Sports Novels: The Sportcaster Voice

A couple months ago my writing buddy Gene Brenek told me of a blog thread discussing sports books that he thought I'd like to chime in on. He was right. Literary agent Nathan Bransford had a good thing going on. So yes, I had to chip in my 20 cents worth.

In  the blog Nathan states, "I think what's behind the difficulty of pure sports novels is that sports already provides so much human drama and narratives and story lines that a straightforward novel about sports is almost redundant," to which I'd like to add that the author's perspective on how the story needs to be told has even more to do with redundancy. Sports books that primarily focus on game action rather than compelling elements of craft strike out swinging in my score book. These types of stories are written in a writing style I term 'The Sports Caster.'

In his book On Writing Well, William Zinsser explains that there is a "weariness" about this game-centered approach to writing (180). He goes on to say that what keeps sports writers from writing well is,"...the misapprehension that they shouldn't be trying to. They have been reared on so many clichés that they assume they are required tools of the trade (181)." Could the game-centered, cliche' laden, bombastic voice of the sports caster be a source of redundancy to which Nathan made reference to? I think so.  

Perhaps this lack of freshness in a sports novel is what Nathan is alluding to when he states, "Thus, in order to give readers something that they can't already find just by following the NFL or NBA or curling, an author has to bring something new to the table, whether that's by introducing suspense or fantasy or literary merit or a real-life behind the scenes look." In other words, an author must bring a story that is set in the arena of the game, fully complimented by the drama that surrounds competition, rather just a story about the sport.

References: Zinsser, William. On Writing Well. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1998.

Blog: Nathan Bransford: Literary Agent for the Curtis Brown, Ltd.