Inequity and deservingness are two of the main factors that keep readers reading. If we want to write killer stories, we need to know how they affect readers. A few years ago I wrote an essay on this and thought it probably too technical for most folks’ taste. But I passed it on to a recent attendee of the killer workshop and he found it helpful. In fact, when he watched Pride & Prejudice shortly after reading the essay, he saw how these factors dramatically affected his rooting interest. So I’m thinking others will find it useful as well.
In order to understand it you must first read George Saunders’ short story “The Bohemians.” You’ll find it here in The New Yorker, January 19, 2004. It would probably be rated PG for some profanity.
Now if the story doesn’t pull you in, stop reading. Because the essay probably won’t make any sense to you. You’ll only be able to understand it if the story works for you. But if it does, then ask yourself what the main character’s problem was and what drew your interest? Then read my essay, “How Inequity Evokes Reader Interest.”
Please note “The Bohemians” does present a character with a problem, and the story cycle applies, but not in the straight-forward manner it does with most stories. BTW, if you’ve ever read Patrick Rothfuss’s excellent Name of the Wind, you’ll see inequity is what shapes the story there as well. If you haven’t read it, I recommend you give it a go.
I’ll be interested to see your responses to Saunders’ story, my essay, and/or Rothfuss’s novel.
Here’s Joseph Finder, a NY Times best-selling author, talking about how he studied his craft, why he uses outlines, and what he decided about four-letter words and why.
I had the same reaction when my daughter came to me wanting to read my stuff. I’ve never heard of Joseph Finder–there are soooo many authors these days. But I can tell you I’m going to pick up one of his books to see what he’s all about.
Orson Card has just announced the dates and location for this year’s literary boot camp. This one is in North Carolina. Card usually usually holds a session in the west every other year. But here’s the deal: east or west, if you are a new writer, this is THE workshop to attend. It is hands-down THE best workshop I have ever attended.
If you want to learn how to write fiction from one of the masters, you will apply (the boot camp is limited to 12 people) and then do whatever it takes to attend if you’re selected. The two day writing class is also great. I don’t know that I would spend hundreds of dollars to fly in for that, but I would and did spend hundreds to attend the boot camp (way back in ye year 2002).
If you write poopy-slow like me, you will finish 500-700 words of your draft in an hour. Let’s see what that means for various novel sizes.
25,000 words: 50 hours
50,000 words: 100 hours
75,000 words: 150 hours
100,000 words: 200 hours
200,000 words: 400 hours
And those requirements don’t count time you might need to spend re-imagining a piece or researching some gap in your knowledge or figuring out some knotty bit you couldn’t see was problematic when you first set out. A novel can be a big project and stretch over a few weeks, especially when you don’t have eight hours a day to write.
In this lesson, you will learn that you need to treat the draft like what it is–a project–and use basic project management techniques to help you get the work done.
An avid reader friend of mine began reading through the books in a list called “100 books you must read before you die.”
She got to Jack Kerouac’s On The Road and went to Facebook and posted the following: “I don’t get the appeal. It’s about a group of boys/men who are irresponsible, drunks, whoring around taking advantage of others and being enabled by their women. Why is this a classic and why should I have wasted my time on it? Can some of my literary friends explain? I hated a brave new world and the handmaid’s tale too.”
Is the book a classic?
Should she read it before she dies?
Is it really that important?
Let me share an edited version of my response and then provide my list of 30 books you should read before you die.
*
Annette, the unfortunate truth is that these lists of “classics” are a sham because there is no objective criteria for determining literary excellence.
Or maybe I should say that measuring quality in the arts isn’t like measuring the unambiguous, objective score of a baseball game. After books exhibit a certain level of proficiency, it becomes increasingly difficult to distinguish the quality of one book from another, especially because much of this depends on a reader’s interests and subjective experience of the story.
When it becomes hard to rank performances, people rely on other measures. One of the most powerful is social networks.
So if two readers find two different books that blow them away, one of the books might get all the attention because the one book gets picked up by a news service (The New York Times) or a platform (the Oprah Book Club effect) or some other social network of influence. A lot of the so-called literary classics only appear on various lists because they tapped into the academic network, which kept them alive far longer than they would have lasted otherwise.
