Alma Alexander

I recently did an interview for Book Talk (you can read the whole thing at http://booksbypickles.blogspot.com/2009/07/interview-with-alma-alexander.html – it was a good interview!) and their last question was whether I had any questions to ask of the readers. So I did – I asked,

“What makes you, the reader, call something a “good” or a “bad” book? What makes you call a book unforgettable? What makes you throw it across the room?”

Here’s some of the comments that turned up in answer to that (the emphasis on certain bits is mine):

Karen H said,

”I can tolerate pretty much anything in the books I read but the two things that will make me throw the book at the wall are:

1. TSTL* heroine (or hero) and
2. Characters not written true to the time period of the book

I’m not talking about flaws in history (or research) but let’s say it is a book set in late 18th century and the heroine is suppose to be the illiterate, virginal daughter of an innkeeper. Her conversation is written as a well educated, sexually liberated 21st century woman. Just doesn’t fit! I tried to read a book written like that by a rather well-known author. I couldn’t finish it.”

(*Too Stupid To Live)

Victoria Dixon said:

“Things that make me throw books against the wall, hmmm? I’ve done that on two different occasions and for two very different reasons.

1. The end of Tigana. I threw the book, screamed, cried, then picked it up, hugged it and read it again. That type of ending (hopefully) echoes in my own novel’s conclusion.
2. The end of Anne Rice’s fourth Vampire book in the Interview with a Vampire series. I forget the title of the book. I’ve probably blocked it from my memory. But the likeable, mortal character (David??) has stated throughout that he does not want to be turned. That he’ll never forgive (whoever turns him) if it happens. He is turned into a vampire and is oh so happy! Of course I wanted it! Yeah, I considered glueing the book face down to the dryboard, but I wanted to redecorate in a more traditional method. Plus I had no desire to keep the book. I LOATHE it when a writer lies to me about who their characters are. I haven’t read Anne Rice since, either.

Kami said:

”I find it interesting when people talk about throwing books against the wall. I don’t think I’ve had that reaction. Lots of times, though, I get this feeling like I’d rather poke my eyes out than keep reading, mainly from character stupidity. The other thing that gets me these days: female pov characters who are so enchanted by their own snarkiness and cleverness and who are so self-involved they don’t even seem like real people. Many of them don’t give any value or credence to anyone else, which creates problems for them at best, or worse, they turn out to be right and everyone else is wrong. Even the ones who create problems for themselves have the same issue as a cheesy romance–if they just pulled their heads out of their a$$es for two seconds they’d solve the problem. Ugh!”

BrigidsBlest said:

“Something that makes me throw a book across a room? Bad writing. The last one was “Fool’s Tavern”, which bragged it’d been written by a 15-year-old. I could tell.”

Julie B said:

“[As for throwing a book against the wall I don't remember ever doing so.] Sometimes I will give up on reading a book especially if it has too much potty humor or stuff that reads like it is written by a 12 year old boy. The other thing that bothers me is incongruence. I have read some books by well know authors that have been filled with glaring lack of continuity. it is as if the author forgot what they wrote two chapters before. I want to read a story not just the current fad in how to shock the reader.

Someone who just went by Anonymous said:

“What makes a book unforgettable for me is that I learn something from it, even though it’s fantasy.

Fenix (BLN) said:

“In answer to your question on what causes me to call a book ‘good’ or ‘bad’ – realistic characters with strongly consistent dialog is, by far, the hook for me. The scenes, storyline, and history are also considerations, but I must be able to identify, empathize, or feel compelled to ‘know more’ about the ‘people’ in the story.

The thing that makes a book unforgettable for me is when the combination of character, dialog, and story come together to deliver more than distraction and entertainment — when the lessons they learn and the experiences they have reflect something meaningful and insightful about the human condition.

The thing that makes me want to toss a book across the room is when I can predict

what’s going to happen… and I’m right.

