CRAFT: Musings and peeves
Sep. 21st, 2006 01:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shalannaA couple of things that just bug the heck out of me when I encounter them in published novels:
1. Thoughts that "swirl around inside" a character's mind or head. Or thoughts that fight, argue, whirl, or battle for a character's attention. I don't even like "pushed the thought out of her mind" any more, though that didn't usedta bug me so much. It's a convention and a type of shorthand, but it isn't working for me any more.
My thoughts do not swirl, twirl, or curl. They're typically linear, or sometimes I'll have thoughts that are almost simultaneous and branch off like a decision tree's paths, but they don't compete inside my mind. They are sometimes nonverbal and certainly aren't the logical complete sentences that so many authors portray them as, in fact. I'm turning against "he thought/she thought," as well, because most readers are trained so thoroughly to expect a close, intimate third person with a very close psychic distance, and that usually means that the narrative can carry the character's thoughts. This wasn't always the case; omniscient POVs used to be all the rage. Not now, though.
I was *almost* charmed and won over when I ran across a line in a mystery that said something like, "Her thoughts lined up on either side of the Mason-Dixon line--the corpus callosum--and started taking potshots in preparation for a civil war," and then it followed up with a neat metaphor for the thoughts that the main character was having. But ultimately I wanted the thoughts just to show up as part of the vivid, continuous dream. Just state the thoughts and show that the character is working something out. That's all you need.
2. Characters who can do everything after a short period of reading about it or watching somebody. Too many of these get-up-and-go characters never fail at any skill they try to learn or have any things they just can't do. For example, they can cook and sew and put a new roof on the house and fly a plane and dance the tango and . . . whatever comes up. I *always* hit my thumb with the hammer. I get tired, have to take bathroom breaks, need to take a class to learn certain skills. Real people always have their failings and foibles.
Related to this is the narrowing of the "cast" in so many novels. Everyone in novels now seems to be a love interest or the devil. I never see the eccentric comic-relief foil. Maybe this is following the lead of films, where you never see an actual older person playing the elder statesman or grandparent . . . everyone's young and beautiful. Real life just isn't that way, folks, and isn't designed to be.
I suppose all fiction is fantasy, though.
# # #
It's becoming ever more obvious that my problem is that agents (at least) don't like my STORIES. And this is a far deeper problem than their not liking my writing, character names, etc. It's probably not fixable, in fact. It goes way down into the reasons that an author will spend so much time with a tale trying to get it down for others to experience.
My stories come from the Girls in the Basement [TM] who send up a bubble now and then (or maybe a trial balloon) to spark some narrative about some premise that means something to me philosophically, an idea that I would like to explore and spend time with as the characters who fit that story grow and change. That's why they're my stories. And that is the only kind of story I can manage to write. I've said before that it's quite possible that I can't write the kinds of stories that will sell nowadays. If I could steal somebody ELSE'S story and rewrite it in my voice, that might work . . . but I can't find any stories that appeal to me to that extent. An author spends a helluva lot of time with the characters and events in his or her book, and that means she'd better be pretty enchanted with them from the get-go. I write the kinds of books I like to read. There is a relationship (probably an equation) explaining why I don't find much out there that I want to read and why I don't write stuff that's sufficiently like it. This relationship should end in divorce.
It's late. And y'all don't need to hear all this again.
1. Thoughts that "swirl around inside" a character's mind or head. Or thoughts that fight, argue, whirl, or battle for a character's attention. I don't even like "pushed the thought out of her mind" any more, though that didn't usedta bug me so much. It's a convention and a type of shorthand, but it isn't working for me any more.
My thoughts do not swirl, twirl, or curl. They're typically linear, or sometimes I'll have thoughts that are almost simultaneous and branch off like a decision tree's paths, but they don't compete inside my mind. They are sometimes nonverbal and certainly aren't the logical complete sentences that so many authors portray them as, in fact. I'm turning against "he thought/she thought," as well, because most readers are trained so thoroughly to expect a close, intimate third person with a very close psychic distance, and that usually means that the narrative can carry the character's thoughts. This wasn't always the case; omniscient POVs used to be all the rage. Not now, though.
