WHEN YOU WRITE, SIT ON AN ICEBERG

Only ten percent of an iceberg can be seen above the water. Which obviously means that 90% is hidden from the viewer.

So how do we know that most of the iceberg is underwater? Well, unless we want to plunge into frigid waters….we assume…..we conclude based in our prior understanding…….we conjecture.

Which is precisely what readers do when they read a novel. Most of the backstory, the lead-up, the landscape of a story and the history of the characters is hidden from the reader.

But why would an author deprive the reader of this information? Surely it will enhance the book if a reader knows the full details of characters, or how the major players in the drama arrived at the circumstances portrayed.

And the simple answer, is almost certainly not!

Good authors create a landscape in which their characters come alive and perform, converse, react; but the job of the author is to excite the imagination of his readers, to open the curtains on the theatre of the mind so that the reader will imagine who the characters are, what they look like, how they sound, why they react in the way they do, what will happen next, and what’s happening in the wider world of the book.

Perhaps the most acute observation of what writers know and keep to themselves, and what readers imagine when they read a novel, was made in a 1967 essay by the French philosopher and critic, Roland Barthes. He argued in his essay, Death of the Author, that the creator of a work is merely the scriptor, and trying to interpret what the author had in mind when he or she came to write the work, has no bearing on how the reader absorbs and understands the work. Barthes argued against the way in which literary critics and teachers deal with the author’s intentions in the interpretation of the text. He says that the intent of the writer isn’t important; what’s important is what readers brings to the text…..it’s how readers re-write the text in their minds, using their past experiences and cultural influences to understand and develop the text.

Readers tend to bring their own experiences to the text and often interpret meaning from their own histories and achievements.

So what this means is that when you’re writing a book, giving away too much of the background to the current action may be taking the 'authority’ of the author too far. Firstly, you’ll mire your reader in too much detail. Just because you know facts and figures, it’s often best to hold these back from the reader. And secondly, you’ll prevent readers from participating in the book because they’ve been prevented from using their imagination.

If you’re writing about your characters boarding a plane, then readers don’t need to know the make, history, location, or markings of the aircraft, nor the provenance of the company who made the plane, nor do they need to know the qualifications of the pilot, co-pilot and navigator. You may have found out all these things in your research, but why bog down the dynamism of the story by telling your reader.

Over-explaining, and superfluous details will annoy and frustrate the reader, and are best avoided.

There are few finer examples of over-writing and tedious bloviation, than the poems of William McGonagall, known for all eternity as the world’s worst poet. He leaves nothing to the imagination, and you can feel the hard work he put into straining to make rhyme.

Here, for instance, is a disaster poem about a railway crash on the Tay Bridge in Scotland…..read it and weep. If you want to spend a couple of hours of hilarity, Google McGonagall and read his hideous poems. They’re hilarious. And this Tay Bridge disaster of a poem is only the first three stanzas of the most over-blown doggerel imaginable.

The Tay Bridge Disaster

Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay!
Alas! I am very sorry to say
That ninety lives have been taken away
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember’d for a very long time.

’Twas about seven o’clock at night,
And the wind it blew with all its might,
And the rain came pouring down,
And the dark clouds seem’d to frown,
And the Demon of the air seem’d to say-
“I’ll blow down the Bridge of Tay.”

When the train left Edinburgh
The passengers’ hearts were light and felt no sorrow,
But Boreas blew a terrific gale,
Which made their hearts for to quail,
And many of the passengers with fear did say-
“I hope God will send us safe across the Bridge of Tay.”