“Any More” said:

”Unforgettable book is when the author grabs you from the first page with drama, intense emotion that can be seen while reading the words. Throw against the wall…ones that leave you hanging in the end knowing there is no other book coming out. I love mystical, fantasy, vampires and books that just keep me going through each sequel.”

Sue said:

“ I would call a book “good” when the characters stories captures my attention so much that I don’t want to stop reading. It is also when the characters background are so well-thought out that they seem like real live person. I also consider a novel “good” when I cannot predict the plot twists and the plots keeps me guessing. I would consider the book “bad” when it seems like the heroine is a Mary-Sue and her characterization is quite flat. Also, if the language the author employs are so horrendous that I cringe every time I read a sentence.”

So – couple of threads that can be pulled out of this particular set of comments, then. On the “bad stuff” front: character and/or plot idiocy of high degree; inconsistency and incongruity; predictability; lack of closure; dishonesty on the part of the author about the true nature of their characters; out-of-period characters who talk or behave as though they belong in a different time or place than the one in which the author has placed them; bad or just immature writing skills on the basic language level.

“Good” stuff: characters who are good enough to feel as though they might live if allowed out of their current novel milieu; well-thought-out settings and backgrounds; drama, intense emotion; a storyline that is meaningful, insightful, or that has something to teach; the kind of ending that makes you want to pick up the book and start reading it again from the beginning.

I’m sure I missed some – but as there is a limited scope to an essay like this anyway, let’s just go with those to start with.

Let’s start with the bad news. Authors, take note and avoid – if you want your books to remain unacquainted with readers’ walls;

1. “I Don’t Care What Happens To These People” – a phrase known as the Eight Deadly Words, and something that encapsulates a fair number of the complaints on the list above. It’s character stupidity in an idiot plot. It’s characters who pretend to be things they are not, until they are “rumbled” somehow and the author gleefully points in quite a different direction entirely and says oh look over HERE because that’s what I really meant for this character to be – but because they’ve already pretended once, and thus lied, the reader finds that the characters are now pretending to be the things that they are supposed to be, and it’s just as unbelievable. It’s characters who manufacture drama where there isn’t any because the storyline of the book needs to be drawn out, and, well, being dumb and getting into worse trouble than ever they needed to will drag a character kicking and screaming through a few more pages of plot.

Not the reader, apparently. A savvy reader will NOT follow an idiot character into a complete quagmire without a decent reason to do so – a reason that gives at least a hope that the character in question will basically do something intelligent enough (or believable enough) to justify their existence.

No, this does not mean that every character you ever write has to be deeply sympathetic and full of sweetness and light (oy, Mary Sue moment, beware) – dark characters with deep flaws are more than welcome to apply for a residence permit in a decent novel, but they have to be able to engage the reader somehow. Perhaps not outright sympathy and complete self-identification – in fact that is damn near impossible anyway – but at the very least a glimmer of understanding as to those characters’ motivations, and a basic contract between writer, character and reader that the troubles and travails that the character is being put through are actually there to MEAN something, and not just to (a) prove that the character is an idiot, (b) prove that the author hasn’t thought the plot through to a plausible conclusion, (c) the author is a sadistic sod who actually hates those characters with a cordial passion and is itching to punish them for existing at all, (d) prove that the character is so flat and two dimensional that it cannot change, no matter WHAT is thrown at it, and comes out of the worst of wringers with exactly the same set of attitudes and convictions with which it went in, or (e) all of the above to some degree.

A story is about change. If there is no change, if you cannot tell the beginning of the story from the end of the story and the characters have learned NOTHING while you’ve watched them blunder through the plot, why did you bother reading the story at all? You just know that at some time in the future you are going to want to have those couple of hours back. And you don’t care WHAT happens to those characters next, because you’ve figured out that they won’t learn anything from that, either. They’re stuck there in limbo, left hanging. Trust me, the worst of fates. At least if a character is loathed it’s a valid emotional response. If a reader is left feeling merely annoyed or irritable, the character is doomed to a particular circle of hell called Oblivion.

