CLARENDON HOUSE PUBLICATIONS

Earlier we saw some examples of how to pack as much meaning as you can into those aspects of a book which are visible to a passer-by, so as to entice him or her into moving close enough to purchase the thing and read it. If you can do so, then you will have gained a reader and acquired more attention: it would then be up to the book itself to retain that attention all the way through to the end. A work of fiction is effectively an attention-capturing and manipulating device

Earlier we established that, to attract potential readers closer and get them to the point where they will actually acquire your book, you must magnify Meaning in those elements of a book which are visible externally - i.e. before buying the book itself. These include the cover and the blurb. Meaning, as we have learned, is made up of four strands: sequential, vertical, contextual and embracive. Let’s take a look at another blurb to see the four strands of Meaning in oper

Earlier, I suggested that a writer must use sequences - and the ‘hook’ of something missing in expected sequences - to draw readers along, not only in stories themselves, but in the whole marketing process of attracting attention to his or her stories. Blurbs are a primary means through which to do this. Let me give you an example by looking at the blurb for one of the top novels for 2018: Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine, by Gail Honeyman. This was a debut bestseller,

Human beings seek Meaning. They seek it everywhere they look: in the world at large, in religions, social movements, politics, in groups, in relationships and in themselves. It’s a constant and eternal quest in one form or another. Readers of fiction seek meaning in stories, whether they are completely aware of it or not. Meaning therefore attracts attention. To attract attention, one needs to develop Meaning and then find ways of communicating that meaning to a range of

We're looking at four kinds of meaning: sequential, vertical, contextual and embracive. All readers - arguably, all human beings - are seeking Meaning of one kind or another. Combining these types of meaning produces not only a successful story, but attracts attention from the marketplace at large. Earlier, we looked at how meaning occurs in sequences like words in sentences or numbers in mathematics. The next type of meaning I have termed ‘vertical meaning’. Just as se

We’ve been talking about Meaning and its relationship to Attention. The basic simplicity is an equation: more meaning = more attention. For the most part, as we have seen, the world at large ignores us as writers and as human beings unless we belong to the small class of the super-famous. Even then, the attention given is usually fleeting, or what I have called Momentary. Much of the energy expended by those trying to attract attention in order to sell something or comm

Deep Attention is the fount from which ripples move outward, meeting the consciousness of readers at the level of Intermittent Attention. Perhaps you will understand more of what I am talking about if I use even a rather obscure example. ‘The Woodspurge’ By Dante Gabriel Rossetti is on the surface a simple enough poem: The wind flapp'd loose, the wind was still, Shaken out dead from tree and hill: I had walk'd on at the wind's will,— I sat now, for the wind was still.

Deep Attention is the fount from which ripples move outward, meeting the consciousness of readers at the level of Intermittent Attention. Perhaps you will understand more of what I am talking about if I use even a rather obscure example. ‘The Woodspurge’ By Dante Gabriel Rossetti is on the surface a simple enough poem: The wind flapp'd loose, the wind was still, Shaken out dead from tree and hill: I had walk'd on at the wind's will,— I sat now, for the wind was still.