But calling specifically for “novices”? Scam. Total scam.

Assholes.

Re. #13: Tell you what, you and I will start up a racing organization for Clydesdales. Or sue the thoroughbred racetracks for discrimination. Either one.

This is kind of a stretch, but work with me here. I don’t think I would enjoy reading something wherein the author’s agenda clearly shows through, whether or not I agreed with the message. I think I’d find that…annoying. And it would certainly impede my ability to find entertainment in the story. Not being able to come up with a literary example, the only thing to which I can compare what you’re saying is that infamous U2 concert, which cost me $200 to attend, and which consisted of hours of Bono NOT singing and NOT entertaining us, but rather telling us how we would’ve been best to spend our money saving Darfur. Three years later, I’m still bitching about it. So if you can draw the line between fiction as entertainment and concerts as entertainment, you see what I mean.

There’s a time and a place for everything. If you know what you’re getting into – as in, if the blurb on the dust jacket tells you that you’ll be reading all about What The Author Believes thinly veiled as What The Character Thinks, or if the concert ticket says that 60% of the show will be taken up by having the Human Rights code read aloud to you in six different languages – then we have no right to complain. It’s the sneaky bastards who use window dressing to get you through the metaphorical door and then slam it behind you after your money’s been snatched… THAT makes me batshit.

I suspect that comment was a whole lotta nuthin’. But it’s the best I could do at nearly 5 a.m. with no decent examples of books coming to mind. Music will have to suffice.

I know what you’re talking about with the dystopian fiction, and no, that’s not exactly what I meant. I’m not talking about a cautionary tale – the kind with a basic message running through it as a sort of background theme – that tries to show the horrors of war, or that revenge is a bad idea, or things like that. Nor am I talking about stories for kids that teach them how to deal with problems like bullying and such. I’m not even talking about stories that are up front about the fact that they’re making a social commentary. What I’m talking about are the stories that masquerade as regular old genre fiction, like a thriller or a mystery, and then once you get into it you realize that the entire plot is just an excuse for the author to get up on their soap box and preach about their pet cause, whatever it may be.

I guess, for me, the whole thing can be boiled down to the concept of show vs tell. An author can write a book that fairly screams War is Bad, but if they do that by showing the horror and atrocity of war, I’m fine with it. But if they spend half of the book telling me that war is bad, either through the mouth of one of the characters, or by narrative dumps, that drives me totally around the bend. Not because I don’t agree that war is bad – I do, wholeheartedly – but because I just don’t like being preached at. And of course, if it happens to be someone who’s thumping a cause that I come down on the opposite side of – the pro-choice/pro-life debate would be an example of an issue that really gets me hopping, although I can’t think of an actual book in which this one came up – that makes it ten times worse.