The latest episode of a self-help podcast called, A Life in Color, which happens to be the intellectual child of my lovely and talented niece, Laura Branch, used music as a metaphor of what’s missing in many corporate offices these days. Managers want their employees to learn all the notes and meters, and the surest route to success is perform a tune that sounds perfectly fine every time. Rote recitation, no imagination required. In fact, she maintains, imagination is unwelcome in many corporate suites.
Taking Laura’s metaphor in a slightly different direction, perfectly fine music is the aural equivalent of a Bob Ross painting or the product of a paint-by-numbers set. True musicians, however, understand that the spots on the leger lines mark only the outline of where master musicianship resides. For an instrumentalist, music can be reduced to a math problem, but for a musician, those marks on the page reflect the heart and soul of the composer. Through phrasing and passion, a gifted musician pulls life and emotion out of those sheets of paper.
There’s a kind of magical transference that happens that I don’t begin to understand, but most of us have experienced a swell of emotion as a reaction to a performance–sometimes it’s a piece that we have heard many times before without any emotion at all. Perhaps it’s the sheer beauty of it as in the finale of Mahler’s 8th Symphony–“The Symphony of A Thousand“–which choked me up yet again when I was finding the right cue for the link. (Please give it at least a 90-second listen.) A more contemporary example is Carrie Underwood’s performance of “How Great Thou Art” on last year’s “American Idol.” Perhaps it’s simply the story being told, as in David Ball’s “Riding With Private Malone.”
So, what does this have to do with writing? Well, pretty much everything.
Let’s be honest here. Perfectly fine storytelling isn’t that difficult. Artificial intelligence can take assigned plot points with designated twists and barf out a tale. It will bring the reader all the emotional satisfaction of a paint-by-numbers image. It won’t be bad but it won’t be good, either. It will just . . . be.
I don’t want to just be. I want to leave an emotional impact on my readers–whether it’s fear or excitement or sadness or triumph. I want to be a master musician of genre literature. Stories need to be more than conduits for plots and twists. Books we love connect with us emotionally because a human author infused that emotion into their work. It’s in the ebb and flow of developments. In turns of phrase. In pacing. In the unique and insightful peeks into the world through the author’s eyes.
But because a book is a work of art, there’s room for limitless interpretations of the author’s intent. Just as we can never know how Gustaf Mahler or W.A. Mozart phrased their work during performances, readers of my books cannot know the rhythm of words that I imagined as I wrote them. Emphasizing one word over another in a paragraph can make a huge difference. Passages intended to make readers chuckle may in fact offend a few. A scene I write to elicit a tear may cause some readers to roll their eyes. And that’s fine. I hear from readers who find symbolism that I did not intend, but that makes the symbolism no less real to those who see it.
The emotional connection is what counts. Like musical composition, a story is in its way an immortal piece of its creator’s soul. It lies silently until living person picks it up and interprets the author’s words through the filter of the reader’s own life experiences. The result is an experience that is close to but never precisely what the writer intended. The result is musical.
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On Sale Now. Listen to Jonathan and Digger talking about the book here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2A7Nn1sJyA
Well said. I especially loved “Artificial intelligence can take assigned plot points with designated twists and barf out a tale.”
“I want to leave an emotional impact on my readers–whether it’s fear or excitement or sadness or triumph.”
So true. One of my writing mentors used to say there is only one rule of writing: to affect the reader emotionally.
“The emotional connection is what counts.” The emotional connection is a human connection, and it’s a vital reason we read fiction.
Affecting the reader emotionally and creating that emotional connection is why I write fiction. (That and enjoying the heck out of playing pretend 🙂
“Like musical composition, a story is in its way an immortal piece of its creator’s soul.” What a beautiful statement. For me, the act of creation is fulfilling. I would love to think my words make an emotional connection with readers.
But you bring up something I’ve been wondering about. Do mystery readers respond to emotion in stories, or are they looking for the intellectual enjoyment of solving the puzzle? Might be a good subject for a TKZ post.
You pose an interesting question, Kay. My answer comes in the form of an observation: One of the reasons I don’t like traditional mysteries is that I don’t care much about the characters. This includes the sainted Sherlock.
Fascinating. You’ve given me the topic for a future post.
“Do mystery readers respond to emotion in stories, or are they looking for the intellectual enjoyment of solving the puzzle?”
This is a super-interesting question. One I’m curious about both in asking myself as a reader and as a writer. As a reader, I grew up reading the Hardy Boys Mysteries. I would not say they were particularly emotional in nature but you cared about the characters. But how much of that was by virtue of the fact that it was already a very well-known series & perhaps they could get away with less emotional context then others? I mean, I can’t even recall there being a serious fight between the brothers (we know that’s not realistic!) or the family, or things along that line.
As an adult, I can’t claim to have read tons of mysteries, but in thinking about a mystery series I read set in NY in the early 1900’s, while it has some relationship/personal stuff for the main character, it is very lightweight on those aspects and its more about the mystery. Again, I engaged just fine with the characters.
Which goes back to John’s follow up comment — how much emotion needs to be built into mystery characters to enable the reader to engage with the story? Not as much as with some other genres, is my perspective based on my own reading experience. Especially when you have recurring characters who probably don’t change a lot over the series.
Gives much food for thought. And I’ve wrestled with that in a project I’m co-writing. It’s tricky to find that balance.
Hmmm…..
“I want to be a master musician of genre literature.”
Music has always had an emotional impact on me. A beautiful collection of words delivered in the perfect form is as shiver-inspiring as the most haunting musical piece. I believe the most inspiring communication is found in story and music. It’s no coincidence that they are so often entwined.
Thank you, John, for the link to your niece’s lovely podcast on creating music from the notes of your life. You just gained her a new follower.