Writing fiction is surpassingly hard.
Oct. 3rd, 2019 08:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickI don't write fiction much and when I do, it's about as much fun as banging out chin-ups (if I could do chin-ups, which I cannot despite having fairly decent upper-body strength and the ability at almost-fifty and 170 lbs, to shinny up a swingset pole). Therefore, I have some sympathy for people who are writing fiction. It's a lot like work. And so I sometimes pony up actual money earned by the sweat of my brow (this past week running a vibrating plate floor sander over ancient oak floors to remove carpet cement and what seemed like fifty layers of varnish) to read fiction written by other people.
Recently, on a fistful ofdollars suggestions, I picked up The Lies of Locke Lamora, which was delightful fun and enjoyable enough to keep me awake and reading until 3 AM. Now, I read fairly briskly. (Here, "briskly" means I can pick up Jemisin's Inheritance Trilogy in an omnibus cat-killer format for twenty bucks on a Friday evening while waiting for the movie hour to arrive and subsequently plow through it over the a weekend, said weekend also including things like sleep, eating, showering, leaving the house, riding my horse, etc. An average light fiction paperback of 250 to 300 pages lasts about two and a half hours. Nonfiction generally takes longer and I am usually reading it for different reasons than light fiction, so... yeah. Li-Tra-Chure that I am reading for... some reason other than The Story also slows me down. But anyway, you get the idea. I am to text as a hot knife is to butter, that sort of thing.) So, I jumped into this Locke Lamora book on the phone (I read mostly on my phone via the Kindle app these days because it's a very compact way to haul books around and I can have several in process.) at some point after work Friday and when I looked up at the end of the book it was 3 AM. (Typical Time To Read: 11 hrs 45 min.)
That was fun enough that I pulled the next two books and read them as well. I'm done with them (they were fine) and the week is not yet over. They're fun books. Locke pines a bit for his redheaded woman, but mostly I like the books and the way they roll along. There's enough plotty in them to amuse me, worldbuilding is kind of Fantasy Europe With Serial Numbers Filed Off And Stirred (which is adorable), the conceit of Gentleman Bastards is a delight, and Best Of All his prose does not fucking annoy me.
Now, aside from Actual Flesh People suggesting books, Amazon's Kindle has a rec engine. It suggests to me things based on things I have read, and I am good with that. But, for writers of serial fiction, I sometimes get done with the author before the author is done with the series. This DOES NOT bother me. I also get done with television serieses before they wrap. And that doesn't bother me, either. End of The X-Files? Fuck if I know. I quit watching before it ended. End of Breaking Bad? I read the wiki and omitted the last season. House MD? No clue. Quit two seasons before the end. And so it goes with books. I really, really liked C. Stross's Laundry Files. They were damn fun reads. But I'm done now and there are still books left. Seanan McGuire's InCryptid series? Fun. But, I'm done, author is not.
My willingness to give up before the author is done means that sometimes Amazon has difficulty understanding what I want out of a fic rec. *sigh* I skip over the recs that are based on the assumption that I want the next book after the one I stopped on.
Mostly I go by synopsis and star ratings. Synopsis is fine, gives me some idea of what's going on in the book and what style of thing it is. If I'm in the mood for, say, Space Torturer and the book is about Fantasy Thief, I'm not going to be happy. If I want Dynastic Problems of Succession and instead I get Arranged Marriages Suck, that's also not a win.
Star ratings though... Imma have to give up on that shit. Star ratings for books are apparently handed out by idiot mouthbreathers who tolerate a lot of shit in their prose that I can't stand. Just because I'm reading space torturer porn (Fleet Inquisitor, Susan Matthews) or Fantasy Machiavelli + Zombies (Prince of Thorns, Mark Lawrence) or Zombie Future (The Girl With All The Gifts, M. R. Carey) or Fanfic In Book Clothing (Captive Prince Trilogy, C. S. Pacat and yes, take my money. Do. Take more of my money.) this does not mean I am willing to tolerate shit writing in pursuit of my lowbrow amusements.