On The Road is simply a book that made a stir among some circles in the 1950s. That’s it.
Was it more important or of higher quality than Exodus? The Chronicles of Narnia? Lord of the Rings? A Town Like Alice? All published in the 1950s as well.
It depends.
If you’re wanting to understand the 1950s beat culture, it would be an important book.
But if you’re wanting to understand fantasy writing of the time, it wouldn’t.
If you’re wanting to read a book that’s had a huge impact on popular culture, well, LOTR beats On The Road like a dog.
Some people have the feeling that the so-called classics have some inherent medicinal value because someone put them on a list and called them classics.
Nope. They’re just stories. Some of which can shed light on the issues and interests of a part of the culture in a given period. But if you’re not interested in that specific sub-culture, who cares?
And if you’re reading to be entertained, moved, uplifted, or educated—which ones do that best for Annette is for you to decide.
So all that to say I wouldn’t devalue your reaction to the book
*
I’m now going to give you my list.
But it’s not going to be a list of titles. Nor will it focus on a book’s impact on some sub-culture of a given period.
It’s going to be a real list. One that focuses on what so many of us go to stories for.
The one that makes you weep.
The one that makes you giggle and snort.
The one that reminds you of what it’s like to fall in love.
The one that gives you hope.
The one that you begin to read more and more slowly because you don’t want it to end.
The one that scares the soup out of you.
The one that you can’t put down, even though you need to wake up early in the morning.
The one that makes you wish you lived there.
The one that’s so good that when you close it, you immediately start to read it a second time.
The one that gives you and your child hours of pleasure together.
The one that gives you a sacred, spiritual experience.
The one that makes you reread some of the lines because the turns of phrase are just so delicious.
The one that gives you courage.
The one that takes you on an awesome adventure.
The one that makes you want to be a better person.
The one that bores you to tears (just so know you how good the others are).
The one that introduces you to a different culture that delights you.
The one that makes you think.
The one that lingers with you for days.
The one that gives you lovely insights.
The one that inspires you to love your spouse more.
The one that introduces you to the sorts of people you normally don’t like and makes you actually like them.
The one that delights you with its characters.
The one that whisks you away to a different historical period.
The one that inspires you to give your children a hug.
The one that gets your adrenaline pumping.
The one that sparks all sorts of ideas in your head.
The one that makes you wonder and start imagining what it would be like to be there.
The one that blows your freaking mind.
The one that makes you stand up in your living room and cheer.
We could do more than 30, couldn’t we?
Like the one that makes you think people from a different time period are just like us. And the one that makes you think people from that same period are completely alien.
But I think we’ll stop. That there above is a list.
Those are 30 books I think everyone will want to read before they die.
I don’t know how it’s possible to aruge that media does not influence our decisions. The evidience is simply overwhelming. Here’s another report of a study linking media sexuality to teenage decisions about sexuality.
“CHICAGO — Groundbreaking research suggests that pregnancy rates are much higher among teens who watch a lot of TV with sexual dialogue and behavior than among those who have tamer viewing tastes.” Full article here.
The study shows that while teenage pregnancies have dropped overall, those teens watching racey shows had, not just a small incremental risk, but TWICE the risk of getting pregnant.
Now, I know this article by the Guttmacher Institute focuses on the 1990’s, but it still is enlightening. It discusses the reasons for the dropping teenage pregnancy rates during those years. It’s conclusion is that both abstinence and usage of more effective contraception are the main factors for the drop in teenage pregnancies.
When I put the two articles together, it makes me wonder if the racey shows are encouraging more sex among the teens who watch them or the use of less-effective contraception or both. My guess is that the shows are influencing a decision for more sexuality.
Either way, what does this mean for a writer?
To me, it means that while I’m never responsible for someone’s actions nor in 100% control of what people take from my writing, I AM responsible for those things I know are highly likely to influence folks one way or another. I hope my works provide a wonderfully entertaining experience, but also avoid influencing people into decisions that will lead them down paths that will limit their happiness.