I was *almost* charmed and won over when I ran across a line in a mystery that said something like, "Her thoughts lined up on either side of the Mason-Dixon line--the corpus callosum--and started taking potshots in preparation for a civil war," and then it followed up with a neat metaphor for the thoughts that the main character was having. But ultimately I wanted the thoughts just to show up as part of the vivid, continuous dream. Just state the thoughts and show that the character is working something out. That's all you need.
2. Characters who can do everything after a short period of reading about it or watching somebody. Too many of these get-up-and-go characters never fail at any skill they try to learn or have any things they just can't do. For example, they can cook and sew and put a new roof on the house and fly a plane and dance the tango and . . . whatever comes up. I *always* hit my thumb with the hammer. I get tired, have to take bathroom breaks, need to take a class to learn certain skills. Real people always have their failings and foibles.
Related to this is the narrowing of the "cast" in so many novels. Everyone in novels now seems to be a love interest or the devil. I never see the eccentric comic-relief foil. Maybe this is following the lead of films, where you never see an actual older person playing the elder statesman or grandparent . . . everyone's young and beautiful. Real life just isn't that way, folks, and isn't designed to be.
I suppose all fiction is fantasy, though.
It's becoming ever more obvious that my problem is that agents (at least) don't like my STORIES. And this is a far deeper problem than their not liking my writing, character names, etc. It's probably not fixable, in fact. It goes way down into the reasons that an author will spend so much time with a tale trying to get it down for others to experience.
My stories come from the Girls in the Basement [TM] who send up a bubble now and then (or maybe a trial balloon) to spark some narrative about some premise that means something to me philosophically, an idea that I would like to explore and spend time with as the characters who fit that story grow and change. That's why they're my stories. And that is the only kind of story I can manage to write. I've said before that it's quite possible that I can't write the kinds of stories that will sell nowadays. If I could steal somebody ELSE'S story and rewrite it in my voice, that might work . . . but I can't find any stories that appeal to me to that extent. An author spends a helluva lot of time with the characters and events in his or her book, and that means she'd better be pretty enchanted with them from the get-go. I write the kinds of books I like to read. There is a relationship (probably an equation) explaining why I don't find much out there that I want to read and why I don't write stuff that's sufficiently like it. This relationship should end in divorce.
It's late. And y'all don't need to hear all this again.
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no subject
Date: 2006-09-21 06:45 am (UTC)Otherwise, yeah, on instant experts. Unless there's a reason.
no subject
Date: 2006-09-21 08:28 am (UTC)The woefully incomplete version: sometimes my thoughts are not only linear, but punctuated and arranged in paragraphs; and there are also times when my thoughts do indeed swirl.
no subject
Date: 2006-09-21 10:51 am (UTC)Smetimes it's not the fact of the thoughts swirling, it's just the words the author chooses that puts me off. (I think I would have been impatient at the Mason-Dixon bit, but I can see where it would work for other people.)
Instant experts--a close corollary is the action-movie/thriller convention in which the quiet librarian becomes the remorseless killing machine overnight. Or the law student outwits international spies, over and over. Come now. The "regular person" protagonist is interesting because they can't do all those things--they're not James Bond. The point is working the character up to the point of being tough or cunning or just angry enough to do these things.
I once thought of a subplot in which a group of people keep encountering ridiculous dangers, and saving themselves by consulting The Worse Case Scenario Survival Guide--only to later realize it was possession of the guide that kept attracting all these unlikely dangers. Sadly, I couldn't think of a main plot to carry the subplot. It might have worked as very silly fan ficiton, had I had a fandom to use it in.
no subject
Date: 2006-09-21 02:22 pm (UTC)What makes a story a 'Shalanna' story?
(There were a couple of memes going around a while ago - ten things I'll do in all my novels/ten things I'll never do in a novel, that sort of thing. That might be a starting point.)
If the stories - rather than your treatment of them, or your micro-writing skills - are the problem, then that might help you to ferret out _why_.
As for taking someone else's plot, that might be a writing exercise - take a classic novel and set it in modern times, or vice versa, or with dragons, and see *why* you don't want to do it.
The Girls in the Basement
Date: 2006-09-22 01:02 pm (UTC)Don't know what age these women are, but my take would be for ladies of the "Desperate Housewives" demographic grouping. Your mileage may vary.
You can take it from there, if it's at all intriguing,
Re: The Girls in the Basement
Date: 2006-09-22 02:32 pm (UTC)