There's a certain level of competence that I expect from fanfic, which I drink from the firehose for free. If I have laid out money earned at the Lordly rate of $12.00 an hour by unclogging toilets and running floor sanders and whatnot for SOMETHING TO READ that will likely not outlast a LoTR marathon, I would like it to meet the same level of competence I expect from Malfoy Sr. and Harry Potter in jail together singing french nursery rhymes. (No, seriously. It was good. Delightful.)
And so let me tell you about this book rec that Amazon convinced me to spend all of $2.99 on, what is called as follows: The Thief Who Pulled On Trouble's Braids by Michael McClung. There were starred reviews. There were less-than-happy reviews, citing overly grimdark, but I fucking like grimdark, so that didn't put me off. If the less-than-happy reviews had said AUTHOR IS OVERLY FUCKING FOND OF SENTENCE FRAGMENTS THAT DO NOT ADD TO STORY OR PUNCH UP FLOW OF PROSE then I'd have been all hard pass but GDI, that is not what the less-than-happy reviews said.
Now, I have to read this book. I paid for it. I am GOING to fucking read it, but it is not pleasing me. Three pages in (37 "kindle" pages, actually, I counted. Font size is not teeny because I read in bed without my glasses and need to be able to see the text bifocal-free.) and I am seriously considering editing the fuck out of it and sending it back to the author as a .pdf.
This is a Real Book, a thing it's harder to discern in these our digital times. It's a real book. It has a real publisher. It's got a fucking print edition. Real cover art. Someone, somewhere has edited this fucker, though not very well.
THIS BOOK IS NOT AS WELL-WRITTEN AS THE ABSOLUTELY FUCKING CHARMING WILDFIRE UNICORN by Zoe Chant, a fucking shifter romance novel about FIREFIGHTING ANIMAL SHIFTERS AND THE WOMEN WHO LOVE THEM. Look, I was blushing when I bought that shit from Amazon (wirelessly -- over the internet, nobody can see you lowbrow over your fucking delightful shifter romance novels) because I was 100% certain it was schlock and I bought it for the express purpose of making fun of its schlocky incompetence. But it was sweet and cute and surprisingly competently put together. And so I did not mock it. I haven't bought the rest of them but I am considering buying some more of them as a guilty pleasure. They just... read too fast for the amount they cost. (See above about the "I read briskly" problem.)
Allow me to illustrate the problem with the prose. Original is in italics. What I'd prefer, or at least an alternative that I think sucks less is in not-italics.
----------------------------
"Hello, Amra," he said with that boyish smile that tended to get him past doors he wasn't supposed to get past. He stood nonchalantly at the top of the stairs, one hand on the splintered wooden railing. Well, what was left of the railing.
"Hello, Amra," he said with a boyish smile that usually got him past doors he wasn't supposed to get past. He lounged at the top of my stairs, one hand draped over what was left of the splintered railing to give him an air of professional-quality nonchalance. He always did try too hard.
...
He was looking ragged. Dark bags under his eyes, stubble that had gone beyond enticingly rough to slovenly. The yellow-green shadow of an old, ugly bruise peeked above his sweat-stained linen collar. His honey-colored locks were greasy and limp.
He looked ragged -- dark bags under his eyes, stubble edging up on slovenly, and a yellow-green bruise showed above his sweat-stained linen collar. Even his honey-colored locks, usually his best feature, hung greasy and limp.
...
I put the bottle back in the pantry and came back out with a jug of Tambor's vile vintage. It was barely fit for cooking with. I dropped it in his lap. "Remind me never to give you anything worth drinking again."
I returned the bottle to the pantry and changed it for a jug of Tambor's plonk, barely fit for cooking. That, I dropped in Corbin's lap with exactly as much ceremony as the swill deserved. "Remind me never to give you anything worth drinking."
