Novel Revelation

I've tried to read manuscripts before--whole ones, from people who have been working on them for loooong periods. And I've been burned.

The ones I've read have been by people who have never written anything before, and who don't think of themselves as writers. Not to say they weren't dedicated; after all, they'd drafted AND revised a novel-length manuscript, and gone to the trouble of taking a local class/joining a writing group/finding a critique partner.

BUT their manuscripts have generally not read like books. Reading one and commenting on it could become a huge chore, because they weren't novels, they were fictionalized reports. Usually, they'd come from a very smart person in an interesting field, who wanted to write an account of their work without breaking confidentiality or ruining their security clearance. So while the facts were often fascinating, there was little word play, few actual scenes, and tons of barely integrated facts.

What these people *really* wanted was to process their experience, and used fiction to do it.

Which, I suppose, is what all writers do to a degree; they work through things using their fictional characters and fictional situations. The difference isn't whether writing CAN be therapeutic, because it always CAN be--it's whether therapy or understanding is the aim, or if storytelling is.

And though therapeutic writing *can* be powerful and interesting, it's not especially suited for novel-length stories. At best, it lacks momentum, and at worst, it's inaccessible to anyone outside the writer's head.

Which is why reading the manuscript I'm "critiquing" now is such a revelation. I can only hope this is how my own manuscript reads: like a story. Sure, it's a draft, and there are flaws. But it's got the *flavor* of a book; this is the story of the most important and defining period of a fascinating man's life, and he's living in his own world, telling his own story, as opposed to operating in a pale shadow the writer's. This feels like it has its focus on the *audience* as opposed to the writer.

I started reading it yesterday, and I'm finished now--because it was *fun* to read. The story exists in its own world, with its own characters, and I love both the place and the people; when I'm gone from them for too long, I start longing to go back. That's artistry, as well as craftsmanship, and that's why this feels like the beginnings of a professional effort, and not an amateur one.

So, in a nutshell: is the difference between professional and amateur storytelling the difference between a story existing for the audience's pleasure and benefit as opposed to, for the author's?