Wednesday, February 27, 2013

The Reader Net

I've decided that writing is like fishing. No, not that kind of fishing. Not the kind of fishing where you get up really early on Saturday morning and sit around in a boat all day long with your beer and your line dangling in the water. Although it can be like that. The kind of fishing where you just catch one fish at a time.

Most of my middle school writers do that kind of fishing, in fact. There's a few of them that write and share stories with each other all the time. The only problem is that they are the only ones that "get" the stories because they're full of all kinds secret language and stuff. Some of these get turned into me in the creative class, and I have to always say, "this is great but no one else will understand it." And I know, because a few of them have been read in class, and the students not in that group always respond with "I don't get it."

See, they are dangling their lines in the water in their secret fishing hole with their special bait and catching a few fish. One at a time. So, yeah, you can do that kind of fishing, but you'll never be able to do it as more than just a relaxing way to spend a Saturday in your boat if that's your route.

A real fisherman needs a net, and that's where it's like writing, because writing is like weaving a net to catch readers. But writers have to weave their own nets, which I kind of doubt that fishermen have to do anymore, although they did used to have to do it. And the smaller the fish you want to catch, the finer you have to weave your net. Stories have to be that way, too. Woven so as to catch readers.

And, well, size matters.

You have things like Harry Potter that end up being pretty finely woven and catch hordes and hordes of readers. And there are things like Twilight that also catch hordes of readers, a lot of the same kinds of readers, but it's not woven quite as tightly (because, hey, sparkly vampires?), so a lot of potential readers slip through. And, then, you have nets that are built for particular types of readers (like sci-fi or historical fiction or horror) and most everyone else slips through. [And I don't actually know to what degree or if fishing nets differ, but I suppose they must. I'm not looking it up, though.]

But my real point is this (and I've arrived at this mostly because of the discussion around Looper this week): Holes in your net are bad.

Fishermen spend a lot of time repairing their nets. They know having holes is bad. Too many holes, and the fish just swim right on through the net. When your livelihood depends upon catching the fish, you have to weave that net tight and make sure you take care of the holes. And this is the part that is liking writing, because anytime someone says "But why..." or "How come..." or "What...," you've made a hole in your net and some reader has slipped through. If there are enough holes, they pretty much all slip through.

I suppose that's why so many writers like to resort to "magic," and I don't mean actual magic, because anything can be used as "magic." For a long time it was computers. A lot of people are using nanotech as "magic" these days (there's even nano "magic" in Looper, although it's never mentioned in the movie (it was, however, in the writer's head)). If you can't use magic as "magic" because you're not writing fantasy, science as "magic" is the next best thing. At any rate, when a reader says, "But why...," the author can wave his hand and say "magic" and believe that closes the hole in the net. It doesn't always work that way, though, because, readers will only go for that so many times. Of course, different readers have different limits.

The best way to deal with those holes is to make your story as plausible as possible (not as possible as possible, although that's not bad, too, but  the story hinges on plausibility, not possibility) and make sure the details are there so that people never have those questions. Basically, if you have the question, someone else is going to have the question, so you better just go ahead and answer it (again, this is from listening to the writer/director of Looper who decided over and over again not bother with the 15 second answers to the questions that even he had (as he said, he didn't think it was worth spending the time to answer those things in the movie)). Never believe that the reader doesn't care or won't notice, because a lot of readers are out there looking for holes or are just good at finding them.

As for myself, I'm not out looking for holes, but I'm a pretty slippery fish, and I ask a lot of questions. All the time. It's in my nature to question, well, everything, so, if you have an unanswered question, there's a good chance I'm gonna find it. I do get that other people aren't quite like that as much, but there are other people out there like me. And worse than me. I mean, you think I'm bad, you should see my wife and the way she treats books and movies. I'm way more accepting of handwavium than she is.

All of that to say: Weave a strong net. Weave a fine net. Weave a large net.
Then throw it out in the water.

22 comments:

  1. Great analogy! The first thing that came to mind when I saw this was patience. My father hates fishing because he doesn't have enough of that. In writing, we need more patience than a saint.

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  2. That's a great way to look at it, I hadn't considered it like that before.

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  3. Just don't try analyzing how the Cassan teleporters work.

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  4. Reminds me of a Simpsons episode (back when it was still funny), at a Comicon convention. Nerds have a Q&A session with Xena, and all of them ask questions about plausibility errors. Xena's reply is always, "Uh, a wizard did it."

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  5. Love that new word "handwavium" I hope it catches on.

    I guess I don't need too tightly woven a net to be caught although the thing that stops me cold are typos, errors, particularly grammatical, misspellings, etc. but I am usually happy with the wizard did it.