...
He sighed, reached into his voluminous shirt -- I'd thought he'd looked a little lumpy -- and brought out something smallish, wrapped in raw silk. About the size of my two fists put together. He held it out to me. "I need you to hold this for a while."
He sighed, reached into his voluminous shirt, and pulled out something wrapped in raw silk. It was small, the size of my two fists put together. He held it out to me. "I need you to hold this for a while."
...
I took it from his hands. Reluctantly. I was surprised at the weight. I knew without looking that it was gold. I unwrapped it, discovered I was right. It was a small statuette, one of the ugliest things I'd ever seen.
I held a bloated toad, two legs in the front and a tail in place of hoppers in the back. Pebbly skin. Two evil little emerald eyes, badly cut. It was devouring a tiny gold woman. She wasn't enjoying it. The artist must have been familiar with torment, though, because her small face was the very picture of it despite the crude overall rendering. All but her head and one arm were already in the belly of the beast. her hand reached out in a disturbing parody of a wave. I don't think that was the effect the artist intended.
I took the proffered object, albeit reluctantly. The weight surprised me -- it had to be gold. I flipped back the silk to reveal a small statuette, one of the ugliest things I'd ever seen.
Nestled in the silk was a bloated toad, sort-of. It had two legs in front but a tail where the hoppers should be. The skin was pebbly, an effect generated by small dots of gold on the surface, and little emeralds, badly cut, attempted to glitter for eyes. The almost-toad figurine was devouring a tiny gold woman and had gotten most of her down, save for her head and one arm. Her face was rendered in fairly competent torment, for all that the overall rendering was crude, but her arm reached out as if she were waving, a jarring effect that couldn't have been intentional.
----------------
This is in the first 3% of the book. Now I get that this is the author's story and not mine. Perhaps there are stylistic choices for the phrasing and stuff that I am currently not on board with because I am not far enough in the story. Perhaps. But there's not a lot going on here.
We have Main Character Amra, who is a thief. We have Corbin, delivering a plot device (the ugly toad-ish thing). And we're fucking 3% into the book. And the prose. Fragmentary, unskilled. It adds nothing. It pulls its punches. Three sentences do for one. But they're short. I guess there's that.
*sigh*
But let us compare the mess above with the opening bits of Locke Lamora (my commentary in parenthesis):
At the height of the long wet summer of the Seventy-seventh Year of Sendovani, the Thiefmaker of Camorr paid a sudden and unannounced visit to the Eyeless Priest at the Temple of Perelandro, desperately hoping to sell him the Lamora boy.
(We have here a lot of meat. There's a dynasty or something. Seventy-seventh Year. We're in Camorr. There's aThiefmaker, who... makes thieves? How? Sounds like an urban gig. He's seeing the Eyeless Priest at a Temple. I'm thinking urban. And he Wants To Sell A Boy, the Lamora Boy. Book is called Lies of Locke Lamora, so presumably that's the boy in question. SO MUCH to chew on, here.)
"Have I got a deal for you!" the Thiefmaker began, perhaps inauspiciously.
(We now see that the Thiefmaker is a shady dealer. Nobody uses "have I got a deal for you" as an opening line without being somewhat shady.)
"Another deal like Calo and Galdo, maybe?" said the Eyeless Priest. "I've still got my hands full training those giggling idiots out of every bad habit they picked up from you and replacing them with the bad habits I need."
(Eyeless priest is not a bad guy. He's also on decent terms with the Thiefmaker. They do deals regularly, for people that do not sound like they're slaves. "Hands full" is not what you say of slaves. It's friendlier than that. He's training them.
For what?)
"Now, Chains." The Thiefmaker shrugged. "I told you they were shit-flinging little monkeys when we made the deal, and it was good enough for you at the--"
(Thiefmaker has a nickname for the Eyeless Priest. They are guys who know each other. This is not a super-formal relationship.)
