{"id":491,"date":"2015-04-10T22:06:23","date_gmt":"2015-04-11T05:06:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/?p=491"},"modified":"2015-04-17T23:34:48","modified_gmt":"2015-04-18T06:34:48","slug":"have-good-voice-will-travel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/have-good-voice-will-travel\/","title":{"rendered":"A Good Voice Will Travel"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cNo digressions allowed!\u201d is one of many pieces of writing advice I\u2019ve read from the horizontal climbers, which is no doubt good advice if you want to write thrillers to formula. However, many books I admire are full of digressions and asides. In fact, such digressions sometimes make those books stand above the crowd.\u00a0It\u2019s one of those things that made me realize the best teachers are often books themselves.<\/p>\n

The thing is, if you\u2019re reading a \u201chow to write\u201d book written by someone who makes more money selling advice than their fiction, you\u2019ll end up making the same mistakes they do. Yes, I get the irony of my own advice, since I have yet to sell a damned thing\u2014but my advice isn\u2019t to listen to me, it\u2019s to listen to the good writing that sings inside you as you read. Anyway\u2026<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

If you\u2019re anxious about your story meandering, I\u2019d say don\u2019t worry about it until the whole story is written. I mean, during my last writing binge, I didn\u2019t get why my character had to rant about orange jumpsuits at first, but it turned out to be crucial (even though it\u2019s exactly as ridiculous as it sounds).<\/p>\n

Often such digressions turn out plot-relevant. Take Luigi Vampa\u2019s tale from The Count of Monte Cristo<\/em>. It seemed a massive digression, and only came into play later. At the time I thought who cares, it\u2019s an interesting story. I know I\u2019m not alone, as can attest the fact that people still read it\u2014all 1500+ pages\u2014centuries later. Dickens also filled his pages with digressions, that often had no plot relevance whatsoever, but it told interesting stories about his characters. So we\u2019re still good on Vonnegut\u2019s #4 rule: \u201cEvery sentence must do one of two things\u2014reveal character or advance the action.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course Kurt Vonnegut broke that rule all the time. Just look at the whole passage about the Harmoniums from The Sirens of Titan<\/em>\u2014it was bloody magical. How about Terry Pratchett, who owned every one of his asides in his footnotes. Or Douglas Adams: the Hitchhiker\u2019s Guide segments rarely had any plot relevance at all, and yet those are the bits people love the most. Maybe we should add an addendum to Vonnegut\u2019s rule: digressions are totally allowed for the Rule of Funny or Rule of Cool.<\/p>\n

Though it helps to make sure your shit is actually funny or awesome enough to make nerds drool. This is subjective of course, but most writers need other people to weigh in on whether or not they pulled it off. Until then, write the damned thing instead of fretting over it. I\u2019ve learned the hard way that pulling back because you think your ideas are too stupid or weird leads to being boring<\/em>.<\/p>\n

An interesting voice is really the only difference between whether or not you can pull a bunch of digressions off. A sense of humor also helps\u2014the ability to spin a tall tale\u2014because the reader is waiting for you to subvert their expectations. They want to be entertained. If you can pull that off, they won\u2019t care whether or not every sentence is plot relevant. They\u2019ll be too busy enjoying themselves to notice. If you can bullshit so well people want you to keep going, then bullshit. Anyone who claims that\u2019s never allowed is full of it.<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"reddit\"<\/a>\"pinterest\"<\/a>\"linkedin\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>by <\/span>\"feather\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cNo digressions allowed!\u201d is one of many pieces of writing advice I\u2019ve read from the horizontal climbers, which is no doubt good advice if you want to write thrillers to formula. However, many books I admire are full of digressions and asides. In fact, such digressions sometimes make those books stand above the crowd.\u00a0It\u2019s one […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[20,15,32],"class_list":["post-491","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-writing","tag-advice","tag-bullshittery","tag-creativity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=491"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":508,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/491\/revisions\/508"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=491"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=491"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sarahdimento.com\/~sarah\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=491"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}