Long ramble on personal preferences in fiction
Several years ago, karenmiller and I went shopping in a bookstore together. Karen, having once owned a bookshop, knows books, fiction in general and speculative fiction in particular. (Better than I do, even with my long history of being a book addict.) So I came out of the store with a number of 'you absolutely must read' books.
I did read some of them, or tried to. And one or two I enjoyed enough to go back and hunt up more books by the same author (particularly easy since one of them was by Lois McMaster Bujold, who was also coming to me very highly recommend by readerjane) and some of them I didn't get to for a while.
Several months ago, I finally picked up the one that Karen had insisted was the best of the best, essential reading for any fan of fantasy, let alone someone thinking of writing in the genre: George R.R. Martin's Game of Thrones. Karen's not the only one who's recommended Martin's series to me: my co-worker (and fellow Tolkien obsessor) and even my sister -- who was responsible for my initial love affair with fantasy when we were kids -- are fans of the series.
I hated it. Couldn't finish it. Read the first eighty pages, (out of something like 800) and dropped it, rather depressed. I *wanted* to like the books, in part because so many people I respect rave about them, and in part because who doesn't love finding a new series to enjoy?
It knocked me back a step, and made me really think about why I read what I read, and why I enjoy it. (For me, those amount to about the same thing. I'm not one of those people who can struggle through to the end of a book I'm not enjoying.)
I found Martin's book to be terribly dark, grim and depressing. There's about a million point of view characters (which I don't object to, in theory -- I tend to like multi-POV stories) but to cover them all, the chapters are short and could be summed up (well, I sum them up this way -- but remember, I didn't like the book) as 'meet a character/watch as something horrible happens/jump to another character/watch as something horrible happens/repeat ad nauseum.' I found almost none of the characters particularly likeable (granted, maybe they'd grow on me if I'd gotten further than 10% into the story) but then -- even if I did like them, I know from comments others have made that Martin has a habit of killing off his characters/corrupting the ones that survive.
So. Does that mean I'm a shallow person? That I don't like complex characters or stories that don't provide easy answers?
I've been thinking about that very thing, a lot. And I don't think that necessarily follows. I freely admit to preferring stories with some sort of happy ending for someone, but that's not because I'm an optimist who can't bear to look on anything dreary. Not by a long shot. I'm a news junkie -- and have been since I was in high school. I read news every day from a variety of sources and slants, and pay attention as much to the small, sad stories, of ordinary people facing hideous situations, as I do the big world-shaking stories.
And maybe that factors into why I want my fiction to show me people I can identify with (difficult when there's no clear protagonist, or at least not one that's likely to live to the end of the book) who face terrible things and yet survive, and win. Do I want them to be perfect? No, of course not. How could I identify with someone who never made mistakes, was never tempted?
I know the world is ugly, and that people can be mean. I also know that, sometimes, people can be real heroes -- like the professor in the Virginia Tech shootings who died giving his students a chance to escape. And that's what I want to read about. I'm all too aware that people fail, and screw up, and kill, rape and maim one another for no good reason. I get a steady diet of that every day in the news. I want my fiction, my recreation, to focus on when Good wins.
Does that mean no character death? No conflict? Of course not. How can it matter for Good to win if Evil never gets its shot?
So I've been thinking about all this for months, watching what I read and trying to be aware of what I'm enjoying, or not, and why.
And this week, I stumbled onto Patricia Briggs. She wrote five standalone fantasy novels followed by two duologys (also fantasy) and is now writing a multi-book series that's urban fantasy/werewolf/vampire focused. I doubt I'll like those, as I'm not a fan of vampires.
So far, I've only read the first duology, 'Dragon Bones' and 'Dragon Blood.' I liked them very much, and it's been interesting to think about why that is. There's death, and torture, and rape (though the rapes happen 'off-the-page' as it were) -- so why did I like these books in a way I've not liked other recent fantasy I've read, Bujold notwithstanding?
Some of it is the hero. He's not perfect -- he makes mistakes, and has a dark side that haunts him. But he's noble, and insists on doing the right thing (or what he thinks is the right thing), or at least attempts to, even when it costs him. And at the end of the first book, it costs him dearly.
Some of it is the tone. Even with the darkness, there's humor scattered through the books. ("it is one of those lessons that every child should learn: Don't play with fire, sharp objects, or ancient artifacts.") And that led to thoughts about humor. I like humor, particularly when it's subtle.
I confess: I've been recording these last few eps of SG1 as they're airing, but I've not watched any of them. I guess I'll watch the last one at some point, but I've recorded them more out of loyalty and nostalgia than anything else. Last night, however, I caught part of The Shroud, and noticed that RDA is guesting on it, so I watched about fifteen minutes of it, and will probably watch the rest tonight, because RDA didn't appear to be being an idiot. He wasn't making the choice they were facing into a joke.