I arrived back at work, along with 2,000 e-mails and about that many incoming books, I got a report from Bowker, a global firm that tracks people’s book-buying habits. Here are some of the more interesting bits from 2009:More than 40 percent of Americans over the age of 13 purchased a book; the average age of the American book buyer is 42.
Women make 64 percent of all book purchases, even among detective stories and thrillers, where they buy more than 60 percent of that genre. [see, they act all touchy feeling, but most women like to see someone kick hiney. Except I suspect a lot of that 60% is driven by mysteries; or are there a lot of women that like, say, Lee Child?]
Thirty two percent of the books purchased in 2009 were from households earning less than $32,000 annually. A fifth of those sales were for children’s books.
The biggest nonfiction genre is biography and autobiography.
Surprise, surprise: the hardcore power users in the eBook world are the same demographics as the hardcore power users in the physical-book word, as a report called Consumer Attitudes Toward E-Book Reading from the Book Industry Study Group (BISG) indicates both hardcore groups are dominated by women buying fiction.
No surprise, really. The BISG says most eBook power buyers — that is, someone buying an eBook at least once a week — are by and large women (some 66 percent), who mostly buy fiction. Out of the entire eBook market, power buyers make just 18 percent of all buyers, but they buy 61 percent of the eBooks. [Holy crap! 18% are driving the sales–who are these people?! Of course, this is just the old 80/20 rule showing its face again.]
In terms of exactly what is selling: literary fiction, science fiction and romance lead the way, each with over 20 percent of the market. [Go SFF!! and those are not the normal breakdowns, SFF is usually under 10%] Overall, eBooks comprise 11 percent of the total book market, with 13 percent of print book buyers also downloading eBooks.
That evolution of the market isn’t surprising: early gadget adopters tend to be men, but as eReaders become more mainstreams, its userbase logically would look like the book market as a whole. And that’s exactly what happened: If women buy 64 percent of all books, it’s no surprise they’re buying 66 percent of all eBooks. [Except I think you got your math wrong; they’re 66% of power buyers. You didn’t say what report said of total sales]
John, I haven’t had a chance to finish reading Bohemians, and I haven’t read the inequity article, but I have to say that I must be missing the boat on Name of the Wind. I just don’t understand why this book is praised so heavily. It’s probably just not my kind of book. I haven’t finished it, yet, but I’m having trouble getting to the ending, and my wife assures me that nothing happens in the rest of the book.
The writing is superb. The characters are good, but the plot is so plodding that I have put it down twice already, and may not pick it up again. I have 200 more pages to go. I think that if I were reading this one piece at a time, perhaps as serial fiction on the Internets, I would like it more, as it seems very episodic.
In the end, perhaps it’s that for me there’s no real big question, such as: will he save the world? Will he get the girl? None of that. The only real question there seems to be is: why is Kvothe so famous? Just not compelling enough for me. Since that question is so broad, the spine of the book is lacking. The plot is all over the place. There’s a little story here, another there. Very nice, and tells me about Kvothe, but I’m just bored. There doesn’t seem to be any progression towards the resolution of an over-arching conflict. I guess for me the spine is weak.
Anyway, I just had to say that to someone.
I don’t think you should feel you’re missing the boat. You’re just not in the audience for that tale. Nobody is ever in the audience for everything that gets published or even most of what gets published. I can pull 10 books off the shelves that folks rave about and can only hope that 2 or 3 pull me in. The best thing I can do at times like that is figure out what was lacking for me and let it guide my writing. AND tell myself that my stuff won’t be universally liked either and not expect it to be.
It’s true the book does have a weird structure. I felt the book ended on about page 600 or so, because that’s when the main plot question resolved for me. The last part was a weird tack on. Mildly interesting, but had nothing to do with the main story line. Rothfuss wrote it as one big honking two gazillion page thing and tried to break it up. But I did like everything else that went before. Enjoyed it immensely. The scene where he did his master performance in the tavern/music hall–holy cow, he was plucking MY strings there.
Still, I think it’s always counter productive to feel you should like a specific work. Then it becomes medicinal. And who wants to read for that reason?
Only two years late, but whatev. I came here from the SFWA website.
