Content and Form

I know, I know: since leaving high school/college, you had hoped to never hear this word pairing again.

Turns out it’s actually arguably the most fundamental principle of literature. Who knew?



So then, first of all, a quick reminder of what I mean by these two words:

CONTENT 

These are the elements that make up the story: The plot. The characters. The dialogue. The setting. The climax.

What happens in the book? Where does it happen? Who is involved? Why are they involved? How does this impact them?

FORM 

This includes how the book is written: The word choice. The sentence structure. Use of imagery. Use of metaphor.

What Point of View is the story written from? Does the author use punctuation correctly? (If not, what are the ways in which he intentionally misuses punctuation?) Why did the author pick this word instead of that one?

Pretty simple stuff, right?



Now then.

Rather than beat you over the head with what these two words are, I’m going to explain why, in my estimation, FORM is vastly more important than CONTENT. If I can help you understand this idea, then some of my reviews and posts will make much more sense to you.



The fact is that anyone can tell a story. You can tell a story. And yes, you have a story to tell. Even if your story is just about your day at work, that’s a story.

Not just anyone can tell a story well, though.

An example:

You’ve read the Da Vinci Code. Of course you have. Everyone and their mom has read it. (Actually, my mom hasn’t read it. But that’s neither here nor there. Oh, and if you haven’t read it, don’t.)

I found the Da Vinci Code to be a fun story. It was intriguing, had some fun twists, etc. But, dear me, the writing style was atrocious. Unforgivable. Really. I will never touch another Dan Brown novel just because this one was written so poorly.

Dan Brown’s CONTENT is fine. His FORM is terrible. (I may explain what led me to this conclusion in a separate post. It’d be a digression here, though.)



Personally, I will gladly tolerate weak CONTENT if it’s presented in stellar FORM.

Another example:

The Secret Scripture by Sebastian Barry is a beautiful, beautiful book. Actually though, I’m not too wild about the story. It’s fine. It’s sort of a (fictional) biographical look at a woman who lived (unjustly) in a mental facility. The CONTENT is passable, I guess.

But what makes the book so beautiful is that its FORM is simply out of this world. Barry’s word choice, sentence arrangement, metaphors, etc. all come together to create a glorious package.

If someone else had written the Secret Scripture with the exact same characters and plot, I may not have even finished it. Heck, I might not have picked it up. But the FORM makes it absolutely worth it.



This isn’t the common approach to writing/reading/publishing. The average reader will just pick up any CONTENT that sounds interesting, without giving much thought to FORM.

This is why there are so many mysteries on the bestseller list all the time, but they never seem to win awards: They’re clever. They have twists you don’t expect. The characters and events are (usually) interesting.

Most often, they’re not really that well-written, though. They only thing that they are, are clever, twisty plots with interesting characters and events.



So: since anyone can write good CONTENT, what separates the wheat from the chaff is a person’s FORM.

At least, that’s where the real talent and intrigue are, as far as I’m concerned.

If you haven’t really noticed the difference before, then stick around this blog long enough: you’ll start noticing.