I want to be one of those people that drops a Bible verse and then leaves, but I am not.
Write YOUR book. That may seem contrary to my mystery verse.
But there are millions of books in the world (billions?bazillions?) and supposedly 7 basic storylines. (7 is such a great number for putting a cap on things.)
Don't be an airport novelist that I can read on one flight and return the book at the next airport for a discount.
Palatable like cake has never been you. You could have chosen cake all along.
I can assure you that I haven't fundamentally altered the nature of the book, but you already know that. More an exercise of getting the asshole writer out of the way and letting the story sing.
"But the story has to be seen to work. It has to be visible enough to catch a reader and earn the turned pages through the end." In college we were assigned the novel Clarissa, Or The History of a Young Lady by Samuel Richardson. It was a lengthy epistolary novel; the closest thing to a jump cut was moving from the end of one letter to the beginning of the next. Spoiler alert for anyone who is thinking of reading Clarissa - there is a rape late in the book. Curiously, in talking to classmates, most did not know that a rape had occurred. My point is this: I agree that the story needs to be visible enough to catch a reader. That said, you are not going to catch every reader. Ultimately, you should write your novel the way you want to write it.
Agreed, Michael. A book cannot be for every reader, any more than a band can be for every listener, or a philosopher for every thinker. Art has to take stands (implict or not), and those stands should light up some and turn away others.
Clarissa. Man, I haven't thought of that book in a good 30 years.
Writing a novel is not a severe schoolhouse, where you rap the knuckles of the readers if their attention wanders. Instead it is a cooperative endeavor, in which your text provides the road map -- the GPS, if you're really trying to communicate -- and you also point out sights and sounds along the way. But the readers have to perform the story in their own brains. It's not your voice they'll hear, but their own, speaking the words of the text in their own minds. Reading brings language into the mind through the auditory processes of the brain, so if your text puts up barriers to attention and aspiration, and the readers drift away, never to return, that's the author's fault. Maybe the few who keep reading have passed some moral or obedience test; maybe the many who give up on it have demonstrated their membership in the culture you are supposedly talking to.
Some writers aspire to write "for the ages," but I believe that we must first communicate with readers of our own contemporary culture. What kind of self-destructive TV executive would try to put on the air a contemporary drama, or even a historical one, using scripts from shows of the 1950s and early 60s? Watch reruns of once-strong and popular shows like The Rifleman, Cheyenne, Leave It to Beaver, Bachelor Father, or Bonanza and imagine trying to shoot a series today using the same scripts. If you cannot speak to the culture you live in, your stories won't be around to find an audience in 2056 or 2116. Thirty years, even sixty years, are not quite "for the ages," but aspiring to reach your living audience is not an unworthy goal.
Those who write only to please themselves and, perhaps, God or the Muses, should not even bother printing out the manuscript and putting it in a trunk. My daughter used to try out new fonts on our computer by writing the beginnings of stories, then walking away when called to dinner or the phone (in the days when the phone was attached to the wall and we used it for talking). We would find it later, this story opening, sitting on the computer screen unsaved, no filename in place. We would name the file ourselves and save it, because she was, even as a preteen and teenager, an extraordinarily gifted writer and storyteller. But THAT is what people do when their art is so pure that they don't care about pleasing an audience -- they walk away without choosing Save As from the File menu. The minute you name that file or print out that script, you are confessing that you aspire to reach someone, some audience member who will receive your tale with eager attention.
It is not a sin to write in such a way as to invite attention, to attract the readers' hopes and fears. We aspire to communicate with readers who care about and believe in the same things that we the writers do, or who are at least willing to follow along with us for part of our journey down the road. It is a worthy goal, a pro-social role, to attempt to be good company for the other travelers, so they'll choose to join up with us tomorrow, and to continue to journey with us to the destination of our choosing.
What a pleasant surprise to wake up to, Mr. Card! Thank you for the note. I suspect we agree on about 98% of this. Why write for other people if you don't intend to reach them? Why write if not to communicate something you find meaningful, to explore a set of ideas and people you find fascinating? My goal in writing is fairly straightforward: there were books I read when I was young that made me feel less alone, less crazy, and in community with other like-minded souls. I want to write to reach even one other person in the same way.
As E.M. Forster always sez, "Only connect."
The occasion for this revision was an attempt to make the book not easier (the difficulty is with the human stakes and living with them) but more welcoming. The first draft was written as though it were a modernist book from the 40s. It was a puzzle game, not an invitation to live with people. So the book retains some refractions of that, but plays far less hide-the-ball. It now, I hope, invites a reader to sit down and co-dream.
