How You Write

So I'm watching a not-very-good movie in which an Australian actress playing some kind of artist confides to a Scottish actor playing some kind of shrink that she worries "they" won't remember her work. They. Them. The unseen public. Posterity.

"I'm worried they won't remember me." Or words to that effect.

"They won't," I say to the television.

Don't imagine any sympathy in my line. My voice isn't tinged with a knowing sense of human transience or anything like that. I'm not even thinking, because I rarely do, of Casanova's great love inscribing a windowpane with her diamond ring: Et tu oublieras aussi Henriette. Being erased from memory and all the sadness it entails is utterly lost on me now, because I'm bored.

Not that the idea of the film wasn't good. The description was enough to make it through my (admittedly iffy) Netflix filter. Not that there wasn't some talent to the direction. The actors were all people I've liked in other things. But it wasn't working, and I wasn't engaged enough even to wonder why.

It reminded me, though, that an idea is not enough. Because it's not what you write about that matters. It's how you write about it.

And again I'm reminded -- this time by a letter Norman Mailer wrote to William F. Buckley, Jr, enclosing a contribution to National Review. "...Not because I love National Review so much," he explained, "for I don't . . . . but as a personal mark of respect to you." He wanted the donation to be kept hush-hush, though, because his friends on the Left wouldn't understand and he'd get tired of having to explain:

"Repetition kills the soul and I would not wish to spend one hundred evenings in succession explaining to various outraged and somewhat stupid people in calm clear fashion my complex motives for giving a gift to a magazine for which I feel no affection and to an editor with whom on ninety out of a hundred points I must rush to disagree. They would not understand that good writing is good writing, and occasionally carries the day." (Emphasis mine.)

If good writing is good writing, then bad writing is bad. Just like bad rhetoric in general. You hear someone espousing a position you happen to share, but the way they put it makes you wonder about yourself for agreeing. And even a point on which you differ, stated well, has an eloquence you can appreciate.

There is in our commercial age an understandable emphasis on ideas -- on "high concept." I accept this. But what does a high concept actually enhance? Not so much the story as the blurb. The movie I was watching got onto my list because the blurb sounded good. It had a clear, compelling concept. But that didn't help the actual story much. Because it isn't what you're writing about, it's how you're writing about it.

Or to borrow from Mailer, it isn't a high concept that carries the day. It's the approach you take, the way you work the language as a technician and the exuberance you bring to it as a human being. It's your peculiar eye. Think of it this way. A ticking bomb is one thing. A ticking bomb in a Mike Snyder novel is something else.

At best, a concept is a hook that's set before the actual hook on page one. The commercial rush, though, results in a lot of hooks being set without any strings attached. Good writing is the string. It's no guarantee, of course. It only occasionally carries the day.

But without it no one is going to remember.

J. Mark Bertrand is the shameless author of Rethinking Worldview: Learning to Think, Live, and Speak in This World (Crossway 2007). He lectures on worldview and cultural engagement at Worldview Academy, and hosts BibleDesignBlog.com, a site dedicated to the physical form of the Good Book. His debut novel, The Suicide Cop, will be published in 2010.

Comments

[Jeanne Damoff]

I love this--both what you said, and how you said it. Thanks, Mark.

[Christopher Fisher]

Good stuff. I especially liked this line:

"You hear someone espousing a position you happen to share, but the way they put it makes you wonder about yourself for agreeing. And even a point on which you differ, stated well, has an eloquence you can appreciate."

I agree, but I wonder if this is true for most readers. I'm thinking there are many, many people out there who find more pleasure in validation than they do in eloquence.

[Melissa Marsh]

Excellent. I just had a great discussion on writing vs. story on my blog this week. It appears that most people can't get through bad writing, even if the story itself is compelling.

[Madison Richards]

...and the converse is also true: Really good writing draws you deep into itself, sometimes making you wish for more story than is actually there.

Really wonderful, thought provoking post Mark. Thanks.

[Dee Stewart]

Nice post, Mark.

As to your question, Chris I think readers love great storytelling over hooks.

Last month I visited a book club meeting with an author friend. The club gave great suggestions to the author on how to build her next novel based on what they didn't like in the novel she was there to talk about. Her story was like the movie Mark saw the title had a great hook, the back cover blurb was interesting, but the book didn't deliver.

Although most readers fall in love with the author and will buy anything he or she writes, once they have made a connection, gratifying the reader is important.

Visiting author events and working in book promotion has helped me to go back to my stories and build better stories that have clean and simple story lines, but deliver what ever I started in the beginning.

[Lisa Kenney]

Ah -- thanks for fixing the links...very good post!