It's important, because one of the things I liked in the early seasons was Jack's humor -- his sarcastic wisecracks. ("It's time for plan B." "We have a plan B?" "No. That's why it's time for one.") And what destroyed the show for me was when RDA bumped that humor into idiocy.
It can be noble, in my mind, I guess, for a hero to try to make light of terrible things happening by cracking jokes. But when the character got to the point where he was so busy trying to make jokes, or be stupid -- apparently because someone thought that having a ranking officer who was a moron would be funny -- there was no longer anything noble or heroic about the character, and I lost interest.
I don't care for slapstick humor. With the Plum books (and yes, readerjane, I will get to comments on the new section of 13) it's mostly not the situations that the characters get into -- I don't particularly find anything funny about Grandma knocking over a casket -- but the way Stephanie thinks about them, her running dialogue.
So a bit of humor, or dry takes on life, is an important part of what I'm looking for in my stories, whether in books or film. It's probably that same kind of thing that allows me to enjoy NCIS. In the middle of the silliness, though, are noble, occasionally conflicted characters trying to do the right thing.
What does this mean for my own writing? I don't know. I've not quite put the pieces together yet. But I will, and think that understanding what I like and why I like it will be a major part of that.
In the meantime, I wandered over to Patricia Briggs' website last night (www.hurog.com) and in her comments about Dragon Blood, she writes:
"I hadn't really meant the book to be quite as dark as it was -- though I have to admit I was writing it with the aim of writing a book that neither my worst critics nor my most devoted readers could call light. (Sometime I'm going to write my diatribe on "light fantasy" -- which I think most reviewers really define as any fantasy written by a non-bestselling author in which less than half the characters die. I really wouldn't mind the designation if it weren't used so disparagingly.) I had hoped for a dark book, but with my proclivity for humor at odd moments I didn't think I'd manage it. You're the final judge, of course, but I think this one qualifies as dark fantasy. Maybe someone will call it "light dark fantasy".
I read that quote and laughed out loud, for a good long while. As I said, I don't know if I'll enjoy the rest of her books, particularly the vampire ones. But that comment helped me feel that I'm not completely alone in my confusion about what qualifies as good fantasy, as well as giving me hope that there might be a market for what I wind up writing, after all.
Now if I could only get the worldbuilding completely sorted...
I did read some of them, or tried to. And one or two I enjoyed enough to go back and hunt up more books by the same author (particularly easy since one of them was by Lois McMaster Bujold, who was also coming to me very highly recommend by readerjane) and some of them I didn't get to for a while.
Several months ago, I finally picked up the one that Karen had insisted was the best of the best, essential reading for any fan of fantasy, let alone someone thinking of writing in the genre: George R.R. Martin's Game of Thrones. Karen's not the only one who's recommended Martin's series to me: my co-worker (and fellow Tolkien obsessor) and even my sister -- who was responsible for my initial love affair with fantasy when we were kids -- are fans of the series.
I hated it. Couldn't finish it. Read the first eighty pages, (out of something like 800) and dropped it, rather depressed. I *wanted* to like the books, in part because so many people I respect rave about them, and in part because who doesn't love finding a new series to enjoy?
It knocked me back a step, and made me really think about why I read what I read, and why I enjoy it. (For me, those amount to about the same thing. I'm not one of those people who can struggle through to the end of a book I'm not enjoying.)
I found Martin's book to be terribly dark, grim and depressing. There's about a million point of view characters (which I don't object to, in theory -- I tend to like multi-POV stories) but to cover them all, the chapters are short and could be summed up (well, I sum them up this way -- but remember, I didn't like the book) as 'meet a character/watch as something horrible happens/jump to another character/watch as something horrible happens/repeat ad nauseum.' I found almost none of the characters particularly likeable (granted, maybe they'd grow on me if I'd gotten further than 10% into the story) but then -- even if I did like them, I know from comments others have made that Martin has a habit of killing off his characters/corrupting the ones that survive.
So. Does that mean I'm a shallow person? That I don't like complex characters or stories that don't provide easy answers?
I've been thinking about that very thing, a lot. And I don't think that necessarily follows. I freely admit to preferring stories with some sort of happy ending for someone, but that's not because I'm an optimist who can't bear to look on anything dreary. Not by a long shot. I'm a news junkie -- and have been since I was in high school. I read news every day from a variety of sources and slants, and pay attention as much to the small, sad stories, of ordinary people facing hideous situations, as I do the big world-shaking stories.
