The Place For My Writers Notes

Original posting 14 Dec 2007

I first read Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card quite a few years ago. Recently, through a strange concatenation of circumstances, a new hardback copy passed through my hands. I sent it on to a friend, but while it was here, I took a quick look and found that Card had added an introduction! Rather interesting . . . a couple of quotes that I found particularly resonant.

p. xiv  "I learned -- from actors and from audiences -- how to shape a scene, how to build tension, and -- above all -- the necessity of being harsh with your own material, excising or rewriting anything that doesn't work. I learned to separate the story from the writing, probably the most important thing that any storyteller has to learn -- that there are a thousand right ways to tell a story, and ten million wrong ones, and you're a lot more likely to find one of the latter than the former your first time through the tale."

p. xxi "This is the essence of the transaction between storyteller and audience. The 'true' story is not the one that exists in my mind; it is certainly not the written words on the bound paper that you hold in your hands. The story in my mind is nothing but a hope; the text of the story is the tool I created in order to try to make that hope a reality. The story itself, the true story, is the one that the audience members create in their minds, guided and shaped by my text, but then transformed, elucidated, expanded, edited, and clarified by their own experience, their own desires, their own hopes and fears."

Separate the story from the writing, and learn about rewriting to find the right way to tell a story.

And don't imagine that you are writing a story alone - it is a cooperative effort between the storyteller and the audience.

Words to write by, perhaps?