David Farland - What Kind of Author do you Want to Be?

To introduce you to his thoughtful style, I am posting quotes from his newsletter below:

 

In my last article, I spoke about the different things that writers can do. I’m often surprised by how few authors have really thought about what it is that they’re trying to accomplish. Do you want to be considered an entertainer? A prophet who forewarns of political doom? A writer whose work electrifies and binds people together?

I love it when an author figures that out early. Personally, I didn’t have much of a vision for what I wanted to become. I figured it out over a few years.

About twenty years ago, L. Ron Hubbard re-released the novel Buckskin Brigades. A businessman in an airport bought a copy, sat down to read, and became so engrossed in the novel, he discovered that his plane had taken off without him—more than an hour earlier! So he hopped on the next plane home. When he got there, he saw police cars in his driveway, along with his brother’s car. He became alarmed and rushed into the house to find his brother comforting his wife. It turned out that the plane he was to have taken crashed, and everyone on it had died. That book had saved his life!

I read about it on the cover of a major newspaper, and I decided, “That’s the kind of writer I want to be—the kind who saves lives by entertaining people well!” So I went to work.

I wrote The Runelords and sent it in to my agent. She passed it off to her assistant, who began to read. She had planned to read a chapter before bed, but became so engrossed that she kept reading. At two she still couldn’t find a place to stop.

At five in the morning, she realized that she was in trouble and drove to an all-night clinic.

At nine in the morning she finished the novel in the hospital and called the agent to let her know that she was stuck there with a urinary-tract infection.

Another reader began reading one morning before work and kept on for hours, even though his boss kept calling with threats. He got fired, but said, “I realized that there are a lot of crummy jobs in the world, but not a lot of good books.”

So I’ve never managed to save anyone’s life, but I have managed to get them fired from their day jobs and put them in the hospital!

Entertaining is important to me. In fact, I believe that whatever else you want to do as an author, you must first entertain. No one cares if you’re a political thinker or a great self-help guru, unless you can capture their interest and entertain at the same time.

I also believe that entertainers are far more valuable than the average critic understands.

But your story can do more than just entertain. I mentioned being a teacher. Some tales are admittedly more about teaching than mere storytelling. If you watch Shakespeare’s “Othello,” for example, it’s a masterful argument about the evils of dishonesty, about the power of lies to destroy others, and the viewpoint character in the tale is the monstrous liar himself. Other Shakespeare plays tackle issues such as jealousy, the dangers of the occult, and so on. Each has a strong moral theme, but the morals aren’t particularly revelatory in nature. One professor summed up the moral of one of Shakespeare’s plays thusly, “We should be nice to each other.” True? Yes. Profound? No.

In other words, though our works might teach, they don’t have to be profound. Each generation must learn the same truths about life over and over again. So stories that teach need only to deliver the tale effectively—with enough intellectual clarity and emotional power so that the message stays with the audience.

Let me give you an example. When I was a young teen, I had a political science teacher who was a communist. I lived in a neighborhood where we had dozens of communes nearby. I was attracted to the idealism that some of my communist friends exuded. I felt that any society that doesn’t take care of those who are in great need—the physically and mentally ill, the disabled—was a failure, an embarrassment.

One day I was speaking to a very intelligent young woman, and she recommended one of her favorite books—Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead.

Rand’s works are so pro-capitalist that they read almost like tracts, but I found her arguments to be thought-provoking and convincing. Indeed, the arguments entertained me on an intellectual level, even though the story did not hold my interest. Forty years later, I don’t recall the plot at all, only the substance of the author’s argument. Ayn Rand turned me from a communist into a capitalist.

In order to be that kind of “teacher,” it seems to me that one needs to sound a clear warning. You must strive to be unambiguous. What if Ayn Rand had a second novel, one that promotes the ideals of communism? Would her novels have galvanized any readers to choose one side of the topic or another? I think not.

Many literary writers believe that it’s a virtue to examine both sides of an issue and let the reader decide what’s right and what’s wrong. They don’t want to be didactic. As a result, they waffle on every topic and never sound a clear call on anything. That’s a huge mistake. It’s a sign of intellectual weakness and moral cowardice.

Some people believe that in order to be a great writer, you must entertain and also be a great teacher. That seems reasonable. Given two books of equal merit as entertainment, the one that also gives us some profound insights will feel “stronger,” of greater value.

 So, find out what kind of author you want to be before you write. It will bring meaning and power to your work.