Why reading past a slow start may offer writers more than just a good story.
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Not long ago I wrote about the value of analyzing even the books you give up on and did not finish (DNFs) to improve your craft. In that post, amid the advice I offered for how to analyze a story to pinpoint why you disengaged, I also confessed that I’ve grown very willing to walk away in the middle of a book—or even relatively early in—if I don’t feel eager to read it every night in my valuable limited reading time.
But the hallmark of growth is change, being willing to allow for new thoughts and ideas and reconsider the views you hold…so allow me now to take the opposite tack and offer an argument for not giving up on a DNF.
I recently kept going on two stories that ordinarily I’d have abandoned: one a book—Malinda Lo’s Last Night at the Telegraph Club—and the other a TV series: the first season of Heated Rivalry, the adaptation of Rachel Reid’s bestselling book of the same name.
I nearly put down Last Night at the Telegraph Club numerous times all the way through to about 55 percent of the book. But the premise and promise of the story—a teenage Chinese-American girl struggling with her identity amid cultural, familial, and societal strictures in 1950s San Francisco—kept me reading when I would normally have stopped, as did its stellar reviews and awards.
Heated Rivalry didn’t really hook me until episode three or four, but the acting and storytelling were good, and a filmmaker/author friend whose taste I trust had prewarned me that the first two episodes might not seem like much of a story but that it got damned good after that. That tempered my expectations so that I persevered when I indeed might have been likely to give up on the show because the premise didn’t immediately grab me.
In both cases, with hindsight I could see what the storytellers were building and why the groundwork was laid—though arguably perhaps the stories might have been even stronger if the early chapters had been more propulsive or higher-stakes.
As a reader, maybe it’s worthwhile to give a story more of a chance before you give up on it
As a writer you may not have a raft of awards and reviews to entice a reader to persevere in your story, or a trusted source to recommend your book to readers. You may not be granted that same patience or leeway by busy agents sifting through the slush pile, or an editor navigating through stacks of submitted manuscripts to find one that will light up the acquisitions team enough to get the string of yeses required to buy it.
If you’re peddling your stories in today’s market there’s a lot to be said for a propulsive, compelling opening, for sustaining and building momentum and stakes.
But as a reader, maybe it’s worthwhile to give a story more of a chance before you give up on it.
Why It May Benefit You to Finish a Book
Here’s what I keep thinking about, and why it might be worth persevering even a story might be slow to start or lag.
First of all, as I wrote about here, it’s always illuminating to analyze what you’re reading and watching—whether you like the story or not, whether you finish it or not. In any case it has valuable information to offer you about the craft of writing and your own taste and voice.
Read more: “How to Read Like an Editor”
But on a bigger-picture level, I’ve been thinking about what it means that we may be so quick to walk away from something that doesn’t immediately grab us.
- I think about two friends I have (had?) who despite years of close friendship decided to abruptly sever our relationship because we wound up on opposite sides of the aisle in a contentious election.
- I think about the broader rising trend of people simply walking away from those with whom they may disagree or have unresolved issues or differences—the #nocontact movement that encourages people to cut off all relations with friends, loved ones, even family.
- I think about the fear and intolerance and resentment behind prejudices like anti-immigrant or anti-trans stances or racist or sexist beliefs, how people can cease regarding others—especially “other” others—as individuals, simply dismissing them based on their own assumptions or generalizations or a label.
- I think about what that easy willingness to dismiss and disconnect and divide does to us as individuals and as a society, not only pushing us ever farther apart but narrowing our own existence, making us less tolerant and less worldly, less open-minded and informed. We’re not really living, just hunkering in our safe little bubble of homogeneity.
I don’t gravitate to romance, but as my friend promised, after those first two episodes I was desperately hooked on the Heated Rivalry series, as was my heterosexual, non-romance-fan husband. We didn’t have to share the characters’ perspectives and views to understand and empathize with their situations and circumstances and struggles, to be moved by them on a purely human level.
I don’t usually read a lot of YA or historical fiction, and I was very ready to put Last Night at the Telegraph Club down for many consecutive nights of reading—and then I ended up blazing through the last half, completely hooked. And the story has stuck with me, lingering in my mind and making me think. Reading about a period in the history of our country and society through the lens of one relatable human experience helps me put our current time into perspective, refueling my reserves of hope that things have been worse in the past and gotten better—and that perhaps it can happen again.
Now I’m interested in reading more from these authors and in these genres I don’t often engage with, broadening my perspective as a reader. I have a richer, deeper appreciation and empathy for life experiences beyond my own.
Finishing these stories expanded my perspective and my world.
Life is too short, I have told myself, to waste time on stories that don’t grab me. But that’s the same argument used to marginalize or shut out certain people, which may keep us from ever getting to know someone with different experience or ideology or worldview or background or culture. It’s guaranteed to keep us stagnant and stuck.
That attitude is so much an indicator of our times, where it can seem that so many are focused only on their own experience and perspective and comfort. We’ve lost sight of ourselves as all part of the same human web of existence, and perhaps it’s made us selfish and intolerant and small.
The Power of Persevering
And this, authors, is where you come in.
Art and artists are what expand our own world, and the world. Art shrinks the distance between us, holds up what we think is a window into another life, only to discover it’s a mirror that shows us our own.
Story is among the most potent forces on earth because of its power to shape people’s minds and their hearts. It’s why propaganda can be so successful at taking over a person’s independent judgment and fan up their baser emotions.
A book—or a movie, or a show, or a painting—can change your life. It can transport you, make you think, make you feel, open up your worldview, change your perspective.
But it’s also why a book—or a movie, or a show, or a painting—can change your life. Why it can transport you, make you think, make you feel, open up your worldview, change your perspective.
Sure, sometimes you may get a clunker—reach the end and resent the hours of your life wasted with a story that never took off or left you cold. (Ask me about The Lobster. Do it.)
But sometimes you may find yourself profoundly affected by a steamy niche romance about two professional hockey players, or unexpectedly finding illumination and hope about your own life and times from a coming-of-age story about a young Asian girl.
And maybe, when you’re writing your own stories, it can remind you that pushing through even when it may feel hard or pointless or futile may yield an impact beyond anything you imagined.
Authors, have you ever persisted in a story you contemplated giving up on? What was the result—were you glad you finished, or did it never deliver on the initial promise it offered you? How do you approach the opening and build of your own stories—are you mindful of market and reader expectations in creating a strong, well-defined hook…or do you let the story grow and find its feet? And if the latter, do you think about strengthening the hook and setup in editing and revision?
FoxPrint Editorial helps writers strengthen their manuscripts through developmental editing, education, and practical writing guidance. Explore more articles on revision, storytelling, and the publishing process.
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Continue reading:
“Should You Write ‘to the Market’?”