Writing the Novel_ From Plot to Print - Lawrence Block [18]
That last point is worth a digression.
A great many people seem to believe that all it takes for a talented writer to produce a best-selling novel is a sound idea and the will to carry it out. Writers frequently make the mistake of believing this themselves, and the results can be markedly unsuccessful.
The writers who consistently produce best-selling fiction are not writing down to their audience. They are not making deliberate compromises between the books they’d like to write and what the public wants. On the contrary, they are turning out precisely the books they were born to write, working at the top of their form, and while they may wistfully wish they were geared to write the kind of thing that wins awards and sparks doctoral theses, just as Norman Rockwell occasionally expressed regret that he didn’t paint like Picasso, they have become successes by being themselves.
Best sellers are occasionally written cynically. William Faulkner batted out Sanctuary with the intention of producing a potboiler that would make him rich; he remained an artist in spite of himself, and while Sanctuary did sell impressively it remained quintessential Faulkner. On the other hand, it’s probably safe to assume that John Updike wrote Couples out of comparable cupidity. Couples did sell very well, but it’s hardly vintage Updike, and the author’s own detachment from it is evident throughout.
I’ve known several writers of category fiction who have tried to break through into the world of bestsellerdom, a natural ambition in a world where success is largely measured in dollars and cents. Some writers manage this rather neatly; they’d written category fiction as an apprenticeship, or their development carried them to a point where they are comfortable working on a broader canvas—for one reason or another, their books work. Others of us have found ourselves trying to be something we’re not in order to attain a goal to which we unwisely aspire. The result, more often than not, is a book which is satisfying to neither its authors nor its readers, a financial and artistic failure. The Peter Principle seems to apply; we extend our literary horizons until we reach our level of incompetence.
I’m sorry to say that I know whereof I speak, and the knowledge was not gained painlessly. What I have learned to my cost is that I do my best work when all I am trying to do is my best work. And it is when I do this that I incidentally achieve the most critical and financial success in the bargain.
There’s a moral there somewhere, and I have a hunch it shouldn’t be too hard to spot.
Suppose I don’t want to write category fiction? I want to write a serious mainstream novel. But I don’t know what I want to write about. I don’t have a setting or a plot or a character. I just know that I want to write a serious novel. How do I get started?
Maybe you’re not ready yet.
Give yourself time. Read the sorts of novels you enjoy and admire, and try to spot those which afford a measure of the author-identification we’ve discussed. You may not want to write books which specifically resemble what you’ve read, but this identification process, this reading from the writer’s point of view, may help your subconscious mind to begin formulating ideas for your own book.
Sooner or later, you’ll begin to get ideas—out of your own background and experience, out of your imagination, out of some well of story material within yourself. This process will happen when the time is right. Until it does, there’s not very much you can do.
Chapter 3
Read … Study… Analyze
Let’s suppose that you’ve managed to zoom in on a type of novel you think might make for comfortable writing. You don’t know that you’re ready to embark on a lifelong career as a writer of sweet savage romances, say,