Spoiler Alert

Reading the final pages of a story before you begin to read it may enhance your reading experience. This is the finding of researchers at the University of California.

It turns out that suspense is not everyone’s cup of tea. Some people are only prepared to make a tough journey if they know that everyone will get to the destination in one piece.

I get that.

Recently my wife and I watched a movie about corruption in the US government. The movie had pace, it had dialogue, it had plot. But then, out of the blue, one of the characters travelled to Iraq. The directors got out the Steadicam. They followed that character down a debris strewn street in Baghdad. I was with that character. I was in Baghdad. I wasn’t safe. Someone was going to get hurt. Some innocent person was going to be blown up by an unexpected ordnance. I was nervous. I reached for the movie’s cover. I rechecked the rating. I reread the back cover.

“I think it’s going to be fine,” I told my wife. I didn’t feel fine. “I’m pretty sure no one gets blown up unexpectedly in this movie.”

I wasn’t at all sure.

But I was right: no one was blown up. Had I known that that scene, the edgy guy-walking-down-street-in-Iraq scene, would turn out okay, I would have enjoyed the movie more.

The scene made me realise two things - two things that apply equally to story writing and film making. First, suspense is a strong flavour: a little goes a long way. Second, if you don’t want your reader flicking to the end of your tale, give them a clue that lets them know that things are going to be okay.

If you’re reading this sentence before you read what's written above, let me tell you: it’s going to be okay.

War and Punishment

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

1 Corinthians 13:11

When I was a child I loved books in which the sun shone brightly upon the land and storms, should they come, would pass over quickly. When I was a child I loved books in which justice was dispensed swiftly and good triumphed over evil.

When I was a teenager I read books in which shadows stretched long and dark over the land. When I was a teenager I read books in which the difference between good and evil was hard to discern.

These are the books that serious adults read, I thought.

I wanted to be a serious adult.

I wanted to read about dystopias and political systems gone wrong. I wanted to read about the breakdown of society and the persecution of the Small Man.

I wanted to read books that highlighted the gloomy reality of the world around us, and I didn’t have to look far for such books. Gloomy books, books in which much goes wrong and little goes well, abound amongst the classics.

Now that I am older I wonder if these books paint an accurate picture of the world in which we live.

Some argue that bleak books help us look with fresh eyes upon the glory and splendour of our free world. But do these books really perform that function? Do dystopian novels really work on the human mind in a liberating way, in a way that makes us see that a human life is worth having?

I’m not sure.

So, now that I’m a man, I am questioning the themes of the books of my childhood and the novels of my teens. I am questioning these books and thinking about this quote from novelist E.B. White.

All I hoped to say in my books… is that I love the world.

I wonder why I haven’t read more books that are based on this sentiment. After all, is there anything else to say?

Language Log

If you, like me, day-dreamed your way through High School English, then you’ll probably find the ‘Language Log’ website more than a little intimidating.

I hope you do.

I hope you do, because I don’t want to be alone in not understanding the difference between a fricative and an unvoiced-consonant.

Life is lonely enough.

Life is lonely enough without the realisation that those people who focused during English class – the nerds – have now gathered together. They have formed a ‘Word Nerd’ collective and they are laughing at people like me. They are laughing at me because I thought I knew about language until I visited their website.

Those word nerds were sitting in the dark, trying to stifle a giggle. They flicked on the light and started laughing and pointing as soon as I typed the URL for their website (http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/) into my browser.

I froze like a deer caught in a car’s headlights. I tried to back away slowly, but it was too late: they sensed my weakness, my lack of linguistic knowledge, and they pounced.

Well, they didn’t actually pounce. We’re talking about me visiting a website here. But I was intimidated, and I think they knew it.

They may not have.

Bookends

My father used to read to me before I went to sleep. One night he decided I was ready to progress beyond The Hungry Hungry Caterpillar and The Many Mice of Mr Brice. I was ready for the world of chapters.

I felt ready: I was four-and-a-half, and I was very big.

Dad took a chapter book from the shelf and showed me the cover. I could see straight away that the book was much longer than my previous favourite book.

This will take ages, I thought, I might get to stay awake until morning!

A cousin had told me that if you stayed up long enough, night would turn into morning. I was sceptical but keen to try it.

Dad lay down on the bed beside me. He turned back the colourful book-cover. He turned three of four pages and began to talk. I say talk because I couldn’t believe that anyone, not even my father - who was pretty amazing -, could interpret the jumble of symbols I was looking at.

Once there were four children whose names were-

“What are those,” I interrupted pointing at the closely packed words.

“Those are the words that make up this story, Matthew,” Dad answered.

“What does that one say?” I asked in a disbelieving tone.

“Peter,” Dad replied.

“What about that one?”

