Words are interesting things. Sometimes they become so familiar we take them at face value and rarely stop to think about what they really mean.
Take the word ‘prejudice’ for example. We all have a pretty good idea what it means – a ‘preconceived idea,’ according to the dictionary. But examine its roots for a moment – the word comes from ‘judgement’ – to pre judge something or somebody. To leap to judgement before all the evidence is in. [continue reading…]
To master the craft of writing, you need the right approach and the right mindset. It’s no different to mastering archery, or martial arts, or tennis.
You don’t dabble at it, jumping like a monkey from one project to another, never settling down for the long haul. The dabbler doesn’t finish things, doesn’t see them through. Once the initial thrill has worn off, once that first enthusiasm has gone, once the excitement has given way to hard work, they get bored and restless and mooch off to something else that has caught their attention.
“The way to succeed is to master the process. That means practicing the fundamentals, every day.”
The dabbler probably has dozens of books they almost started, or never finished. Or they might have a string of blogs they own, but hardly ever post to. (I know, I know, pot and kettle. Be quiet at the back).
They want to learn, but in the end they hit the plateau where they are working hard but they don’t seem to be making breakthroughs or getting any better. They look at the short term and they don’t see anything happening there. The dabbler is always looking for a breakthrough, the next big thing, but will probably never master the craft of writing – or any other craft for that matter. Unless they have a change of mindset. [continue reading…]
Here’s what happens in a story:
The characters are in a crucible. A catalyst starts the action and a chain of cause and effect leads to complications which build through a situation of crisis to a climax (where the hero faces catastrophe, the cataclysm), during which the main character is shown to have changed.
(Photo by Thomas Hawk via Flickr and Creative Commons)
Three horses are grazing in a paddock: a brown horse, a black horse, and a grey one – which would you cheer for?
But wait… why cheer a horse that’s doing nothing but eat?
It’s a good point. So let’s say they spark into life and set off on a race across the paddock. Now it’s going to be a lot easier to cheer for one or the other. You might still need a good reason to pick the grey over the black, but at least they have a goal, they are in motion, and competing with each other so there are good reasons to cheer, or back one of the horses or at least pay attention to see who wins.
It’s the same in life. If a person has a goal, if they are trying to get somewhere, do something, achieve something, they become interesting. It’s hard to take an interest in the person who has no goal, nothing they need to get done.
And, as it is in life, so it is in fiction. If you’re writing any kind of story, your characters must have goals. Without goals, the reader won’t find the character interesting. They won’t have anyone to cheer for, and they won’t keep reading.
If you know your main character, and you know their goal, then you pretty much know your story.
Pic: Trotting Horse by Walraven
The only kind of discipline that works is holding yourself to account. Everything else is tyranny. Or bullying. Depending on the scale.
Worker Anton sniffed the air. Chemical messages surged through the colony, bringing word from the leaders: an announcement was coming. A message from The Queen herself.
He shouldered the packed mud onto his back and set off, hauling four times his body weight up the steep slope. In the distance a lion yawned. A macaw squawked. The warning bleep of a truck reversing on the road outside made the baboons shriek with rage.
Worker Rolant scurried to catch up with him, breaking the neat line to walk alongside. It was against custom. “What do you think? They say there’s been a big meeting, everyone there that matters. What will it be?”
Anton shrugged with his elbowed antennae. They’d find out soon enough. The chemicals were fizzing already. Word was coming through. He didn’t pause. Keep working. Keep walking. Carry that load, for the greater good.
The pheromones buzzed with a proclamation from The Queen. A warning. [continue reading…]
“The earliest experience of art must have been that it was incantatory, magical; art was an instrument of ritual.”
The Observer (sister paper of The Guardian) has been running a series – the 100 Best Nonfiction Books of All Time – and at number 16 they have Susan Sontag’s 1966 work ‘Against Interpretation.‘ [footnote]The article’s headline focuses on that one essay, which was in fact part of a collection of essays called Against Interpretation and Other Essays [/footnote]
Pastel portrait of Susan Sontag by Juan Fernando Bastos
One unlucky (but hugely experienced) journalist was given the task of reviewing the ‘book’ which is in fact an essay, all of eight pages long, and which argues passionately against the review, or at least interpretation, of works of art. By which Sontag meant attempts to impose or explain meaning:
“Interpretation, based on the highly dubious theory that a work of art is composed of items of content, violates art. It makes art into an article for use, for arrangement into a mental scheme of categories.”
“It is always the case that interpretation of this type indicates a dissatisfaction (conscious or unconscious) with the work, a wish to replace it by something else.”
