I still remember the first time I saw it. I was browsing through a used book store and re-reading The Great Gatsby for pleasure, (hey, you have your pleasures, I have mine) when I saw it at the end of Chapter three. Someone had underlined the last sentence in the paragraph and drawn a star beside it at the end. They wrote in a book. A book full of someone else’s words. I wasn’t aware people did that. Not that my family tried to safeguard our books; you can’t safeguard possessions you love and use daily. Our books were tattooed with coffee-cup stains, dog-eared and limp with wear. A few loved storybooks suffered with fractured spines and key pages had to be turned carefully. We were hard on the books we loved, but we never wrote on their pages. I bought the used book, partly because I love the story and partly because I was curious about the previous owner’s additions. The check marks and dashes seemed like someone else’s coded commentary that expanded my vision of the story. I wanted to decipher the code. I never quite succeeded in that but I learned why some folk annotate text: they…
The relationship between writers and readers is an odd one. The writer sits in a garret (or on the top of Mount Parnassus, depending on your point of view) and labors to create a work of lasting value. If it’s good enough and all the stars align, the readers let the work of an author’s imagination into their own and reward the author with praise, treasure and enough allegiance to read writer’s next story, as long as the author keeps the the writer-reader contract. What, you thought what I just described was the writer-reader contract? Au contrair, mes amis! That is merely the description. The writer-reader contract is an old and long one that is modified only as literature evolves. One of the basic tenets of this implied agreement is that, however complex the plot or intricate the fictional universe in the story is, the author knows everything that is going on in the story and can explain how this imaginary world makes sense. For example: Like most of the reading planet, I adored J. K. Rowling’s fantastic Harry Potter series. It’s a mammoth accomplishment and a brilliantly planned series. Elements of the entire saga start appearing immediately although their…
A lot of great writers seem like they were better with ink and paper than people. Pick up biographies of some literary geniuses and you’ll find many worked hard at their crafts and often endured terrible setbacks but were also self-centered loners who focused on their own problems to the detriment of their loved ones. A few of the “greats” were self-destructive abusers. Others unearthed family traumas or secrets and then publicized these for money. You wonder how their relations ever stood them. On the other hand, there are a few authors who were so devoted to their families that their talent seemed to echo through their DNA. Take a look at these clans of chroniclers and prepare to be amazed. The Bronte Girls The Bronte Sisters – Emily, Anne, and Charlotte, the literary doyennes of Yorkshire. They grew when opportunity ran thin on the ground, especially for girls. These three (and their brother, Branwell) developed a rich communal imaginary life that carried them through some miserable childhood experiences. All three of the Bronte girls tried to become teachers at some point (the only respectable profession open to women then) but frail health and romantic disappointment eventually brought them back…
I’ve been thinking about pinch points lately, those intervals in a story when you realize how difficult the hero’s task is. They occur (optimally) at the 3/8th and 5/8th point in a story and structurally, they serve a two-fold purpose: to show how vulnerable the hero(ine) is and what will happen if he/she loses. But structure never interests me as much as character and pinch points teach and clarify these better than anything else. The same thing is true about people. Pinch points are what we learn in the worst of times. The axiom says failure teaches more than success and the essence of a pinch point is failure. For example, the first pinch point of LOTR’s The Fellowship of the Ring happens at Weathertop, when Frodo succumbs to temptation and puts on the Ring. He becomes vulnerable to Sauron’s most powerful agents, the Nazgul, and the resulting injury nearly destroys our hero. Frodo never fully recovers from the experience but both the reader and he learn from it. Frodo shows a resilience and physical fortitude after the injury that most other beings don’t possess. And his character is strengthened after the failure. Strong as they are, the Nazgul never successfully distract…
I like to believe that somewhere out there, someone reads what I write. (To quote one of my favorite plays, In a world where carpenters get resurrections, anything’s possible) If so, they’ve seen alterations in the name of this place, patiently reading while I tried to find the phrase captures the idea and atmosphere I’m trying to create here. The search hasn’t been easy. Initial Title: A good start but not yet there. I started out with “The Stories that Follow You Home” a phrase I love because I believe some stories do just that. While trends change and popular poems, books and plays appear and vanish like popular music recordings, some stories put down roots in your soul and imagination. They stick with you, like a good friend, and when you re-read them, you find gifts you didn’t see before. I love those rewarding tales and the people who feel the same way. I love people fascinated by the structure and function, and power of story. But, what are those people called? Is there a term for a lover of stories? We all know what lovers of books are called: bibliophiles. It comes from two old Greek words, biblion (meaning…