2. I was just entertained hugely by a still photograph where a carefully reconstructed movie set full of     lovingly selected vintage cars was thoroughly wrecked by the unsanctioned presence of a modern vehicle visible behind one of the antiques, displaying a saucy rounded rear with amber and red rear lights, all quite out of character with the period in question. Authors, do your homework – movies get combed for things like this by continuity editors, and books ought to have their own continuity plans in play. If you truly honestly can’t remember that your character lost an arm in an epic battle upstream in the plot somewhere, WRITE IT DOWN AND KEEP IT HANDY – it will help when you suddenly realise that you have him enfolding the lady of his dreams in a passionate two-armed embrace at the end of your book. If your broadsword in chapter 1 turns into a black-powder blunderbuss at the end of chapter 5, you’ve got problems. Keep it straight. This is sometimes much harder than it looks – big books with big story arcs have lots of niggly details which can get lost through the cracks but seriously – it is SO worth going over that MS just-one-more-time, even when you think that you cannot stand to look at it again, because every one of these niggles that YOU find and fix is one less potential trouble spot for your readers down the line somewhere. Yes, in certain paths to publication you will be treated to a copy-edit before the book is released for general distribution (and if you’ve never seen a copy-edit stage MS before, brace yourself, this is scary stuff) – and this is a copy editor’s job, combing the MS for niggles. But you cannot allow yourself to rely on that. Be as thorough when you’re writing and pre-vetting your own MS as you possibly can.

Let me tell you just how easy it is to get caught up in it all. In “The Secrets of Jin Shei”, an early draft thereof, I handed the sheaf of pages to a friend and beta-reader to look through. She did, and then stopped, stared, and asked if she could ask me a question – and pointed to a line in the MS which said: “Summoned by the noise, the deaf servant ran into the room…”

I had WRITTEN THAT. Two readers I trusted – my husband, my agent – had both read this version of the MS… and had failed to have their eye snag on it. There but for the grace of God goes an author with serious egg on her face, if that had been allowed to slip through. Yes, it’s funny NOW – I would have been cringing about it if I knew it was still there in the published book…

3. Predictability – oh, the cardinal sin which leads, eventually, to the a certain incarnation of the Eight Deadly Words. It’s a version of the Idiot Plot which inadvertently includes the reader in the definition of “idiot” – as though a savvy reader is incapable of extrapolating from clue and circumstance. Trust me, if the reader can figure it out six pages in advance… SO CAN YOUR CHARACTERS. Or should. If they don’t they may be too stupid for your plot. If your reader can flip through the book like a flat stone flung at a pond, skipping along the surface barely touching the water except at one or two points, why would they bother reading the stuff in between? If I can read page six and close the book and tell you what happens in the next two chapters… and then open the book again and prove myself right… just what is my incentive to read those two chapters? What is my guarantee that they will bring me anything of value… except possibly the conviction and certainty that I can tell from them exactly how the book ends (and can then put it away and call it read…)?

The corollary to this, of course, is pretentious twaddle which wraps the plot in so much secrecy and cotton wool that it simply becomes too much work wading through it all on the off chance that something might actually be hiding at the center. Finding the right amount and the correct level of foreshadowing plot points without giving them away or using them to confuse the reader into babbling in tongues is a difficult job. Think balance-walking across the Niagara Falls on a tightrope. Without a safety net.

4.  Lack of closure – make an end. Leaving your reader floundering at the back of the book trying to find a missing last chapter is just bad form.

5. Out-of-periodicity – this one gets filed under two headings, really. One is the basic one of Doing Your Research. If you know that you will be writing about a specific period of history (even if you are just basing your story on such a period) keep it straight in your head.

You cannot write about clockwork – or have your characters have knowledge of clockwork – if you happen to be writing about a nomadic horse-riding hunter and warrior tribe whose general level of technological civilisation is how to build a superior travelling tent which can be quickly and easily put up at night and dismantled the next morning when you move your camp on. You will not be telling time by a wrist watch under those circumstances. You will be looking at the stars and having a basic knowledge of telling how far the night is advanced just by lifting your eyes to the heavens.

