The Lure of the Image

They say the waiting is the worst part, and I would have to agree.

After the thrill of the first spark of ideation, the workhorse charge through a plot, the clever asides and welcome humor, the tragedy and the pathos, the love and beauty, the words of wisdom and the coming together of different paths in a satisfying unification just as our breath starts to wane . . . comes the waiting.

They say to set aside your manuscript for a couple weeks, minimum - a couple months is better - before looking at it again. Let the story settle. Forget it a little. Then you can read it again with fresh eyes and, it is hoped, you will see things that need attention - flesh out thin scenes, cut unnecessary paragraphs, add a line or two of dialog, clarify some details, re-check facts, correct typos and lapses of continuity, perhaps add a side quest to explain the sidekick's obsession with bunnies, whatever.

Meanwhile, you ring up your friend the artist and ask for cover art - or you hire a professional to design a book cover that reflects the story's genre but doesn't give away too much of the story. In my experience, book covers seldom fit exactly the story that's inside. Sometimes, it's aggravating they don't match. With fantasy, sci-fi, and horror, the image on the front cover is typically so lavish that I find myself pausing among the pages to gaze back occasionally at the image on the cover, searching there for details from the pages.

I remain amazed at the power of the image to catch us, draw us in, hold our attention, evoke our fantasies and fill our dreams . . . even as I, being the writer, labor to create with words what the artist creates with color, line and form, light and shadow, and special effects that further enrapture the viewer. It is magic. I know many writers collect pictures from magazines, the internet, or they photograph their own just to look at them while typing out a textual description of the scene. Conversely, a cover artist often works from a textual description of the design idea which the author provides.

I am now in that canyon of limbo. Everything is out of my control for a while. All I can do is wait and hope everything will work out just right. I submitted a work order for a book cover and have gotten the finished product. As far as I can tell the cover design follows my description, my idea, what I asked for. However, I find that, holding a proof copy of the book in my hands, the cover art doesn't quite "pop" as they say in the industry. I blame myself; I got what I asked for. Perhaps I should have given the artist more free reign to imagine a better design.

This experience reminds me of the power of the image over the textual. It seems unfair to me that before any reader starts to read even the first page, the reader must first be intrigued by the image on the front cover. Pick it up from the bookstore shelf. Gaze upon the picture, pondering the story represented there. Satisfied, the reader flips over the book and reads the back cover. Either there is a short description of the story, composed in such a way as to further intrigue the reader, to persuade the reader to take the book straight up to the cashier . . . or there are a few quotes from critics I don't know, whose opinions have no effect on whether I will like the book.

No matter how well written a story is, no matter how compelling the story is, no matter how well crafted the plot and its twists and denouement are, a reader will not even begin the reading experience without first being hooked by mere image. Before reading the short blurb on the back, there comes first the cover art.

Imagine deciding to go to a concert only by seeing the poster advertising the concert and reading a textual description of the music. Yes, if you know the music, you can decide based on the memory of having heard it before. Otherwise, a description of how the piece begins, what instruments play here and there, what effects the percussionists add, will not likely prompt a concertgoer to go. Would a lavish picture on the poster help persuade the concertgoer to attend separate from the words on the poster? Perhaps. It may suggest to the concertgoer that the organization cared enough about satisfying their customers to add the image. I'm only speculating, being both a reader and a concertgoer.

The book world is different. And as we move steadily forward into a world without pages, without text, it is the image which will carry civilization forward - much as mere images did in ancient times when the image of a book was the word for book. Or a scroll of papyrus or clay tablet, you know what I mean. 

Ars longa, Vita brevis.

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(C) Copyright 2010-2022 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.

One Thing Never to Blog About: Reviews

You know how things happen when you least expect them to but they leave you with a feeling like you just gotta say something? 

Yes? Well, here's my something. It will read like a rant, for which I must apologize. However, I assure you that I was probably drunk at the time so it's not really my fault. I should probably blame Facebook, where it is so easy to post things you regret the next morning. In the end, I intended no offense to anyone, anywhere. Honestly.

