Hooptedoodle 0

John Steinbeck introduced, what I consider to be one of the niftiest ideas for authors – the Hooptedoodle chapter. All writers occasionally want to break out of the main plot of whatever they are writing and wander about a bit. Obviously, that can be a bit of a strain on a reader who wants to quickly know whether x killed y or A ran off with D. So Steinbeck introduced the Hooptedoodle chapter.

Here is how Mack explains this in a prologue to Sweet Thursday (among the best 5 books I have read – ever).

“Sometimes I want a book to break loose with a bunch of hooptedoodle. The guy’s writing it, give him a chance to do a little hooptedoodle. Spin up some pretty words maybe, or sing a little song with language. That’s nice. But I wish it was set aside so I don’t have to read it. I don’t want hooptedoodle to get mixed up in the story. So if the guy that’s writing it wants hooptedoodle, he ought to put it right at first. Then I can skip if I want, or maybe go back to it after I know how the story came out.”

So that is what I am going to do – all those things I need to broadcast, but I think you might not want to know, will henceforth be introduced in my Hooptedoodle posts. A bit narcissistic perhaps; but what the heck – if JS can do it, so can I.

ok – here is my first Hooptedoodle post