“London,” Dad answered.

“What about –“

Dad cut me short.

“How about we just read the story?”

I agreed.

Dad read on. This was a story about a magical world, and while some of the words were a bit big for me, I could feel that world weaving its magic web around me. I was entranced.

Dad read for about ten minutes. Then he started to get tired. He started to yawn and read at the same time; I didn’t like it when he did that. Then he said: “Well, time for sleep. Goodnight.”

“Wait!” I demanded. “Is that the end? Did you read that word?” I pointed at a word.

“We’ve finished the chapter,” Dad answered. “I’ll read you some more tomorrow night.”

I protested. I complained. This just wasn’t fair. There was more story but I had to wait a whole day to hear it? Did Dad know how long a day was?

This was unprecedented!

“Go to sleep now, Matthew,” Dad demanded.

“I hate chapter books,” I informed him.

“No more tomorrow night then?” Dad asked.

I didn’t think that question warranted an answer.

I’m sure I saw Dad grinning to himself as he turned off the bedroom light. He had me hooked and he knew it.

Limitless

I am intrigued by the number of movies that include struggling authors as characters.

A recently released movie kicks off by introducing the hero: an author struggling to write his first novel. He is down on his luck. But then, something happens. The author has a rush of inspiration. He is brilliant. He is writing a novel overnight. He is writing a brilliant novel in record time.

He finishes his brilliant written-in-record-time novel. He is amazing. The world thinks he is amazing. He moves on. He is not an author any more: he is a stockbroker.

Hang on. What?

He is a stockbroker now because, let’s face it, brilliant people are stockbrokers, not authors.

This movie is based on a first novel and it starts with an author trying to write his first novel.

I can imagine the real life author sitting in front of his computer thinking, “What am I going to write?”. He does this day-after-day.

He writes a few sentences and then deletes them. He starts to panic. He starts to get that feeling you get when you have an assignment due in and you haven’t done any work yet. He gets this feeling even though no one is telling him to write a novel.

He starts to get desperate. He starts to type:

Blocked. Blocked. Blocked. Blocked. Blocked. Blocked. Blocked. Blocked. Blocked. Blocked. Blah. Blah. Blah. Blaaaaaaaaaaaah.

He stops. He gets up from his desk. He makes himself a cup of something warm. He sits down in front of his computer again. He thinks about what he is doing. He types:

Bradley was sitting at his desk, staring at a blank screen, when his girlfriend called…

Modern movies are full of characters who are authors that can't write. That just seems a little bit too easy to me; a little bit too obvious. The fact that these characters know that they are living a cliché doesn’t make them any less cliché.

But then, who am I to talk? Not an author who has had their first novel turned in to a Hollywood movie, that’s for sure.

It was a pretty good movie, by the way.

Prosaic

Poetry, in my experience, can be impenetrable, it can be esoteric, it can be self-indulgent, and it can be overly sentimental. I’ve always been a bit suspicious of poetry. I believe I’m not alone in my suspicion.

There was a time when poetry ruled the English speaking world. People at that time saw poetry as having charisma and life, intelligence and feeling, elements which they saw as lacking in prose. At that time many considered prose to be, well, prosaic.

I think our forefathers were wrong about prose. But perhaps there is more to poetry than I had given it credit for. Perhaps my dislike of poetry was caused by my reading the wrong poetry.

Good poetry, in my opinion, is that which helps us see the mundane world in a magical way. It can illuminate us or give us a sense of comfort.

‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ by Samuel Coleridge was enforced reading when I was in school. I still remember this stanza:

Day after day, day after day,
We stuck, nor breath nor motion;
As idle as a painted ship
Upon a painted ocean.

My mind finds this combination of words utterly captivating.

I am beginning to realise that there is a lot the writer of prose can learn from the poets – the good ones, that is.

The time has come for me to add poetry to my reading list.

Dissecting Soap-Bubbles

Analysing one’s own emotions - trying to put them into words - can be like using a scalpel to dissect soap-bubbles. Trying to label a feeling is a sure fire way of destroying it.

Writers don’t generally describe feelings. Instead they describe emotional situations and rely on their readers ability to interpret those situations in the intended way. The writer still has to understand the emotion that they are trying to evoke. They have to understand the essence of the emotion and its causes.

Good emotionally evocative writing doesn’t happen by accident; it takes time and often requires the writer to delve deep within themself. The process of writing this kind of prose can force a writer perilously close to the point at which they might be tempted to minimise and label their own feelings.

For some writers, trying to capture emotion in their work, particularly a negative emotion, might lead them to truly feeling that emotion for the first time. The process of writing in this way can be fraught; but it can also be cathartic and therapeutic; it can lead to self-knowledge.

Perhaps it is something everyone should attempt.