Interconnectedness

Avi — Thu, 17 Jan 2013 14:01:25 +0000

I write mostly novels, and it’s that form I know best. So I believe that, more than anything, a novel’s interconnectedness is what can make it powerful. The novel tries to replicate a life or lives by providing a myriad of incidents, influences, environments, events, words, hints, suggestions, and even thoughts which shape what happens to the characters. Too much detail makes heavy going. Too little makes the work float away. It’s not the right word that matters as much as the right detail. When readers respond to what they call a book’s details, I think they are reacting to understandable replications of depicted lives. And depicted is a good word, insofar as good writing allows the reader to fully see what is happening. Therein lays the skill of the individual writer, who presents his or her vision. There are the minimalists (early Hemingway) and there are the loaded container ships (like Henry James). Not better or worse, but enriching for the reader who ultimately is the person who must see what there is to see. And if he/she sees the connection between the first and last page it’s so much better. That’s why I don’t think you can’t write a good first page, until you write a good last page. Which is to say, it’s only when you have the complete story, that the first page (which you wrote so long ago) can be rewritten so that it connects to the last page.

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Interconnectedness