days ago I discussed with some writer friends of the qualities of a work of fiction.
The question was: is there any set of rules, which can be met peacefully claim to be in the presence of a work of art?
In some ways I am tempted to say yes, if only as a tribute to the great admiration that I continue to feed on classical rhetoric, and all its subsequent decline.
Provided, however, that among the many rules we follow for the most important first, the maximum pay attention to the functionality of all what is transcribed in the text.
Why I think this is the central point: a story is never under any circumstances, a faithful copy of reality, as they may appear truthful facts surrounding reported therein. In each text each element is not as faithful imitation of the corresponding element in the real world, but only because it has a role to play. Each text is only a model of the world, and a summary. If it were an exact reproduction of reality, the narrator is screwed into Paradox Borges, drawing up a map so accurate in every detail to be finished to coincide with the territory represented. Not more then a map, and then a model, but simply What the .
The text should therefore be only what you need to perform a specific narrative purpose, and only that. Otherwise you fall into that inevitably follows that the Angles define infodumping, and which we could popularize with lengthen the stock.
For example, did you ever find something?
"Senator Marco Lucio Foolish hovered pretty good to the slums district, one of the most infamous of the Roman Empire, mainly intended to thieves and prostitutes, located behind the hole but this isolated by a high wall built by Emperor Trajan, who lived 53 to 117 AD
He stopped in a corner resting his foot on a step of travertine, limestone-colored white and yellow because of several quarries of origin, most of which lie close to the city . After clearing the sewage buskin, fine shoe born on the stage but soon adopted by the aristocratic classes and characterized by a high wooden sole, also removed a few splashes of mud from the expensive edge of his purple robe and went back on the road.
was then that he stumbled into the retiarius Giacinto, handsome member of that class of gladiators in one-on-one battles in the circus were fighting against mirmilloni armed only with a trident and a network, hence the name. While their opponents were protected by armor and helmet, and also has a sword, short sword and stocky, and were called mirmilloni remembered because in the appearance of large fish, although some philologists differ etymology of that preferring other.
-Ave, Giacinto! - Marco Lucio said the senator Foolish, warmly greeting his friend with a gesture of good wishes characterized by the right arm held high and the hand held finger together, greeting again more recently by various political groupings of conservative approach including fascism and Nazism, but it is distinguished for having introduced the variant of the arm bent at the elbow.
-Ave, asshole! - Giacinto said the retiarius etc.. etc. ".
worthwhile out the reader on how to achieve in this way supererogatory those seven-eight hundred pages which are now the norm for many celebrated novels, in particular from overseas. But it is also something to do? The debate remains open.