Hurling Words into Darkness: A Book Doctor's Dose of Brain Science for Writers

By Peter Gelfan

Can learning how our minds work make you a better writer?

For thousands of years, writers in all media have been taught theories and rules about writing based on tradition, philosophy, esthetics, poetics, scholarship, mysticism, whim, pet peeves, and arbitrary dictates. Often they’ve been told how and what to write according to subjective preference rather than universal appeal, leaving them lost in a sea of conflicting advice.

Meanwhile, over the past few decades, cognitive science has discovered much about how the human mind sees the world and extracts meaning from it, giving us a better understanding of the role stories and storytelling play in human survival, growth, and evolution. Yet these discoveries have often remained cloistered in the realm of science, out of sight to writers and artists.

In Hurling Words into Darkness, veteran editor, novelist, screenwriter, and teacher Peter Gelfan uses these discoveries to connect previously undiscovered dots between authors’ misconceptions and readers’ expectations. This short but powerful book provides unique and actionable insights for all writers, whether beginners or pros, who are interested in creating a more engaging and effective reading experience. You’ll learn to:

•Create memorable characters by treating them as real people
•Turn an intriguing premise into a page-turning plot
•Use subtext to add depth and complexity
•Choose the best POV and person for your story
•Balance dialogue and narrative effectively
•Discover which of your writing habits work against you
•And much more!

"A fascinating dive into what authors should know about the brain science of how and why we read." - BookLife Reviews

“...the author tackles the fundamentals of fiction in perhaps the most basic way anyone has dealt with them before.... In a crowded genre, this craft guide makes a lasting impression. An illuminating writing manual with an evolutionary focus.”
- Kirkus Reviews

• Language: English
• Publisher: Peter Gelfan
• Release date: Sep 30, 2022
• ISBN: 9798986345116

Peter Gelfan

Peter Gelfan is a novelist, screenwriter, book editor, and writing teacher. He was born in New York City, grew up in New Haven and the New York suburbs, and has lived in Spain, England, Florida, and Vermont.He wrote the screenplay for Cargo, Les Hommes Perdus, which was produced and released in France in 2010. Found Objects, his debut novel, came out in 2013. His second novel, Monkey Temple, was published in February 2019. The first edition of his nonfiction book Hurling Words into Darkness: A Book Doctor's Dose of Brain Science for Writers was published in 2021; a revised second edition will be released in fall of 2022. He volunteers as a writing tutor in a New York City public high school.

Book preview

Also by Peter Gelfan

Monkey Temple

Found Objects

Hurling Words into Darkness

A Book Doctor’s Dose of Brain Science for Writers

Peter Gelfan

Contents

Also by Peter Gelfan

Title Page

Copyright

Epigraph

Why Another Book on Writing?

Why Write? Why Read?

Literature

Your Message

Subtext

Angels and Devils

Rules vs. Creativity

Characters

Theory of Mind

Creating Characters

Introducing Characters

Characterization

Point of View

Predicament & Attempted Extrication

What If?

Plot

From Premise to Plot

Starting the Plot

Plot Strength

Narration

Person

Dialogue

Exposition

Realism

Voice

Coda

Further Reading

Acknowledgements

About the Author

Copyright 2021, 2022 Peter Gelfan

Second Edition

First Edition published by Adelaide Books, 2021

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Sargasso Press

New York, New York

For more information about this book and its author, visit https://petergelfan.com

ISBN (print): 979-8-9863451-0-9

ISBN (ebook): 979-8-9863451-1-6

Library of Congress Catalog Number: 2022911072

Cover design: Ebook Launch

Interior design: Ampersand Bookery

Printed in the United States of America

I would hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo, and if an echo sounded, no matter how faintly, I would send other words to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of hunger for life that gnaws in us all, to keep alive in our hearts a sense of the inexpressibly human.

— Richard Wright

Why Another Book on Writing?

Some years ago, during a bout of singleness, I walked into a small Vermont inn and found a party going on, an engagement celebration for a couple I’d never met. But I knew a few of the guests, and there was plenty of food, an open bar, and lively company, so what the hell. When I went for my first glass, a pretty blond sat alone at the bar. We started talking.

What do you do? she asked.

I’m a writer.

She shrugged. Anybody can write.

I could have argued, but that wasn’t why I’d struck up a conversation with her. I asked what she did.

She sat up a little straighter and shook her hair back from her face. I’m a singer.

I couldn’t keep a snarky grin from snaking across my face. Everybody sings.

She laughed. Okay, I see what you mean.

And we’ve been together ever since? No, the conversation petered out after a few minutes, and I never saw her again. So much for frank exchanges during courtship.

But the question remains: what distinguishes a successful writer from one of the millions of others who write?

The dirty little not-so secret of the publishing industry is that except for having an already bestselling or celebrity author, there is no reliable way of predicting how well a book will do if published. Most veteran agents and acquisitions editors have stories of a manuscript they loved but which never found an audience, and of others they deemed a nonstarter but, in the hands of another agent or publisher, became a success. Likewise, thousands of writers have followed to the letter a book or course that purported to tell them how to write a blockbuster, only to watch their manuscript stack up rejections while other books, some of them breaking those same hard-learned rules, became hits. A few agents and editors are known for having The Eye, for being able to spot a winner in a crowd. Maybe so. But let’s not forget that the mere fact of being plucked from the clamoring throng by such an august figure makes a manuscript and its author buzzworthy.

Because so many unpredictable elements are involved—luck, timing, real or imagined market trends, the personal tastes and moods of individual gatekeepers, an evolving concept of fiction and nonfiction, and the random nature of existence—no one can honestly tell writers how to get published.

However, while writers have no surefire path to success, there are some reliably watertight guarantors of failure. It’s interesting that the lethal mistakes, whether in fiction or nonfiction, are relatively few and overwhelmingly common. (Agents and acquisitions editors surely yearn for fresh, fascinating, even enlightening reasons to say no to a manuscript.) As Ernest Hemingway said in The Wild Years, We are all apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master. He was talking about writers but could just as well have included editors, agents, and publishers.

I once heard an art teacher say that a budding painter can learn far more from looking at second-rate art than from studying the masters. You stand in awe of a transcendent canvas, but its creator, like a magician, doesn’t show you much about how she did it. On the other hand, an unsuccessful painting’s problems and mistakes are on lurid display. As a freelance book editor, I have read a frightening number of manuscripts, some by established or bestselling authors who needed help with a particular section or problem, but most by writers who had not yet been able to find a publisher or even an agent. Agents, publishers, and movie and TV producers enjoy the efficient luxury of having to read a ms only as far as it takes to find a reason to say no. But if you’re paid to read the whole thing, you do so, carefully, and try your best to figure out and explain to the author what is and isn’t working and why. And then you often discuss it in detail with the writer and discover what led him astray.

The terminal surface flaws have been listed many times—lackluster characters, slack or predictable plot, unconvincing dialogue, copycatting, amateurish or insipid writing, flat voice, etc.—and a number of how-to books already exist on remedying these problems. A book editor must look beyond the faults on the page and try to understand what went wrong with the writer’s thinking. Likewise, again and again it turns out that the writer had better look beyond his own agenda to try to understand what’s going on in readers’ minds.

In the mid-twentieth century, writer and scientist C. P. Snow warned that human culture was threatened by a growing schism between the arts and science. He noted that his friends in the arts were