Sports Novels: The Voice of the Gamer
Tuesday, September 8, 2009 at 9:52AM 
Ahhhh, the Gamer. The writer who knows what it is like to inhabit the sweaty, scraped-up, pressure-packed skin of an athlete. If they don't have a first hand experience in the sporting arena, they write like they do because they have taken the time to get it right. Gamers know that the connection to sport lies within the character. The protagonist takes their unique athletic ability along with them as the plot unfolds. Sport is important to the story because it is important to the character.
Sport is the backdrop, the field onto which the story unfolds rather than being the story itself. Gamers do not rely on over-used clichés. Their language is engaging, fresh, and alive!
William Zinsser encourages writers of sports novels to, "Hold the hype and give us heroes who are believable" (184). Not some flat, undeveloped, fair-weather fan athlete or some game-dominated, redundant, sportscaster slanted plot line. No! Zinsser goes on to say, "Sport is now a major frontier of social change, and some of the nation's most vexing issues...are being played out in our grandstands and locker rooms." (185). Real stories about real issues with well-developed, complex characters. Good stuff, wouldn't you say?
Oh sure, there is plenty of game action in stories told in this slant. Of course there is. That's the world in which the character resides, isn't it? A skilled Gamer takes the essence of athletic arena...the referees and locker rooms, doing some pine time and putting up the winning point, injuries and elation...and lets the characters take the lead to create a great story.
A Gamer's story is much, much more than just a sports story. It is a story about life!
Reference: Zinsser, William. On Writing Well. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1998.
Reader Comments (6)
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