All language subtitles for Masterclass Margaret Atwood Teaches Creative Writing - 01.Introduction

[MUSIC PLAYING]

MARGARET ATWOOD: Creativity
is one of the essential things

about being human.

You don't have to
apologize for it.

It's something human beings do.

Sometimes people say,
express yourself.

Sometimes people say,
express yourself.

I don't really think that that's
necessarily the key thing.

Expressing yourself can
be shouting in a field.

So rather than
expressing yourself,

why don't you think in terms
of evoking, conjuring up

for the reader some curiosity,
some suspense, some interest

rather than this is my ego?

rather than this is my ego?

[CLASSICAL MUSIC PLAYING]

If you're a writer, you have
a very limited repertoire

of tools.

Your repertoire is a
blank page and some words

that you put on it.

So you're not making a film.

You don't have sound effects.

You don't have actors.

You don't have actors.

You only have those words
that the reader is reading.

And that's what you use to
build everything in your story

as words.

Words on a page are inert.

They're like black
musical notes on a score.

They're inert until
the music is played,

or in the case of a book,
the reader is reading.

And when the reader
is reading, the words

transform back into
representations, sounds,

transform back into
representations, sounds,

smells, colors, people.

Reading is the most
participative of the arts.

There's more brain
activity when you're

reading that kind
of intense text

than there is, for
instance, when you're

watching television, when
you're watching film,

because the brain has to supply
everything with the words used

because the brain has to supply
everything with the words used

just as cues, clues.

So what you're providing
the reader with

is a score, a score that the
reader will then interpret.

And all you can do
as a writer is make

your book as good as it can be.

You throw it out into the
world, hope for the best.

And that's all you can do.

You can not dictate
to the reader

how they should read your
book or receive your book.

how they should read your
book or receive your book.

Because the meaning of a book,
once it's is out in the world,

is not decided by
the writer anymore.

Even if the writer has
thought the writer was putting

x meaning into the
book, the reader

may have quite a different idea,
and usually does over time.

So Thomas Hardy thought that
"Tess of the D'urbervilles"

was about the irony
of fate, and we

think it's a pretty kinky story
about what happened to women

in the Victorian period.

in the Victorian period.

I mean, that's what I think.

What do you think?

When I wrote "The
Handmaid's Tale,"

I didn't give the
central character a name.

The readers decided
that her name was June.

There's nothing in the
book that contradicts that.

In fact, it all fits.

But it wasn't
something I thought up.

The readers figured it out.

It has to be June once
you come to think of it,

because each of the names that
are mentioned in chapter 1,

because each of the names that
are mentioned in chapter 1,

they all occur again in
the book except for June.

I thought that was
pretty smart of them.

I'm Margaret Atwood, and
this is my MasterClass.