{"id":6473,"date":"2021-04-01T11:24:26","date_gmt":"2021-04-01T10:24:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/jerichowriters.com\/townhouse\/articles\/the-click-of-billiard-balls\/"},"modified":"2021-04-01T11:24:26","modified_gmt":"2021-04-01T10:24:26","slug":"the-click-of-billiard-balls","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jerichowriters.com\/the-click-of-billiard-balls\/","title":{"rendered":"The click of billiard balls"},"content":{"rendered":"

I mentioned last week that I was reading George Saunders\u2019 A Swim in a Pond in the Rain<\/em><\/a>, a book about reading and writing. It\u2019s a very good book and I recommend it.<\/p>\n

At one point, Saunders writes:<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve worked with so many wildly talented young writers over the years that I feel qualified to say that there are two things that separate writers who go on to publish from those who don\u2019t.<\/em><\/p>\n

First, a willingness to revise.<\/em><\/p>\n

Second, the extent to which the writer has learned to make causality.<\/em><\/p>\n

I\u2019ve probably worked with as many writers as Saunders has. (Though, young? Tush! The oldest client of ours to become a top 10 bestseller was the 84-year-old Barbara Tate. You don\u2019t need to be young to have something to say.) And on that willingness-to-revise issue: well, he\u2019s right.<\/p>\n

The most frustrating writers I\u2019ve ever dealt with are ones who come to us with a really strong manuscript, which they then don\u2019t revise. I remember one writer in particular who had a genuinely interesting and well-written manuscript. It needed a brisk haircut, three or four weeks in the workshop, and it would have been ready to meet some agents. And \u2013 it never did. It never got there. I\u2019d look at version N+1 of the manuscript and be genuinely perplexed. Had I in fact received version N by mistake? And then I\u2019d look and I\u2019d find that, no, sure enough, a few specific paragraphs had changed in response to very specific comments by me.<\/p>\n

But those comments had always been simply illustrative of more general points: \u201cYour characterisation is sometimes sloppily general, for example on page 243, where you say \u2026\u201d The issue on page 243 might have been fixed, but the manuscript just didn\u2019t reflect the broader comment I\u2019d been struggling to get across.<\/p>\n

I think it\u2019s probably true to say that not one of those authors has ever been published. And honestly? They didn\u2019t deserve it either.<\/p>\n

Really, though, I want to focus on Saunders\u2019s other issue: causality.<\/p>\n

He writes:<\/p>\n

Making causality doesn\u2019t seem sexy or particularly literary. It\u2019s a workmanlike thing, to make A cause B \u2026 But it\u2019s the hardest thing to learn. It doesn\u2019t come naturally, not to most of us. But that\u2019s really all a story is: a series of things that happen in sequence, in which we can discern a pattern of causality \u2026<\/em><\/p>\n

This is important, because causation is what create the appearance of meaning.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cThe queen died, and then the king died\u201d (E.M. Forster\u2019s famous formulation) describes two unrelated events happening in sequence. It doesn\u2019t mean anything. \u201cThe queen died, and the king died of grief\u201d puts those events into relation; we understand that one caused the other. The sequence, now infused with causality, means: \u201cThat king really loved his queen.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

And yes: just yes.<\/p>\n

Causality gives stories meaning, which gives them purpose. You can\u2019t have a memorable or interesting story that doesn\u2019t have layers of meaning \u2013 and rich causal relationships.<\/p>\n

But I want to pick at this a bit more, not least because Saunders addresses himself, in large part, to literary writers. But we genre authors are in the same old boat, with the same sails, ropes and steering tackle.<\/p>\n

We have the same aim: write an engaging story! And the same means of propulsion: characters at move in the world, events connecting up via chains of causality.<\/p>\n

Yet things only start to get interesting when the causality gets complicated and (preferably) a little but murky too.<\/p>\n

An example:<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s say you want your detective novel to end with the baddie taking your protagonist, an unarmed female detective, hostage down at the now-deserted docks. OK, good. That sounds like a perfectly good strategy to me.<\/p>\n

But why would your unarmed female detective go and explore those dark and deserted docks by herself? Those of us who write police stories have an eternal battle: we want drama, but police forces really don\u2019t. The author solution to any plot-climax is: get the protagonist one-to-one and face to-face with the baddie. The police solution is: deploy overwhelming force so the baddie has absolutely no chance to get one-to-one and face to-face with anyone.<\/p>\n

The classic authorial response involves some kind of side-shuffle. Damn! The detective\u2019s phone is out of signal. Damn! She\u2019d call for help, but she\u2019s in trouble with her boss, so … Damn! She would call for help, but she has a stone in her shoe and \u2026<\/p>\n

And, OK, you do probably need a thing-in-the-world type solution like these. Such things help.<\/p>\n

But they can\u2019t be all. That can\u2019t be your everything.<\/em><\/p>\n

Saunders, remember, links causality with meaning \u2013 and a lost phone signal doesn\u2019t deliver any kind of interesting meaning at all. So you need to pair up your thing-in-the-world solution with something fuzzier, darker and more capable of complex interpretation. So:<\/p>\n