual and musical media can deliver a strong combined effect.
Ai generated post
I hate the way I look
something like that relies heavily on the reader's imagination than the author's words
i wish publishers included more illustrations in their novels
i want little cartoons to go along with the text