We had a very interesting discussion in my French class
today about modern art. You know the
sort of thing: what classifies as art? how do we define art? etc. And, of course, the most controversial question
of all: can n’importe qui (just any
old one) be an artist?
Actually, the question turned out to be not at all controversial
to my class, because, despite being from all over the world, from twenty different
cultures and from a range of age spans, we were all of the same opinion.
Anybody can draw, learn how to paint, study to be an artist, copy techniques
and whatnot… but those who stick in that rut can never become true
artists. As my French teacher put it, “tout
est déjà fait”. Since everything’s
already done, you can only copy. So what
differentiates you between a copy-cat and an artist?
Well, it’s the Spark of Something Other. To be honest, I don’t think anybody can
really define it. It was one of the rare
occasions in class where even the teacher what struggling to express
himself. He’s normally quite a voluble
guy who would put any talkative female to shame. (I’m a talkative female. He talks way
more than I do.) In the end, he
conclusion he came to (in French) was that, for something to become a piece of
true art, and therefore render its creator a true artist, it has to have “un proper
regard unique et personel qu’on transmet” to the person observing the work. That translates roughly as the artist has to
show something in their own unique light/perspective (the artist’s, not the
piece) and transmit their perspective of it to the beholder. You could say that they have to put their
heart/soul into it in such a way that it shines through.
Why am I rabbitting on about this? you might wonder. Because I’m about to say something you might
find controversial, in exactly the way that my French class didn’t.
You’ve probably heard it said that everybody’s got a story
in them. Fair enough. You may also have heard it said that
everybody can write a book.
Er, no. Sorry. Those who say that have obviously never
tried. Or they’re being ridiculously
blasé about it, because it’s not true.
That’s exactly the same as saying “everybody can be good at maths”, or “everybody
can be a musician” or “everybody can be an artist”. I don’t particularly like having to repeat
myself, but sometimes, as a teacher, one has to (yes, I teach). As I was saying about an artist, anybody can
study techniques of writing to death.
You can analyse how somebody does well and copy it to death as well. You can work out what somebody’s doing wrong
and avoid it to death too. But if you
don’t put that Spark of Something Other into it, the work will always be
lacking something.
I’ve seen lots of writing blogs on the internet and lots of “how
to write a book!” manuals, online and offline, but, to be honest, any help that
that gives you can only boost you two-thirds of the way there. That’s why I’m only dedicating two weekdays
to writing advice rather than three (or the entire blog). People can give you all the advice in the
world, but in the end, to make your book a real work of art that people can’t
fail to read, you have to have that Spark of Something Other in there, and
nobody can teach you how to do that. You
need to be able to put it in yourself.
You can have the best plot in the world, or the most logical characters
in the world, or even perfect grammar, but if the Spark of Something Other isn’t
there, people just won’t find the book as interesting as they should.
Remember, everything’s been done before. The best plot’s already been taken. The most amazing characters are already out
there. There are some (sadly, far too few) published books with perfect or
near-perfect grammar. That said and
done, you have to have a way to compare to them and make the readers want to
read YOUR book. And the way to live up
to that is your Spark. Find it, ignite
it, and pour it into your story. I can
only give you boost you two-thirds of the way there.
The first booster, one that (sadly) a fair number of authors
these days seem to overlook, is grammar and syntax. I’m sorry, but these are not nearly as subjective as people pretend
they are. If your grammar isn’t decent,
the reader will feel insulted (if they know their grammar); it looks extremely
unprofessional and is just plain lazy.
Not to mention that blogs like ReasoningWithVampires will happily rip
your book to pieces. But more
importantly, you’ll have a bad influence on the reading generation with regards
to your audience’s own grammar. People
tend to take stuff in a book as “the way to use grammar” as it’s a) supposedly
by professionals, b) writers ought to know their trade of word-craft inside out
and therefore be grammar-perfect and c) it’s supposedly been proofread by
professional editors, who (if anything) ought to know grammar better than the
authors. People like me, however, will
sit with your book in one hand and a red pen in the other and mark it up like a
teacher correcting a French essay. Don’t
give people a reason to hate your book before they’ve finished page one. Bad grammar can mean the difference between
your book being read in its entirety and being thrown out of the window by a
frustrated teenager. Just think of
grammar and syntax being like the fundamental rules of colour mixing when
painting: red plus blue makes purple, never
blue, and orange comes from red and yellow, etc.
The second booster, and this one is more subjective (like
the techniques of applying oil paint to a canvas, or crosshatching for shading
instead of smudging something – i.e. there usually more than one way of doing
well, and it’ll depend on the audience as much to you as to whether or not it
works), is style/technique/execution and plot.
This is where you have to let your individualism really flare. Anyone can write. It’s easy.
You see it all over the place – history essays, computing instruction
manuals, cook books… . But writing
compellingly is very difficult.
And your Spark of Something Other on top of your
style/technique/execution/plot/grammar/syntax is what will really count towards
how compelling your writing is.
TBG <3
