The Vivid and Continuous Dream
What John Gardner Meant
In 1984, John Gardner wrote a textbook called The Art of Fiction: Notes on Craft for Young Writers. It is the most quoted craft book that I know of.
Gardner’s most talked about bit of advice is that if the writing is to be any good, it must create “a vivid and continuous fictional dream” that remains uninterrupted in the reader’s mind.
In my previous article, I finished by saying that fiction that didn’t follow this stricture wasn’t worth a damn. Maybe you think it’s over the top?
I don’t.
In fact, I’m gonna double down: I think that there is almost no fiction (exceptions being works by folks like Lance Olsen or Mark Danielewski) that doesn’t follow this principle. That’s not to say that other things aren’t also required. It’s more than a little complicated.
Breaking Gardner Down
Vivid
Google defines vivid as: “producing powerful feelings or strong, clear images in the mind.” This is exactly what Gardner meant. A skilled writer simply has to write a sunset or a car wreck in a way that creates strong feelings and clear images.
Easy, right?
No.
The writing must be clear, using strong, concrete descriptions. If it’s a scene with action, then strong verbs must be used. But it must not be cliché (unless it’s being done on purpose) and it helps to be slightly novel. It shouldn’t be boring or trite, but it shouldn’t be over the top, either.
What is it that makes a sunset vivid? One obvious thing are the colors, whether you are seeing it from a beach or a mountain range. Pinks and purples and blues and oranges and reds and whites, and that’s just the colors in the sky .
What about a car wreck? Maybe it’s the sounds: metal squealing or a man wailing. It could be the smells: burning rubber or spilled gasoline? The sights: broken humans and their bright, red blood. Shattered glass glittering in the morning sun.
Many things can make a subject vivid. You just need to pick something that works for the story and then describe it using the best details and the best words.
That’s the hard part.
Continuous
To follow this part of the theory, you need to keep your readers inside the fictional world you’ve created. That is, don’t interrupt the continuous nature of the story, the dream, with a mistake that might wake them up.
There are so many different ways to destroy the continuity of the dream. You can change psychic distance or point of view (POV) accidentally, moving from inside the character’s head with their thoughts, straight to some inane comment about a cow. Later in the story, you might describe something inaccurately, writing about a menacing anaconda out in the high deserts of Colorado. Maybe you get the capital of Rhode Island wrong?
Hell, changing fonts or margin widths can do it. Typos, too.
Basically, your story, whether flash or a novel, needs to move flawlessly from beginning to end, without error or any sort of inconsistency. Then, it’s continuous.
As with the rest, much easier said than done.
The Dream
When Gardener says dream, he means an alternate reality, one the author creates inside the reader’s mind through skilled and purposeful writing.
Do you remember the last time you told yourself you were only going to read for 15 minutes in bed and then realized, four hours later, that you’d read for just a little longer than intended?
That’s what Gardner is talking about: creating a dream so realistic that the reader forgets about the real world.
Summing it up
Gardner’s theory of a “vivid and continuous dream” is deceptively simple. Describe things in a way that allows the reader to see them in their mind’s eye while not introducing any interruptions to bump them out of the dream.
Here at The Craft of Fiction, we will be describing and discussing the techniques writers use to do just that. Following Gardner’s advice isn’t all you need to do be a good writer, but not doing it will make you a bad one.
Unless, of course, you’re trying to write a jarring story. But, that’s a whole different topic.
