Today we’re going to take a break from shouting into the void and introduce a new feature, Ask A Writer. I asked several writers if they’d like to be the writer being asked but they asked me why I wouldn’t just write the Ask A Writer feature myself and I didn’t really have an answer for that.
Which should probably not be a habit to get into if one is going to be a writer who answers questions in a feature called Ask A Writer.
I’ll be doing the asking and answering to start with but I’ll be happy to answer legitimate questions from readers too. That would cut my workload in half, if my math is correct.
Anyway. Let’s get started.
Dear Dono, I’m putting the finishing touches on my mystery romance fantasy Western, and one of my beta readers said she was confused and didn’t know that the protagonist was actually the great-niece of the archduke until the next to last chapter. “The story didn’t make sense without that information,” she said. I replied that that relationship was clearly stated on the third page of the prologue. She said she never reads the prologues. I said what? She thought I meant I couldn’t hear her so she said she never reads the prologues but in a louder voice. Is skipping over the prologue an actual thing? (signed) Fuchsia MacStonebridge
Dear Fuchsia, I became aware of this phenomenon a few years back and I’m still baffled by it.
Yes, apparently there are people who don’t read prologues. They’re avid readers, they say. They borrow books from the library and buy books from the bookstore and then go home and sit right down and read them.
Except for the prologue part. They don’t read those. They’re anti-prologue.
I don’t understand the reasoning. Do they just assume the writer had nothing important to say in the prologue?
How would they know this without reading the prologue?
Looking at my own work, I see that The Fraternity has no prologue. Trombone Answers has three, one at the beginning of each section. Neither The Rocheville Devil nor Love and Corn and Whatnot nor Kerouac’s Ghost has a prologue but Fluffball! has a First Prologue, a couple of pages called Between Prologues, and a Second Prologue. And then, of course, all those books have lengthy sections of Logue.
I guess that once you’ve bought the book you can do whatever you want with it. Read the prologue, skip the prologue, read only the even-numbered chapters, skip the verbs, use it as a paperweight, whatever.
But honestly, how much time are the prologue-skippers saving by skipping the prologue?
And aren’t they curious? Heck, when I was working, if I found someone else’s email on the work printer, I gave it the once-over—so you can bet I read every word a writer considered important enough to put in a book.
Sometimes its’s nice to find out I still have the capacity to be utterly amazed.
Dear Dono, I want to be a writer but I don’t know where to start. Where should I start if I want to be a writer? I’m asking specifically about the process with which one might start writing and thus become a writer. I think I could be a writer if I could get past this first hurdle, namely not knowing where to start. Where did you start? How should I start? Is it possible to skip the start and start in the middle, or would that make the middle the start and the end the middle? What if I started at the end? Sincerely, Guy Who Doesn’t Know Where to Start
Dear Guy, It sounds to me like you want to be a writer but don’t know where to start. It also sounds like I wrote a question so goofy I’m not even sure I have a good answer for it.
But let’s break this down into two parts: (1) How does one start being a writer? And (2) How does one approach starting a specific manuscript?
For the first question, I knew back in grade school that writing came easy to me, and that I got a thrill out of the laughter and positive comments from classmates, teachers, and family members. There were three factors here:
a. The desire to write
b. A natural aptitude for it
c. Positive feedback
If you have a and b but not c, you’ll probably have to be satisfied writing for yourself. Fortunately, a natural aptitude for writing tends to lead to positive feedback unless your natural aptitude is for writing unironic stories in which cannibal Nazis are the heroes. If you have b and c but not a, you’re better off doing something else. Writing shouldn’t be a chore, though I suppose the presence of a fourth factor, d, where d = people willing to fork over thousands of dollars for something you’ve written, would make it worth your while to keep grinding away without a.
If you have a and c but not b, you’re either extremely patient or have a great editor. But if it’s the latter, then who’s really the writer?
It’s strictly my opinion, but you start being a writer when you have a, b, and c. I’m probably never going to reach d but in the grand scheme of things I’m happy with what I’ve done and where I am and what I plan to continue doing although I wouldn’t complain if I could hit d or even d/2.
For the second question, I’ve known how all but one of my novels was going to begin and end before I wrote the first word. The exception was Love and Corn and Whatnot. I knew it was going to end with Parker Graham still feeling lost and unsure of his place in the world, but the final sentence took me by surprise. I had some more thoughts, but as soon as I wrote Angie Allen’s last line I realized I was done.
Point is, if you have an idea where your book is going to end, you should never lack direction while you’re writing the middle. So that’s a good place to start.
