Ook!
Which is a useful word, meaning precisely what I wish it to mean, as well as different things to different people. I’m thinking of renting it out to politicians. “You misunderstood! I said ‘Ook,’ not ‘Ook’!” “Oh! ‘Ook’! Oh that’s alright then. We thought you said ‘Ook’ and we were about to tar and feather you…” (Come to think of it maybe I could earn more by taking bids on not renting out.)
When you think about it simplifies writing enormously, and clarifies things in a wondrous way. Why this entire blog post could simply be ‘Ook’, and you would all derive precisely what you needed about how to write well, how to get published, what the state of the industry is, how best to do your covers and what to draw inspiration from. I could sit back and bask in your adulation, instead of having to scratch my wooly pate and come up with a post to entertain and inform you.
I’m tempted to write ‘Ook’ and just leave it at that. However, just because the ignorant amongst you might think that I had nothing much to say, let me press on. You see ‘Ook’ rather gets to meat of writing/reading issue. The larger part of writing – and being read, is really about communication between the writer and the reader. Most of clever ‘rules’ and advice dispensed by authors really, if you boil and refine them, comes out as ‘how do I get the great story in my head out of it and into your head, without confusing you, boring you witless, or making you want me for your very own… dart-board’.
These are important, as darts are decidedly uncomfortable, and, besides a book that fails at this level simply falls over at the first hurdle and doesn’t go any further. I’m not a grammar or even spelling pedant, but they do help to make sure that I know you’re telling me about Ook, not Ook (Or, heaven help us, Oook!). Editing, proof reading, actually working on structure, points of view, tenses, and continuity – boring stuff that many a young writer believes publishers employ someone to do (they do. They’re called ‘authors’.) are vital. Things like show-don’t-tell come partly into this too, because no matter how erudite you are, my Ook and yours may actually have subtle differences… and if I make you envisage your own Ook (or even Oook) clearly, you will firmly believe I have communicated it well. Quite eerily, almost as if I had seen and felt the same things in that situation as you have.
So…. As enquiring minds (something possessed I am sure all of those who read and do not turn their brains into oozing pap with TV instead) what the hell is the other part? (which can at times be vast, far bigger than the ook I uttered.)
That is what — in my humble simian opinion — separates the mere communicators from the great writers… is the clever monkey who manages to say ‘Ook’ in such a way that he communicates much more than just the straight story in his head. Who makes a mere Ook into Oook OoooooOoK! Or more – because he wakes in the reader’s mind both his story and a far wider world and story which he evokes from them. I’ve just been reading one of the absolute masters at this –Giovanni Guireschi
In simple, clear words… he gets his ‘Ook!’ to paint the Po valley and how he loves it, the society, the details of the lives of and the depth of the characters he portrays in a way that a thousand hours of film could not.
So who does this for you?
And why?
Mad Genius Club 
19 responses to “Ook!”
Ok.
The bit about communicating the story reminds me about something I say about Modern art whenever the opportunity presents itself.
“Any piece of art that requires a little plaque next to it to explain what it means has failed. And any artist who says that it means whatever you want it to mean is a failure.”
Hmm. While in the broad sense I agree with you (especially about the plaque!), what about the artist/ writer/ poet/ musician who is deliberately (and possibly skillfully) using what he is producing to pull your strings and push your buttons? He has a broad idea what it will do, but no specific knowledge. He just knows those words / pattern /sounds will evoke a powerful response ‘We stand as one, defiant’.
Then he should explain that that’s what he’s doing, rather than simply saying it means whatever you think it means. He may mean it the way you said it, or he may mean, “I just slapped this crap on canvas (or shaped it with a baseball bat, or made random sounds with a Theremin, or whatever), and now I’m going to cop out and say it’s meant to be interpreted by the viewer, even though I didn’t ACTUALLY put any work into it.”
My doctor put me on Theramin once, but it made me all WooOOOooo.
Ooooo’k oook ook oooook Oook Ooook ook ooooooook ook OOKS oooook oook.
There’s some guy called Dave Freer who describes his ooks pretty well.
