I‘m going to start this post with some music which did not bore me at all.
On Saturday nights, our local public-radio station broadcasts a program originating in Chicago, called Midnight Special, whose slogan, per the program’s Web site, is “folk music with a sense of humor.” And the other night I just happened to catch a song called “Don’t Make Me Sing,” by an artist named Greg Greenway.
Now, Greenway — check his Web site — is a serious guy: not a “comic” performer, as a rule, although he obviously has a good sense of humor. But he’s been singing in small venues long enough to have seen a wide range of audience response… not all of it applause. “Don’t Make Me Sing” adopts the point of view of an audience member with things on his mind other than the person onstage.
I’ve transcribed the lyrics below the audio-player widget (please let me know of any mistakes); as you will see, this live performance comes with a certain amount of… well, let’s say it departs from what seem to be the “official” words. (In a performance captured via YouTube, Greenway manages to get through the song with somewhat less, er, distraction. Once he gets started, that is.)
Lyrics:
Don’t Make Me Sing
(by Greg Greenway)I ate at the bar
I surveyed the space
Two tables from the stage front
My favorite placeI was bursting with pride
I was flushed with success
I’d had to ask her out six times
Before she’d finally said…
…Okay.Then this guy started singing
It was a pretty good show
Then that telltale expression
Don’t even go there — oooh nooo…refrain 1:
Don’t make me sing
That’s why I paid to see you
It’s a show business trick,
Singer/Songwriter shtick
Why don’t you write something new?refrain 2:
Don’t make me sing
Don’t even act like I should
Give me a break, I’m on a first date
Why don’t you write something good?We gave it our best shot
We gave him a chance
Until he turned into Barney
In combat boots and black pants[refrain 1]
Everybody!
[refrain 2]
I gave into peer pressure
I sang with all that I’ve got
She used to be smiling
Now she’s checking her watch[refrain 1]
Don’t make me sing
They hit me up at the door
I did my job all day
Why should I have to pay
To help you do yours?Don’t make me sing
Why don’t you try something else?
If I had a good voice
I’d be up there myself[refrain 1]
[refrain 2]
I’ve been thinking about the song quite a bit since Saturday. Aside from enjoying the rhyme and melody (and of course laughing at the sense), I’ve also tried (and failed) to come up with analogy, for writers and readers, to the live singer/audience dynamic which Greenway depicts so wryly.
At first I tried to think of readings I’d attended — what do writers ask of their audiences on such occasions, which audiences might be unwilling to grant?
But the real analogy, I believe, isn’t in the live performance of a written work. It’s in the general unspoken contract between writer and reader. This is the contract which takes effect when you sit down in your favorite reading chair, open a new book, and begin to read.
What little gimmicks do writers rely on which drive you crazy, make you twitch, maybe make you wish you had picked up that other book instead? For example: cliffhanger chapter endings, maybe? gratuitous insertion of untranslated foreign words and phrases? picaresque plotlines? (Note: this is a question about writers in general, or writers in a particular genre, not about a specific writer’s tics and foibles.)
And if you’re a writer, have you — in horror, no doubt — ever found evidence in your own writing of something which drives you crazy in others’? If so, what (if anything!) did you do about it?
The Querulous Squirrel says
Backstories that interfere with the flow of the ongoing story for so long that you forget where you were going. Drives me crazy to the point where I will often skip whole chapters of back story.
fg says
I’m with the squirrel, exhausting especially if one is a slow reader. Lengthy descriptive passages can have the same effect.
And of course all people have something that gets their goat (some unfortunate folks have lots of things!) but, I think unless its going to be very smartly or funnily written or you know all your readership feel the same complaining can be a bore to read. I often skip it.
Otherwise – keep it coming. I may not be able to do it myself but I enjoy little better than writing when it grips me.
marta says
Things like ending every chapter with a cliffhanger doesn’t much bother me because that may be the work of the book’s editor. If something bothers me I wonder if it is the hand of the author or of editorial interference.