Grateful for the thoughtful note, and for the rare pleasure of talking craft with someone who's lived it.
Give them the markers, Owen, but let them wander. Make them earn it. If they want TikTok level depth and velocity, the distraction is already in their hands. Keep the story in the knives mate. Cut that bastard down.
Right: it's a matter of calibration. Gotta provide enough of a map for the reader to build the shape of it on his or her own. But some wandering, some unresolved tension that is up to the reader to suss out is the interesting thing, no?
That’s not just the interesting thing, my friend, that’s the whole enchilada as far as I’m concerned. Keep ‘em thinking, keep ‘em guessing. That’s what keeps ‘em turning the pages.
In college I took a history class that focused on the novel War & Peace. It was a small class of around probably 20 or so people. We were assigned chapters to read and then discussed them. At some point our professor started to play the movie during class time. Not the Audrey Hepburn and Henry Fonda version. But the 6+ hour version in Russian with subtitles. I think I made it through 2 classes before I stopped going, and I fell asleep during both. I never finished reading the book, either. Yet somehow I managed to write a paper on it and from what I remember got a reasonably good grade on it.
Like Rear Window, the book and the movie were made in a different era. Back when we didn’t have the distractions of television or the internet or social media. Back when someone would be willing to read a 1000+ page book, or sit through a 6+ hour movie (that wasn’t about elves or galactic rebellions).
We create things for the world as it is at the time. Tolstoy in 2026 would have written a much shorter book. James Stewart and Alfred Hitchcock would have created a much different movie with faster pacing if they were making it today. You can lament that people don’t have the same attention spans now as they did 10 years ago, let alone 50. But the people from 50 years ago won’t be reading your book. The people with short attention spans will. I think the real art is staying true to yourself and your story and being able to share it with others.
We are in accord, my friend! Any writing is a joint endeavor between writer and reader, a negotiation of sorts. The important thing is to keep the right people journeying with you.
Ecclesiastes 1:9
I want to be one of those people that drops a Bible verse and then leaves, but I am not.
Write YOUR book. That may seem contrary to my mystery verse.
But there are millions of books in the world (billions?bazillions?) and supposedly 7 basic storylines. (7 is such a great number for putting a cap on things.)
Don't be an airport novelist that I can read on one flight and return the book at the next airport for a discount.
Palatable like cake has never been you. You could have chosen cake all along.
I can assure you that I haven't fundamentally altered the nature of the book, but you already know that. More an exercise of getting the asshole writer out of the way and letting the story sing.
And indeed, there is nothing new under the sun.
"But the story has to be seen to work. It has to be visible enough to catch a reader and earn the turned pages through the end." In college we were assigned the novel Clarissa, Or The History of a Young Lady by Samuel Richardson. It was a lengthy epistolary novel; the closest thing to a jump cut was moving from the end of one letter to the beginning of the next. Spoiler alert for anyone who is thinking of reading Clarissa - there is a rape late in the book. Curiously, in talking to classmates, most did not know that a rape had occurred. My point is this: I agree that the story needs to be visible enough to catch a reader. That said, you are not going to catch every reader. Ultimately, you should write your novel the way you want to write it.
Agreed, Michael. A book cannot be for every reader, any more than a band can be for every listener, or a philosopher for every thinker. Art has to take stands (implict or not), and those stands should light up some and turn away others.
Clarissa. Man, I haven't thought of that book in a good 30 years.
Writing a novel is not a severe schoolhouse, where you rap the knuckles of the readers if their attention wanders. Instead it is a cooperative endeavor, in which your text provides the road map -- the GPS, if you're really trying to communicate -- and you also point out sights and sounds along the way. But the readers have to perform the story in their own brains. It's not your voice they'll hear, but their own, speaking the words of the text in their own minds. Reading brings language into the mind through the auditory processes of the brain, so if your text puts up barriers to attention and aspiration, and the readers drift away, never to return, that's the author's fault. Maybe the few who keep reading have passed some moral or obedience test; maybe the many who give up on it have demonstrated their membership in the culture you are supposedly talking to.
