Appreciation post: I finally got my book club to stop arguing about the same thing every month

My group in Milwaukee kept hitting the same wall. Every single meeting, someone would say 'but the author didn't show us that' and we'd argue for an hour about what should have been in the book versus what was. It was killing the vibe. Last month, I brought a printout of a quote from a Stephen King interview I found, where he said 'Description begins in the writer’s imagination, but should finish in the reader’s.' I read it out loud and just said, 'Okay, for this book, let's talk about what our imaginations finished.' We spent the whole night actually discussing the story and our own ideas instead of fighting about missing scenes. It was the best talk we've had in like a year. Has anyone else used a quote from an author to steer a debate back on track?

3 comments

3 Comments

the_joel26d ago

That quote is a total cop out though. It just shuts down valid criticism. If a book has a huge plot hole or skips a major character moment, that's a flaw. Using a fancy quote to say "use your imagination" feels like letting the author off the hook for lazy writing. My old club fell apart because we stopped holding books to any standard. Everything became about what we imagined happened, which meant no discussion could ever be wrong. It got pointless. Sometimes the author didn't show us that because they messed up.

willowthomas25d ago

Hard agree. That quote gets used as a shield against any real talk. There's a big difference between leaving space for the reader and just leaving a hole. My old group had the same issue, everything became a guessing game where the author's actual choices didn't matter anymore. It makes talking about the book pointless.

avery_carr573d ago

That quote is about trusting the reader, not covering up bad writing.