Then again, they’re published and I’m not, so if something bothers me, I figure I must be wrong!
John says
Squirrel: I may be guilty of the overdone backstory syndrome… I have a bad, bad, bad habit — probably speaking as well as writing — of circling around a point before actually making it. (This may explain in part why I’m so charmed by The Pooch’s habit of rotating and describing multiple figure 8s before doing what I’ve walked her outside to do.)
(Ironically, or maybe just because I’m momentarily hyper-conscious of it, I just moved the first sentence in the above paragraph from its original location at the end.)
fg: Ha ha, yes: some people have entire herds of goats to be gotten.
The Management thanks you for registering your complaint about excessive complaining — at least, we think that’s what that was (we were in a hurry to read the next bit, whatever it was).
marta: There’s a particular sort of cliffhanger which drives me nuts if I see it too many times in a book (including my own). It isn’t really a true cliffhanger but the author’s attempt to create one, and it’s often signaled by a question. Like:
We are probably supposed to be impelled by this into the next chapter — by the promise of an answer, I guess. If done adroitly, this can be almost invisible, but if an author does it repeatedly it just shows itself as a gimmick.
The “they’re published and I’m not” line of thinking is why it’s hard for me to write a bad review of a book — even if I had a really bad experience with it. (The Book Book review I mentioned in the post after this one — that was very difficult for me to write. And even having written it, I couldn’t help more or less apologize for it.)
cynth says
I always have a hard time with stories that have more than 6 strands to them at a time. Or if there are that many characters (or more) with their own little plot thing going on and eventually it comes out in the end, but I’ve forgotten who Mrs. Fabrisham is and why I’m supposed to care about here when there are 5 other characters to follow. I think you wrote about that syndrome before in one of your other posts. But what I usually do to compensate is skip ahead and each time I see one of the characters’ names, I read what they are doing, until I get to the end where it supposedly all makes sense. Or else I stop reading the book. Depends on how much I like it.
jules says
I’m sort of opposite-answering your question here, but…
Haven Kimmel is one of my favorite novelists (and memoirists — is that a word?) She wrote a middle-grade novel a few years ago in which she employed random moments of ALL CAPS for the young protagonist’s voice. (She also did that in her own writing at her blog, now kaput.) What struck me as funny about it every time was that it when you least expected it. Not when she was trying to emphasize something, as you might anticipate, but during moments of understatement. So, it made me laugh, but Kirkus, I believe it was, picked on her for it in this middle-grade novel.
I found that I’ve picked up this habit in my own writing. I HAVE. Why does that annoy me about my own self? I feel like a poseur, but I have, indeed, picked up the habit in my emails and (perhaps??) blog-writing.
Interesting question here at RAMH.
John says
cynth: No more than six story lines at a time. Got it. (I might be pushing the margin a little with the work-in-progress. Hope not…!)
The book I wrote before this one also was written multiple points of view. When it was done, I broke it up into all the chapters for Character A, all the chapters for Character B, and so on. And then I read and edited each of those separate “sub-works” separately. Which sounds sorta like what you do with your read-ahead strategy.
Jules: I first heard about Haven Kimmel over at 7-Imp, and immediately latched onto her blog as a result. Loved it, and haven’t been able to make myself take the link down over there on the right, in the “Je Ne Sais Quoi” category. But I still haven’t ready any of her books (although I actually bought Iodine, supposedly a real departure for her so I’m not sure why I chose to start there).
That all-caps habit is one of the things I really like about your “voice,” regardless where you picked it up. Don’t you dare change it. (Even though, as you’ve said in not-so-many words, hyperbole is one of your strong suits even without the additional boost, ha).
Aside: reCaptcha says, on pooches. Awwww.
jules says
Oh, you’re kind. Thanks. What would my life be without hyperbole? (Insert overblown, hyperbolic response of your choice here.)