"Or maybe another deal like Sabetha?" The priest's richer, deeper voice chased the Thiefmaker's objection right back down his throat. "I'm sure you recall charging me everything but my dead mother's kneecaps for her. I should've paid you in copper and watched you spring a rupture trying to haul it all away."
(Ah, ok. This is haggling. They will eventually reach a deal for our titular character as they have reached deals for the three mentioned.)
-------------------
And, spoiler alert, you have now encountered -- at least in passing -- all but two of the GOOD GUYS CHARACTERS of the book. There's Chains, who trains Lamora and Sabetha and Calo and Galdo. And we KNOW about the training part, he mentions it in passing. We're missing Jean and Bug, who arrive a bit later, but we're halfway down the first page and we have most of the major goodish-guys players in the book AND THEIR RELATIONSHIPS TO EACH OTHER AND SOME OF THEIR BACKSTORIES. We don't have the bad guys yet, but give the author a minute... this is page one, here, we're just getting underway. We have some world-building going on, too. We know Chains is the Eyeless Priest at the Temple, but he doesn't sound very religious. What's up with that? There's no Bless You or My Son or anything, but there's giggling idiots and bad habits. Locke Lamora book is getting a fuckload more done than our Amra book.
Start as you mean to go on. But on I must go for I have spent good money on this thing. *sigh*
Recently, on a fistful of
That was fun enough that I pulled the next two books and read them as well. I'm done with them (they were fine) and the week is not yet over. They're fun books. Locke pines a bit for his redheaded woman, but mostly I like the books and the way they roll along. There's enough plotty in them to amuse me, worldbuilding is kind of Fantasy Europe With Serial Numbers Filed Off And Stirred (which is adorable), the conceit of Gentleman Bastards is a delight, and Best Of All his prose does not fucking annoy me.
Now, aside from Actual Flesh People suggesting books, Amazon's Kindle has a rec engine. It suggests to me things based on things I have read, and I am good with that. But, for writers of serial fiction, I sometimes get done with the author before the author is done with the series. This DOES NOT bother me. I also get done with television serieses before they wrap. And that doesn't bother me, either. End of The X-Files? Fuck if I know. I quit watching before it ended. End of Breaking Bad? I read the wiki and omitted the last season. House MD? No clue. Quit two seasons before the end. And so it goes with books. I really, really liked C. Stross's Laundry Files. They were damn fun reads. But I'm done now and there are still books left. Seanan McGuire's InCryptid series? Fun. But, I'm done, author is not.
My willingness to give up before the author is done means that sometimes Amazon has difficulty understanding what I want out of a fic rec. *sigh* I skip over the recs that are based on the assumption that I want the next book after the one I stopped on.
Mostly I go by synopsis and star ratings. Synopsis is fine, gives me some idea of what's going on in the book and what style of thing it is. If I'm in the mood for, say, Space Torturer and the book is about Fantasy Thief, I'm not going to be happy. If I want Dynastic Problems of Succession and instead I get Arranged Marriages Suck, that's also not a win.
Star ratings though... Imma have to give up on that shit. Star ratings for books are apparently handed out by idiot mouthbreathers who tolerate a lot of shit in their prose that I can't stand. Just because I'm reading space torturer porn (Fleet Inquisitor, Susan Matthews) or Fantasy Machiavelli + Zombies (Prince of Thorns, Mark Lawrence) or Zombie Future (The Girl With All The Gifts, M. R. Carey) or Fanfic In Book Clothing (Captive Prince Trilogy, C. S. Pacat and yes, take my money. Do. Take more of my money.) this does not mean I am willing to tolerate shit writing in pursuit of my lowbrow amusements.
There's a certain level of competence that I expect from fanfic, which I drink from the firehose for free. If I have laid out money earned at the Lordly rate of $12.00 an hour by unclogging toilets and running floor sanders and whatnot for SOMETHING TO READ that will likely not outlast a LoTR marathon, I would like it to meet the same level of competence I expect from Malfoy Sr. and Harry Potter in jail together singing french nursery rhymes. (No, seriously. It was good. Delightful.)
