I'm about to start reading Freedom by Jonathan Franzen and I’m really looking forward to it. I
devoured The Corrections and
absolutely adored it and I can't wait to lose myself in the vast landscape of
his new book. I'm filled with that prickle of excitement and if anything I'm
delaying the start of the novel simply because I don't want to finish it too soon.
There's a lesson here for writing fiction. Anticipation can
be one of the most pleasurable experiences known to man (and woman - see my
previous post) and something that a storyteller should seek to inspire in her
audience. In theory, it should be easy
to achieve. You give your characters,
and by inference your readers, a taste of something potent (it could be pain or
terror as well as something more enjoyable) but then you cut away to something
else. This helps to create a sense of
expectation which you then take ages to fulfil.
And ages. And ages. And when you do fulfil it, maybe it happens
in an unexpected way. Deferred
gratification is the kind of exquisite torture which keeps people up at night,
turning pages…
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