So, writing a review of the polemic against explanatory reviews was, in many ways, a thankless task. The journalist skirted the issue by barely referring to the essay, at all, but focusing more on Sontag’s life, her other works and in particular another essay entirely.[footnote] Even the ‘signature sentence’ comes from another essay, ‘Camp’, not ‘Against Interpretation’. [/footnote] Which is a shame, because ‘Against Interpretation’ is a great read:
In most modern instances, interpretation amounts to the philistine refusal to leave the work of art alone. Real art has the capacity to make us nervous. By reducing the work of art to its content and then interpreting that, one tames the work of art. Interpretation makes art manageable, comformable.
This philistinism of interpretation is more rife in literature than in any other art. For decades now, literary critics have understood it to be their task to translate the elements of the poem or play or novel or story into something else.
I can understand why the journalist shied away from trying to paraphrase the meaning of ‘Against Interpretation.’ I really, really can. What I can’t understand is why the writer didn’t simply let Sontag’s words stand for themselves, by quoting them. Words such as these:
Ours is a culture based on excess, on overproduction; the result is a steady loss of sharpness in our sensory experience. All the conditions of modern life – its material plenitude, its sheer crowdedness – conjoin to dull our sensory faculties. And it is in the light of the condition of our senses, our capacities (rather than those of another age), that the task of the critic must be assessed.
What is important now is to recover our senses. We must learn to see more, to hear more, to feel more.
Our task is not to find the maximum amount of content in a work of art, much less to squeeze more content out of the work than is already there. Our task is to cut back content so that we can see the thing at all. The aim of all commentary on art now should be to make works of art – and, by analogy, our own experience – more, rather than less, real to us. The function of criticism should be to show how it is what it is, even that it is what it is, rather than to show what it means.
Sontag is urging us not to sit around in an intellectual pose saying clever things about art (books, movies, whatever) in the hope you’ll look smart. Throw yourself into the experience. Art is reality. Art is real. If it wasn’t, it wouldn’t be there.
It is an empowering and joyous message: it is better to read a book and enjoy it, than to blather hot air about its meaning.
Clarity is one of the most important qualities of good writing. Making your writing easy to understand is also good manners. Why should readers have to work hard to fathom what you are saying (or trying to say).
Turn to virtually any guide to good writing and it will emphasise the importance of clarity.
Nietzsche – By F. Hartmann
Why, then, do so some people deliberately make their writing difficult to understand – by using too many long words, complicated sentence structures and an excess of ‘style’?
I believe the answer is simple and straightforward – it is because they have little or nothing to say. Or they fear that what they do say lacks originality or is simply mundane or trivial. They attempt to make themselves sound clever, or profound, by being obscure and hard to understand. Or, to put it more simply:
“They muddy the water, to make it seem deep.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche
If life is a river, then it is more than than just water. It is not a lake, a pond or a pool. It is running water. It must change.
“If you try to capture running water in a bucket, it is clear that you do not understand it and that you will always be disappointed, for in the bucket the water does not run. To “have” running water you must let go of it and let it run. The same is true of life…”
(Excerpt From: Alan Watts. “Wisdom of Insecurity.” )
The river must flow, time will not stop and we all age. We are caught in the stream of life, carried along. We can try to carry off buckets of water but it will become stagnant unless it is poured out and rejoins the flow of life.
The river must run. And one day it must reach the sea.
Should a novel be well written, or a good read?
The two are not mutually exclusive or incompatible. But you wouldn’t know it, listening to a lot of the guff talked about books.
In the red corner we have the high-brow literati, who appear convinced that novels should be slow, ponderous and incomprehensible in order to be any good.
Meanwhile, in the blue corner, a fair number of people, including quite a few who actually buy and read books, have been pointing out that it is, sometimes, an entirely good thing that a novel has a coherent narrative.
The elitists reply that a work of ‘literature’ should have higher ambitions than that. They have a point. We wouldn’t want all the bookshops to be filled with clones of James Patterson and Jeffrey Archer, now would we? On the other hand, a lot of those pretentious literary novels really aren’t very good, don’t go anywhere, have little to say, and represent incompetent story telling.
So who’s right? Should we reward and hail the novels that contain literary ambition, which set out to chart new territory and stretch the art form? Or the ones that represent a damn good read?
I think you know the answer. Drum roll please: as readers, what we crave and desire and want and deserve and demand is….
BOTH!
Both goddamn you.
Why can’t we have novels that are well written and a good read? A good story, characters who come alive on the page, suspense, interest. Combine that with a strong theme, something to say about the human condition, imaginative use of language, care and control over every word on the page. Art and story combined. That would make for a terrific novel.
Is it really too much to ask?