And so let me tell you about this book rec that Amazon convinced me to spend all of $2.99 on, what is called as follows: The Thief Who Pulled On Trouble's Braids by Michael McClung. There were starred reviews. There were less-than-happy reviews, citing overly grimdark, but I fucking like grimdark, so that didn't put me off. If the less-than-happy reviews had said AUTHOR IS OVERLY FUCKING FOND OF SENTENCE FRAGMENTS THAT DO NOT ADD TO STORY OR PUNCH UP FLOW OF PROSE then I'd have been all hard pass but GDI, that is not what the less-than-happy reviews said.
Now, I have to read this book. I paid for it. I am GOING to fucking read it, but it is not pleasing me. Three pages in (37 "kindle" pages, actually, I counted. Font size is not teeny because I read in bed without my glasses and need to be able to see the text bifocal-free.) and I am seriously considering editing the fuck out of it and sending it back to the author as a .pdf.
This is a Real Book, a thing it's harder to discern in these our digital times. It's a real book. It has a real publisher. It's got a fucking print edition. Real cover art. Someone, somewhere has edited this fucker, though not very well.
THIS BOOK IS NOT AS WELL-WRITTEN AS THE ABSOLUTELY FUCKING CHARMING WILDFIRE UNICORN by Zoe Chant, a fucking shifter romance novel about FIREFIGHTING ANIMAL SHIFTERS AND THE WOMEN WHO LOVE THEM. Look, I was blushing when I bought that shit from Amazon (wirelessly -- over the internet, nobody can see you lowbrow over your fucking delightful shifter romance novels) because I was 100% certain it was schlock and I bought it for the express purpose of making fun of its schlocky incompetence. But it was sweet and cute and surprisingly competently put together. And so I did not mock it. I haven't bought the rest of them but I am considering buying some more of them as a guilty pleasure. They just... read too fast for the amount they cost. (See above about the "I read briskly" problem.)
Allow me to illustrate the problem with the prose. Original is in italics. What I'd prefer, or at least an alternative that I think sucks less is in not-italics.
----------------------------
"Hello, Amra," he said with that boyish smile that tended to get him past doors he wasn't supposed to get past. He stood nonchalantly at the top of the stairs, one hand on the splintered wooden railing. Well, what was left of the railing.
"Hello, Amra," he said with a boyish smile that usually got him past doors he wasn't supposed to get past. He lounged at the top of my stairs, one hand draped over what was left of the splintered railing to give him an air of professional-quality nonchalance. He always did try too hard.
...
He was looking ragged. Dark bags under his eyes, stubble that had gone beyond enticingly rough to slovenly. The yellow-green shadow of an old, ugly bruise peeked above his sweat-stained linen collar. His honey-colored locks were greasy and limp.
He looked ragged -- dark bags under his eyes, stubble edging up on slovenly, and a yellow-green bruise showed above his sweat-stained linen collar. Even his honey-colored locks, usually his best feature, hung greasy and limp.
...
I put the bottle back in the pantry and came back out with a jug of Tambor's vile vintage. It was barely fit for cooking with. I dropped it in his lap. "Remind me never to give you anything worth drinking again."
I returned the bottle to the pantry and changed it for a jug of Tambor's plonk, barely fit for cooking. That, I dropped in Corbin's lap with exactly as much ceremony as the swill deserved. "Remind me never to give you anything worth drinking."
...
He sighed, reached into his voluminous shirt -- I'd thought he'd looked a little lumpy -- and brought out something smallish, wrapped in raw silk. About the size of my two fists put together. He held it out to me. "I need you to hold this for a while."
He sighed, reached into his voluminous shirt, and pulled out something wrapped in raw silk. It was small, the size of my two fists put together. He held it out to me. "I need you to hold this for a while."
