If you want to tell reading-skeptical kids about "the volta", please don't phrase it as "the volta". Just say that a lot of good novels need you to read them for a bit to see what's going on, and then it will get good. They might already be familiar with the idea from TV shows.
But also, it's extremely possible to write a novel that grabs you from the first page. Thriller writers are the most obvious case. A gripping concept or setting can do it, too. This author might think they're too cool for books like that, but we shouldn't keep them away from kids if that's what they want to read.
Margaret Mitchell got me to read a thousand pages of Gone With The Wind because she placed a juicy hook in the first chapter (Ashley) which gave me the motivation to read the entire book to see what happens.
Why more novels do not have central hooks I do not know. Hooks are usually what keep me reading, unless the book has some kind of reason for being interesting otherwise.
The key to enjoying novels is to read them in long enough sittings to get into the flow state. If you only read a couple pages at a time between doomscrolling sessions, it will feel like a chore. Anything would.
There was a rule a fourth grade teacher of mine had that she used in her English class to try and get some of the less literate kids up to par. That rule was embodied by the name she gave it, "Thirty minutes thirty pages." She gave them thirty minutes to read thirty pages of a book. A minute a page. Considering most of them were choosing things like Goosebumps that were only a hundred and twenty pages or so it was an easy enough ask. But because she set it as a challenge so many of them went blasting beyond that. Many would finish half the book during that thirty minute reading period. The interesting thing I didn't pick up on until years later as an adult was that it was also slow enough that they could actually understand and remember what they were reading rather than just blasting through it. It left the slower readers with enough time and didn't make them feel like they were falling behind while encouraging them to learn how to read faster.
Many modern adult book series are six hundred pages or more for a single installment with about four hundred words a page versus the maybe hundred and fifty of a children's book like Goosebumps. Since it's three to four times the text that makes thirty pages thirty minutes actually viable as a self challenge even as an adult.
I consider myself a slow reader so I am interested in this pacing rule. Do you remember how the pacing was enforced? Were there like minute sandtimers or was it just kind of like a 30 minute timer and you either met the pace or didn't?
I value writing style and pacing way more than any volta. Pride and Prejudice is hardly my genre, yet I remembered it grabbing me immediately. So just now I checked to see if I remembered it correctly, and within the first minute I laughed and I'm hooked again.
Life's too short for novels that might get good halfway through, especially when there's plenty Austen I haven't read yet.
One collary I'd add to this is that the opposite is also true. There have been plenty of times that I've trudged through the beginning of a novel, only to reach an "anti-volta" and realize that it isn't for me. It can incredibly frustrating and make the slog feel like a huge waste of time, but I still keep trying books. Maybe I'm just chasing the highs I felt when I first read the novels that got me into reading.
The article focuses on novels, but of course many things in life are like this. Learning an instrument for example. It also brought to my mind that famous quote from Ira Glass about creative work.[1]
I appreciate Isherwood in this retrospect. Most of this novels have a sort of placid flow about human existence and the tedium of modern life, until the last few pages retell the moral with such rapidity that feels almost physical.
I call this process ‘threading the needle’ - some novels thread with ease, some do not thread with ease but the payoff is worth it in the end, some thread and then unthread, some never thread at all.
As a kid I'd often start reading books from about the middle, if I liked it, I'd restart from the beginning before I finished, if I didn't, I got another book.
I used to have a recurring problem with Doctor Who (the newer one / reboot) where some episodes would be so boring at first that I would not get through them. I had some success in trying to assure myself that EVERY episode at least had SOMETHING interesting, and in practice they did. I have been trying to adopt that idea more in life.
Oof, maybe don't. A lot of them are written directly for children, which they mostly work for, but only later bits have stuff mostly for adults and are vaguely worth analysing.
Don't what? I enjoy a lot of media written for children. Trollhunters / Tales of Arcadia, Miraculous Ladybug, Max Steel, My Little Pony (G4), Sonic Prime, etc. Though I tend to prefer media that respects intelligence rather than pure babyslop.
