A Partnership with the Reader

What you do not say is as important as what you do say—a piece of writing advice every writer has heard at one time or another.

Mrs. WhatIfYouCouldNotFail.com and I have a yardstick by which we measure movies. We know a movie was worth our time and money if it is the topic of conversation at breakfast the next morning. The more we talk about it, better the movie was.

Tender Mercies, a 1983 film starring Robert DuVall and Tess Harper is a good example of this, and also of the piece of writing advice that heads up this post. In case you have not seen it, Duvall plays Max Sledge, a has-been-now-gone-to-drink country western singer who makes a comeback, not so much in his career (although there is a little of that) as in his life. Duvall won the Oscar as Best Actor and Horton Foot won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay (two decades earlier Foote won for Best Adapted Screenplay for To Kill a Mockingbird).

Tender Mercies was a great example of how some of the most important parts of the movie—were not in the movie. You see little of the developing love story between Duvall and Tess Harper’s characters. One day he asks her to marry him and the audience is not surprised. There is no wedding, either. There is a scene in which the marriage is mentioned and that is it. Between a great script and great editing, though, your mind is able to fill in the gaps. This leaves more time for other, more important parts of the story.

There was a blog post this morning on QueryTracker.net by Jane Lebak that talks about what you don’t say.  Lebak’s post deals more with overtelling a story with the use of adjective and adverbs—he screamed angrily or his loud and boisterous voice. Lebak makes the point that your dialog and expository passages, as well as the plot, should make this obvious. I agree. There is no need for the adjectives and adverbs.

The best part of Lebak’s piece, though, is when she quotes fellow writer Ivy Reisner, who said “ … partner with your reader. Give two parts and let the reader fill in the third.”

This is where the conversation over breakfast table comes into play. For a reader it might not be the breakfast table, but maybe your book club, reading reviews, or just cogitating about it while you pound out an extra mile on your morning run, or wherever else you do you serious thinking. As writers we need to give the reader something to think about and let them determine what really happened, how a character really felt, or what the theme of your novel really is.

See ya later.

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Comments

[Puckettpuckette.blogspot.com]

As always, a perfectly relevant and practical point. Thank you!