Avi (author, “Something Upstairs”) gave a list of things you need to do to be a good writer.
What items are on the list?
One of the items relates to ‘Audience’. If the purpose of our writing is to create a memory (as Ryter saw his mission) how would the writing need to be different then if we were simply writing to entertain?
Thursday, April 3, 2008
Ryter's Write?
Posted by Mr. Z at 7:47 AM
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Ben and I talked about this question today as we drove a couple of places. (We do some of our best thinking while driving or walking the dog.)
What I was trying to get at with the question is – how do you write for an Audience that is difficult to define? If you are writing for posterity then you hope that in the future someone will read it. How can you make that writing meaningful to them?
One answer might be to ignore the issue altogether. The piece would reflect the moment it was written and it would be up to the future audience to figure out the context.
The other extreme would be to try to identify the things that are unique about this time and highlight them in the writing. I am afraid that trying to write so that someone could ‘walk in your shoes’ would be next to impossible. Invariably the things that you would think to be important in the future would be wrong.
In talking about this and about memory, Ben had the quote of the day. In responding to a question about the past and future, he said, “I think about now, mainly.”
Ben went back to eating his cookie, but I thought (out loud): “Do people have to learn to respect the past and prepare for the future or is that a skill they develop with maturity.” Maybe one thing Philbrick was saying in LBITU was “The distractions of ‘now’ keep us from learning the lessons of the past and using that information to prepare for the future.”
By the way, AVI says,
Writers:
- Write
- Rewrite (My favorite – if you think it is good after the first draft you are in trouble).
- Write for an audience
- Listen to their writing
- Read
When you write you always need to address the issue of audience because you don't write the same way for all people, but audience is also tied to your purpose. If you are trying to create a memory, you need to structure your writing so that the reader can relate to the experience, other wise they cannot hold it in their memory. I found Philbrick's writing to effectively communicate the issue of Spaz's seizures by his use of the smell of lightning as an aura.I know what that burnt smell is like and it helped convey the sense of dread that an impending seizure must bring even without my having experienced a seizure myself. So I think that involving senses can help create a memory. More than that, the characters that are created have to be ones that the reader can relate to. I know it was awful for me when Ryter got wheeled at the end of the book even though you could see it coming. I found that aspect of the text much more memorable than anything that happened with Lanaya or Bean. I had greater empathy for Ryter and Spaz than for the other two.
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