    JO ON FOOD, MY TRAVELS AND A SCENT OF CHOCOLATE

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  6. I'm a little confused. At one point, I think you're slamming writers for not being original because they all resort to "magic," but then I think you're saying that we all suck (which may be true) because we all have holes in our net that we haven't fixed. LOL. I like this post.

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  7. Terrific analogy. If ya don't have a good net, you darned sure better have some primo bait, because there are an awful lot of other lines in the water.

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  8. This is the kind of jerk I am, and the kind of mood I'm in today, outer appearances notwithstanding:

    You said:

    "A real fisherman needs a net"

    And I thought immediately:

    "What about those guys from 'The Perfect Storm' who caught something like a thousand swordfish in a typhoon using only a line with hooks?"

    You've been METAPHORED.

    Or something.

    Anyway, you're right about the points you make in your post. I'm just being a jerk today.

    Also, I really wanted to get in on your battle with Rusy over "Looper" but I didn't have time for a variety of stupid reasons. It seemed fascinating.

    Also: So long as the logic of your world is logical, it doesn't matter if it's real. Think "The Matrix," where the rules of the computer world are logical, but could never happen in the "real" world. That was one problem I had with "Harry Potter"'s ending: After 7 books of really very tight logic and magic that sounded like a system, JK pulled "REALLY OLD MAGIC" out of her butt and saved the day via something that she'd just introduced.

    As an aside, when I do something like that, I at least acknowledge that is the point. My Nick & Other Sexy Cop stories, for example, always end with a deus ex machina. At least, the two that have ended have done so, and so will "Twas," when I get around to finishing it.

    (Hence, your comment in the review that the ending seemed abrupt; it was, and was intentionally so.)

    Anyway, I'm off to be a jerk to other people.

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  9. This is the kind of jerk I am, and the kind of mood I'm in today, outer appearances notwithstanding:

    You said:

    "A real fisherman needs a net"

    And I thought immediately:

    "What about those guys from 'The Perfect Storm' who caught something like a thousand swordfish in a typhoon using only a line with hooks?"

    You've been METAPHORED.

    Or something.

    Anyway, you're right about the points you make in your post. I'm just being a jerk today.

    Also, I really wanted to get in on your battle with Rusy over "Looper" but I didn't have time for a variety of stupid reasons. It seemed fascinating.

    Also: So long as the logic of your world is logical, it doesn't matter if it's real. Think "The Matrix," where the rules of the computer world are logical, but could never happen in the "real" world. That was one problem I had with "Harry Potter"'s ending: After 7 books of really very tight logic and magic that sounded like a system, JK pulled "REALLY OLD MAGIC" out of her butt and saved the day via something that she'd just introduced.

    As an aside, when I do something like that, I at least acknowledge that is the point. My Nick & Other Sexy Cop stories, for example, always end with a deus ex machina. At least, the two that have ended have done so, and so will "Twas," when I get around to finishing it.

    (Hence, your comment in the review that the ending seemed abrupt; it was, and was intentionally so.)

    Anyway, I'm off to be a jerk to other people.

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  10. T.: There's certainly a lot of patience involved. Even when you're using a net. And a lot of empty hauls.

    Kellie: Yeah, I thought so. Thanks!

    Alex: Oh, I already know how those work. :P
    And you don't have to explain how every piece of technology works, because, really, how many people really know how an iphone works. Or a TV. Or, even, a car.

    ABftS: LOL That's awesome. I should sit down and watch some Simpsons at some point. I did see the first few seasons, but that's about it.

    Jo: I didn't make it up, but I also don't remember where I got it. I -think- I heard it from my wife, but I'm pretty sure she didn't make it up either.

    Michael: Well, no, I'm not slamming anyone in particular (except, maybe, the Looper guy for admitting that half of the things that -might- have made his movie plausible he kept in his head and, possibly, hadn't even worked out for himself). And it's okay to resort to "magic" every once in a while, but you can't do it for everything.

    Susan: Well, that's true, but, even with good bait, you can still lose the fish.

    Briane: 1000 swordfish? Are you sure? I should look that up, but I know I'm not going to go do that right now.

    What you're saying about logical is what I was saying about plausible. Possible doesn't matter as long as you stick to your rules, make it plausible.

    You can still get involved in the Looper discussion. In fact, I specifically didn't mention the whole "that's the best use you could come up with for time travel" so that you could.

    At which point were you a jerk? Because I must have missed it. Or, maybe, I'm just that much more of a jerk than you, so you didn't register as being one.

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  11. I think you are dead about the fishermen thing. Of course, I enjoy niche stuff A LOT… as long as it’s my niche. I read and reviewed Count to a Trillion a month or two ago on Goodreads, and noted there that this was not a very accessible book. Narratively, it was kind of a mess, but that’s okay, it could have been published as a series of essays on AI, mathematics, the Fermi Paradox, the nature of communicating abstract concepts to cultures that have no shared cultural or historical common ground… but it wasn’t, it was thrown together in a novel.

