Writing: Reader Investment (Part Whatever)

[sartorias]

Yeah, I know this subject has come up before, but (at least for me) in a slightly different form. Maybe it’s just tedious for others, which is why I will cut after this sentence, but I at least find I need to look at certain topics from as many angles as I can to try to comprehend them-and then maybe use whatever it is I think I’ve learned.

Comments

[jonquil]

> if we begin them in a neutral place, observing and not reacting-that is, not required to react, we have a tougher time drawing the reader in beside us.

Yup. You have to open with a need, an unfulfilled itch. I can think of a couple of books recently that had me within the first chapter, not because there were explosions and events, but because I desperately wanted to know what happened to the protagonist. For that to happen, first I have to like or at least be engaged by the protagonist, and then s/he has to be at risk. Otherwise I don't have to turn the page.

[merriehaskell]

Oh, good stuff! The art metaphor at the end is perfect. Dang. I wish I were home--I need to cut into some stuff now!

[jonquil]

My bete noire is books that split the characters into two groups, then alternate chapters between the groups' viewpoints. I ALWAYS I wind up primarily interested in one group, which leads to skimming the other chapters.

[kate_nepveu]

Sister!

While I'm looking forward to reading Peg Kerr's _Emerald House Rising_, I'm going to have to give _The Wild Swans_ a pass just because of this.

The first book of Dave Duncan's grammar series failed for me too because of this.

I think of it as a prime example of "this might be good, but I don't like it."

[rysmiel]

It makes me twitch a little to hear this; I really do not get seeing multiple different-POV threads as an inherently not likable thing, and it also seems to vastly curtail the possibilities inherent in it for doing interesting things in different angles on whatever it is the story is about.

[jdparadise]

Giving the protag unresolved wants is always a good thing, IMO. Without them, we have nothing to hope for for the protag, so we're left with the prose on its own (or the coolness of the world, or whatever) to draw the reader's attention. Can be done. Haaaard

[jonquil]

Jennifer Crusie says "Start where the trouble starts", and I have found this to be true; if I do scene-setting, it winds up being moved later in the book. A gripping book starts with the incident that pushes the universe out of balance. Take P&P, for instance -- we are introduced at the moment that the stable social environment is unbalanced by the introduction of a single man. Then we zoom out to discover who is reacting to the single man. We learn the Bennetts' characters from their reactions. Austen is quite a discursive writer, but she opens with the bombshell.

[jdparadise]

I'm not sure... but I think we're actually talking about the same thing. That's why I distinguished between potential energy and inertia.

Inertia: Bob sits on the sofa, drinking beer and watching General Hospital because he's been laid off for a month.

Potential energy: Bob sits on the sofa, running interview questions in his mind for the surprise interview he has that afternoon and hoping the beer buzz and the smell fades away by then.

I think. Or maybe I'm fulla it.

[jonquil]

My experience has been that somebody ruminating is much less interesting than somebody reacting to outside events.

The trouble starts when he walks into the interview. Or maybe the trouble starts when, half-drunk, he takes the phone call scheduling the interview. But if Bob's just sitting on the sofa thinking, there's no tension there for the reader.

[jonquil]

Well, it's always the words, innit? Otherwise it's a dance or a building or a painting or something else non-novelish.

But the trouble is there, front and center. The wishpond exists. It is dangerous. And we know that we're going there. The protagonist is curious, and therefore so am I?

[sartorias]

This is just the response I would expect from a poet!

Of course the words lead, because your instinct furnishes you with the right words. Whereas we visual fumblers are never certain of our words, it's far too easy to thump something down, blithely confident while our brain is bathing in the sunlight of the other world that of course the words are evoking it...only to find later, when we frown and try to shut out the images and see what just the words mean, that we've written a dull, cliche-ridden mishmash. And there we are at the beginning again, rewriting over and over, trying to beat those images back while we fumble around hoping these words will do it, no, how about these, no, well, try these...

[quiller77]

Know this well, I do. *sigh*