Once upon a time, like never before: the challenge of telling the next story

ABSTRACT

Readers turn to narrative for certain familiar pleasures; and yet, reading the opening sentences, they hope to find themselves in unknown territory. They want to be lost in a book, transported through a shared act of imagination. If what they read seems too strange, though, if they start to feel truly lost, they're likely to feel anxious, frustrated, even angry. The challenge for the writer, then--the challenge for every discoverer and creator--is to communicate with the past, while guiding the reader (or follower, or user) someplace new.

Using examples from writing and cartography, this talk will explore the challenges of discovery, the challenges of presenting those discoveries, and how the presentation itself is often the key to discovery (think Impressionism). It will also consider the tension between intention and inspiration, or good luck. Columbus was headed for India, James Cook mapped the Pacific only because he couldn't find Terra Australis, and both Mark Twain (soon after publishing The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn) and F. Scott Fitzgerald (in the weeks following the publication of The Great Gatsby) expressed despair over their failure to write the books they thought they meant to write. The thing they had discovered--the thing they had created-transcended their own conception of a "good book.

Before we can lead anyone anywhere, we need to look clearly at where we are, and to prepare ourselves to see like never before.

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  A. General Literature
  A.0 GENERAL
      Subjects: General literary works (e.g., fiction, plays)

General Terms:
Human Factors

Keywords:
creative writing, maps