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My days rarely start with a hook or end with a cliffhanger. The most satisfying hours are not spent on the edge of my seat in suspense. Momentum means being on a roll, in flow, where the rest of the world goes away and later I’ll wonder where the time went. Disruptions break the momentum.
"Fiction isn't like life," Christine DeSmet of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Continuing Studies told her novel-writing critique lab last year. Fiction creates an illusion of reality through techniques that are anything but. What breaks the momentum in fiction is having everything run smoothly. Engrossing as I find working a jigsaw puzzle, you’ll only keep reading about it if two of the pieces are lost and the cat’s running off with a third and the landlord’s going to put my furniture on the curb unless the puzzle is completed by five o’clock.
10 Comments
Lisa
2/26/2018 09:56:16 am
I shared this with our book discussion facilitator, Leah, and she replied that she's reading it aloud at our next discussion! This season we're reading Booker Award Winners and last night we briefly went off in the direction of how these British novels differ from the American fiction we've read in the past (a few series of Pulitzers, for instance). So, we can use the statement, "Fiction isn't like life" to spring into a good discussion. Thank you!
Wow, Lisa! I'm delighted that you shared this and your book discussion facilitator plans to read it to the group! Thanks for telling me.
Lisa
2/26/2018 07:31:30 pm
I think we will think that it's a difference of literary conventions and heritage. And yet, British (or as in the case last night, Indian) authors start the book with a hook, lure us in, mess us around, and at the end, if they don't solve all the problems, they solve enough that we feel we can set the book down and move on with our own lives. Our next book is The Line of Beauty, by Alan Hollinghurst, Sunday March 25, 7PM, Deerfield, and you would be most welcome to join us. :)
Lisa
2/27/2018 08:35:16 am
We just broached the topic Sunday night. One of us suggested it has something to do with the age of the place, that the US is sort of like a teenager, in terms of our development. And we are much less homogenous. But as I write that, no author expects everyone to read their book. We'll discuss this more, since we've not made a point of reading British award winners; if we've read one in the past, it's been incidental.
Beth
2/27/2018 02:05:12 pm
It looks like you've moved on to British vs. American writing. But I just want to emphasize that the advice that your teacher gave you also applies to the visual arts -- including painting, movies, and even photography. Thanks for the interesting post!
Lisa
2/27/2018 04:47:37 pm
Beth, I absolutely agree! As for British vs. American writing, I think we're just musing on the topic, kind of an expansion is British literature more like life than American or is that a good general statement of all literature. Beth, I'd love to hear more illustrations of ways paintings and photographs aren't like life. (Movies are more obvious to me; they're a form of fiction, and "It's not like in the movies" comes up all the time.) Symmetry, lighting, balance, framing all more deliberate, where in life they just happen?
Beth
2/28/2018 11:41:58 am
Good Examples; Framing I think and the angle from which the filmaker and photographer and oainter view the objects and what objects are prominent in the frame. Color is a huge factor of course; as Monet and the other impressionists knew, light changes strongly affect what we see and change colors almost moment by moment, but even Monet who with his series paintings (haystacks, Rouen Cathedral, etc) says he couldn't capture that. There is lots more but I'm in haste. More later.
Wonderful examples, Beth! As I think of the lighting and framing and which objects stand out, in paintings, I am seeing the woods outside my office window with a different eye. It's a different view depending on whether I center my attention on the large black cherry in the background, or the smaller spruce near the window, or the way the sunlight angling in from the left lightens some of the carpet of brown leaves compared to those on the right. Much the same way ordinary life events feel momentarily different when I think of it as a scene from a novel or movie. Leave a Reply. |
AuthorI'm a historian who writes novels and literary nonfiction. My home base is Madison, Wisconsin. Archives
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