Elements of a bad book
No names or titles here; I decided to make it a study.
Now first off, I am well aware that these things are all relative. First, this byline sells more books in one year than I ever will in my lifetime, so the producers of it have to be doing something right that I am not. And two, I'm sure at that end (and many other points around the compass) everything I do exists as an example of a bad book, and this one as an example of good reading.
But still, I made some notes as I ploughed those pages, and thought, what the hey, maybe someone will want to discuss this stuff. Maybe I'll even learn something.
Foreshadowing
I think foreshadowing has gone out of fashion. That is, one still finds it in contemporary fiction but not paragraphs of portent as in the classics--especially the days of serials. In the books I like best, it's fairly oblique. This might be because I've been reading a very long time, and so it's tougher to take me by surprise.
One type of foreshadowing that I don't mind in small doses is the POV thinking questions as they try to figure out what's ahead. But if there's a lot of it--if entire scenes are made up of it--I can get tired of that really fast. Robin McKinley's latest, Chalice seemed to me to be composed mainly of the main character asking herself questions she couldn't answer, and trying to muddle to an answer through lots and lots of narrated (as opposed to experienced) flashbacks, with very, very little realtime action or direct experience of other characters. If this was an exercise in an autistic heroine, it was quite innovative, but made me long to get outside of that POV to see other people, and what was happening. Anyway, those many, many questions asked and not answered by the POV did build to the ending, which was the usual good McKinley powerhouse.
In this book, pretty much every page had the heroine asking herself questions she couldn't answer to set up what was coming, but then it would go on with portentous language that made me hear the organ minor key notes that used to end my mom's soap operas, fifty years ago.
Near end of chapter one:
I did not know it, but I would never step inside that room again. This walk I began was the start of a long journey that would take me from everything I knew in ways I could never have imagined. i was kidnapped by cruel fate and condemned as a prisoner of destiny beyond my control. I would lose everything, and even the simplest choices would be denied me.
Then there's the "something" besides the narrator that conveniently tells characters things.
Something told me, however, that I had just seen the very tip of the flame. There was a fire burning in her, a fire started years ago in the past. Would I ever understand it? More important, would it consume me, or would I snuff it out before it could?
. . .something in his eyes warned her that he was about to . . .
. . . something in her voice reached to the very core of his being . . .
Predictability
When you've been reading a long time, you know a lot of story forms. If you like a story form, then you go with the flow, especially if the language is engaging. But if you're really, really tired of one, then seeing the heroine put with the sleazy guy so that you know a rape is coming...and it comes . .
Single obvious motivation invisible to everyone else
The other name for this is willful stupidity. J.K. Rowling makes her subsidiary characters with single motivations work because there is so much else going on in her stories. Crabbe and Goyle are just always going to be jerks. Fleur is always going to be "French." Etc. That's okay because there are so many other trajectories, their predictability adds to the ongoing energy. The weight of the story doesn't turn on them.
When one character is willfully stupid, it can add dramatic tension, especially if contrasted with smart people. In real life, we do encounter people who cling desperately to what we think stone stupidity. When all the characters in a story have but one motivation driving them, and the others firmly believe the most dramatic interpretation of actions without a shred of common sense, much less without listening to the evidence, that indicates to me an entire storyline that depends on willful stupidity, not just side characters.
Maybe readers find that cathartic, like horror?
Now first off, I am well aware that these things are all relative. First, this byline sells more books in one year than I ever will in my lifetime, so the producers of it have to be doing something right that I am not. And two, I'm sure at that end (and many other points around the compass) everything I do exists as an example of a bad book, and this one as an example of good reading.
But still, I made some notes as I ploughed those pages, and thought, what the hey, maybe someone will want to discuss this stuff. Maybe I'll even learn something.
Foreshadowing
I think foreshadowing has gone out of fashion. That is, one still finds it in contemporary fiction but not paragraphs of portent as in the classics--especially the days of serials. In the books I like best, it's fairly oblique. This might be because I've been reading a very long time, and so it's tougher to take me by surprise.
One type of foreshadowing that I don't mind in small doses is the POV thinking questions as they try to figure out what's ahead. But if there's a lot of it--if entire scenes are made up of it--I can get tired of that really fast. Robin McKinley's latest, Chalice seemed to me to be composed mainly of the main character asking herself questions she couldn't answer, and trying to muddle to an answer through lots and lots of narrated (as opposed to experienced) flashbacks, with very, very little realtime action or direct experience of other characters. If this was an exercise in an autistic heroine, it was quite innovative, but made me long to get outside of that POV to see other people, and what was happening. Anyway, those many, many questions asked and not answered by the POV did build to the ending, which was the usual good McKinley powerhouse.
In this book, pretty much every page had the heroine asking herself questions she couldn't answer to set up what was coming, but then it would go on with portentous language that made me hear the organ minor key notes that used to end my mom's soap operas, fifty years ago.
Near end of chapter one:
I did not know it, but I would never step inside that room again. This walk I began was the start of a long journey that would take me from everything I knew in ways I could never have imagined. i was kidnapped by cruel fate and condemned as a prisoner of destiny beyond my control. I would lose everything, and even the simplest choices would be denied me.
Then there's the "something" besides the narrator that conveniently tells characters things.
Something told me, however, that I had just seen the very tip of the flame. There was a fire burning in her, a fire started years ago in the past. Would I ever understand it? More important, would it consume me, or would I snuff it out before it could?
. . .something in his eyes warned her that he was about to . . .
. . . something in her voice reached to the very core of his being . . .
Predictability
When you've been reading a long time, you know a lot of story forms. If you like a story form, then you go with the flow, especially if the language is engaging. But if you're really, really tired of one, then seeing the heroine put with the sleazy guy so that you know a rape is coming...and it comes . .
Single obvious motivation invisible to everyone else
The other name for this is willful stupidity. J.K. Rowling makes her subsidiary characters with single motivations work because there is so much else going on in her stories. Crabbe and Goyle are just always going to be jerks. Fleur is always going to be "French." Etc. That's okay because there are so many other trajectories, their predictability adds to the ongoing energy. The weight of the story doesn't turn on them.
When one character is willfully stupid, it can add dramatic tension, especially if contrasted with smart people. In real life, we do encounter people who cling desperately to what we think stone stupidity. When all the characters in a story have but one motivation driving them, and the others firmly believe the most dramatic interpretation of actions without a shred of common sense, much less without listening to the evidence, that indicates to me an entire storyline that depends on willful stupidity, not just side characters.
Maybe readers find that cathartic, like horror?