Dear Dono, I ask a lot of writers for advice and they all say the same thing: read, read, read. They say this even when I’m asking for advice about cold medications that won’t make me drowsy. Anyway, what sorts of things should I read if I want to improve my writing? (By the way, I bet my friend five dollars that you could answer this without coming off like a book snob.) Sincerely, Different Guy
Dear Different, Venmo your friend five bucks right now because I’m not sure I can answer this question without coming off like a book snob.
Actually, hold off until the end of the answer. Let me see how it goes.
When writers tell you to read, read, read, they aren’t talking about reading someone’s vanity manuscript or some corporate vice president’s buzzword-laden memorandum. They’re talking about books, good books, books written by people for whom their native language is an infinite toolbox, people who work with words like a painter works with oils or Ralphie Parker’s old man works with profanity.
And certainly, if you’re writing in a particular genre, read the writers considered the best in that field. But my advice, Different Guy, is to immerse yourself in literature as well. The classics. The books they assign you in high school and college English classes.
The more you read, the more you absorb. The more you absorb, the more you impart. You’ll absorb nuts and bolts—grammar, vocabulary, sentence structure, dialogue—but you’ll also absorb the understanding of what’s possible. You’ll become familiar with what rules to break and when. You’ll learn that you are the captain of your vessel and that you can steer it where you want.
For writers, great literature has the same effect that a liberal arts degree has for people entering the workforce or service field: It prepares you for just about anything and takes the fear out of what it doesn’t prepare you for.
The nice thing is that there’s plenty to choose from and you don’t have to love it all. (I’m looking at you, One Hundred Years of Solitude.) But here’s where you’ll need to decide if you’ve won your book-snob bet or not. I’m going to list three books that I absolutely love, three masterpieces, three books I couldn’t have written in a million years, three books whose influence on my own writing is quite possibly undetectable.
Three books that drew me in and showed me the endless possibilities of where a novel can take you. You don’t have to read these to be a better writer. But it sure won’t hurt.
The Magus, by John Fowles (1965)
I’ve read this close to a dozen times and it reveals something new to me every time. The one-line summary: An English schoolteacher on a Greek island finds himself drawn into the mind games of a wealthy recluse to the point where he’s no longer sure what’s real and what isn’t. Along the way he falls in love with a young woman who might (or might not) have a twin and who might (or might not) be a participant in the mind games. The recluse, Conchis (pronounced conscious with a wink from Fowles), drops the teacher into reenactments of the Nazi invasion of the island, denies and admits and denies he’s pulling any strings at all, and exhibits an uncanny ability to reach back and manipulate parts of the teacher’s past. It’s a fascinating and unpredictable narrative, and it ends—nah, I can’t tell you how it ends. Let’s just say it ends with Fowles talking directly to the reader, something along the lines of “You’re on your own from here.”
The Alexandria Quartet, by Lawrence Durrell (1957-60)
OK, this is actually four books—Justine, Balthazar, Mountolive, and Clea—and you could stop after the first one but you’d be missing out on an enriching experience. (We read the first and fourth books in William Palmer’s 20th-Century British Fiction class during my ill-fated semester in grad school, and it took me years to get around to reading the Quartet from start to finish.) The woefully inadequate one-line summary: In pre-WW2 Alexandria, Egypt, men and women from a diverse set of backgrounds fall in love and have affairs and only gradually reveal their true personal and political motivations. Durrell said these books were his attempt to apply Einstein’s theory of relativity to literature, so the first three novels deal with the same series of events through the perspectives of different characters. Only the fourth book moves ahead in time to wrap things up. It’s an intricate tapestry of storytelling that combines elements of psychodrama and political thriller, all told through a masterful (if occasionally and forgivably overwrought) use of language.
Edwin Mullhouse: The Life and Death of an American Writer 1943-1954 by Jeffrey Cartwright, by Steven Millhauser (1972)
This debut novel is a darkly comic satire of literary biographies and a richly detailed account of growing up in the late ’40s and early ‘50s. The one-line summary: Young Jeffrey Cartwright holds his classmate Edwin Mullhouse in high esteem as a writer and visionary, and proceeds to write his friend’s life story. Edwin’s only finished work is a novel called Cartoons, which we are told is a narrative based on animation tropes like someone running off a cliff and being suspended in the air for a moment before falling, but it’s clear that his biographer rather optimistically gives him far more credit than he’s due. In fact, we get the impression that Cartwright desperately wants Edwin to be an important literary figure to justify the importance he’s placed on his friend. I found Edwin Mullhouse years ago in a catalog of heavily-discounted books, but it deserves to be on a lot more bookshelves. Steven Millhauser, by the way, eventually won a Pulitzer for his novel Martin Dressler, which is also a great read but didn’t hit home with me as much as Mullhouse.
Yeah, I don’t know, Different Guy. You might be out five bucks.
Loved The Magus. Made me a Fowles fan.