Catching Idle Butterflies

Water vs Wine

“My books are water; those of great geniuses are wine. Everyone drinks water.” ~ Mark Twain in Mark Twain’s Notebook.

At the writer’s conference, one speaker, Dr. Rosalie de Rosset, complained that literary masterpieces are no longer being written. Writers and publishers have dumbed-down books because they believe that’s what sells. Koni (pronounced Connie), another attendee and I disagreed with Dr. Rosset’s premise that we writers must concentrate on writing those masterpieces.

I considered Jesus’ parables. He met people on their level, telling stories about farming, shepherding, and the like. If he had spoke to them on a more scholastic level, they would not have listened to him. He wasn’t talking down to them, assuming they lacked intelligence, but expressing his ideas in a way they could immediately understand and relate to.

To further prove Koni’s and my point, she began her keynote speech by reading a literary piece – 15 minutes (or so it seemed) on what a communion wafer tasted like. Beautiful writing, but so what? What was the point of making us listen to it? She continued speaking in florid terms, putting two people at my table asleep.

Like it or not, we live in a time when people don’t want to spend time reading page after page of description. We could blame it on 30 minute television shows, action-saturated movies and video games. It doesn’t matter. As writers, we must write according to what interests people the most. Which would you, as a writer see; your books and articles reaching thousands, if not millions, or mere hundreds who read your tome once before placing it on a shelf gathering dust?

However!

A world full of ‘water’ books can get dull after a while. Sometimes a reader wants to savor a glass of good wine. Even the slow-moving movie has its appeal, because we do at times want and need to slow down. We would rather read something that tickles the intellect and not our adrenaline.

I think the reason cable television shows such as TLC, Discovery, and National Geographic Channel do so well. Humans love to learn new things. Action feeds one part of the mind, learning another. Each satisfies us in different ways.

So it’s not about writing intellectually vacuous stories, but combining the two. We can feed both needs of the reader by writing an action-packed, emotion-evoking story while the reader is learning at the same time.

A writer’s duty is to manipulate the reader into seeing and feeling what the characters see and feel, while at the same time make them believe they’re not being manipulated.

If we want our readers to fall in love with language as we do, we have to show them how delicious it is; not with florid writing, per se, but to weave literary writing within the action.

How will people know the beauty of wine if we only offer them water?