The Importance of Urgency in Literature

In literature, Urgency refers to an element in writing that provides the reader a desire to continue turning pages (Beck, 2012). Apparently, many students or new writers claim that some published authors don’t have Urgency in their work, and to assert this, they even cite the best sellers in the town who have different pieces of writing with no Urgency. Consequently, it is true that some writers don’t use Urgency, but as affirmed by Daldry (2016), classic authors such as Tolstoy, Dickens, Shakespeare, to name a few have Urgency in their chronicles. In fact, for those writers who for centuries have not used Urgency in their literary work, they experience a tough time, and publication has been difficult for them. The well-established and contemporary authors who are successful and haven’t used Urgency in their fictions rely on their already existing audiences.

According to Beck (2012), only a few writers who are lucky, whereby, readers wait in the line for them to publish their next book or series and they turn to be the best sellers in the market. In fact, writing and publishing is a competitive business like any other form of activity where authors compete for readers, and they as well compete with other fields such as movies, televisions, cinemas, among other media. For a traditional publishing model, authors send their literary work to agents, who on their behalf determines whether to sell the writing to the manuscript editors. At the publishing house, these editors know if the manuscript is attractive and whether it can sell and give the author a significant profit margin. Therefore, for traditional publishing, there is a system in place that assists authors to know whether their book is marketable. However, conventional publishing approach does not determine the literary merit or quality of the manuscript; instead, the market gets driven by potential profit that an agent seems to make from the players (Simpson, 2014). 

Nevertheless, in the current market model, where there is Print-On-Demand paper book, the printing is done by customers’ or sellers’ predetermined demand, and this excludes both agents and publishers in the line of the business (Daldry, 2016). More significantly, authors who have no idea of the traditional method can publish their work with minimal expenses and without investing a tremendous amount of resources for books to be kept in the stores. Unfortunately, this kind of publishing brings in the concept of Urgency, where readers must wade for great deals, and they cannot settle for mediocre writing. It is true that poor manuscripts get published by traditional houses, but forecasting the market responses for the book is almost impossible, which make most of the writers prefer the print-on-demand strategy. As affirmed by Beck (2012), quality writing is critical, where authors must create Urgency in their works to have positive reviews so that readers can wait for their next scripts. Therefore, Urgency must be integral, and this keeps the reader clamoring for more each day.

Types of Urgency

In Urgency, there are three fundamental areas that one can include in their writing, namely plot, voice, and character development (Beck, 2012). In a nutshell, most of the readers turn pages based on the scheme of the work with the aim of seeing how the story unfolds. There are lucky published authors with compelling plots where readers cannot put their books down. These are brilliant authors with exceptional writing styles and have mastered the concept of Urgency in this field. Again, the plot must go hand in hand with conflict, which eventually creates Urgency and through this, readers can know the characters of the players by following their dialogues or observing their moves. Therefore, in the piece of writing, it is crucial for the author to ensure that the characters present say or do some of the things that illustrate conflict and leave the reader with the zeal to continue reading. Again, if the author is writing several books, every manuscript should have its developing battle to capture the attention of the reader.

The other kind of Urgency is character development. The Urgency in character development is where writers allow their characters to deal with the emerging conflicts individually rather than showing them how they could have dealt with them (Simpson, 2014). The approach assists the author to avoid writing the same narrative over and over again and also increase Urgency and develop characters. When writing different chronicles or books, character development must occur in every paperwork. Nevertheless, for Urgency maintenance, an individual must be keen to spread the character development evenly over the books instead of saving it to the final work or series since the reader may get bored and fail to wait for that far (Simpson, 2014). Finally, the author needs readiness in answering all the queries concerning character relationship and development over the entire series because some writers set up a fanciful Urgency on character development for the first work and with time they forget to maintain.

The last type of Urgency is in voice whereby, unusual or distinctive voice cannot appear until the narrator, author, or the protagonist masters the Point of View. In fact, when a voice in a literary manuscript of literature has Urgency, it gives the reader the desire to continue reading. Again, according to Simpson (2014), a voice in Urgency relates to the Point of View and most of the writers find it easy to develop Urgency when they write in the First-Person Point of View because this creates an inmate bond as the reader hear and perceive the narrator’s words.  However, as Hemingway’s novels illustrate, there is the possibility of having voice Urgency in other points of view. For instance, in Unlimited Point of View, the author’s or protagonist’s unique voice creates Urgency instead of the narrator.

In conclusion, the most significant thing to remember in Urgency creation is that any place that risks you to lose the reader’s attention requires Urgency. There are different suggestions for Urgency placement such as in the first sentence of the paragraph, at the beginning and the end of every chapter, the last line of the first paragraph, periodically throughout the narrative, and every time there is the change of the narrator’s point of view. Therefore, to excel in the writing industry, authors need to include Urgency in their papers.

References

Beck, H. (Ed.). (2012). Teaching Creative Writing. Springer.

Daldry, G. (2016). Charles Dickens and the Form of the Novel: Fiction and Narrative in Dickens’ Work. Routledge.

Simpson, P. (2014). Just what is narrative urgency? Language and Literature, 23(1), 3-22.