Some writers aspire to write "for the ages," but I believe that we must first communicate with readers of our own contemporary culture. What kind of self-destructive TV executive would try to put on the air a contemporary drama, or even a historical one, using scripts from shows of the 1950s and early 60s? Watch reruns of once-strong and popular shows like The Rifleman, Cheyenne, Leave It to Beaver, Bachelor Father, or Bonanza and imagine trying to shoot a series today using the same scripts. If you cannot speak to the culture you live in, your stories won't be around to find an audience in 2056 or 2116. Thirty years, even sixty years, are not quite "for the ages," but aspiring to reach your living audience is not an unworthy goal.
Those who write only to please themselves and, perhaps, God or the Muses, should not even bother printing out the manuscript and putting it in a trunk. My daughter used to try out new fonts on our computer by writing the beginnings of stories, then walking away when called to dinner or the phone (in the days when the phone was attached to the wall and we used it for talking). We would find it later, this story opening, sitting on the computer screen unsaved, no filename in place. We would name the file ourselves and save it, because she was, even as a preteen and teenager, an extraordinarily gifted writer and storyteller. But THAT is what people do when their art is so pure that they don't care about pleasing an audience -- they walk away without choosing Save As from the File menu. The minute you name that file or print out that script, you are confessing that you aspire to reach someone, some audience member who will receive your tale with eager attention.
It is not a sin to write in such a way as to invite attention, to attract the readers' hopes and fears. We aspire to communicate with readers who care about and believe in the same things that we the writers do, or who are at least willing to follow along with us for part of our journey down the road. It is a worthy goal, a pro-social role, to attempt to be good company for the other travelers, so they'll choose to join up with us tomorrow, and to continue to journey with us to the destination of our choosing.
What a pleasant surprise to wake up to, Mr. Card! Thank you for the note. I suspect we agree on about 98% of this. Why write for other people if you don't intend to reach them? Why write if not to communicate something you find meaningful, to explore a set of ideas and people you find fascinating? My goal in writing is fairly straightforward: there were books I read when I was young that made me feel less alone, less crazy, and in community with other like-minded souls. I want to write to reach even one other person in the same way.
As E.M. Forster always sez, "Only connect."
The occasion for this revision was an attempt to make the book not easier (the difficulty is with the human stakes and living with them) but more welcoming. The first draft was written as though it were a modernist book from the 40s. It was a puzzle game, not an invitation to live with people. So the book retains some refractions of that, but plays far less hide-the-ball. It now, I hope, invites a reader to sit down and co-dream.
Grateful for the thoughtful note, and for the rare pleasure of talking craft with someone who's lived it.
Refreshing; you earned the turn - er...scroll...from me. Just make sure the knives are in the right spot.
The knives are all polished and sharpened, edge properly pointed toward the plate. Except for one place setting. That knife is getting used.
Give them the markers, Owen, but let them wander. Make them earn it. If they want TikTok level depth and velocity, the distraction is already in their hands. Keep the story in the knives mate. Cut that bastard down.
Right: it's a matter of calibration. Gotta provide enough of a map for the reader to build the shape of it on his or her own. But some wandering, some unresolved tension that is up to the reader to suss out is the interesting thing, no?
That’s not just the interesting thing, my friend, that’s the whole enchilada as far as I’m concerned. Keep ‘em thinking, keep ‘em guessing. That’s what keeps ‘em turning the pages.
In college I took a history class that focused on the novel War & Peace. It was a small class of around probably 20 or so people. We were assigned chapters to read and then discussed them. At some point our professor started to play the movie during class time. Not the Audrey Hepburn and Henry Fonda version. But the 6+ hour version in Russian with subtitles. I think I made it through 2 classes before I stopped going, and I fell asleep during both. I never finished reading the book, either. Yet somehow I managed to write a paper on it and from what I remember got a reasonably good grade on it.
Like Rear Window, the book and the movie were made in a different era. Back when we didn’t have the distractions of television or the internet or social media. Back when someone would be willing to read a 1000+ page book, or sit through a 6+ hour movie (that wasn’t about elves or galactic rebellions).
We create things for the world as it is at the time. Tolstoy in 2026 would have written a much shorter book. James Stewart and Alfred Hitchcock would have created a much different movie with faster pacing if they were making it today. You can lament that people don’t have the same attention spans now as they did 10 years ago, let alone 50. But the people from 50 years ago won’t be reading your book. The people with short attention spans will. I think the real art is staying true to yourself and your story and being able to share it with others.
We are in accord, my friend! Any writing is a joint endeavor between writer and reader, a negotiation of sorts. The important thing is to keep the right people journeying with you.