After reading the novels, “A series of Unfortunate Events” I immediately assumed that the Author, Lemony Snicket, also known as Daniel Handler must be an imaginative and eccentric man. After hearing him speak today, I’ve learned that he’s also funny, creative, intelligent and a very well respected author who wasn’t also so sure of himself. His approach on writing novels can teach us all something our own style of writing, and more importantly about life itself.
Growing up, Mr. Handler was unlike most children – he enjoyed reading books in which terrible events occurred but were never resolved. As an adult, this led him to write his famous series of unfortunate events, emphasizing the fact that endings aren’t always happy and that evil is not always defeated. Hearing the author speak about real life vs. fairy tales can teach us that in our writing we should be raw and truthful. Events should not be sugar coated because when this happens a point is reached in which the reader can no longer relate to the story simply because life is not sugar coated, it is raw.
A moment that really stood out for me while listening to him speak was when he said that, “When enough terrible things happen, it becomes funny.” This made me begin to think about my writing, and the writing of most college students in general. We’ve been taught to write in a proper manor, where everything is essentially already laid out for us, Handler thinks outside the box. His novel is funny because it is ironic; it’s not funny because he followed a special outline for a comedy or inserted a joke on every page. Sometimes writing is more about the absence of something than having every single detail spelled out for the reader.
