Journal Entry

Reviews today, writing tip also

August 29th 2007 at 2:25 pm

Today saw three reviews all pop up. Sorry about the all-book all the time channel there, I just wanted to link them before I forgot about them.

I love this quote about Ragamuffin by Heather of Errant Dreams:

Surprises and revelations flow naturally and aren’t used to artificially ratchet up the tension or bolster the pace. This means that if you figure something out in advance, it doesn’t cause an anticlimax or rob the story of its momentum.

It speaks to something I consciously try to do. The instinct, particularly in a newer writer, is to hold back the secret or big reveal in your writing and make that the focus.

The first draft of my short story ‘In Orbite Medievali’ was written that way. I remember that for 13 pages no one understood why the hell my characters were on Columbus’s ship but were floating around (I wanted to hide the reveal that they were falling off the edge of the world and thus weightless, like astronauts of 1492, as long as I could for a big ‘ta da’). To sell it, I rewrote it so that the big reveal is just the first thing you encounter and move on. It isn’t the cool idea that’s important, it’s the following things you do with it, and play with it.

When I write I try to assume that the reader is reading my book or story for the second or third time. I find it useful for heading off that instinct to hide everything from the reader until you can spring it on them. I just front that stuff, the smart reader will be guessing it anyway, people are just as pleased to have it sprung early, and if you do that for lots of neat things, you get to hide a thing or two for later anyway because you’ve been distracting readers with cool and shiny since the get go.

It took me a long time to internalize that.

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3 Responses so far

  1. 1. Heather (errantdreams) on Aug 29th, 2007 at 2:31 pm

    That is truly one of the things I loved most about your books. The temptation to hold back for the “big reveal” is one that even long-time, experienced, best-selling authors who should know better fall prey to. The way you do it, if a reader is surprised it’s an added bonus that just makes things all the better. When an author relies on surprises for pacing, they can’t really control whether the reader is actually experiencing the pacing they intended, since you can never guarantee a surprise.

    I hadn’t even thought of your point about re-reading a story, but that’s a great one. Not relying on reveals makes stories far more re-readable.

  2. 2. Shara Saunsaucie on Aug 30th, 2007 at 8:23 am

    It isn’t the cool idea that’s important, it’s the following things you do with it, and play with it.

    Amen. It’s something I’m trying to internalize as well. :)

  3. 3. Steve Buchheit on Aug 30th, 2007 at 10:24 am

    This works with something else I’ve been mulling over, and that’s “don’t hold anything back.” If a writer has an excellent idea, and it works in the story, use it. Don’t think, “oh, I’ll save this idea for a better story.”

    I forgot this with a recent short story. I didn’t want to push an issue so far that it would make some readers toss the piece across the room because they couldn’t stand what I was writing about (it was a horror piece). So I mumbled it. Some of the comments I got back said that I was making light or being too cute with a horrible situation. Yeah, for the rewrite I won’t make that mistake again.

    And there will always be other really cool ideas to have for other stories.