Communication

An Element of Fiction

At first glance, this fictional element might seem so obvious as to not even warrant attention, but that would be missing a big point. That fact is that communication is not only a fictional element, it is what fiction, and any writing, is all about; and the crucial question is, and always will be: does it, indeed, communicate?

When it does not, writing is either a waste of time or a personal exercise of some sort.

Every writer is aware of this, at least on some level. Many keep a fictional (or real) reader in mind — sometimes a wife or husband or other significant other; others have a more nebulous reading public in mind. There are, of course, one or two who are writing for posterity — still, that’s a future reader, isn’t it?

And yes, there are those that write for the sheer pleasure of putting one word after another, of putting sentences together and telling a story — but even those have an audience in mind, even if only themselves.

Robert Frost was aware of this when he said, “A writer can live by writing to himself alone for days and years. Sooner or later to go on he must be read.”

Some think sooner, a few think later.

“All writing is communication,” says E.B. White, “Creative writing is communication through revelation — it is the Self escaping into the open. No writer long remains incognito.”

John Fowles does not “believe in hermetic art; I think there’s everything to be said for writing that wants to get read.”

And that, again, is of course pretty much the definition of communication.

William Zinsser believes that “Writing is talking to someone else on paper. If you can think clearly, you can put what you think and what you know into writing.”

Ayn Rand certainly agrees, “Since all art is communication, there can be nothing more viciously contradictory than the idea of nonobjective art. Anyone who wants to communicate with others has to rely on an objective reality and on objective language.”

As does Flannery O’Connor, “Unless the novelist has gone utterly out of his mind, his aim is still communication, and communication suggests talking inside a community.… Success means being heard…. The act of writing is not complete in itself. It has its end in its audience.”

And then she adds this very important point: “In art, the way of saying a thing becomes a part of what is said.”

The French poet Arthur Rimbaud streaked the poetic sky briefly, then vanished from view. This, though, is what his poems were all about: “I have wanted to say what it says there, literally and in all other senses.”

And that is the very purpose of writing, whether fiction or poetry, or essays and other non-fiction for that matter.

And what makes real communication take place?

Eudora Welty has a nice answer to that question: “Communication is going on…. when you believe the writer.”

It is, then, the obligation of the writer to write as clearly as he can, as interestingly as she can, and as believably as writerly possible.

That would be communication.

© Wolfstuff

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