What is exotic? I wonder as I eat my bowl of oatmeal while standing over the kitchen sink in my suburban home at 4 a.m. the morning after the "Exotic in Literature" salon. And why am I wondering in such a boring situation? Now if I were eating monkey brains from a skull, or standing beside a fireman’s pole in my redwood tree house, or – why not both? – now that would be a story. Anyway, back to the topic: what is exotic? How about some examples from the salon: Is it the story of a college girl working in a sex club? The boy watering the mud in his yard in the hope that grass will grow? The ghost of a lightning-struck loved one lifting and dropping a bed?And who gets to decide what is exotic, anyway? The New York editor? The literary gods? Oprah?The consensus from the salon seems to be: the exotic story is distant from the reader's experience, and transports the reader. However, a good writer knows that for the story to be sustainable, it must have depth – it must move beyond the novelty to the novel. I don’t mean to exclude nonfiction, I just like the terminology: novelty being something sweet that is quickly consumed; novel being that which is truly unique even when sustained. If you are going to catch a reader's attention, it helps to use a hook. And the big fish run deep. Reeling them in, pulling them through the story, requires tension and a strong line.
How many exotic stories are there? How many people are there in the world, and how many hours in a lifetime? Exoticism is in the eye of the reader.
Posted by Lighthouse member, Ross Knechtel.
