Here are some thoughts from the man who brought you Dr. Horrible’s Sing-a-long Blog and Serenity about the future of movies. I’m suspecting a lot of time-lengths and form that weren’t possible given the constraints of TV and theaters will start to rise.
I heard this a few years ago and LOVED it. Ken Follett is a master of suspense. Notice how he starts by talking about the emotion produced in the reader and getting readers emotionally involved in a story. He knows exactly what effect he’s trying to product. He also talks about how to determine whether an idea is good enough for a novel. And all this as he describes the interesting form and history of the thriller.
Here are the parts of his speech.
| 1 | Introduction | 10 | Agatha Christie |
| 2 | Erskine Childers | 11 | Dashiell Hammet |
| 3 | John Buchan | 12 | Dennis Wheatley |
| 4 | E Phillips Oppenheim | 13 | Mickey Spillane |
| 5 | Zane Grey | 14 | Ian Fleming |
| 6 | William Tufnell Le Queux | 15 | After Bond |
| 7 | Joseph Conrad | 16 | Thomas Harris |
| 8 | The standard thriller | 17 | Q&A |
| 9 | The psychological thriller |
“The Art of Suspense” by Ken Follett–enjoy!
This is J. K. Rowling’s 2008 Harvard commencement speech, “The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination.” It’s one of the best speeches I’ve ever heard. Watch and then watch again. Read the full text here.
Two quotes that in no way can do justice to the whole thing.
And so rock bottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.
You might never fail on the scale I did, but some failure in life is inevitable. It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.
. . .
Though I personally will defend the value of bedtime stories to my last gasp, I have learned to value imagination in a much broader sense. Imagination is not only the uniquely human capacity to envision that which is not, and therefore the fount of all invention and innovation. In its arguably most transformative and revelatory capacity, it is the power that enables us to empathise with humans whose experiences we have never shared.
One of the greatest formative experiences of my life preceded Harry Potter, though it informed much of what I subsequently wrote in those books.
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.
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.
James Dawson, YA author, feels it’s somehow wrong to hold back on cussing in his fiction. He wrote an article about this in the UK Guardian called “Why Teens in Books Can’t Swear.” He thinks it’s unrealistic. He thinks it’s about gate-keeper censorship. You know, parents wanting to steer their children towards certain experiences and away from others.
People.
Dawson’s approach to the whole problem is wrong-headed. This isn’t about the virtues and vices of fiction. Or about gatekeepers, especially in today’s ebook world. Or what experiences parents want to provide their children. And it’s not about art reflecting reality. Reality includes trips to the toilet, and yet we somehow fail to include realistic bum wiping in so many of our tales. Good heavens, have we betrayed our artistic integrity? No. We’ve just naturally chosen to include things that appeal to us and leave out others that don’t. Every book is an exercise in hundreds of such choices.
The fact is that Dawson’s forgetting that a fundamental aspect of the book trade is the trade. The buyer trades his or her money for a product (the book) that provides a service (the entertainment, thrills, chills, etc. of the reading experience) he or she values. A customer preferring one kind of experience over another isn’t censorship (the horror, the horror). It’s choice.
As an author, you make your offer. If folks like it, they buy it. If not, they don’t. Nobody owes you a purchase.
This means that in any business, and selling fiction is a business, the most sensible way forward is to offer your intended buyers something they are likely to value. Something they’re going to like. Something they want. If your buyer is thirsty and wants water, offer him a cold glass of water, not a waffle iron. And if you can’t bear to develop anything but waffle irons, then, by all means, develop waffle irons. Just make sure you offer them to the folks looking for . . . waffle irons.
This business of making offers also means that we package our products and services so that customers can easily tell what’s in the box. You don’t want someone to purchase your box thinking it contains breakfast cereal when in reality it’s a bunch of bolts.
Yeah, writing is an art. But offering it in trade to others is also a basic economic act.
Want to get the basics in a very succinct article? Read Algis Budrys on story.
Filling up your mind with wonderful things by hunting zing is a writer’s bread and butter. But guess what? You can’t develop a killer story by waiting to stumble across great story ideas. So while you must deploy your drag net and hunt with a purpose, you must also learn how to develop your own zing. And I haven’t found anything more productive for helping me do that than the process of creative question and answer.