You can write a plucky and feisty heroine – but if she lives in certain cultures she will still be treated like a girl, and you have to make a DAMNED good case for it if she is not. Women in Marie Antoinette’s time did NOT have the vote. Women of certain classes in certain cultures had a very limited number of careers open to them (and again, if you flout that you better make a damned good case for it). Upper class Roman matrons grew up in a world where it was perfectly okay to own slave girls – and they would not, under normal circumstances, be agitating for emancipation of those slaves. Neither would most of the slaves – in those days it was called a slave rebellion, and you DO remember what happened to Spartacus, don’t you…? If you foment unrest amongst the slaves, be prepared for the price you might have to pay. Others – others rooted into their time and milieu and mores with more verisimilitude – will have a vested interest in the status quo and will probably take a dim view of a 21^st century social conscience. (Which, of course is all fine… if that is the story you INTENDED to tell…)

You cannot have modern idiom in the mouths of people who would not have a CLUE about the meaning of the thing they had just uttered. Certain words and phrases had a pretty well documented advent, and you can research this. They will also have a certain concept of time which is equally well documented Please don’t have your dark-ages cobbler look up from his work and tell his woman he’ll be in for tea in five minutes. Minutes were not exactly something that could be accurately measured back then.

6.  Bad Writing, and Bad Storytelling. Oh, la. Nothing helps here except a willingness to learn from your mistakes, and the need to accept the fact that you can only get better at it with practice. The good news is that the actual CRAFT of writing can be fairly adequately taught in class – even if you do self-study. Grammar has rules. If you know you’re a bad speller and spend some time double checking your work (or find a willing beta-reader who can do it for you – do NOT rely on your writing software’s spellcheckers…) this is not an insurmountable problem

But that’s just one kind of Bad Writing. The other kind – the Bad Storytelling kind – is the kind that is much harder to cure. The kind that is just Bad Story. Nobody can give you a good story to tell – they aren’t handed out on silver platters. You have one, or you don’t have one. There are plenty of people who THINK they might have one and are hard to convince otherwise – but sometimes there really is no there there, so to speak. Go hunting for another plot bunny.

One of the things that came out in the commentary was that sometimes Bad Writing looks like “something written by a 12-year-old… and you can tell”. Sure, there are 12-year-olds out there who are geniuses. THEY ARE RARE. Most of the time the writing of the young… looks like the writing of the young. You cannot write about life – even about a fantasy life – until you’ve had just a LITTLE bit of experience in living it.

If you’re fourteen and reading this and think I am picking on you… don’t. I was fourteen once, too. I got over it. So will you. And if you keep practising, so will your writing. The years that are gathered into the folders of our lives bring their own gifts – they bring knowledge, understanding, subtlety, sarcasm, the sting of loss and the fireworks of triumph. Sometimes you just have to wait for them.

Sometimes it never comes. Just because a human being can speak does not mean that they can use language with a sufficiently adroit hand to write – writing is a very different beast.

There are those of us who are willing to let the gifts of the written word possess us, so that we can give them back wrapped in story; there are those who think they are willing, but scratch and claw against surrender all the way even while believing that they remain chosen and will fight to the death anyone who might try to tell them that the symbiosis isn’t working; there are those who don’t want the writing bug, and step back, and are content with learning about it (both its triumphs and disasters) at second-hand from those of us who carry its mark. That’s as well; those of us who write absolutely need those of us who only sit and read; without one another, neither could survive. Those in the middle – those who think they’re doing well but who commit the sins which the readers have brought up and which were the basis for this tale – be warned. There be traps in the road. They be lined with pointed sticks. Take the wrong turns of the writing game at your own risk.

Eh. This turned out rather long.

We’ll do the “good stuff” next month….