this post was submitted on 29 Mar 2026
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Yeah, I think you just might just hate formulaic genres. Let me guess, you also don't like hero's journey stories.
How do you feel about LeGuinn's writing?
Definitely possible. I remember being genuinely appalled when our teacher casually told us that most stories can be divided into three acts (Setup, Confrontation, Resolution).
Rationally, I've understood that it's almost like a law of nature. You kind of have to tell stories this way.
But on an irrational level, I'm thinking, great, they've spoiled the end of most stories. If they all end with a resolution, why even bother listening to them?
...that is somewhat of a hyperbole, but there are further subdivisions that make this even more obvious. Like hero's journey that you named, where you can tell that they're going to survive at least until the final conflict, and even then there's a pretty good chance for a happy end, because people like those. If my brain latches onto one person being the hero, it feels like I know the remaining story arc already.
And I have to admit that I don't read much, so this is the first time I'm hearing of Le Guin.
But it's not just the writing either way. I do also always feel like I might as well read about the real world before I read about fictional worlds. I don't need to know about aliens and dragons, when ants exist and are so much cooler.
I kinda get it, I found myself frustrated as a student learning about story structure because it felt like it spoiled all stories too. But rather than the framing of these things as laws of nature I think it's better to see it as more like known formulas for making a story compelling. The three act story is so common because it's relatively snappy while containing all the things necessary to make a story work. Like, there is avant-garde storytelling (especially in theater and film) that completely says "fuck you" to story structure, but at its best it's not something most people will enjoy. It tends to revel in the fact that it's unsatisfying or confusing, it looks at the structure of its media and asks what if I did something different. And it really teaches you the reason for convention.
But yeah LeGuinn's big thing is using what if scenarios to shine light on society. The main books people recommend are The Left Hand of Darkness which is about a man from earth serving as the initial ambassador of a union of planets to an ice world where everyone is both male and female, which is used to explore gender relations in the real world, and The Dispossessed which serves as more of an imagining of the problems and struggles of a free thinker who grows up in an anarchist society as he visits a far more geologically fortunate world engaged in a cold war style conflict.
I bring her up because her fiction isn't subtle about its exploration of real world ideas and themes. Ultimately I don't think anyone should have to like fiction, but I do think it's valuable to understand why people like it and the intellectual value we can get out of some of it