The Authority of the Author

[Madman Starryteller]

How confident are you when writing? Confidence about the subject, the technology, the characterisations, the plot, the world? Etc.

Storytelling is a one way medium, in that we the authors, if we ever reach the grand masses, will seldom be able to take every individual's feedback to heart. We tell it how we believe it is, not the other way around. We decide who lives and dies in our stories.

When reading, especially fiction, we take for granted that the author knows, that the author is correct in their word usage. We read on because the words that came before interested us and we want to see where the next words take us. But we can not question these words as we read them, we can not ask the author questions, we can not interrogate the book nor the author. We must accept every word for what it is. And that may be good, for otherwise, we could spoil surprises.

So, we need to be confident in our writing. Confident that we have managed to bring along all the necessary words for the telling of the story we want to tell. We need to make sure it all makes sense.

How do you stay credible in your story? How do you maintain your story's cohesion? We may forget that a lamp was blue in one scene and write it as red in another, which diminishes our authority.

How important is if for an author to maintain their authority? (To make sure that all these components of cohesion, correctness, credibility, etc, are all kept throughout a story.)


For me, I am getting more and more confident about the world I'm building, how it works, and why. But someone familiar with my universe could probably poke a thousand holes in it. My authority can be questioned. Is it perhaps a sign of a weak story? I don't know.

What I'm not at all confident about, and where my authority will certainly be challenged, is reality, more specifically our physical reality. I know why an apple falls from a tree, in the simplest terms, but I don't know why the apple disappears in a black hole. (I may have a solution for this and that is to set my stories in another universe.) But with these issues I have, I may paint one planet a certain way and another another way, none of which may make sense physically. (But I don't worry too much about it, since it is fiction.)

How about you? How's your authority?

 

[Homer Potvin]

Cool topic. I don't think this has come up before. I tend to be very confident in my writing. Probably too confident, but I always believed a diffident writer was a dead-on-arrival writer, so nuts to all that. I'm not sure that's the same thing as being authoritative, though I guess you can't spell authority without author. I don't think the wishy-washy ones ever make it to common print, so it's difficult to point to to ones that aren't confident.

Confident that we have managed to bring along all the necessary words for the telling of the story we want to tell. We need to make sure it all makes sense.

I would call that a prerequisite... without coherent words and story things, there wouldn't be a story. Kind of like a house without sturdy structure would just be a pile of wood.

But someone familiar with my universe could probably poke a thousand holes in it. My authority can be questioned. Is it perhaps a sign of a weak story? I don't know.

Every story is littered with plot-holes and inconsistencies. Literally every single one. The trick is to not draw attention to them by trying to explain them. It's one of the worst things an author can do.

 

[Naomasa298]

I'm fairly confident that I'm confident. Not necessarily about the world, or physical details or anything like that, but I'm confident that I know what my story is. So if I'm writing a fantasy romance, I know if it's a fantasy adventure first, or a romance first. That means when I write, I naturally don't hedge about what I'm writing. If you do, the story's voice and trajectory will falter, and readers will notice.

Personally, I worry very little about things like worldbuilding, but that's a reflection of what's important to me in most, but not all writing. If I'm writing historical fiction, I like historical accuracy, but I like it so that the story *feels* like it knows what the hell it's talking about, not so that it actually does.

But I absolutely agree. Writing has to come across as confidant and certain.

 

[CatrionaGrace]

Imagine Authority and Confidence forming a solid, dependable base from which one proceeds smoothly from Point A to Zee End. Wow. I do love fiction.

Best I can do is have faith in the process, faith in my experience, faith in my brain cells, and faith in my imagination. Two days ago, I was unstoppable. Tonight, my brain is circling the drain and every word feels hopelessly banal, frayed, and pointless. I don't like it, but finding myself here in the bottom of the sink doesn't surprise me. In some ways, it reassures me. If my confidence and authority ever cease to wax and wane, I'll know I've gone from being a good writer to being a complacent one.

 

[TWErvin2]

I am confident. I've been through the process (from outlining to publication) quite a few times.

What lends confidence is that I am methodical, and I complete at least 5 drafts. A lot of little things can be caught. Then, if you have a good editor, once you've done the best you can, the resulting novel will only be better.

I think it is important for a writer to realize that the first draft is going to have a lot of concerns, and it won't be close to the quality it can have after revisions that follow. Forgetting that can really knock the confidence of writers in many areas (or aspects).

 

[Banespawn]

What I'm not at all confident about, and where my authority will certainly be challenged, is reality, more specifically our physical reality. I know why an apple falls from a tree, in the simplest terms, but I don't know why the apple disappears in a black hole. (I may have a solution for this and that is to set my stories in another universe.) But with these issues I have, I may paint one planet a certain way and another another way, none of which may make sense physically. (But I don't worry too much about it, since it is fiction.)

In any story, there are always 2 sets of rules: the rules the author makes and the rules the reader brings with them.

