I take the last post back. At least somewhat.
The implication — at least in my mind — is that the writer is the sole caretaker of this fictional “reality”. I’ve realized over the past couple of days that this isn’t entirely true. Although a novel’s reality can’t exist without the writer, it also can’t exist without the reader. This is an extremely important point, I think, especially if you subscribe to the view that reading is an active rather than passive activity. (And I do.)
“Reading is not a passive activity but an empathetic act of co-creation…”
I believe this. Yes, the writer writes or creates a world. But the reader interprets that world in a way that makes sense to him or her. Especially in this day and age — instead of 25 Dickensian pages about a mountain view, today’s minimalist writer simply suggests the peak, the valley, and the picnic table the characters are sitting at, and the reader fills in the rest.
But that doesn’t take the pressure off the writer — in fact, I think it puts even more pressure. You have even fewer words now to suggest the scene and mood and characterization, so you have to do it subtly and precisely. And if scene plays heavily in the plot at that particular moment, you need to choose your words with great care if you are going to get your own vision firmly thorned into the reader’s imagined landscape.
It doesn’t have to be a handicap though — at least I don’t take it that way. In fact it’s a great benefit knowing that with some carefully chosen hydraulic touches, you can get your reader to do most of the heavy lifting in exactly the direction you want them to do it with as few words as possible.
That’s the theory, anyway.
~Graham
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Yes, I broadly agee. Each reader will create their own version (reality) and they will all be subtly different – for example, picture ‘a dog in a yard’. Well mine was a Jack Russell chasing its own tail in a small bare dirt space; the sort you used to get in back to back terraced housing (oops, my age is showing); but what was yours?
Really good writers seem able to add a layer of meaning onto the description which makes these otherwise disparate realities more convergent. To take the previous example picture ‘a guard dog in a yard’ – I suspect our pictures become more convergent in that we now see Dobermans, Alsatians or something similar…
Martin White’s most recent blog post: Some weeks are better than others…
My “dog in the yard” is actually a cat, so that really underlines your point.
You’re right — that’s the key of course. To give the reader free-reign to fill in the blanks of the story’s realities, but to nudge them in the right direction for the truly important parts, like what kind of dog it is so we understand it has the potential to rip the throat out of our protagonist, not just nip at his heels.
~Graham