Smart Novels

Not everyone wants to read them. Not everyone wants to write them. But for certain readers and writers, unless a novel stretches your mind—at least a trifle—it lacks a certain je ne sais quoi. It doesn’t have quite enough substance. Whether you wrote it or read it, you’re pretty much who you were when you started. Where’s the fun in that?

But “smart” has another meaning. Somewhat ironically, as a verb, “to smart” becomes the action of irritating or wounding. It’s easy to inflict that on readers: just sound like a smarty-pants.

How do you offer the heft that leaves one changed when the book ends—without depriving readers of the entertainment they seek? And without being a smarty-pants?

*** Mystery.

In Andrew Winer’s The Marriage Artist, readers learn about the richly illuminated Jewish marriage contract called a “ketubah.”  Murders to solve and sex to savor keep us turning pages while delving into not only Jewish tradition but the meaning of art—especially when it stops being representational.

*** Humanity.

On a panel at the recent AWP conference in Minneapolis, Joan Silber remarked that historical fiction comes alive when readers grasp what “the characters would know and feel.” That “makes the history yours.” This explains the popularity of Hilary Mantel. We’re certainly being educated. But it doesn’t “smart” to wade through all those royals and edicts and Thomases—because they’re as real as a Piggly Wiggly clerk.

*** Voice.

In The Gold Bug Variations (pun intended) by Richard Powers, once you acclimate to the dazzling array of verbal gymnastics, poeticisms, and intellectual prowess, you’ll earn honorary degrees in history, classical music, genetics, and more. Rhythm and metaphor sweeten a scientist’s musings about the search to crack the DNA/RNA/amino acid code:

“We knew a little; enough to know that further extrapolation would require a whole new zoo of relational models. Certain things we already suspected: a long, linear informational string wound around its complement, like a photo pinned to its own negative, for further unlimited printing.”

*** Plot.

“She was like a fossil that’s been cleaned and set so everyone can see what it is.”

In Tracy Chevalier’s Remarkable Creatures, the history of fossil-hunting gets magnetically intertwined with the fates of the fossil hunters.

Tip: Smart novels are fun novels. But they have to feel like novels. That’s plot and character.

The Space Between

At the recent AWP (Association of Writers and Writing programs) conference in Minneapolis, novelists Stacey D’Erasmo and Charles Baxter, and poet Carl Phillips tackled the reader/writer relationship. The panel focused on the reader’s relationship to the text. How much does the individual affect the meaning of what’s on the page? How much should the individual affect the meaning of what’s on the page? Their consensus? A lot. I heartily agree.

But reader participation requires “space.” Not the kind buzzing with unimaginable sub-atomic particles, but an emptiness—because not every dot is filled in—that lets the reader join a “conversation.”

This space resembles openness, or white space on the page, or the silence between the movements in classical music, or the blank parts of a drawing or painting. The individual ear or eye fills that space. Novels work the same way.

The quality of the space depends on the fragile relationship between reader and character, reader and narrator. Not enough narrator, and there’s insufficient context for the reader to react, much less interpret. But too much narrator, and reader interaction becomes impossible.

Tip: The secret to handling empty space in a novel is the balance between character and narrator.

Don’t

~ Let your narrator offer interminable logistics, or not enough who, what, where and why.

~ Let your narrator draw every conclusion, preventing readers from doing that.

~ Let your narrator withhold so much for so long that readers lose interest.

~ Let your narrator upstage your characters. Readers follow characters.

Do

~ Let your characters rely on subtext. Implication intrigues everyone. That includes readers.

~ Let your characters intimate intimacy. Readers want to contribute their own experience.

~ Let your characters fall silent. This doesn’t mean silence while worrying or yearning and

   reminding readers of that. It means characters acting, so readers can decide what that means.

~ Let your characters steal the show, with readers deciding who deserves a happy ending.

A novel is an opportunity to enter a world so compelling that we leave everything humdrum, improbable, or amoral far behind. Any real world, fictional or otherwise, is composed of clarity and vagueness, of questions answered or only introduced, of people saying what they think while we calculate whether they mean what they say they think.

Give your readers an opportunity to enter a world of conversation and silence, of empty space that readers can fill with questions they never knew they wanted to ask. Give your readers enough space to reflect on those questions.