SETH W. JAMES

Reader as Artist

February 6, 2023

By Seth W. James

Every reader is an artist.  When approaching a novel or series, an old favorite or new recommendation, we of course think of the long hours of artistic labor that the author devoted to crafting the prose, but the artistry does not cease when the author’s pen lifts from the page: writing requires reading, to complete the artistic act, and every reader performs an artistic act while reading.  As writers, we plot plots and craft images, we decide what the characters say and when, and we allude to the works of the past as we create the those of the future: as readers, though, we are the ones who give voice to the characters’ words, perhaps hearing an accent unmentioned in the prose, we clad the characters in our mind’s eye, to suit our interpretation of such a person’s style, and we make the skies weep or the leaves crackle underfoot, as we follow the characters through a world of someone else’s devising and our creation.  As readers, we start with the author’s words and then create our own version of the story in our minds as we read.

Writing and reading are unique in this way, when compared to other artistic media: the audience of a novel actively create as they read, while in other media, the experience is largely passive.  From sculpture to painting to performance of every variety, the audiences are given the exact substance to consider, whether it is an actor’s costume or a singer’s cadence.  And there’s nothing wrong with that.  I love movies!  But when watching a movie, I don’t dress the characters or set, I don’t apply tone to their voices, nor expression to their faces.  All is provided.  Certainly audiences can engage with movies, wondering if a character can be trusted or if the heroes will escape in time, the interaction, though, is not artistic but rather it is social.  We consider the characters and the scene, we anticipate or disbelieve, just as we would in our daily lives with those we meet in our travels.  We do not, however, create.

And it is for this reason that overly descriptive prose can hamper a reader’s experience, rather than heighten it.  Novels can, of course, possess a cinematic quality (my Pyrrhic Rendition is quite cinematic), but when an author adopts the provide-everything sensibility of the movies or other media, they deprive the reader of one of the fundamental benefits of reading: the act of creation.  Raymond Chandler said it succinctly—and with a simile, of course—in his The Long Goodbye, when he wrote about the tendency of tough-guy villains to speak only in exit lines, “It’s like playing cards with a deck full of aces: you’ve got everything and you’ve got nothing.”  It’s the same with overly descriptive prose, if, as writers, we describe everything to within an inch of its life, we not only leave no room for the reader, we can soon find ourselves on a three-page jag expounding about wainscoting.

The trick, therefore, is to leave room for the reader to create.  If a description or action is not central to the plot or a character’s arc, consider whether it would be better to leave that detail for the reader to create.  Trace the clothes or the trees, but leave the reader to color them; name the song and the tune, but leave the singing to the reader’s mind; cloud over the skies, but leave the reader to fill up the puddles.  After all, in your mind’s eye, you may see Lauren Bacall as you create your femme fatale, but the reader may prefer Rita Hayworth.  Let the reader cast whom they will and their experience will be all the more satisfying.

Leaving out details can test an author’s willpower; many of us can see the scenes and hear the sounds so vividly in our minds as we write.  I always go back to a passage from the Tao Te Ching, when struggling to decide what to cut:

Thirty spokes share the wheel’s hub;

It is the center hole that makes it useful.

Shape clay into a vessel;

It is the space within that makes it useful.

Cut doors and windows for a room;

It is the holes which make it useful.

Therefore benefit comes from what is there;

Usefulness from what is not there.

Write what will benefit the reader and leave out what will be useful for them to create.  Happy reading!