If you refer back to the Story Development Framework download, you’ll see that Creative Q&A is one of the key tools used to develop every part of story. So how does it work?
Do you remember my first and second posts where I talked about Ed Smiley and the folks at NASA who helped save Apollo 13? They used this technique. Here’s how it went down.
They had a problem: the astronauts were running out of oxygen because the CO2 scrubbers weren’t working in the module they were in.
The problem led to an objective: figure out a way to get the CO2 scrubbers working.
The objective led to a question: what are some options for getting those CO2 scrubbers working?
Then they began to generate possible answers. Two days later they had one that would work. Ed and his team saved the three astronauts aboard.
This same thing happens over and over again in any situation that requires some new solution. Do you remember all those redneck solutions I shared in the first post? They were practicing creative Q&A.
You know all those accountants generating various ways to do your taxes? They’re practicing creative Q&A. Mine did that this year; he figured out one legal way do our taxes that saved us some money, then figured out another legal way to do our taxes that saved us more than $1,500. I’m so glad he looked for that second, actually third, right answer.
You see all those mothers and fathers generating ways to make ends meet? They’re practicing creative Q&A.
It happens all the time. It’s a key tool when trying to develop a story, and I’ve found a couple of guidelines when using this technique that seem to help quite a bit:
I use creative Q&A to help me develop my key objectives all the time. I state a question and use the principles to guide me in the options I generate. For example, in the thriller I’m writing I started with a character, an ex-con trying to go straight. I asked myself “What are some threats to his happiness?” and “What could go wrong?” I started to generate options. Some were mildly interesting; some were dumb. One was that “some old associates come back, old prison buddies, and try to drag him back into the life he’s trying to escape.” That one tingled my zing meter, and I started to generate more information about that. “What would they drag him back into?” “What kinds of crimes?” “Who are they?” (Okay, not every objective can be turned into a “what” question.)
There are also ad hoc objectives, i.e. objectives that arise only in a particular situation that I can’t plan for. I can use this with them as well. For example, in Servant of a Dark God I wanted a henchman to have a cool weapon, something that I hadn’t seen before. My question for that was “what are some cool new weapons for this henchman?” I listed out some that were stupid and had been done before like “a big knife” and others that were wacky like “a chain.” I generated a big old list. As I generated options I suddenly generated the idea of “spikes.” And then “spikes that were alive.” That tickled my zing meter, and I followed that path and came up with the Ravelers, which I think are just awesome.
For more information about creative Q&A, I recommend you read Creative Problem Solving: An Introduction, Fourth Edition by Donald Treffinger. It’s one of the most practical books on creativity around.
While you’re waiting for that to come in the mail or to get it from your library, I want you to watch something. Dewitt Jones, a photographer for National Geographic, uses creative Q&A. He made an incredible twenty-minute video explaining the principles of generating options. Please watch Everyday Creativity . It says “Preview,” but it’s the whole wonderful video. Then go here and watch that same last bit plus some material not on the other one. These are two versions of the same presentation. Everyday Creativity is the commercial version used for training. Clear Vision is the personal use one that includes some extra material. Let me recommend you purchase the Clear Vision version. You will not regret the $45 dollars. I promise you.
All of what he says applies to generating answers for our writing.
GO WATCH IT NOW.
Note what he says about these principles about generating options:
One last thought on creative Q&A. There are certain questions that seem to be more productive than others. I find that those focused on the key objectives are usually very productive for me. So give those a try, but there are others. Furthermore, what might work for me might not work so well for you. Don’t get stuck on using a specific question because someone else does. The goal is not to use a specific tool, which in this case is a specific question. The goal is to make the different parts of the story come to life in your mind. Whatever question helps YOU do that best is the one to use.
Because creative Q&A is such a powerful tool, I want to make sure you see plenty of examples of authors using it in their writing. To start, read chapter 2 of Orson Card’s Characters & Viewpoint and see what questions he finds useful and an example of how he uses them. Then come back here. I’ve asked some other published authors to share how they use questions to help them generate story. I’m going to start with Ian Creasey whose short fiction has appeared in magazines such as Asimov’s, Realms of Fantasy and Weird Tales, and has been reprinted in several Year’s Best SF anthologies. He’s written a wonderful essay that I’ll use for the next post in the series.
For more in this series, see How to Get and Develop Story Ideas
