We Are the Authors (I)

“A writer is someone for whom writing is more difficult than it is for other people.”

-Thomas Mann

As authors, we often know our characters before they are written. The urge, then, is to make sure our readers know every detail about them that we do – the color of their eyes, the roughness of their hands. In some cases the details are symbolic, sometimes plot elements. Yet stories, like conversations, are nothing without two parties; the written word is simply one hand clapping. The author writes “city,” and the reader builds it. In that sense we are all authors – for one, the cobblestones glisten like onyx; for another they’re worn blocks of sandstone. The more you write, the less you allow the reader to participate in the experience. The author thinks nothing of telling his readers how to picture things, but wouldn’t want his readers telling him how to write them.

Explication is always necessary, but if you write with the above in mind, you’ll probably write a little differently. At least you’ll write a little less.

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See also:

We Are the Authors (II)

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Fat Freddy’s Drop – Boondigga || 2009/Dr Boondigga & The Big BW

Suspension

People talk about suspending disbelief as if disbelief was a torrent barely held back by the storytelling. In truth people believe almost by default; all you have to do is not mess that up. Which is the hard part. People will go along with the protagonist shooting lightning out his fingers before they’ll believe he’s in love. You have to understand this to tell a story.

Event Horizon

Have you ever hit the limits of language?

From time to time I’ll find myself getting closer and closer until finally I find myself on the very edge of saying exactly what I mean. It’s at that point that language begins to break down with each step until eventually it fails completely, dying an arm’s reach from truth.

That’s when I know I’m onto something.

“A language possesses utility only insofar as it can construct conventional boundaries. A language of no boundaries is no language at all, and thus the mystic who tries to speak logically and formally…is doomed to sound very paradoxical or contradictory.”

-Ken Wilbur

Or, more succinctly:

True words seem paradoxical.

-Tao Te Ching

The Test

Semicolons aren’t bad; they help divide sentences. Capitalization is cool, as are commas & ampersands, and definitely exclamation points! Accents are a little blasé while italics rule, but guess what I really like – that’s right, dashes (they’re almost as good as parentheses). I guess “quotation marks” are cool, but compared to question marks? No contest. Still, there’s one bit of punctuation that trumps them all…no, not the ellipse…the period.

You smiled if you’re a dork.

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A Man Called Adam – Estelle || 1999/All My Favourite…