One of these days I'm going to remember to promote my novels again. Until such a time, look me up at Amazon. And if you can add to my review tally, I'll send you the book of your choice as a Kindle gift to read. 

Top of Form

[Returning to that Facebook post the next day...]

Oh dear. Did I really post that? I thought I was drunk. 

But, yes, I had a fair number of reviews before the great Amazon purge, when they removed everyone's reviews, believing they were all fake. I only had two novels out at that time but lost about a dozen reviews.

Then I got lazy. For me, being lazy means locked in my own mental ward writing something new...which is always preferable to doing the promotion thing. Besides, I'm rather altruistic and introverted when it comes to promotion; hate to foist anything upon anyone. And there's no accounting for taste; sometimes a story is just not someone's cup of tea, no matter how well written it may be.

I've always written stories that interested me, following the axiom of write the kind of stories you want to read. I've been very good about following that idea. Whether others want to read them is, of course, another fair question. But, really, that is the lesser question because I have always, right from the start, written to entertain myself and gave little thought to what to do with them next. Maybe I'll be accused of coming to this conclusion after not selling massive amounts of books, like it's a kind of salve for the soul. Possibly; only a psychiatrist would know. Perhaps I came to this conclusion while deep in a meditative pose? Would that make it more or less valid?

At any rate, selling some and having the readers express enjoyment of them is the most basic measure of success to me. My only rule is that I will never make a book free--unless given as a gift to a specific person, of course. I believe "free" cheapens the product, and for what it's worth, I put in a lot of time and effort to produce a novel, as all writers do. It's worth at least the token 99 cents.

I must be drunk again to write a rant such as this. Never mind. I've got my latest novel, the vampire story, locked away for the two-week crap test. If it survives, I'll seek a gamma reader and go from there. Onward and upward. The day job awaits!

[And returning the following day...]

It occurred to me this morning as I was preparing to go to school for the summer class I'm teaching, that someone will remind me to consider the reader or some variation on that meme.

The quick and easy answer is I do consider the reader. I consider the reader during revision, editing, and proofreading. The first draft, however, belongs to me: I am trying to please myself and not really thinking of who else may one day read it. Only later do I take on the role of objective reader and try to shape the manuscript into something perhaps more palatable.

The longer and more complex answer is that there is a fine line between challenging the reader and, for lack of a better phrasing, making it easy for the reader. I see the dumbing down of education every day and I am swept along with that tide. One sign is the reluctance of young people to read anything which requires sustained attention and reflection. The Tweet is the perfect medium for these people.

So should an author make it easy for a reader? I'm sure if I tried I could boil down a novel into a paragraph, but it would necessarily lose a lot of deeper meaning, nuances, the beauty of the language, and heart and soul of the fictional people dealing with their crises.

I prefer to lean toward challenging. Not challenging in the way, say, James Joyce did with Finnegan's Wake. I want the text to be clear, certainly, and the meaning not obscured. But the story must flow with its own inner fire and sometimes that means the reader must meet the author half-way, at least.

In fact, what keeps a reader going? It's bizarre enough that someone willingly chooses to read about something he/she already knows is a lie. Fiction is a lie we accept for the sake of entertainment...and perhaps some kind of catharsis. So it's rather like a performance, a stage play: Here is the play which I have created. Sit back and enjoy it. If by the end, or somewhere in the middle, it is not to your liking, you are free to leave. It would not be the same medium if a reader could intervene in a novel.

Unlike the interactive video games available today, can we allow the reader to decide at any point in the story what a character should say or do, or how the plot should turn or twist, or who actually is killed in the end? No, it's already set, just like performing a play. You can have endless debates afterward, of course, but in the product itself (a play or a novel) the performance is already done and the reader must experience it as it unfolds according to the instructions of the author.

Yes, there's plenty of room for self-indulgence in the author's tasks, but most of us weed out those examples of purple prose and kill our darlings to a reasonable degree. (I wrote about this in a recent blog post.) But how are we as a society, as a civilization, as the keepers of literary culture supposed to go on without some maintenance of the standard, any standard, which assures our performance on the page is welcomed and ultimately appreciated?