And maybe that factors into why I want my fiction to show me people I can identify with (difficult when there's no clear protagonist, or at least not one that's likely to live to the end of the book) who face terrible things and yet survive, and win. Do I want them to be perfect? No, of course not. How could I identify with someone who never made mistakes, was never tempted?
I know the world is ugly, and that people can be mean. I also know that, sometimes, people can be real heroes -- like the professor in the Virginia Tech shootings who died giving his students a chance to escape. And that's what I want to read about. I'm all too aware that people fail, and screw up, and kill, rape and maim one another for no good reason. I get a steady diet of that every day in the news. I want my fiction, my recreation, to focus on when Good wins.
Does that mean no character death? No conflict? Of course not. How can it matter for Good to win if Evil never gets its shot?
So I've been thinking about all this for months, watching what I read and trying to be aware of what I'm enjoying, or not, and why.
And this week, I stumbled onto Patricia Briggs. She wrote five standalone fantasy novels followed by two duologys (also fantasy) and is now writing a multi-book series that's urban fantasy/werewolf/vampire focused. I doubt I'll like those, as I'm not a fan of vampires.
So far, I've only read the first duology, 'Dragon Bones' and 'Dragon Blood.' I liked them very much, and it's been interesting to think about why that is. There's death, and torture, and rape (though the rapes happen 'off-the-page' as it were) -- so why did I like these books in a way I've not liked other recent fantasy I've read, Bujold notwithstanding?
Some of it is the hero. He's not perfect -- he makes mistakes, and has a dark side that haunts him. But he's noble, and insists on doing the right thing (or what he thinks is the right thing), or at least attempts to, even when it costs him. And at the end of the first book, it costs him dearly.
Some of it is the tone. Even with the darkness, there's humor scattered through the books. ("it is one of those lessons that every child should learn: Don't play with fire, sharp objects, or ancient artifacts.") And that led to thoughts about humor. I like humor, particularly when it's subtle.
I confess: I've been recording these last few eps of SG1 as they're airing, but I've not watched any of them. I guess I'll watch the last one at some point, but I've recorded them more out of loyalty and nostalgia than anything else. Last night, however, I caught part of The Shroud, and noticed that RDA is guesting on it, so I watched about fifteen minutes of it, and will probably watch the rest tonight, because RDA didn't appear to be being an idiot. He wasn't making the choice they were facing into a joke.
It's important, because one of the things I liked in the early seasons was Jack's humor -- his sarcastic wisecracks. ("It's time for plan B." "We have a plan B?" "No. That's why it's time for one.") And what destroyed the show for me was when RDA bumped that humor into idiocy.
It can be noble, in my mind, I guess, for a hero to try to make light of terrible things happening by cracking jokes. But when the character got to the point where he was so busy trying to make jokes, or be stupid -- apparently because someone thought that having a ranking officer who was a moron would be funny -- there was no longer anything noble or heroic about the character, and I lost interest.
I don't care for slapstick humor. With the Plum books (and yes, readerjane, I will get to comments on the new section of 13) it's mostly not the situations that the characters get into -- I don't particularly find anything funny about Grandma knocking over a casket -- but the way Stephanie thinks about them, her running dialogue.
So a bit of humor, or dry takes on life, is an important part of what I'm looking for in my stories, whether in books or film. It's probably that same kind of thing that allows me to enjoy NCIS. In the middle of the silliness, though, are noble, occasionally conflicted characters trying to do the right thing.
What does this mean for my own writing? I don't know. I've not quite put the pieces together yet. But I will, and think that understanding what I like and why I like it will be a major part of that.
In the meantime, I wandered over to Patricia Briggs' website last night (www.hurog.com) and in her comments about Dragon Blood, she writes:
"I hadn't really meant the book to be quite as dark as it was -- though I have to admit I was writing it with the aim of writing a book that neither my worst critics nor my most devoted readers could call light. (Sometime I'm going to write my diatribe on "light fantasy" -- which I think most reviewers really define as any fantasy written by a non-bestselling author in which less than half the characters die. I really wouldn't mind the designation if it weren't used so disparagingly.) I had hoped for a dark book, but with my proclivity for humor at odd moments I didn't think I'd manage it. You're the final judge, of course, but I think this one qualifies as dark fantasy. Maybe someone will call it "light dark fantasy".
I read that quote and laughed out loud, for a good long while. As I said, I don't know if I'll enjoy the rest of her books, particularly the vampire ones. But that comment helped me feel that I'm not completely alone in my confusion about what qualifies as good fantasy, as well as giving me hope that there might be a market for what I wind up writing, after all.
Now if I could only get the worldbuilding completely sorted...