The Appeal of Unappealing Writing

A post about art and accessibility

1.

Right now, I’m in the middle of working on a new novel, and the voice is, shall we say, a lot.

The war had been going on as long as I knew. Far as I knew, I’d been born and we was at war with the Howlers. Hells below mayhap it was that when my da was born we was at war with the Howlers. No one ever bothered to explain history nor politics to me, Morky, and Jessat. We was just sprogs, and sprogs didn’t need to know none of that. We needed to know when to keep our mouths shut and when to scarper, and how to haul ‘munitions through the deep places where the growns could no longer fit, and how bow and scrape when old Carbunk got the spirits in him, and how to never meet the duke’s eye, and all the stupid necessities of staying alive at Bastion. Except now it was all come to naught because the Howlers were coming.

I am very much aware that by choosing to go down this route, I am limiting this story’s potential appeal. Some people are just going to bounce right off that and walk away.

2.

At the same time, I am reading “The Black Echo” by Michael Connelly. It’s his debut, and the first appearance of Harry Bosch —the protagonist of all 7 seasons of Amazon’s show Bosch, and 24 of Mr Connelly’s books. Michael Connelly also created The Lincoln Lawyer. He’s a very successful dude.

I am, I should make clear, enjoying the book thoroughly. If you like a good police procedural, this is a good police procedural.

Anyway, the reason I bring up “The Black Echo” is because, at a sentence level, the prose reminds me a lot of other pop thrillers and airport mystery novels I’ve read. It is perfectly serviceable, but it is not really doing anything other than conveying information. There is no attempt to sparkle. There is no poetry. There’s nothing at all wrong with it, but that’s really the only bar it’s trying to pass.

(Honestly, this may be a bit unfair to Michael Connelly, it’s his debut, and “The Black Echo” is a lot better than some other books I’ve read, but I’m not exactly punching down here, so I feel OK about myself.)

3.

I work in a small backwater of advertising, doing promotions for pharmaceuticals. (Seriously, I swear I’m going to tie this all together eventually). When we write for patients, the goal is to write for a fourth- to sixth-grade reading level. Fourth-grade is preferable. The reason is because by doing that, we ensure that as many people as possible can read and understand the text.

I am tempted to say that it’s hard to write for a fourth-grade reading level, but that is not precisely true. There are very clear rules for doing so and they’re relatively easy to follow:

• One thought per sentence

• Avoid polysyllables whenever you can

• Try to keep your sentences to twelve words or fewer

What is hard is writing that way and making the prose interesting in any way at all. If there is a recipe for dry prose, it is those three bullet points above.

4.

Let’s go back to Michael Connelly. Actually, let’s go wider. Let’s go to pop-genre fiction in general. Let’s think about folk like James Patterson. These people are writing for as broad an audience as possible. Because if you want to sell to millions, you have to have millions who can read your book. Which means you simply cannot write at a 12th-grade level. You have to make sacrifices to legibility.

You basically cannot write the way I’m choosing to write my new novel.

So, why the hell am I doing it? Because I want to be read, right? If you’ve been reading along, I’ve mentioned that I do want to be read.

But I also want to have fun.

Look, I’ve been trying to write these posts to build to some sort of point, and I’m not exactly sure I have one here. Perhaps, if there is one, it’s this: any sort of art is a series of choices. And choices come with consequences. Those choices help define your audience, and art requires an audience if it’s to be anything more than masturbatory (as much as creators of any sort can chafe against that fact).

Ultimately, there’s nothing wrong with either type of writing. They’re just written with different purposes in mind. I’m 100% confident that Michael Connelly could write as obliquely as the next man should he want to. And I’m 100% sure that James Joyce could have written a solid potboiler if he’d been of the mind.

(Well, OK, maybe I’m not 100% sure on either of those points, but like…. 98% let’s say).

So maybe instead my point is this: be aware of the consequences of your choices. Maybe not in the moment when you make them, but at least when you go back and edit.

And then, all that’s left to do, is to live with them