First, a word about my experience at Mount Hermon this year. As always, it was wonderful. The highlight is meeting with the many writers, both published and, hopefully, pre-published. I’ve requested that several proposals be emailed to me and I will look at them more closely than I was able to do at the conference. If you are an aspiring writer, PLEASE go to at least one conference a year. It really is worth it if you’re serious about publication.
Now I want offer a few words about fiction….and announce a contest. This week the book group I belong to will be discussing People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks. I’m only a third of the way through and am not likely to finish. Thus, I will be unable to offer a score on the book when we meet. But the reason I’m not likely to finish is the purpose of this present blog. Frankly, I’m bored by the book. And yet I have to admit that Brooks is a good writer. Her considerable research was impeccable. Her writing is fine—sort of. She creates believable (if uninteresting) characters. The ingredients for a good book are mostly here. So, what’s my problem?
Just this: I don’t give a rip about these characters or what happens to them. Also, the necessary conflict in a good novel seems to me to be missing. And the writing, though very craftsman-like, is, to me, flat. The bottom line is that life is too short to continue reading a book that is well-written on one level, but utterly flat on the most important level—that of engaging me, the reader. Of course, reading (like acquiring books as an editor) is subjective. Of the 275 reader reviews on Amazon, 121 are five-star. But 82 are three-star or less. And I’m going to have to number myself with that latter group.
My point is that it takes more than good writing and the semblance of a plot to write a really excellent book. You HAVE to make your characters interesting and sympathetic enough for me to want to spend several hours of my life with them. I often read manuscripts just like People of the Book. The writing is craftsman-like, the plot is serviceable, but the overall result is utterly flat. It’s not enough for the individual components of a book to be well-done; those components must combine to offer something out of the ordinary.
Having said that, I want to segue to my contest. Although Ms. Brooks failed me with this book, I’m eventually going to give her another chance. A previous novel of hers intrigues me. If you’ve read Little Women by Louisa May Alcott, you’ll remember that Mr. March (the father) is not present, having gone off to the Civil War. So in her book March, Ms. Brooks imagines Mr. March’s life away from home. The reader reviews on Amazon are just about as split as on the newer book, but because I like the idea of March, I’ll give it a try. And that brings me to my contest. I’ve often been intrigued by the idea of “but what happened next” after a book ends. One of my favorite quotes is from author Mary Gordon who has reportedly said, “When I get to heaven, I want to find my characters there and ask them what happened to them after the book ended.”
That’s a paraphrase of her comment, but it makes the point that her characters are so real to her, their existence continued after the book she wrote ended.
Once in a college course I wrote a short story that was a sequel to a story by Sherwood Anderson (one of my favorite American writers). I loved imagining “what happened next.” So here’s my contest: I want you to choose Scarlett O’Hara from Gone with the Wind, Scout from To Kill a Mockingbird, or Holden Caulfield from Catcher in the Rye and write a brief explanation of what you imagine happened to them after the book ended. Pretend that you have been given a book contract by the copyright owners of one of these books and asked to write a sequel. What would you write?
Here are the rules:
1. I don’t know how many blog readers I have, so I will cancel the contest if there are fewer than ten entries. (To ensure enough entries, you might want to tweet the contest or refer others here).
2. The contest is open to both published and unpublished authors.
3. Must be no longer than 250 words. Simply enter your synopsis in the comments section.
4. No silliness. (Don’t have Scarlett run off to become a nun or Holden become a televangelist).
5. Just a short synopsis please, not part of the imagined book itself.
6. Deadline will be Sunday night, April 11. The winner will be announced next week.
7. I reserve the right to remove any entries that I deem in poor taste or in any way inappropriate.
The winner will receive his or her choice of a phone consultation regarding his or her work-in-progress (after I review it) or a $10 gift card to Starbucks or Barnes and Noble.
Besides all that, I hope it’s a fun and productive exercise for you. If you choose not to enter, just take a few moments and imagine the destiny of one or more of these three characters. What would you have them do?