I spoke at a writers’ event recently and chose the topic of what makes good writing. For me, this means informing and enriching, but above all entertaining. Here’s what I said (not totally verbatim!):
What is good writing?
Publishers tell you that they want a ‘good book’ but the difficulty is that reading is so subjective. I once tried to get a publisher to explain what ‘a good book’ meant and was met with a lot of head scratching. The problem is that while I love a book, the person sitting next to me might hate it. But it doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s bad writing.
Good writing is much easier to pin down – it must inform, enrich and entertain.
When I was a young reporter, my editor told me that our job is to inform, enrich and entertain our readers. They may not like every story we do, he said, but it has to do something for them. Even if that something is to make them angry!
This conversation happened just before I went out on an assignment at an auction house that was selling off some beekeeping equipment. As a result of his advice, I ended up with a story that started: ‘What does Julius Caesar have in common with Benjamin Franklin and Aristotle?’. Answer: they all kept bees. (It also led to a photograph of me dressed as a beekeeper and sitting on top of a hive. But the least said about that the better.)
Informing, enriching and entertaining
The idea of informing, enriching and entertaining is something I’ve tried to take forward in my own writing, particularly my fiction.
I could also add in that I want to enthral my readers as well, but that kinda goes with the territory of entertaining.
I was very inexperienced in the writing process when I first wrote A Deadly Rejection. But I was still more concerned about entertaining than informing and enriching. Hopefully my readers feel that I enrich and inform as much as I entertain!
I come to fiction as a reader to be entertained. If I learn something along the way, then that’s great, but it’s not my priority. If I’m honest, I also want to be entertained as a writer. It makes the incredibly long, often difficult, process of writing a book more interesting. (After all, if I’m bored with the story, that’s a pretty good indicator that the reader will be too!)
Too much informing can be a bad thing
I have to sound a note of caution when it comes to informing. Informing is fine, but some writers go too far. They’ve done a lot of research on their topic and they’re going to tell you everything they found. This is whether you want it or even really need to know it. They also tend to dump it in one place – usually several pages of dry text that feels like a lecture – and leave it there. For example, if you’ve ever read Tom Clancy explaining how to make a nuclear weapon, you’ll know what I mean. This, for me as a reader, doesn’t work.
The problem is that it brings the story to a bone-shaking halt. You have to stop, take in all this information and then restart the story four pages later. And it can be hard to get back in. Plus you’re left wondering why all that was important.
In A Deadly Rejection, I’ve taken a little bit of artistic licence with the behind-the-scenes action in a planning department, but the planning process is accurate to real life. As a reporter who had sat through many hours of planning committees, I had enough knowledge to give readers a good indication of how things work.
Show, don’t tell
There’s an old maxim in writing – show, don’t tell – and that’s incredibly important, if you want the reader to follow your story easily.
In other words, while it’s important to be factually correct and authentic, the writer’s job is to weave that information into the story, not drop a text book on your head. If you want to know what happens when you do that, check out A Deadly Truth.
It’s much easier in films and TV programmes because you can’t dump loads of written explanation. It would be the equivalent of stopping mid-scene so the author can come on stage and talk to the camera for five minutes explaining the background to the action. Instead the characters explain through their dialogue. It feels more natural for them to do that. Although I do sometimes feel sorry for characters when they have to state the obvious because it is something that the viewer needs to know.
After all, it’s far more interesting to have Dan, Emma or Ed to explain it to you, rather than me butting in.
Weaving it in
My way around an information dump, as I said, is to write the story first and then work out what I and the reader really need to know and when we need to know it. I find this to be much easier. That way, I save myself from disappearing down a rabbit hole. I know what I need to prove my theory.
A story I’ve been working on recently had me looking up the symptoms of cholera and whether that could be mistaken for poisoning. It can, if you’re interested. I might need a bit of extra background to build authenticity but what and how I communicate that information to the reader is important. Then my decision is exactly what the reader needs to know to keep it simple. It was necessary research because I had to make sure that there is actually a poison that mimics the symptoms of cholera. There is, but I won’t tell you which one, in case the story ever gets finished and you end up reading it.
The latest Allensbury Mystery, currently in the writing stage, is set in a dance and drama school and one of the main characters is a ballet dancer. Don’t do what I did and Google “ballet dancers’ feet”. The results of the image search is enough to put you off your lunch. However, it was important for me to know what they look like so one character can describe them. In this case, the pictures did help!
But if you throw in chunks of research at once, you risk the reader putting the book down forever as ‘boring’. Your story and characters could be amazing but the reader is put off because they’re being given a lot of information that they’re not even sure they need.
This kind of information should be, as I said, woven into the story.
What do readers want?
Many readers, particularly with the state of the world at the moment, say they read for escapism. Indeed, that’s very much a thing for me. I love a book that holds my attention and then leaves me wondering whether I’ll ever find anything as good in future.
The biggest compliment you can give a writer is to say that you couldn’t put their book down. That you feel better for having read the book. Whether you learned from it or simply read it and enjoyed it, that’s exactly what the writer wants for you, and they will be delighted that they’ve succeeded.
When it comes to fiction, for me, I’m looking for something that entertains me, something that pulls me into the story so much that I forget what’s happening around me. I remember reading one of the Harry Potter books and all that made me stop was the room had gone so dark that I could barely see the words on the page. I’ve also had several books that almost made me miss my stop on the train. How’s that for enthralling?
So, while informing and enriching are important, for me it’s all about the entertainment. If I learn something along the way, that’s great, but when it comes to novels that’s not what I’m looking for.
In conclusion…
So, my message to writers is, by all means do your research and use it to inform yourself about the world your characters live in. But only give the readers what they absolutely need to know at that point and use dialogue to explain some of it. It’s much better if a character is giving you the information, and it’s drip-fed on a need to know basis, than the writer butting in and spoiling the flow of the story.
Informing and enriching are all very well, but don’t forget that, most of all, a writer’s job – and their book – is to entertain.