planning and fiction
The heat is back; I'm warm even down here in my shady office.
This morning, keyed only a few notes from From Eden to Exile. I had to chair a strata council meeting upstairs after that, so no writing today.
Yesterday afternoon I finished reading The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith. That in itself--the fact that I finished it--speaks well for it. Most novels I do not bother to finish. But I could have stopped reading this book somewhere before the end and not missed it. For although Smith has done many things right in creating the novel, I feel he's not really a storyteller, at least, not for a book-length work.
There is no strong central story in the book, only a collection of episodes. What's needed is a main story question that is interesting and urgent. The novel had a collection of smaller questions--the answers to the little mysteries that Mma Ramotswe was solving--but these were mostly dealt with in a single chapter each. The question of the survival of the heroine's new agency--the first and only of its kind in Botswana, so therefore of special interest--was vaguely present, but the author did not capitalize on this or turn it into a pressing question on which to anchor the book.
Another obvious route to go would be to have a large mystery anchor the book--in the mold of the traditional mystery novel. The biggest and darkest mystery in the book had to do with witchcraft and a connection with the Botswana government. Perfect! This to me cried out to be made into the main plot. But no such luck. It was just another day on the job for Precious Ramotswe. The writer dropped the ball here, voluntarily making his book less exciting, less captivating, less powerful than he could have.
In all, I'd say that I read the last third of the book more or less as a favor to the author, a show of respect. Reader goodwill pulled me through the last 70 pages or so. That's not the way it should be.
This problem is general in fiction-writing. The basic skill of storytelling is underdeveloped. It's taught to screenwriters (who master it only to a degree, depending on how seriously they take its importance and how well they understand it), but not to fiction-writers, as far as I know.
Some writers--many--are proud of the fact that they don't work from an outline. And yet few indeed are the human activities that do not benefit from planning, and writing extended works of any kind, fiction or nonfiction, is not among them. It's right in The Elements of Style by Strunk and White: the importance of having a plan before you write. You'd never build a house without a plan. But somehow it seems to be thought that planning a work of fiction is uncreative.
It's not uncreative; it's intelligent, and respectful of those you're asking to read your work.
Was The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency planned? I don't know. It doesn't particularly seem so. And the result was a relatively low level of involvement from this reader, despite the many good things the book had going for it.
This morning, keyed only a few notes from From Eden to Exile. I had to chair a strata council meeting upstairs after that, so no writing today.
Yesterday afternoon I finished reading The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith. That in itself--the fact that I finished it--speaks well for it. Most novels I do not bother to finish. But I could have stopped reading this book somewhere before the end and not missed it. For although Smith has done many things right in creating the novel, I feel he's not really a storyteller, at least, not for a book-length work.
There is no strong central story in the book, only a collection of episodes. What's needed is a main story question that is interesting and urgent. The novel had a collection of smaller questions--the answers to the little mysteries that Mma Ramotswe was solving--but these were mostly dealt with in a single chapter each. The question of the survival of the heroine's new agency--the first and only of its kind in Botswana, so therefore of special interest--was vaguely present, but the author did not capitalize on this or turn it into a pressing question on which to anchor the book.
Another obvious route to go would be to have a large mystery anchor the book--in the mold of the traditional mystery novel. The biggest and darkest mystery in the book had to do with witchcraft and a connection with the Botswana government. Perfect! This to me cried out to be made into the main plot. But no such luck. It was just another day on the job for Precious Ramotswe. The writer dropped the ball here, voluntarily making his book less exciting, less captivating, less powerful than he could have.
In all, I'd say that I read the last third of the book more or less as a favor to the author, a show of respect. Reader goodwill pulled me through the last 70 pages or so. That's not the way it should be.
This problem is general in fiction-writing. The basic skill of storytelling is underdeveloped. It's taught to screenwriters (who master it only to a degree, depending on how seriously they take its importance and how well they understand it), but not to fiction-writers, as far as I know.
Some writers--many--are proud of the fact that they don't work from an outline. And yet few indeed are the human activities that do not benefit from planning, and writing extended works of any kind, fiction or nonfiction, is not among them. It's right in The Elements of Style by Strunk and White: the importance of having a plan before you write. You'd never build a house without a plan. But somehow it seems to be thought that planning a work of fiction is uncreative.
It's not uncreative; it's intelligent, and respectful of those you're asking to read your work.
Was The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency planned? I don't know. It doesn't particularly seem so. And the result was a relatively low level of involvement from this reader, despite the many good things the book had going for it.
posted by paulv at
2:51 PM
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