Real Life
Yesterday, in the comments section, Ewoh, a fairly regular visitor to this blog, had a great observation. To summarize it, we were talking about evil, and I at first was thinking you could trace the MOMENT someone goes over to the dark side. He pointed out it's more likely to be many series of moments. Little things adding up until the big things don't seem to matter. But, he pointed out, that doesn't make for very good fiction.
True.
When I worked as a book editor, I cannot count the number of times I would wade through the slush pile or be asked to critique a manuscript, and find a book that had great promise--but ultimately bored me to tears. The query or the synopsis--awesome. But the book was bogged down in the details of real life. It would take the writer five pages to move through an uneventful meal. It was as if the character could not take a step, have a drink, drive a car, do ANYTHING without it landing on the page in detail. Conversations would prattle on and on to get to a single piece of meat--something I needed to know. So I'd give up. Rejection letter. Or a tough critique (which was, of course, what the person was paying for).
Real life is mundane. It's true, what we discussed yesterday, that evil is a gradual fall.
But in fiction, we CHOOSE how to define our characters. We get to pick precise moments, precise scenes. And every single one of them should be revealing. We don't need to go through all the mundane details--unless for some reason that's important. We need to cut to the chase.
Real life vs. fiction. Thoughts?
E
True.
When I worked as a book editor, I cannot count the number of times I would wade through the slush pile or be asked to critique a manuscript, and find a book that had great promise--but ultimately bored me to tears. The query or the synopsis--awesome. But the book was bogged down in the details of real life. It would take the writer five pages to move through an uneventful meal. It was as if the character could not take a step, have a drink, drive a car, do ANYTHING without it landing on the page in detail. Conversations would prattle on and on to get to a single piece of meat--something I needed to know. So I'd give up. Rejection letter. Or a tough critique (which was, of course, what the person was paying for).
Real life is mundane. It's true, what we discussed yesterday, that evil is a gradual fall.
But in fiction, we CHOOSE how to define our characters. We get to pick precise moments, precise scenes. And every single one of them should be revealing. We don't need to go through all the mundane details--unless for some reason that's important. We need to cut to the chase.
Real life vs. fiction. Thoughts?
E
posted by Erica Orloff at 6:50 AM
9 Comments:
I think readers just don't have the patience for all that detail anymore. Linear is the name of the game.
I'm currently reading Thomas Harris's Red Dragon, published in 1980. For some reason, he felt it was neccessary to include 20 pages of backstory on the villain, these in the final third of the novel. Red Dragon is a classic, and I like it, but I'm just wondering if today's editors might cut a good portion of that detailed backstory.
I can't even force myself to read things like Dickens anymore. In a way, the internet, TV, etc., have reprogrammed us to expect things to happen fast. I think the future of the novel is going to depend on lower word counts and sparser narratives. Since that's the way I write anyway, I'm okay with it. :)
My editor said it's about context. If you need it to set the context of the scene, add it. I thought that was a good rule of thumb.
E
I think that's a good rule of thumb.
I try to use the Michaelangelo approach: Start with a block of marble, and chip away everything that isn't David. If it doesn't move the scene forward, or add to characterization, I reach for the chisel. That's my goal, at least.
thanks for pointing to your previous post and the discussion between you and ewoh, both of which i missed (busy busy!). anyway, i share a lot of the same feelings but i disagree that it would be impossible to weave these moments into a narrative. i guess, like you said later, erica, it's all about context. since we rarely come across 'pure' evil these days, i think that exploring these small steps towards going astray could be very interesting.
also i beg to differ about detail and backstory. an excellent example of this is a book i recently read, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, by Susanna Clarke. this book is the king of backstory as far as i'm concerned, and yet it is fascinating (almost) the entire time. there are some sections that i would have edited for length, but ...the book is so incredibly rich and vivid that i found myself not caring about all the footnoting.
Just weighing in again... I'm in agreement with Erica that it all depends on the context.
If you take a look at Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon, you get a lot of jumping back and forth in time. It works for that book. However, his Novel Quicksilver is, in my opinion, terribly dull because it is all the backstory and history of where the characters from Cryptonomicon come from.
Quicksilver is written with almost excruciating detail. I finally gave up on reading it and I rarely do that for any book. Even Dickens :)
Heather:
I agree . . . you can weave moments all the way through . . . but a lot of fiction depends on that big moment. I think Jodi Picault does a great job of illuminating that. You see all the little details of a family and their choices--but there is the big dramatic moment, too.
Same goes for the detail--like so much, it's all in the execution. I was strictly talking slush pile and writers who really were starting out and clearly learning--which is fine. We're all there, were there once, or are somewhere on the continuum.
E
It really is all in the execution. In Erica's The Roofer, for example, most of the story IS backstory, brilliantly done.
For a look at a nearly-perfect linear narrative, check out Cormac McCarthy's The Road (this year's Pulitzer winner). I read it shortly after watching Children of Men, so it was a little bleakness overload for me, but it's a great example of keeping the backstory mostly invisible.
For the record, I liked The Roofer better than The Road.
Jude:
Thanks. :-)
E
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