There is a maxim in writing called R.U.E — Resist the Urge to Explain. Supposedly, if you show your readers the story rather than explaining it to them, it will allow readers to draw their own conclusions, thereby making readers a part of the story.
In some ways, my novel More Deaths Than One is a simple story. A man returns home after eighteen years in Southeast Asia to find the mother he buried before he left is dead again. Or rather, he finds her obituary in the morning newspaper, and when he goes to the cemetery, he sees a funeral party. He also sees someone who appears to be . . . himself. With the help of an unfulfilled and quirky waitress he meets in a coffee shop, he sets out to discover the truth.
Beneath that simple story lies the question of what makes us who we are. Is it our memories? Our experiences? Our natures?
And beneath that is the real story — a mythic tale of a man who reflects the people he meets back to themselves. This is the story I did not explain. I wanted readers to discover it for themselves, yet I’ve learned (by way of less-than-stellar reviews) that not everyone sees this story. One reviewer, who thought that the relationships were developed with too little explanation, couldn’t understand why the waitress would run off with someone she barely knew. I thought as readers got deeper into the story and noticed more of the characters seeing themselves in the hero (good guys saw good, evil guys saw evil, victims saw a fellow victim, the artistic saw the artist, the soulless saw a drone) that it would be apparent the waitress’s adventure-starved soul saw in him the fulfillment of her dreams. I guess not.
It’s too late to rewrite the story, and even if I could, I wouldn’t. But . . . here’s the question: should I have explained more? Should I have resisted the urge to resist the urge to explain?
June 5, 2011 at 3:47 am
Pat, I read the book. It has been a little while, but I don’t remember having any questions. I liked it. As I have all of your books.
Thank you. 🙂
June 5, 2011 at 11:32 am
Thank you, Holly. When I see negative reviews, I remember people like you who have read and liked all my books. Makes me think I must have done something right!
June 5, 2011 at 6:08 am
I always hope that reviewers will find what I might have explained and then explain it to those who didn’t discover it.
June 5, 2011 at 11:31 am
Malcolm, that would be ideal, wouldn’t it? What’s disconcerting is when someone is so disappointed in the book that they are compelled to write a negative review though they have never before reviewed a single book. Ah, well. Such is the life of an author in the age of the internet.