WHY AM I INCAPABLE OF GOING TO SLEEP AT A REASONABLE HOUR

[apiphile]

Oh good grief I hate updating this. I am as always full of angry and contentious thoughts, which I will sideline in an attempt to avoid trouble with the no people reading this, and then I'll write something so boring that no one wants to comment on it anyway

Comments

[fahye]

Off the top of my head:

- Terry Pratchett for worldbuilding, humour, and enviable juggling of large casts and interlocking plots with clues dropped all over the place.
- Pat Barker for addressing the kinds of themes I like, and portraying a lot of different types of human relationships/interactions in ways that are subtle and ring true.
- Diana Wynne Jones and Margo Lanagan for the same thing: sheer unflinching imagination, creation of fantastic settings that come across as very believable.
- Lionel Shriver for human relationships and failings.

Personally I don't care at all about action sequences, but I do like a believable romance. I think writing from multiple perspectives is a lot harder to pull off effectively than using a single POV character, but if the characters are all given enough time/space to develop as whole people, and if the storytelling is enhanced by it, it's great.

[apiphile]

Agreed very much with the first two (I'm still discovering Diana Wynne Jones at the moment) - Terry's plotting and large casts were kind of influential on me when I was a teenager and are certainly something I aspire to.

[apiphile]

This is a reminder reply!

[apiphile]

You're the first person I've spoken to who hasn't tried to push me to read Catherynne Valente, so that's interesting. I hate Cormac McCarthy with bricks, though.

They write about flawed and broken people/places with empathy and a kind of faith in the value of fellowship.

In what manner? I mean, I get the content-argument, but the style-argument - how, how?

[jackiesjunkie]

Sherrilyn Kenyon - Specifically the Dark Hunter series. Universe based mostly on Greek/Atlantean mythology in a modern day world. Gods, demons, vampire like creatures, were-creatures. The characters are richly developed and often appear in other books. Most of the books are set in the New Orleans area. The Dark Hunters have all died due to betrayal and sold their souls to the goddess Artemis for revenge. Fights are good without being over the top. Romance is usually lust developing into love. Each book is about a different character/pairing but a lot of the characters are from large families so they appear in their siblings books quite often.

I was actually dreaming of Ash (the 11,000 year old cursed Atlantean god who trains all the Dark Hunters and barters with Artemis for the return of their souls) this morning. He makes an appearance in most of the books.

[apiphile]

What is it about her writing that really stands out? The world-building, or the characters themselves, or the actual sentences?

[jackiesjunkie]

I've read a fair bit of paranormal romance over the years and Kenyon's universe isn't typical "monster vs. human or creature/human porn". The characters have rich history and come alive through the pages. The sentences in and of themselves aren't that amazing but she's a good storyteller.

[sparrowpunk]

I will come back and answer when I am not getting ready for college, loading my mp3 player and trying to cast on a sock :P

[apiphile]

Reminder reply!

[apiphile]

You wouldn't enjoy a cab ride with a driver who kept weaving all over the road and asking you the way every ten seconds; I don't like an author to do that either.

I think that's an excellent analogy, and I agree - I don't like an author who has so little confidence in their story that they feel the need to hammer me about the motivations of their character etc. If you're writing well, I will pick that up, and if I don't get it I will talk to someone else who has read the book and see what they picked up!

I could never remember who was talking

My big worry with the multiple PoV stuff I do - even though I usually separate out the PoVs into separate chapters - is that the characters all sound the same (and that they all sound like me). I think that is not just a worry with MPOV fiction but with successive books that have different PoV characters, written by the same author. You worry that all the interesting things about the character are just elements about the author that they forgot to leave out.

There are many action sequences,

[apiphile]

With confident readers, yes. I've encountered an unfortunate amount of people who hate books because "the author was trying to be clever", which usually meant the author was succeeding in being clever but the reader wasn't...