I went and read the Bohemians, and am partway through your essay, but I thought I’d let you know my thoughts about the story before reading the essay. I feel like the problem that drives me in theis story is the helpless feeling of being a kid, and especially a kid in a less than ideal situation. Your parents and other authorities can do whatever they want to you, you don’t know what’s real and what’s not, you’re mean because you don’t know how not to be mean. The end of the story offers some resolution to the problem: the characters learn a real truth (Mrs. H is not what she seems), and an inhuman monster (Mrs. P) turns out to be something different as well. They gain in sympathy and self-determination. It’s not that anything really great happens to them, but that they take some steps out of the hell of childhood and into maturity.
As for the Name of the Wind, I don’t remember being bothered by the “early ending”. What really kept me reading was the question of how Kvothe went from being that boy to being that man. I think framing the tale as he did was a masterful move on Rothfuss’s part. The “three silences” at the beginning are so intriguing that they carry us clear through the book. Also Bast is very interesting. Anyway. I will read the sequel just as soon as my husband releases his death-grip on it. 😉
John, I haven’t had a chance to finish reading Bohemians, and I haven’t read the inequity article, but I have to say that I must be missing the boat on Name of the Wind. I just don’t understand why this book is praised so heavily. It’s probably just not my kind of book. I haven’t finished it, yet, but I’m having trouble getting to the ending, and my wife assures me that nothing happens in the rest of the book.
The writing is superb. The characters are good, but the plot is so plodding that I have put it down twice already, and may not pick it up again. I have 200 more pages to go. I think that if I were reading this one piece at a time, perhaps as serial fiction on the Internets, I would like it more, as it seems very episodic.
In the end, perhaps it’s that for me there’s no real big question, such as: will he save the world? Will he get the girl? None of that. The only real question there seems to be is: why is Kvothe so famous? Just not compelling enough for me. Since that question is so broad, the spine of the book is lacking. The plot is all over the place. There’s a little story here, another there. Very nice, and tells me about Kvothe, but I’m just bored. There doesn’t seem to be any progression towards the resolution of an over-arching conflict. I guess for me the spine is weak.
Anyway, I just had to say that to someone.
I don’t think you should feel you’re missing the boat. You’re just not in the audience for that tale. Nobody is ever in the audience for everything that gets published or even most of what gets published. I can pull 10 books off the shelves that folks rave about and can only hope that 2 or 3 pull me in. The best thing I can do at times like that is figure out what was lacking for me and let it guide my writing. AND tell myself that my stuff won’t be universally liked either and not expect it to be.
It’s true the book does have a weird structure. I felt the book ended on about page 600 or so, because that’s when the main plot question resolved for me. The last part was a weird tack on. Mildly interesting, but had nothing to do with the main story line. Rothfuss wrote it as one big honking two gazillion page thing and tried to break it up. But I did like everything else that went before. Enjoyed it immensely. The scene where he did his master performance in the tavern/music hall–holy cow, he was plucking MY strings there.
Still, I think it’s always counter productive to feel you should like a specific work. Then it becomes medicinal. And who wants to read for that reason?
Only two years late, but whatev. I came here from the SFWA website.
I went and read the Bohemians, and am partway through your essay, but I thought I’d let you know my thoughts about the story before reading the essay. I feel like the problem that drives me in theis story is the helpless feeling of being a kid, and especially a kid in a less than ideal situation. Your parents and other authorities can do whatever they want to you, you don’t know what’s real and what’s not, you’re mean because you don’t know how not to be mean. The end of the story offers some resolution to the problem: the characters learn a real truth (Mrs. H is not what she seems), and an inhuman monster (Mrs. P) turns out to be something different as well. They gain in sympathy and self-determination. It’s not that anything really great happens to them, but that they take some steps out of the hell of childhood and into maturity.
As for the Name of the Wind, I don’t remember being bothered by the “early ending”. What really kept me reading was the question of how Kvothe went from being that boy to being that man. I think framing the tale as he did was a masterful move on Rothfuss’s part. The “three silences” at the beginning are so intriguing that they carry us clear through the book. Also Bast is very interesting. Anyway. I will read the sequel just as soon as my husband releases his death-grip on it. 😉
Jenny Jo,
I can’t wait to read the sequel either.