New things always come and then, for better or worse, always go. Ebooks then self-publishing then whatever is next occupy our attention, but the imagination, the construction of texts never ends.

Sorry for all the literary criticism jabs. I was considering my readers when I decided to make short paragraphs and add blank lines between them to make the reading easier. 

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(C) Copyright 2010-2014 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.

Second to None! On subsequent sentences and where they go when ignored.

I actually hate the number 8. A couple birthdays aside, August is my least favorite month. I'm not fond of "L8R" either. There's just something about that smugness it carries. Round at the top, round at the bottom, perfectly even, 4+4, or its "oh so" clever 2+2+2+2 business. So here it is, that dreaded month: the end of summer, the start back to school, the hottest time of the year, the days when dogs eat grass (I've heard it said). At this point, there is no more "endless summer".

And all I can think to do as my first August blog is to share some sentences of no particular import. On a recent trip, I had hours of driving to contemplate the opening sentences of THE DREAM LAND trilogy. Now that Book III is complete and being edited, I must return to that weak spot I've always had: the opening sentence.

Countless author blogs have reported on the necessity of a great first sentence, as though that alone tells potential readers (bookstore browsers, etc.) all they need to know about the book. Alternatively, an old literature professor--the one who actually taught me something useful (as a writer, not as an English professor)--said that a good author will teach the reader how to read the text in the first few pages. Pages! Not one all-important sentence. (Also, note the word 'teach'; thus, it's not 'You stay in your world and try to understand this text'; 'No, you must come into my world, the world of the text, but fear not for I shall guide you....')

Well, I subscribe to the latter notion. If a potential reader will not read the second sentence or others beyond the first, perhaps that reader should stick to graphic novels or Twitter. Not to be disrespectful to a majority of our finer readers, for an opening sentence is still important to setting the story in many ways; however, like much of literature, an opening sentence is intended not to stand alone but to lead to the next sentence, and that second sentence to lead to the third, and so on. It's a whole industry, not a sample bite in a grocery store. Have some patience, dear reader!

To that end (er...beginning, whatever), I look strongly at the second and third sentences and note how they proceed from the opening sentence. That shows me flow. More often than not, there will be a joke or some clever juxtaposition that strikes interest in the reader...several sentences down from that first word of that first sentence. The images, the word play, the introduction of a character or setting...the accumulation of ideas...is what catches the interest of the reader [I suggest].

By way of example, I offer the opening paragraph of each of the three volumes of THE DREAM LAND Trilogy, for your amusement today:

THE DREAMLAND Book I “Long Distance Voyager”

“I was face up in a vast snowfield, sun on my face, and all around me were hundreds of half-buried skeletons. The yellow sun was glaring off the snow, blinding me, and the blue sun was winking at me from the horizon, but all I could think of was ‘I’m freezing to death!’ They took my greatcoat, and I didn’t have any boots. In fact, I couldn’t feel my legs below the knees. I wanted to check them, but I was too frozen to move. I wanted to cry out for help but I was afraid of calling the ones who did this to me. I kept thinking ‘It’s all a mistake’ and ‘I don’t belong here.’ Then I looked up at a small branch stretching over me. I followed the branch to its end and there was a single drop of thaw hovering there. It was about to fall. I watched it for a moment—then it fell! Straight down to my legs! It hit my legs—which were frozen solid—and they shattered into a million splinters! There was nothing left but stumps! And I cried my brains out in pain—but there was no pain because everything was frozen! And I was wondering how the hell I was going to get home without my legs.”

This monologue is intended to come out all in a rush to create a tossing of imagery fast and furious, to create a composite image of a scene...a dire, wintry situation...which may or may not be resolved in the next paragraph.

THE DREAMLAND Book II “Dreams of Future’s Past”

The yellow sun was beginning to warm the room, the misty, frayed globe high enough that he knew dawn was coming to an end. The blue sun was still below the horizon.

One paragraph, short and sweet. All seems fine in the first sentence. The second, however, adds a twist which is scientifically designed to pique a reader's curiosity.

