That title
made you click the link, didn’t it? Because it’s so good. So lyrical, so
agonizingly perfect for this moment in time.
It’s not
mine. It belongs to Ian Rankin’s latest book, which follows his now-retired Inspector
Rebus as he travels to Scotland’s north to investigate a disappearance amid the
internment camps used by Britain in World War II.
He said the
title was inspired by phrases from German playwright Bertolt Brecht. But I think
it’s Rankin’s decision to include two often excised words that makes this title
work so well.
Try this:
A Song for
Dark Times. Not as good.
Song for the
Dark Times. Same thing.
You need the
“A,” and you need the “The.” That combination is what makes the whole thing,
well, sing. And in an era of paring titles down to the bare minimum, that’s part
of what makes this one stand out.
The fact
that he got the timing perfect doesn’t hurt, either. Rankin said he came up
with the title in September 2019.
“I thought
the world was going through some pretty dark times,” he said during a panel at
the Bouchercon Mystery Convention, listing wildfires, Brexit, and the rise of
the far right as examples. “Little did I know how dark the times were just
about to get.”
He said that
in October. I read the book then and tucked it away on my bookshelf. Friday, I came
across it while looking for something to take my mind off the horrific mob
attack at the US Capitol, all six perfect, now-even-more-timely words staring
at me from the spine. Somehow ominous and hopeful at the same time.
Like how
things feel to me right now. Which way will we go? I don’t know. I only hope
that there’ll be more titles in the future that so perfectly capture the
moment.
For me, music has always been closely connected to my moods. I grew up solidly on country music, and used to fall asleep to old-school country music. George Jones, Gordon Lightfoot, Tom T Hall, Hank Williams, Johnny Cash. Songs not just about love and love lost, but about death. He Stopped Loving Her Today. Nothing like getting tucked into bed while you listen to a song about a guy's funeral and the love he lost.
A Boy Named Sue, or Folsom Prison Blues.
I shot a man in Reno just to watch him die.
I was a somber kid. A deep thinker. I was also an insomniac as a child, and I attribute it, at least in part, to listening to songs about people dying in car crashes (Carroll County Accident) and ghosts haunting the living and depressing endings.
As a writer, I think that the easiest illustration of tone is through music. Most people can understand how the music and lyrics work together to create an atmosphere and a feeling. Does anyone listen to Amarillo By Morning and feel cheerful? I doubt it.
When the music and lyrics blend perfectly, they elicit the desired response. Music alone can do this as well. TV shows and movies rely on the shortcut of music to indicate whether something good or bad will happen next, and viewers rely on the music to prepare them emotionally.
I actually think that tone is one of the things we don't talk about as much as writers, despite the fact that it can get us into a lot of trouble. Tone is what sets the reader up with expectations of what's to come. If a book is nothing but sweetness and light, with teddy bears and cupcakes and happy family moments and fifty pages in people start swearing like sailors and carving people up with machetes, there needs to be a solid set-up to prepare the reader for that kind of transition.
Just like with music. There are songs that start off somber, and the entire piece is downbeat. Songs that always make me feel like tearing up.
Songs that just depress the hell out of me.
Other songs boost your spirits and make you feel positive. This one's been on my aerobic mixes for years, just because it always makes me feel like dancing.
Other songs just make me angry.
There are times when the music and lyrics are in sharp contrast, intended to be ironic. All You Ever Do Is Bring Me Down by The Mavericks always springs to mind as an example of that.
Whatever the intent, the artist needs to sell the audience, and the same is true for an author with their work. I think a lot of writers get into trouble without giving careful consideration to how they prepare readers for what's coming. I've heard stories from authors, about how their editor had them rework the opening of a book so that there wouldn't be any swear words on the first page, so that they wouldn't deter readers who didn't like swearing in their books. From page 2 through the end was one expletive after another, which was fine by the editor, as long as they could still try to mislead readers into giving the book a shot.
Can we really be surprised when the author is inundated with mail from readers who were offended?
The overall tone should be consistent, and it should convey the underlying atmosphere and disposition of the work. Yes, there may be times parts of the book appeal to different sentiments, but there is an overall tone that comes through. When I'd read the Rebus books, even when he had a long-term girlfriend, I always knew it was just a matter of time before he screwed that up. With some characters, we know they won't find peace, love and happiness in the final pages. It would be inconsistent with their character.
It's something writers have to give serious consideration to as they develop their work. I think most of the time, when we find something doesn't work for us because we feel it's inconsistent, it has to do with the events somehow contradicting that tone.
I actually think that the show Terra Nova has a bit of a tone problem. Some scenes are scary and intense and the suspense is developed well. Most of the storylines deal with some major drama... and then it's time to go home to the happy family where we can all enjoy the wonder of the universe through the eyes of a child and never really talk about the guy who's flirting with your wife all the time or the years you spent in prison, or the sense of loss that would come with leaving behind friends and family who you'd never see again. It's hard to buy into all the happy family moments because it seems like, after all the obstacles and issues and things endured, the family was fixed with the snap of their fingers. They've at least made the son be a bit of an ass with an attitude problem, but they have to lighten up on the sugary moments because it doesn't fit with the realities of the show, and when the tone doesn't work, it makes the characters come off as two dimensional, because their experiences aren't fully reflected in their emotions.
In the same way that a single spice can make or break an entire dish, tone plays an important part in the creation of a story, a part more writers should pay close attention to.
*****
It took me 50 long years just to work out That because I was angry didn't mean I was right...
