How I approach talking about fiction

AKA The Terms of Engagement

I created a Reading Notes tab on my blog page, because I want to write about fiction more, but I think it's wise to set some expectations. I think context is important; fiction doesn't just appear out of the sky, and you don't read it as new as a baby. You bring your own context with you. This is some of mine.

My Reading Notes posts aren't reviews; I'm not reviewing these books. I'm not going to recommend or not recommend books to you. I don't know you, and it's probably best for you to make your own mind up, based on the blurb, what other people are saying about it and your knowledge of your own tastes. Instead, I just want to talk about the experience I had with a given piece of fiction; how it made me feel, whether it was to my taste, what my relationship is to the narratives presented.

The notes are predominately going to be about fiction, because I adore it, but it might be TV, film, music or video games, too, and what I say applies equally to them. I think.

Originally, this section said that I don't think that there is good or bad fiction, only fiction you like or fiction you don't. I still think that's the case. I think our experiences of fiction are wholly subjective. Unless you're talking about the weight of a book, or the number of times the letter e appears in the text, the things that we say about fiction is based on our personal thoughts, feelings and beliefs. I think most people understand this on some level, but it bears repeating aloud. I apply it to questions of craft, grammar and things held to be "writing rules." Most widely accepted rules of writing are just trends that change over time; compare the amount of "telling" Charles Dickens did to a contemporary author, for instance.

I was being too terse in the original version and I want to expand aspects of the reading experience, to provide a bit more context of where I'm coming from. There's three important aspects of reading a piece of fiction, to me.

Firstly, there's the experience that you have with it as a reader; how it made you feel, whether you thought the characters were flat or deep, whether the dramatic tensions that were created eventually paid off. Was it satisfying, did it challenge you, did it make you feel something or did you get to the final page with relief, if at all? In short, what it was like for you to read this book, and how felt when you closed the cover.

Secondly, there's your relationship to the story told. Narrative is one of the chief ways that we engage in sense-making - the project of giving meaning to our collective experiences. The stories we tell about our selves and our position in our collectives and the world in general, are crucial to personal stability, resilience and our world-view. Fiction plays a role in this; it can help us understand the experiences of others; at an emotional level, (be a little leery of taking fiction as fact; see below), it can help us understand our own narratives and views better. It can lead to self-understanding. Even if your relationship with a piece of fiction is very simple ("I just needed to escape for a bit") that can still tell you a little something about yourself. For instance, that there is something that you were trying to escape from.

Finally, there's taste. We all have aesthetic preferences. Some of us prefer a minimalist approach, others like maximalism, others somewhere in between. Some people like stock characters, some people like deep, unique characters. I think understanding what you like - especially if you're an artist or writer - is crucial to understanding how stories work, as well as understanding your experience and relationship with a piece of fiction better. For instance, I'm not particularly a fan of litRPG style stories. I think the inclusion of game mechanics in the fiction damages the immersion. That doesn't mean that I won't ever*¹ read litRPG, it just means that there have to be other appeal factors for me to want to read it. My experience with a litRPG book is already going to suffer a little bit right out the gate, in a way that it might not for other books, and that's something for me to bear in mind when I'm reading.

For me, this comprises the purpose of fiction; an aesthetic creation that attempts to produce a specific experience in order to make sense of our collective experiences.

Increasingly, fiction is being treated as though it is a moral treatise; as though the actions of the characters can be measured against a set of moral values (usually uninterrogated Christian or western judicial values) in order to decide whether a work is "good or bad," (or "unproblematic/problematic"). Fiction can provide a moral opinion, but acting as though that's all it's for diminishes fiction.

I'm also wary - and I think readers should be, too - of expecting fiction to teach you factual information. Fiction has absolutely no obligation or duty to be factually accurate. It can be, and many writers go to great lengths to make sure that they are, but expecting that from fiction is unrealistic. There's nothing stopping anyone writing a piece of fiction where the Vikings have howitzers, for instance. You should take all the facts you get from fiction with a pinch of salt until you can corroborate them from objective sources. I find the expectation of factual accuracy in fiction manifested as critiques of fantasy fiction on the basis of historical accuracy particularly tedious.

If fiction is about sense making of our collective experiences, and our collective experiences include politics*², fiction is therefore necessarily political. Fiction is not political in the way that a manifesto or an argumentative essay is political; it is still first and foremost about making you feel something, but that feeling can be political. I think people who say 'fiction shouldn't be about politics' or 'authors shouldn't be political' often means 'you're making me think about how power is used on who and the role I play in that, I don't like it, please stop.'

I don't see a difference in value or inherent quality between genres or publication methods. Romance novels and literary fiction have equal value to my mind. What self-published or traditionally published tells you is how many people's labour has gone in to a work; many people compared to, often, just one. It tells you nothing inherent about the quality of the work. They can all be used for sense-making.

Sometimes fiction makes you think deeply about the thing you've read, sometimes, it doesn't. Sometimes there'll be lots to write, sometimes there won't. I don't know that "I enjoyed this, it was fun!" is any less inherently valuable than, "this made me cry, and think about my past." Imagine a life without fun. Yeah.

I'm unlikely to write anything about books that I actively disliked, unless I can think of a distinct benefit. It's just unproductive. Same goes for books that I DNF*³; unless I DNF'd for a particular reason I want to talk about, I probably won't write about them. I DNF books for all sorts of reasons, up to and including 'something I wanted to read more was available.' It doesn't necessarily mean anything.

I'm also probably not likely to write lots and lots about books that I really liked, ironically. I get the most mileage out of books that I really liked but had some problems with. Fiction that I have a love-hate relationship with is often the stuff I can't shut up about when talking to friends, so that'll probably appear often. These are the pieces of fiction that I really chew on over time.

I will not willingly or knowingly read a book written with AI. GenAI is a scourge.

Sometimes I'll want to talk about something that happens in a book that includes spoilers. I'll mark the sections where that happens. It should be obvious.

Where necessary, I'll include content warnings, or link to the content warnings for books.

If I have some sort of a relationship with an author, or any other kind of conflict of interest, I will say so up-front.

You probably shouldn't read a given note if it references a work you authored. I'm not necessarily going to pull my punches. I'm not an asshole; I know how much work goes into writing anything. I will not shit on or tear down works out of glee. But I am honest, and it is a value that is important to me. Writers please beware; unsolicited critique is rarely constructive to the writer whose work is being discussed.*⁴

I reserve the right in advance, to update, evolve or otherwise change my mind about my opinions and tastes. I think there are lots more things that I want to think about here, but it's probably better if I think about those in other posts and link back to here if relevant. This is just the basic level context of where I'm coming from when I'm reading and writing about fiction, for people to refer to if they need to.

I'll update this when I think it's necessary. It's current as of 26.10.26.