Grantimatter
asked
Nick Harkaway:
How do you know if a plot you're currently in the middle of writing will be of interest to anyone else? (I mean, *you* know what's likely to happen next, and *you* know the characters well enough to know why they made the decisions they made that got them there.)
Nick Harkaway
Oooh, good one. Two answers:
1. You know because you make it make you so excited, so thrilled by the reveals and so appalled by the pits into which the characters fall that you can't wait to get back to your desk to write some more. When your attention flags and you want to play FTL for iOS on your iPad Mini (totally random example, nothing to see here) you have to fix that. As long as you're bouncing up and down and unable to type the words fast enough, or rapt by the beauty and the horror or whatever, you're okay. Your sad scenes should make you weep, your murders should make you afraid. Oh, and that's the other thing: personal opinion - you need to own all the cardinal compass directions of narrative and emotion. If you want your audience to be scared, make them feel safe. Own safety. Then you can take it away. Etc etc.
2. The gig is not to write what will interest them, it is to make them interested in what you write. Someone like Jeanette Winterson could write about carving a wooden toothrbrush for a chapter and you'd be fascinated. Hell, she could write a book about it and people would queue up for a copy.
1. You know because you make it make you so excited, so thrilled by the reveals and so appalled by the pits into which the characters fall that you can't wait to get back to your desk to write some more. When your attention flags and you want to play FTL for iOS on your iPad Mini (totally random example, nothing to see here) you have to fix that. As long as you're bouncing up and down and unable to type the words fast enough, or rapt by the beauty and the horror or whatever, you're okay. Your sad scenes should make you weep, your murders should make you afraid. Oh, and that's the other thing: personal opinion - you need to own all the cardinal compass directions of narrative and emotion. If you want your audience to be scared, make them feel safe. Own safety. Then you can take it away. Etc etc.
2. The gig is not to write what will interest them, it is to make them interested in what you write. Someone like Jeanette Winterson could write about carving a wooden toothrbrush for a chapter and you'd be fascinated. Hell, she could write a book about it and people would queue up for a copy.
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