#authorial control

Tomi Adeyemi, the acclaimed author of the bestselling novel ‘Children of Blood & Bone,’ has publicly declared she will not watch the forthcoming film adaptation of her debut work. Adeyemi characterized her involvement and the overall experience during the film’s production as “painful.” This announcement, reported by Deadline, has initiated considerable discussion within the literary and film…

There are many ways to play TTRPGs. As long as you’re all having fun you’re doing it right. It’s easy, however, to stumble over one’s assumptions. Mismatched assumptions about creative control, who’s taking narrative initiative, and what to expect in play are a quick way to sour your fun. This is a tangent from the “social skills of storytelling” series, working from two inspirations: Continue…

Reader’s experience & author’s influence

Sometimes, you start a chapter and just know that this is the creepy one. You know it as you skim that first page. And when that happens to me while I’m lying in bed in the dim light and drifting towards sleep, my self-preservation kicks in. I don’t always manage to do this, but the most recent time it happened, I stopped myself. I set the book aside and reminded myself of which world I existed…

“The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry” by Rachel Joyce is a sappy-sentimental-sweetly-earnest read.  I suppose some readers might find it inspiring and uplifting.  Maybe I would have if I hadn’t become enraged with the heavy handedness utilized by Joyce in telling the reader what they should take away from reading the book.

Don’t tell me what to think as I read, nothing turns me off more.

By the end of reading “The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry” I was angry and muttering to myself because I was not allowed to find my takeaway from the reading experience.  Joyce handed it to me with a bow. 

I’m all for authorial control, but those masterful authors do not tell the reader, nor do they rely on sentimentality to control the reader. 

Another hindrance to the reading experience of “The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry” is that I saw the movie unfold in my head as I read.  Scene by scene.  This decreased what little enjoyment I found about the book.  The movie trailer image of a make-up aged Colin Firth trudging along the road while a frumped-up Emma Thompson frets with a voiceover proclaiming: “The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry” is the feel good movie of the year, put on some boat shoes and join Harold in this uplifting life making journey.