Max Steel in particular was so untargeted to adults that it's nearly lost media. I'm so glad for whoever managed to collect it and upload it to YouTube while it was still available.
Don't spend too much time on what was at the moment not meant for adults, like there is alot of other art to look at and interpret. It was more of a don't get crazy into it, my own Dad got super weird into interpreting things he thought he found in Doctor Who. It was both sad and weird. Just maybe don't dwell to much on things people didn't also give much thought to.
I think the existence of enough technical information for such an index to even be possible is what I mean by internal consistency. Not the absence of plot-holes or ret-cons.
No, NOT every novel is boring from the get go. And some novels ARE boring. And the fact that so many people recommend the ones that are is the bloody problem.
The first thing to accept is that different people like different things. If someone likes the Beatles, you wouldn't immediately jump to recommend Handel or Black Sabbath.
And, yet, this is EXACTLY what people do all the time with literature. Oh, you liked that Vonnegut story? Here, have some Dickens. ARGHGHGHGHGHG! NO! NO! NO! NO! Give the Vonnegut reader some O. Henry or Roald Dahl--not Dickens or Bronte. Good grief.
I got lucky. My father understood this. He always recommended things that he thought I would like--interspersed very rarely with things that were good for me that I might or might not like. But he NEVER gave me anything he thought I would dislike simply because it was supposedly "great literature".
And, now, Dear Readers, I leave you with wisdom for the ages imparted from Wallace Stevens via my father: "The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream."
You did not read the article completely, did you? For someone with wise father, you are not being wise yourself. The writer is exactly talking about this subjectivity.
But also, it's extremely possible to write a novel that grabs you from the first page. Thriller writers are the most obvious case. A gripping concept or setting can do it, too. This author might think they're too cool for books like that, but we shouldn't keep them away from kids if that's what they want to read.
Why more novels do not have central hooks I do not know. Hooks are usually what keep me reading, unless the book has some kind of reason for being interesting otherwise.
It took me 4 days to finish the rest. This is because the pacing was wrong - the first chapter should have been the last.
Many modern adult book series are six hundred pages or more for a single installment with about four hundred words a page versus the maybe hundred and fifty of a children's book like Goosebumps. Since it's three to four times the text that makes thirty pages thirty minutes actually viable as a self challenge even as an adult.
Life's too short for novels that might get good halfway through, especially when there's plenty Austen I haven't read yet.
On the other hand, Blind Assassin was extremely boring to me until the very last page, but that last page blew my mind.
[1] https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/309485-nobody-tells-this-to...
Max Steel in particular was so untargeted to adults that it's nearly lost media. I'm so glad for whoever managed to collect it and upload it to YouTube while it was still available.
But, every now and then, the writing CLICKS and you get genuine emotional ART--generally as a monologue.
I think the existence of enough technical information for such an index to even be possible is what I mean by internal consistency. Not the absence of plot-holes or ret-cons.
A lot of shows simply aren't very technical.
The first thing to accept is that different people like different things. If someone likes the Beatles, you wouldn't immediately jump to recommend Handel or Black Sabbath.
And, yet, this is EXACTLY what people do all the time with literature. Oh, you liked that Vonnegut story? Here, have some Dickens. ARGHGHGHGHGHG! NO! NO! NO! NO! Give the Vonnegut reader some O. Henry or Roald Dahl--not Dickens or Bronte. Good grief.
I got lucky. My father understood this. He always recommended things that he thought I would like--interspersed very rarely with things that were good for me that I might or might not like. But he NEVER gave me anything he thought I would dislike simply because it was supposedly "great literature".
And, now, Dear Readers, I leave you with wisdom for the ages imparted from Wallace Stevens via my father: "The only emperor is the emperor of ice-cream."
https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45234/the-emperor-of-...