The Disappearing Author
Wednesday, April 15th, 2009
The greatest mystery that mystery writer Gregory McDonald ever put over on readers was his hands-off, bordering-on-absent writing style. The author of The Fletch series almost entirely relies on dialogue in his novels. His books read similar to screenplays with little scenery description and sparse characterization. He explained in this interview excerpt his thoughts about the role a writer should assume as storyteller:
“The magic I attempt is to point the finger, as concisely as possible set the scene, then pull back my hand, disappear as the author, leave the reader alone with the characters. Of course the result of this is, not typical of authors, that tens of millions more people know the names of my characters than know my name, which I don’t mind a bit.”
