Writers Reading

I imagine that when a sausage maker tastes a sausage made by another sausage maker, they consider the sausage in more detail than, "I like it" or "I don't." They would consider the casing, the blend of meats, the grind, and the mix of spices that went into the making of the sausage. It would be more than mere lunch meat to them.

By the same token, I'd think this would apply to writers reading the work of other writers. A writer, when reading the work of another writer, would naturally feel the desire to look deeper into the story and writing than most readers. Moreover, writers should have a deeper insight into the creative process involved with crafting the story than most readers, because they know how the sausage er, story was made.

Being a writer myself, this seemed pretty obvious to me. I was so certain this was the case that I set out to write this essay on the subject. It just makes sense. Stories, and writing stories are not just lunchmeat to writers. They're our bread and butter... Well, you get the idea. When we writers read what other writers have written, we can image them writing it; or rather, ourselves writing it, or not, depending on the writing.

But while trying to organize this essay, I found it harder and harder to distill what was my writers' eye from what was just my reader's taste in writing and stories. Every insight seemed to flow from my taste in stories - a taste that has evolved over time - and not from being a sausage maker, er, writer. Indeed, it seems that the writer in me is just the reader in me, expressed.

Still... I have a blog spot to fill.

I would like to say that being a writer, I have an insider's view of how the books get written, and with it, an insights into the choices that authors made in how they tell their stories. A sharper, more knowledgeable eye for the flaws in the stories. But damn, I'm far from certain that I can say that.

With several years of book reviews on this blog, I can look back on the books I've read. Not that I actually have, mind you, but I could. But if I did, I think I would find that for most of the books I loved, I didn't delve too deeply into discussing why the author and their writing worked for me. The fact that it just clicked was enough. The opposite can be said for books that didn't click. In those cases, I often delved into the reasons why they did not work for me, highlighting the authorial decisions the writers made that I wouldn't have; if only to justify my panning of the work. But, as I've said, thinking about this process, I find it hard to distill my writer's experience from my reader's taste.

Let's take a recent example of a historical/fantasy book I recently DNF'ed (review coming in a few months.) As a reader, one of the reasons for DNF'ing it was that I felt that it was trying way to hard to educate me. I love to learn about the past in well researched fiction. A well founded story can "teach" you a lot about certain aspects of the period the story covers, without drawing attention to this aspect of the story. But in the first third of this book, the part that I read before putting it aside, I felt, as a reader, that the author was taking time out from the story to lecture me, the reader, on very specific aspects of Victorian English society. And by lecture, I mean lecture. The author essentially put aside the telling of the story to turn to the reader to tell them about the historical facts the author wanted to tell us about. As a reader, this always annoys me. I'm reading the book for the story. If there are things that I don't understand or want to know about, there is Wikipedia. I resent this assumption of ignorance on the part of an author. 

Reading it as a writer, I felt including scenes not necessary for the story or the characters merely for the interjection of the information the author wanted to tell us, the readers is clunky, at best. I suppose if an author is writing omni-present third person with multiple POV, as in this case, they have the freedom to shove whatever they want into a story. Whereas a close third person or first person narrative this information would needed to be introduced in the thoughts of the characters or in dialog. As a writer, this pausing of the narration to insert a Wikipedia article about something you want to draw attention to, especially incidental information peripheral to the story is, in my opinion, lazy writing. I believe that an author should be able to bring an aspects of the past to light over the course of the story, without turning to the audience and just explaining the it. Readers will pick things up on whatever it is as they go along, if it's important enough to the story to make it feel organic to the story. And if they want to know more, the 21st century reader can look it up in less than a minute.

I am not the only person who was struck by these inserted lectures. The blogger/reviewer, a SF anthology editor, who brought my attention to the book, also noted this rather heavy handed promotion of the author's agenda in the book, and he felt it detracted from the story as well. He, unlike me, found the story compelling enough to not only read it in its entirety, but praise it, which is why I tracked the book down in the first place.

I'm fine with writers having an agenda, if they weave it into the fabric of the story with some finesse. But in this case it was a ham-fisted attempt to highlight the ills of the historical society the story was set in. As a writer, I found this inexplicable, indeed inexcusable, since this is not the work of a new author. The author is an award winning author whose first novel was published in 1982. 

But does it matter how I look at it? Looking at it's 4 star plus rating on Goodreads, probably not. Indeed, this is seems always to be the case with books I dislike, and criticize for their writing; most readers clearly don't mind the things I do, as much as I do. 

Can I blame that on my writer's mind?

Does this mean that most readers read books like eating lunchmeat, while I read books like a sausage maker eating lunchmeat, i.e. curious to know how and what it's made of? 

I would like to believe so, since being a writer, I had aught to be more aware of the choices that go into the writing a story. But as I said above, I have my doubts this is the case.

I think the main difference in my vs most readers' ratings might be that most readers enjoy and rate stories for the stories they tell, not on the writing. If the story draws them in, the writing becomes invisible. The story lives in their imagination, with the words only acting as prompts for their own imagination. As long as the words do that, it doesn't matter how artfully they're arranged. It also seems that if the story grabs them, many readers are willing to overlook what I consider laziness in writing; cardboard characters, plot holes, and well worn tropes and plotting for the convenience of the writer that, if the reader takes the time to think about, make no logical sense.

I, on the other hand, value the style and cleverness of the writing above all other aspects of the story. And I value stories which make sense, even when you think about them. I can't say if these requirements are because I'm a writer, or because of my love for writing in and of itself, was such that I became a writer. I've always been interested in writing, and have done so all my life, so I have no baseline to measure how much of my criticisms are based on my taste in books, vs my interest, instincts, and efforts in writing my own books.

But is this the case for all writers? I dare not speak for writers. So what do you think? If you're a writer, do you think knowing how the sausage is made affects how you read and enjoy stories?  And if you're not a writer, just a reader, do you still notice what the author is doing in the way stories are written to achieve the affects they ae hoping to achieve?