I've been drinking deep from a jar of pain - Jackie Leven
There was sad news last week, that Jackie Leven had passed away. The Scottish musician, a former member of Doll by Doll, had first come on my radar courtesy of Ian Rankin and his books featuring DI Rebus. I picked up a lot of great musical recommendations from the books over the years, and have several of Jackie's CDs. A great musician, a great poet, a great loss.
3 parts author, 1 part agent,1 part editor and1 part reader.
I'm not big on formulas, but if I were to do a general breakdown for the recipe for the reading experience, it would look something like that (with slight variations from book to book).
It's the part of the reading experience that is completely out of the author's control. Each reader brings their own experience to the reading experience, and each reader will view a text through the lens of their experience and knowledge.
When I was a teenager, I spent time living in Europe. During that time, I had some unbelievable experiences. I was there when the Iron Curtain collapsed, and have pictures of people cutting up the Berlin Wall. I crossed into East Germany at Checkpoint Charlie. I was also in Seville when they found over 4 tons of explosives set to blow the Semana Santa processions sky-high.
It's still surreal to think that I witnessed such historic events from such a close vantage point.
There were other things I experienced that year as well, and a lot of my strongest impressions are from my time spent in Ireland.
I have an unlikely confluence of Irish ancestry at work in me. My grandfather was an Orangeman (and my dad as well). My grandmother: Irish Catholic. Even as a teenager who was fascinated by history and culture, I had no real sense of what that meant.
Not until I spent some time in Ireland. After meandering around Continental Europe for the better part of a year, I'd grown accustomed to hanging around train stations, and even sleeping on my backpack between connections.
Five minutes after my train unloaded in Dublin, I was still in the station. As a result, I was questioned by police. Let's just say I didn't really understand the realities of the situation in Ireland, or living under terrorist threat.
It got worse. My ride to Northern Ireland arrived, and off we went. We just happened to be crossing the border by car on the day the Queen Mum was visiting in Northern Ireland. Even when I crossed between armed guards into East Germany, I'd never come close to experiencing what it was like to cross the border into Northern Ireland. The stretch of road wound its way through hills on both sides, and the family I was with pointed out to me all the snipers positioned in those hills.
Guns trained on the cars on the road. One false move…
And my day got better still. In Belfast, we ended up driving beside a military vehicle. Those boys don't play. Guns were pointed at us the entire time, until our vehicles went in different directions.
Let's just say this was completely unlike anything I'd ever experienced in Canada.
A few days later, I had to travel back down along the coast of Ireland. A week later, the road I'd been on was blown up.
When I returned to Canada a few months later, I was catching up on episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation, and one episode in particular really rattled me. It wasn't an episode that anyone was voting as one of the ten greatest to date (even though the series was only partway through its run then). In some respects, it was a quiet little episode, called The High Ground.
In the episode, a group of terrorists need medical help, and they kidnap the doctor from Enterprise, believing she'll be the best to help them with their problem. The realities of being kidnapped, and being under pressure to help terrorists who've killed a lot of people conflict with the doctor's instincts to help those in need. She's at war within herself, but the leader of the terrorists isn't like she expected.
And while there's some hope underscoring the ending, it's not a feel-good episode that tries give pat answers to a complex problem.
Heck, I can't remember half of what I watched last week without applying myself, but I can still remember lines from The High Ground, although I haven't seen it in years.
You see, the story meshed with my recent experiences, and had a more significant impact on me than it had on some other viewers, and that's something the writers could never count on when they drafted the script.
We never know what the reader will bring to the reading experience, either.
Over the years since, my experiences with terrorism have been distinct but more removed. The train station in Madrid was bombed a few years after I was there. And the nightclub in Bali that I walked by countless times, beside stores I shopped in, was where the Bali bombing attack occurred. Tourists were sleeping on the beach because they were afraid to go to their hotels… the beach I walked on every day when I was there.
Removed, yet connected.
That's the experience I brought to the table when I sat down with Ian Rankin's latest offering, The Impossible Dead. Rankin's second title featuring DI Malcolm Fox, since sending Rebus to pasture, The Impossible Dead starts with the unlikely task of investigating officers who may have been a little dodgy, covering for a colleague who's been found guilty of sexual harassment and abusing his badge on the job.
I use the word unlikely, because it isn't often that detective fiction starts with anything other than the dropping of a body, yet Rankin takes his time before shedding blood on the page, and when he does, the investigation shifts into unpredictable directions that may have been hinted at in the early pages, but take the reader far into the past and the heart of Scotland's quest for independence, as well as the varied opinions of Scotland's current government.
As a Canadian teenager, my experiences in Ireland were enough to put me into shock. It was completely outside the realm of my experience. With 9/11, North Americans lost their innocence. We're all more aware of terrorism, and what it means to live with a pervasive terrorist threat.
I think that's going to serve readers well. Rankin's wheelhouse is politics, and The Impossible Dead features a complex plot that plays to his strengths in storytelling.
Or it could be that when my personal experiences mixed with the reading, they heightened my sense of connection to the events and the story, and the subject of terrorism. It could be that the book resonates more with me than it will with someone else who hasn't had those same experiences.
What that means is that, at the end of the day, one person's experience reading a book isn't right or wrong. It's simply different. It's the reader's ingredients that are outside the author's control, and why each time a person sits down with our books, part of us holds our breath, because even if we've done our job, told the story well, written well and fine-tuned the book during editing, the positive response of a reader to our book is never guaranteed.
