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I know. This is a long post. :-) But it's going to have to last the month. I plan on going into extensive rewrites for the next few weeks, but I'll try to check in on everyone's blogs on the weekends.
As writers, we've all been there. Cozied up in an easy chair, we break open a brand new book, mmm...breathe in that untouched aroma of fresh pages, and let the words swallow us whole. Then our eyes stumble. Once, twice, three times. Before you know it, we've thrown the book across the room and are on our feet, fuming and furious that this atrocity ever got published. How can any story with so many blaring mistakes and such weak writing have ever made it past an agent, much less an editor, and onto the printing press? What a monumental waste of paper and ink!
Didn't those publishers see the wooden dialogue? What about the info-dump in chapter one, or the dream sequence that hopped from one POV to the next? And there were at least seven commas in sentence # fifteen on page ten.
Hmm. Is the book really so bad? Would we have noticed these "blaring" discrepancies had we not read every book out there on "How to write", had we not taken every creative writing class offered at the local community college and attended each and every workshop / conference made accessible to our finances and locale? Would we have cared, were we not inundated every moment with rules, rules, and more rules, that will assure us acceptance and ultimately publication with some big New York house?
No. Something happens when an avid reader learns to write (I'm sure it's no different than when a newly-established film producer / special effects designer watches someone else's movie). Books that in the past used to carry them to new and wondrous places, can't carry them past the lumpy cushion on the loveseat. It's a catch 22, as I can't argue the fact that my internal editor has helped my writing improve by leaps and bounds, but yet it's stifled my enjoyment of the written word to some degree. The innocence is gone. And I know I'm not alone.
Jessica Faust posted a subject today on BookEnds' blog that I'm sure all of us, as aspiring authors, can relate to. A frustrated writer having trouble getting an agent wrote in, wondering why there are so many "bad" books that get agented then published. Wondering how they can possibly make it past the rigorous strictures of querying, submitting, and slush piles to be a shiny new title on the shelves when they are so lacking internally. Problem is, the writer forgot to clarify what she thought constituted a "bad" book.
Was it:
1) adverbs dominating each sentence?
2) too many passives?
3) excessive use of "that"? (my personal weakness--grrr)
4) comma splices, dangling participles, punctuation faux pas, etc...?
5) head hopping?
6) cookie cutter cardboard characters or wooden dialogue?
7) unappealing plot / ending?
8) a flowery or sparse prose?
9) information dumping?
Okay. So, numbers 1-4, I would have to sympathize with said writer. Nothing is more frustrating as an author, when we see someone slide into home plate and be counted SAFE when they're breaking all of the grammatical rules we've been taught as writers. The rules we bang our heads against the walls day in and day out to uphold. I'm so anal myself, that before I finish revisions on a MS, I'll go through with the FIND tool and search for all "was-derivatives", "thats" and LY adverbs in an effort to make those sentences stronger. Yet from time to time, a writer will get in despite negligence toward these rules--though it's rare. Still, it's frustrating to any writer that's trying to put out their very best from the get-go. But should we let it ruin what might be a perfectly good STORY by dwelling on the errors instead of skimming over them and reading on to find the meat? There had to be something there that made an agent and editor love it enough to accept it despite its faults. Aren't you curious what that was?
And what about numbers 5-9? There comes a point when we cross the line from grammatical to personal writing style, and some of the "rules" we've learned as writers can bleed into voice to be counted as style, much as it makes us choke to admit it. Therein resides the last five points. I've read enough online book reviews to know that such things are subjective. Where one reader sees wooden dialogue, another will think the dialogue sings. While one sees the prose as too drippy and lyrical, another is swept away by the beautiful flow. Head hopping? That can be argued as the author's personal approach to internal narrative, so long as they can handle it in a way that doesn't jolt the reader from the story.
There is a magic in and of itself, when an author has learned to bend the "rules" we've all been taught, and can do it in such a way that the typical reader won't notice ... in such a way that they aren't shaken from the story but instead are left floating in a suspension of blind faith until the story's final sentence.
Maybe, as writers, when we put on our reading caps, we need to borrow that line from Pirates of the Caribbean, "Hang the code, and hang the rules. They're more like guidelines anyway."
I'm going to try it myself. I'm nostalgic for my past innocence. I've missed the decadence of pleasure reading. I want to smell the roses through someone else's nose, to taste the flavor of rain on their tongue.
I want to get lost in a story again.
Happy writing AND reading to all!