Oh him! No, He’s always up to some money-business. Learning to type with his feet to get closer to his inspiration… tossing coconuts with Gay A. Bandon. (A charming lass, I assure you, and a crack shot with the coconut).
I like your way of doing stories — I did not know we shared a love of Guareschi. Someday, when I grow up, I want to write like him. Because he keeps it to essential, btw, he also evokes the village of my childhood (yes, of course there are also some cultural consonances there) so it’s the only way I can visit anymore (since the village doesn’t exist any longer.)
The REALLY interesting thing about Guareschi is that he evokes very very effectively a villiage I never lived in and a land I had then never seen (and when I did, was not that different to what I imagined). I’d love to compare the village in your head with the village in mine sometime.
I just love Don Camillo. Guareschi was a master. I often wished Don Camillo were pope.
I like his concience most 🙂
Amen
Eek!
I don’t often look too deeply at precisely *how* my favorite authors manage to make the “ooks” sound like proper “ooks” in my head- though with a little time to think on it, I might have some ideas.
I quite enjoy both David Drake and David Weber, and not merely because names that start with the letter “D” have a sort of mystical nature about them. *grin* Dave Drake manages to give his characters unique and clear voices with what looks like little effort wasted. It makes for a swiftly moving story that remains interesting enough to re-read, speaking specifically of the RCN series.
David Weber is in the other direction as an author, and requires more patience, but that very thick description which frustrated me in earlier years has proven to be quite entertaining from an older perspective. Which leads me to believe that a writer who can Ook well manages to suggest more meaning than what first might appear.
Not exactly newly minted, but Kipling and Heinlein are two I picked up rather later in life that also manage to do a lot with a little. I think a good ook, so efficient with only three letters!, should set a reader’s mind on the path to adventure without spoiling the experience.
Different people are going to want different ooks- some may want it to wear a different hat- but that’s okay. I may never grasp the appeal some have for genre romance, or contemporary spy thrillers no matter how carefully enunciated. That still leaves a lot of room for some pretty good ooks. Err, books.
Dan, there is no doubt tha the great authors use words and phrases like a great cook uses spices and herbs. (and that is my inept way of showing what they’re doing, because those things are probably inside your experience) They use your experience to trigger the imagination to expand on the world. Generally I find that sparse writers who use clear description of a few things and leave the rest of the picture to me (Kipling!) But yes, many different flavors of ook!
Early Ann McCaffrey (the original Dragonriders trilogy) does it for me. In a few words and pages you are in a completely different world but one that makes sense. Having Lessa so focused on revenge that the reader doesn’t stop to go “oooh, dragons!” (at a time when friendly dragons were rare in fantastic fiction) is a technique and twist still amazes me.
Another one, a non-fiction writer, is Amity Shlaes. She can interweave politics and economics into a biography so well that you don’t realize you’ve just read four pages on 1910’s economic policy. I’d love to pick her technique apart and try it in fiction.
yep, a piece of brilliance. It was in a way something similar to Heinlein’s make the ‘make the extraordinary seem ordinary (because it is to your character, and to them, their immediate problems loom far larger than the aircar or rocket.)
I’ve always liked Ian Rankin’s descriptions. I can smell the booze and cigarettes. You love the crappy car, disheveled apartment, and music that populates Rebus’s life. It all feels so real. How can you not love a dogged investigator who never gives up no matter how many times life punches him in the face? That’s a great tapestry.
So what is it that makes it work for you, Scott? Dig deeper. Work out how it works 🙂
I’m new at this, so I’m hoping I figure that out in a couple of years 🙂
I think it’s mostly because Rankin has a passion for the character and the setting. You can feel it. What the specific mechanism is…if I had to pick one word, I’d say immediacy or maybe intimacy.
It’s much easier to say Ook, but it’s a hard beast to track down.
Lois McMaster Bujold is my Ook-meister. She inhabits the worlds of which she writes, lives behind her characters’ eyes. They do and say things, acting from their culture, the way real people do. Forex, in the Sharing Knife tetralogy, one single expletive did more to capture the culture than most authors could achieve in three pages: “Absent gods!” I could go on (I often do!) But all I’ll say is that I’d like a candle in front of Bujold’s picture if I thought it would make me a better writer.