THE DREAM LAND Book III “Diaspora”

He felt the sand scratching his face before he opened his eyes. A faint dream hovered wallflower-like at the edge of his dance card, afraid to let itself go and twirl about the floor no matter who might be watching. Letting the image sail away on a breeze, he pushed out his legs, stretched his arms up, bent his neck—and in every movement felt pain shoot through his body like lightning, like fire and ice. He stopped, grimacing against Fate once more, like some old habit his mother had scolded him for. When his eyes opened he saw what he had expected to see, yet the sight of the desert landscape, red and brown below the emerald sky, seemed to catch him by surprise.

Textures is the theme of this opening paragraph: imagine yourself waking up in the desert. And realizing your Fate is not quite as you expected it to be. You are in trouble!

So there you have it: examples of second (and third, etc.) sentences flowing from first sentences. I hope now that everyone will henceforth pay more attention to those sentences who do not come in first but still try so very hard!

Next time: The importance of a mind-blowing final sentence.

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(C) Copyright 2010-2013 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.

A Love Letter to the Dreamers

Dear Reader of this blog,

I've missed you. How have you been? Enjoying your summer? Or has your schedule remained the same, hashing through the daily slog of a job that does not quite suit your mental verve or skill set? I've been there, done that. My guess is that you get by through a combination of avocational misadventures and a certain portion of dreaming, both day and night. I sure hope you've been having good dreams.

It's interesting (sometimes) to contemplate dreaming. Of course, that's very much the theme of my major work, but I've sworn to myself not to promote my science-fiction trilogy today. (What's it called? Can't remember. See? No promotion today.) But seriously, as you go about your weekly routine, do you ever think about a dream you've had? I mean the nightly dream; ever wonder what it meant or is supposed to mean?--if you believe in that sort of thing. I tend to have a lot of dreams in which I am traveling, usually lost in a strange city, or alternately finding my way around a large unfamiliar house, checking every nook and cranny, peeking in cabinets. But that's just me.

And there's the other kind of dream, the kind they write songs about: Don't give up on your dream, la la la!  Well, I'm pushing 39 again (lost count how many times that's happened) and I still haven't decided what my dream is. Yes, that kind of dream: what you want to do with your life, what goals you want to achieve, what you want to be known for after you are gone. I think back to the dead music composers, authors and poets, painters, even the generals, statesmen, famous women, and the unnamed teachers who gave a simple idea to an unremarkable youth who grew up to bend the world to his/her will--those people--and I wonder what their dreams were. I suppose that because we remember them today, for better or worse, they managed to achieve their dreams.

You know, it seems the question I am asked most (that is, after "What, you're still here?") is what I really mean by the "dream land"--whether socio-scientific concept or mere writing gimmick. I recently had an experience which provides fodder for explanation: I traveled for a week. Nothing special about hitting the road and just going somewhere to see what's there. However, upon returning home, everything is the same. After a deep sleep, I awakened and the thing that occupied my attention for the past week now seems like only a dream I had. The only way to prove I ever went on a trip are the souvenirs I purchased ("souvenir" means 'something by which to remember') and the photographs I took. Nothing more. (Sure, U.S. Customs probably has an electronic record of my passage, if you want to check.)

So...if I were a character in a novel and I had various adventures, say, on another world, and then I returned home, it all might seem like a dream when I awoke from a good sleep. A little confusing, certainly. But that's the concept behind the feeling of remembering something that may or may not have happened in reality, or seemed just as real as reality in a dream, that is remembered as a real event even though it was only a random biochemical surge between 3:17 and 3:21 in the morning while you were quite unconscious yet dreaming of a greater purpose to your life than what you are doing these days for which you need all that precious sleep.

It's probably deep into the week by now, so I wish you well, and hope that whatever you do in the time remaining before the weekend, you do with honor and purposefulness. Someone will remember what you did, and that someone may very well be you. Or your dream-self.

Yours always,
Stephen

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(C) Copyright 2010-2013 by Stephen M. Swartz. All Rights Reserved. No part of this blog, whether text or image, may be used without me giving you written permission, except for brief excerpts that are accompanied by a link to this entire blog. Violators shall be written into novels as characters who are killed off. Serious violators shall be identified and dealt with according to the laws of the United States of America.