For a related post on this subject, visit Elizabeth Moon's blog on "Why Bad Books Work."
As writers, we've all been there. Cozied up in an easy chair, we break open a brand new book, mmm...breathe in that untouched aroma of fresh pages, and let the words swallow us whole. Then our eyes stumble. Once, twice, three times. Before you know it, we've thrown the book across the room and are on our feet, fuming and furious that this atrocity ever got published. How can any story with so many blaring mistakes and such weak writing have ever made it past an agent, much less an editor, and onto the printing press? What a monumental waste of paper and ink!
Didn't those publishers see the wooden dialogue? What about the info-dump in chapter one, or the dream sequence that hopped from one POV to the next? And there were at least seven commas in sentence # fifteen on page ten.
Hmm. Is the book really so bad? Would we have noticed these "blaring" discrepancies had we not read every book out there on "How to write", had we not taken every creative writing class offered at the local community college and attended each and every workshop / conference made accessible to our finances and locale? Would we have cared, were we not inundated every moment with rules, rules, and more rules, that will assure us acceptance and ultimately publication with some big New York house?
No. Something happens when an avid reader learns to write (I'm sure it's no different than when a newly-established film producer / special effects designer watches someone else's movie). Books that in the past used to carry them to new and wondrous places, can't carry them past the lumpy cushion on the loveseat. It's a catch 22, as I can't argue the fact that my internal editor has helped my writing improve by leaps and bounds, but yet it's stifled my enjoyment of the written word to some degree. The innocence is gone. And I know I'm not alone.
Jessica Faust posted a subject today on BookEnds' blog that I'm sure all of us, as aspiring authors, can relate to. A frustrated writer having trouble getting an agent wrote in, wondering why there are so many "bad" books that get agented then published. Wondering how they can possibly make it past the rigorous strictures of querying, submitting, and slush piles to be a shiny new title on the shelves when they are so lacking internally. Problem is, the writer forgot to clarify what she thought constituted a "bad" book.
Was it:
1) adverbs dominating each sentence?
2) too many passives?
3) excessive use of "that"? (my personal weakness--grrr)
4) comma splices, dangling participles, punctuation faux pas, etc...?
5) head hopping?
6) cookie cutter cardboard characters or wooden dialogue?
7) unappealing plot / ending?
8) a flowery or sparse prose?
9) information dumping?
Okay. So, numbers 1-4, I would have to sympathize with said writer. Nothing is more frustrating as an author, when we see someone slide into home plate and be counted SAFE when they're breaking all of the grammatical rules we've been taught as writers. The rules we bang our heads against the walls day in and day out to uphold. I'm so anal myself, that before I finish revisions on a MS, I'll go through with the FIND tool and search for all "was-derivatives", "thats" and LY adverbs in an effort to make those sentences stronger. Yet from time to time, a writer will get in despite negligence toward these rules--though it's rare. Still, it's frustrating to any writer that's trying to put out their very best from the get-go. But should we let it ruin what might be a perfectly good STORY by dwelling on the errors instead of skimming over them and reading on to find the meat? There had to be something there that made an agent and editor love it enough to accept it despite its faults. Aren't you curious what that was?
And what about numbers 5-9? There comes a point when we cross the line from grammatical to personal writing style, and some of the "rules" we've learned as writers can bleed into voice to be counted as style, much as it makes us choke to admit it. Therein resides the last five points. I've read enough online book reviews to know that such things are subjective. Where one reader sees wooden dialogue, another will think the dialogue sings. While one sees the prose as too drippy and lyrical, another is swept away by the beautiful flow. Head hopping? That can be argued as the author's personal approach to internal narrative, so long as they can handle it in a way that doesn't jolt the reader from the story.
There is a magic in and of itself, when an author has learned to bend the "rules" we've all been taught, and can do it in such a way that the typical reader won't notice ... in such a way that they aren't shaken from the story but instead are left floating in a suspension of blind faith until the story's final sentence.
Maybe, as writers, when we put on our reading caps, we need to borrow that line from Pirates of the Caribbean, "Hang the code, and hang the rules. They're more like guidelines anyway."
I'm going to try it myself. I'm nostalgic for my past innocence. I've missed the decadence of pleasure reading. I want to smell the roses through someone else's nose, to taste the flavor of rain on their tongue.
I want to get lost in a story again.
Happy writing AND reading to all!
For a related post on this subject, visit Elizabeth Moon's blog on "Why Bad Books Work."
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