A book is a cathedral

A book is like a cathedral.

This isn’t my own idea. I found it in a piece on writing by Philip Gerard. But I do like it.

If the cathedral is the solution, what is the problem it was meant to solve? Chances are you’ll say: “To give glory to God” or to create “a majestic object of beauty”.

And you’d be caught in our “narrow Romantic aesthetic” without even being aware of it . You’re thinking about the cathedral’s effect on you, the message it gives you in its completed form. In other words, you’re thinking like a reader.

Those creators of the cathedral were thinking less about faith, legacy or the message they were trying to impart, than the prosaic details of load-bearing walls, holding up the middle, and how to light it.

People who have never written before often have the romantic idea that the whole majestic structure of the written work will merely flow out and implant itself in the page.

When you write, you realise it’s never as easy as that. Writing is hard. There’s a stage where you must let go of the romantic and think about structure. In Gerard’s words, you must create a “large, durable, multifaceted story structure that will illuminate what’s inside – the characters whose actions and interior lives tangle and disengage, sprawling across continents and years”.

Let go of the message and the great sublime theme you’re trying to present to the world. Consider the prosaic details of narrative structure, characters that engage, how to hold your readers to the end, and preventing the story from sagging in the middle.

In other words, as with any art form, there are techniques, and rules of writing engineering that you must learn before you can think of breaking them.

Writing is a craft. There may be a certain romance to it, and some people have the natural edge of talent, but yes, there are skills to learn and practise – if you’re ever to create the Roman arch, flying buttresses and cruciform shape of your cathedral.

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