Sean Patrick Cooper

I wrote last month about how ‘gaps’ in writing are important b/c they allow the reader to make the connection herself, between ideas, images, people, etc. The writer should have confidence in his reader to use her imagination to make the text real in her own head. As Zadie mentions, it’s important to keep the mystery intact:

(From the vid. w/ Zadie Smith and Nathan Englandar)

In an essay on Vonnegut, George Saunders talks about ‘gaps’:

Vonnegut was skipping the lush physical details he had presumably put himself into so much danger to obtain. He was assuming these physical details; that is, he was assuming that I was supplying them. A forest was a forest, he seemed to be saying, let’s not get all flaky about it.

To me, this should be a writer’s default mode. Plugging in the gaps and forcing the reader to imagine a particular scene, w/out mystery, should be done w/ serious intent. Like an “!”. You better know how to use it.

Saunders on the reader’s encounter w/ gaps:

What intrigued me—also annoyed me—was trying to figure out the purpose of this usage. If he wasn’t trying to make me know what he knew and feel what he’d felt, then what was the book for?

Bingo. The important stuff can’t be made obvious. That sounds coy but 90% of the time it’s true, especially in art. It has to be shown, and usually in narration, to allow the reader to discover what is being said above/below/within the text.