    I loved it, really loved it. If that writer decided to catch more fish then he failed miserably. But he was clearly going for only rainbow trout, not catfish, or cod, or anything else. Just the one type of fish.

    And so, my enjoyment was much higher than it is with most books, it’s not an emotional journey for me as much as a curiosity based one. I want to know what his ending thoughts are on the philosophical questions he raised. But even understanding the questions being raised in the story requires a reader that is already familiar with underlying topics that all these conundrums are based upon.

    Again, it’s a niche.

    Of course, the publisher makes the decision whether or not that niche is large enough to turn a profit on the costs of publication. In the case of that book, I’m glad they decided to go with it, it’s quite a risk.

    I think that’s really tangential to you post though, I just thought it was worth mentioning. You mentioned it in passing when you brought up the different types of nets – I just wanted to expand on the thought some.

    In regards to the magic thing, the only thing I’m really concerned with is a story obeying some sort of logic that I find self-consistent. I don’t really care about plausibility of the blood magic versus earth magic or if magic is really making requests to spirit beings who carry them out, or if they are really an undiscovered part of nature – so nanotech, magic, whatever, as long as it’s used consistently and in a way that makes sense, I’m not going to be too harsh (I tend to judge more critically in books though, probably because of the way the author has so many opportunities to trap themselves in dumb explanation for how something works).

    As for the Looper thing, it’s not uncommon for me to disagree on the merits of a movie with someone, but much less so for me to disagree with someone on how internally consistent it was (because that is usually much less subject to dispute, it typically either is or isn’t). At this point I just have to shrug my shoulders and put up my hands.

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  12. Wow, it really is like a fishing net. I wonder if it's as easy to miss holes in fishing nets as it is to miss them in stories.

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  13. Rusty: No, that fits in. I actually wanted to talk more about that, but I ran out of time and figured it was too much extra to go into in this post, so it's good that you mentioned it.
    And, like with what Briane said, what you're saying as "self-consistent" is what I mean by plausible. That's another topic that need a whole other post, so I just kept it at "plausible." I do think I've talked about that before, but I don't remember when.

    Since you have your hands up, "Give me all your money!"
    "No! Stick your hands back up!"
    "Now, give me all your money!"
    "No! Stick your hands back up!"

    Jeanne: Fishermen used to have to sit around fixing holes in their nets all the time, the drawback to fishing over writing. Generally speaking, once you fix a hole in a manuscript, it stays fixed.

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  14. I hate it when I see a giant, gaping hole in a story. Totally takes me out of the fantasy. I'm not so sure most people are all that discerning though, judging by the popularity of many movies and books like Twilight :P

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  15. Winopants: Yeah, it's like being the person walking along that steps in the gopher hole while everyone else just passes on by.

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  16. I like this analogy! Very much! I let a lot of stuff slide. Even the best writers make lots of mistakes so I don;t worry about them. I see them, but son;t knock a review down because of the holes. We all make them.

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  17. I missed all this Looper talk, but then I've kind of been out of the loop a bit the past couple weeks and I won't even get into the frustrating details of that. I feel like the fish that slipped through the hole in the net and got left behind. But that's taking your metaphor in a totally different direction.

    Good metaphor I might add. I can have a difficult time reading fantasy and even much science fiction because I start scratching my head so much that I'm afraid I'll scratch a hole in it. I think a hole in the head is probably worse than a hole in a net, but it all probably stems from similar causes.

    And that's what happens when it's late and time to go to bed. I mean this kind of a comment.

    Lee
    A Faraway View
    An A to Z Co-host blog

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  18. Stephen: Sure, everyone makes mistakes, but some people (writers) make a lot fewer. And there are, actually, some works I would say are pretty close to flawless.

    Lee: I can certainly understand that. I mean, I haven't even read Twilight but just the idea of sparkly vampires has me scratching my head.

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  19. Excellent post. You don't want the reader to ever be drawn out of the story. We want them to be sucked in and not emerge until we're done with them. And everyone loves a reading experience like that :)

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  20. alexia: Yeah, readers are fish that actually want to get caught, which makes those holes doubly sad.

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  21. My current WIP is full of holes. I've finally reached the point where I realize that chasing each of the holes down and trying to do a quick fix on the net is not going to hold the manuscript together. Not at all. I'm thinking of scrapping this net altogether and starting over because too many patch jobs don't make for a sturdy plot. Especially against savvy readers like yourself :)

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  22. Jess: Have you had anyone else read it to point out holes? I suppose this is why people like Rowling and Butcher do such extensive plotting and charts and all of that ahead of time.

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