“It is my first aim always to give pleasure.” –Muriel Spark
It is the number one item in the Hippocratic Oath of fiction writers.
And it’s so easy to forget. Absorbed in questions about plot, character, scene construction (all vitally important, of course), we tend to neglect the person climbing into bed at the end of the day hoping to be swept away by a story. That person’s pleasure, first and foremost, is the aim.
To please, that is, not impress.
The following observation by T.S. Eliot in his essay, “Wilkie Collins and Dickens,” is to the point:
“You cannot define Drama and Melodrama so that they shall be reciprocally exclusive; great drama has something melodramatic in it, and the best melodrama partakes of the greatness of drama….It is possible that the artist can be too conscious of his “art.”…. We cannot afford to forget that the first–and not one of the least difficult–requirements of either prose or verse is that it should be interesting.”
From the very first sentence, the whole point is to grab the reader’s attention with something a little sensational, heightened, wondrous.
All art is entertainment.