Authors are free to make up any rules they want as long as they are consistent in how they are used. If the author breaks their own rules for the sake of the plot, readers are going to question it. For anything which the author doesn't define the rules, the reader will insert their own rules. So, for example, say your character appears to be human and you don't ever give the reader a reason to believe they are anything else. Then, you have the character dive under the water and stay there for an hour, searching for treasure in a sunken ship. No scuba gear. No magic or anything to explain why they can hold their breath for so long. The author just writes it as though it is normal. The reader is going to be left scratching their head, wondering if they missed something, or if the author messed up.

I'm very confident in my ability to engage the reader and to craft a coherent narrative. I'm not sure I would use the word authority, though, to describe the relationship between the author and the reader. I prefer the word trust, because trust goes both ways. The reader has to trust the author, and we can gain the reader's trust by making good on our promises. Likewise, the author has to trust the reader to understand what we are laying down, to spot the clues we are leaving for them and to put them together. Confidence for the author grows out of that trust. Only by fully trusting the reader can you fully trust yourself.

 

[Pyroglyphian]

I enjoyed reading your perspective, Madman Starryteller, and contemplating the notion of authority. You speak of it as cohesion, correctness, and credibility, and I think there are other aspects too: confidence, intention, and where one chooses to be precise.

Like Banespawn, I don’t see it as one-way traffic. Creating meaning is a collaboration between writer and reader; the reader must be willing.

It’s possible to find holes in even the most watertight construction. I love science fiction, but I’m struck at how infrequently economics features within the genre. You have calculations of orbital trajectories and payloads and time frames for interstellar travel, but rarely the consideration of how a civilisation finances such an endeavour. Does this ruin anything? No. Just play to your strengths, I think, and have faith in the Muse.

We may forget that a lamp was blue in one scene and write it as red in another, which diminishes our authority.

Okay, well perhaps there’s something to be said for attention to detail. However, as a (recovering) jazz guitarist, I can tell you that the difference between mistake and innovation is a matter of conviction - not that we should be content with sloppiness of course. I guess that puts me in the confident camp.

 

[Stuart Dren]

It was a dark and stormy night. Well, dusk, really. I guess it could be argued that stormy is a matter perspective. It was windy, and it rained a bit, but not hurricane level stuff. I mean, some thunder rolled in at the start of it, enough that you would expect some lightning, but there wasn't any lightning, except once but that might have just been a car with badly aimed headlights driving past the window. Not the old headlights, which would be sort of yellow, but those new blue ones that always seem too bright. One could mistake those for lightning if they were going fast. Hard to be sure.


I think authority just the feature of diction, at least at prose level. Even My Immortal (an actual historical treasure) has confident prose.

It turns out that Darkness, Diabolo, Crab and Goyle’s dad was a vampire. He committed suicide by slitting his wrists with a razor. He had ****d them and stuff before too. They all got so depressed that they became goffik and converted to Stanism.

 

[Night Herald]

I've gotten to be pretty confident at this point, thanks to long experience and much positive feedback. I can sometimes stray into either doubt or overconfidence, but for the most part I'm cool, calm, and collected about it.

Specifically, I believe in my ability to construct quality prose, create loveable, lively, deep characters, and build complex, fascinating worlds. I'm a fair bit less certain when it comes to plot and accuracy/realism, but I'm sure I'm growing into that as well.

How do you stay credible in your story? How do you maintain your story's cohesion? We may forget that a lamp was blue in one scene and write it as red in another, which diminishes our authority.

If I'm understanding "credibility" right in this context... That's one of those areas where I rightly doubt myself and need to keep extra close watch. The main thing I write is absurdist-surrealistic comedic fantasy (or in less haughty terms, goofy cartoonish nonsense) with enormous casts and big, tangled plots. These stories play very much by their own rules, which are usually farily liquid. It can be a real challenge to keep credibility and cohesion within that framework. I've often caught myself having characters act out of... character, for the sake of plot convenience or exposition or even just a gag. How I solve this is by giving the story plenty of time and room to breathe, pushing things towards alignment through many, many iterations. By the time I've revisited a scene or chapter 10, 20 times, a very clear image will have formed in my head and there isn't much of a question of lacking consistency; the story as a whole will be so alive and vivid in me that I'll catch these things quite naturally. I'm sure stuff still sneaks through from time to time, but that's what the next 5 rewrites are for

What I'm not at all confident about, and where my authority will certainly be challenged, is reality, more specifically our physical reality.

Same, very much the same. That's part of why I don't really strive for realism in much of my stuff. I'd rather invent my own laws of physics and that, and have a lot of fun doing it. As long as my stories are internally consistent, I think it's a lot more interesting to apply skewed logic and sort of wobbly universal mechanics. I lean pretty hard into the surreal and psychedelic for my comedic fantasy stuff. I want these stories to have that dreamlike feeling, while also making a certain sense in the context of itself. It's a sometimes tough line to walk, but trying to find that balance is part of the enjoyment for me.

When I do set out to write something grounded and realistic, I just kinda... do my best. I apply commonsense and reason, research as needed. Even there I don't stress realism too much. If I've told a fun story that isn't glaringly and blatantly ignorant, I'm happy. And if it is that, I hope I learn something and do better next time.