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Accessibility vs. literary ambition
Nov. 9th, 2005 05:00 pmI’ve been thinking a lot lately about accessibility and literary ambition and where I fall on the continuum between (prompted, in part, by a post on published author Olen Steinhauer’s blog and, further, by comments received on a recent OWW chapter post).
Steinhauer noted in his blog entry that (heavily paraphrased) he’d started out with high literary aspirations but had had that bubble popped by the realization that no one ever read his stuff because it was too complex. He then focused on more accessible structures, and got published in the mystery genre – and his work is good; I went and checked out his first book, The Bridge of Sighs, and enjoyed it enough that I went and got the second, The Confession. There’s a third I haven’t tracked down yet. Steinhauer’s post, however, is to indicate he’s decided to begin leaning in a more literary direction with his storytelling voice. I would note that his published material already strikes me as containing a lot of the structure clues that I tend to mark as “literary,” especially the second book he published. I’m not sure how much more literary he can go and still hold his audience, but that’s not my call.
What is my call is how accessible my own stories are. I’m aware that I have an issue with getting enough of the clues on the page that the reader can follow, and that this is a flaw I must work on – for, while I like stories that require the reader to do some work to follow, I know not everyone likes those sorts of stories. I guess my goal is to put in enough clues that the average reader can keep up, but not make the exposition so heavy that it annoys the very clever, very observant reader.
Not setting lofty goals for myself, now, am I?
Steinhauer noted in his blog entry that (heavily paraphrased) he’d started out with high literary aspirations but had had that bubble popped by the realization that no one ever read his stuff because it was too complex. He then focused on more accessible structures, and got published in the mystery genre – and his work is good; I went and checked out his first book, The Bridge of Sighs, and enjoyed it enough that I went and got the second, The Confession. There’s a third I haven’t tracked down yet. Steinhauer’s post, however, is to indicate he’s decided to begin leaning in a more literary direction with his storytelling voice. I would note that his published material already strikes me as containing a lot of the structure clues that I tend to mark as “literary,” especially the second book he published. I’m not sure how much more literary he can go and still hold his audience, but that’s not my call.
What is my call is how accessible my own stories are. I’m aware that I have an issue with getting enough of the clues on the page that the reader can follow, and that this is a flaw I must work on – for, while I like stories that require the reader to do some work to follow, I know not everyone likes those sorts of stories. I guess my goal is to put in enough clues that the average reader can keep up, but not make the exposition so heavy that it annoys the very clever, very observant reader.
Not setting lofty goals for myself, now, am I?
