This site will be added to soon. In fact, I expect it to be much larger than my description of the reasons I wrote (and am now writing) what I have. But I only opened the site last week, and I have to get through the first part before I can start meandering around here, and getting replies and answering them. Which, I hope, will be the fun of the whole thing. For both readers and for me. But then, I’m a reader, too.
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R.A. MacAvoy On Writing and Reading
What I've written, what I'm writing, what I hope to write, and other things.
I’ve been rereading Margery Allingham’s later books, and I’m puzzled why I didn’t notice her complete mastery of her craft first time through. I guess I was just reading the first time in the way in which I sometimes shovel in food – gulp, gulp, gulp. I have learn to read much more slowly.
The woman knew everything about storytelling. For instance: the most common and irritating mistake in genre fiction – or any type, probably – is having the characters explain the plot to the reader by talking to one another. Baldly. Badly. But Allingham did the job so smoothly I was only later aware it had been done. And, of course, it must be done, right? In a structured narrative there is so much plot, so many ‘guns over the mantelpiece’ which must be put out there so that they can be shot off at the end.
Allingham does it by veiling the information under a different layer of her prose. She uses the times when the characters are emotional or under pressure and we are so much involved with that aspect of the novel that only later do we (meaning me, of course) understand that in this little row between two people we’ve grown to care about, a large amount of the underpinnings of the story have been revealed. So that in the end we find ourselves going “Oh! Of course. It was obvious who did it all the time. Why didn’t I notice?”
Another tool of hers – and I almost said ‘trick’, but that demeans the work – is that minor characters never pass us by with statements like ‘a small man walked by’, but rather ‘a man who looked rather like an otter slid through the crowd’. She doesn’t do this too much. Writers who put too much jewelry into their prose can have us tripping over it and thinking ‘Oh, isn’t this good writing!’ when we ought to be thinking about the story itself.
These things I’ve been talking about are good writing. Sound craftsmanship. Of course, on top of that she has her stories filled with passion and conviction and everything that spills out of the box and makes us gasp in wonder.
But how well she builds that box, first.
I kept thinking, as I read I’ve been rereading Margery Allingham’s later books, and I’m puzzled why I didn’t notice her complete mastery of her craft first time through. I guess I was just reading the first time in the way in which I sometimes shovel in food – gulp, gulp, gulp. I have learn to read much more slowly.
The woman knew everything about storytelling. For instance: the most common and irritating mistake in genre fiction – or any type, probably – is having the characters explain the plot to the reader by talking to one another. Baldly. Badly. But Allingham did the job so smoothly I was only later aware it had been done. And, of course, it must be done, right? In a structured narrative there is so much plot, so many ‘guns over the mantelpiece’ which must be put out there so that they can be shot off at the end.
Allingham does it by veiling the information under a different layer of her prose. She uses the times when the characters are emotional or under pressure and we are so much involved with that aspect of the novel that only later do we (meaning me, of course) understand that in this little row between two people we’ve grown to care about, a large amount of the underpinnings of the story have been revealed. So that in the end we find ourselves going “Oh! Of course. It was obvious who did it all the time. Why didn’t I notice?”
Another tool of hers – and I almost said ‘trick’, but that demeans the work – is that minor characters never pass us by with statements like ‘a small man walked by’, but rather ‘a man who looked rather like an otter slid through the crowd’. She doesn’t do this too much. Writers who put too much jewelry into their prose can have us tripping over it and thinking ‘Oh, isn’t this good writing!’ when we ought to be thinking about the story itself.
These things I’ve been talking about are good writing. Sound craftsmanship. Of course, on top of that she has her stories filled with passion and conviction and everything that spills out of the box and makes us gasp in wonder.
But how well she builds that box, first.
I kept thinking, as I read the book TRAITOR’S PURSE, that I must remember all these things and let them be my guide. But it doesn’t really work that way, in writing. I doubt Allingham herself was doing much of it consciously.
But here’s to Margery Allingham. I raise an imaginary glass full of the finest imaginary wine to her. And then I spill it on the earth as an offering to her spirit. May it touch me as a writer as it has as a reader.
the book TRAITOR’S PURSE, that I must remember all these things and let them be my guide. But it doesn’t really work that way, in writing. I doubt Allingham herself was doing much of it consciously.
But here’s to Margery Allingham. I raise an imaginary glass full of the finest imaginary wine to her. And then I spill it on the earth as an offering to her spirit. May it touch me as a writer as it has as a reader.