...
I took it from his hands. Reluctantly. I was surprised at the weight. I knew without looking that it was gold. I unwrapped it, discovered I was right. It was a small statuette, one of the ugliest things I'd ever seen.
I held a bloated toad, two legs in the front and a tail in place of hoppers in the back. Pebbly skin. Two evil little emerald eyes, badly cut. It was devouring a tiny gold woman. She wasn't enjoying it. The artist must have been familiar with torment, though, because her small face was the very picture of it despite the crude overall rendering. All but her head and one arm were already in the belly of the beast. her hand reached out in a disturbing parody of a wave. I don't think that was the effect the artist intended.
I took the proffered object, albeit reluctantly. The weight surprised me -- it had to be gold. I flipped back the silk to reveal a small statuette, one of the ugliest things I'd ever seen.
Nestled in the silk was a bloated toad, sort-of. It had two legs in front but a tail where the hoppers should be. The skin was pebbly, an effect generated by small dots of gold on the surface, and little emeralds, badly cut, attempted to glitter for eyes. The almost-toad figurine was devouring a tiny gold woman and had gotten most of her down, save for her head and one arm. Her face was rendered in fairly competent torment, for all that the overall rendering was crude, but her arm reached out as if she were waving, a jarring effect that couldn't have been intentional.
----------------
This is in the first 3% of the book. Now I get that this is the author's story and not mine. Perhaps there are stylistic choices for the phrasing and stuff that I am currently not on board with because I am not far enough in the story. Perhaps. But there's not a lot going on here.
We have Main Character Amra, who is a thief. We have Corbin, delivering a plot device (the ugly toad-ish thing). And we're fucking 3% into the book. And the prose. Fragmentary, unskilled. It adds nothing. It pulls its punches. Three sentences do for one. But they're short. I guess there's that.
*sigh*
But let us compare the mess above with the opening bits of Locke Lamora (my commentary in parenthesis):
At the height of the long wet summer of the Seventy-seventh Year of Sendovani, the Thiefmaker of Camorr paid a sudden and unannounced visit to the Eyeless Priest at the Temple of Perelandro, desperately hoping to sell him the Lamora boy.
(We have here a lot of meat. There's a dynasty or something. Seventy-seventh Year. We're in Camorr. There's aThiefmaker, who... makes thieves? How? Sounds like an urban gig. He's seeing the Eyeless Priest at a Temple. I'm thinking urban. And he Wants To Sell A Boy, the Lamora Boy. Book is called Lies of Locke Lamora, so presumably that's the boy in question. SO MUCH to chew on, here.)
"Have I got a deal for you!" the Thiefmaker began, perhaps inauspiciously.
(We now see that the Thiefmaker is a shady dealer. Nobody uses "have I got a deal for you" as an opening line without being somewhat shady.)
"Another deal like Calo and Galdo, maybe?" said the Eyeless Priest. "I've still got my hands full training those giggling idiots out of every bad habit they picked up from you and replacing them with the bad habits I need."
(Eyeless priest is not a bad guy. He's also on decent terms with the Thiefmaker. They do deals regularly, for people that do not sound like they're slaves. "Hands full" is not what you say of slaves. It's friendlier than that. He's training them.
For what?)
"Now, Chains." The Thiefmaker shrugged. "I told you they were shit-flinging little monkeys when we made the deal, and it was good enough for you at the--"
(Thiefmaker has a nickname for the Eyeless Priest. They are guys who know each other. This is not a super-formal relationship.)
"Or maybe another deal like Sabetha?" The priest's richer, deeper voice chased the Thiefmaker's objection right back down his throat. "I'm sure you recall charging me everything but my dead mother's kneecaps for her. I should've paid you in copper and watched you spring a rupture trying to haul it all away."
(Ah, ok. This is haggling. They will eventually reach a deal for our titular character as they have reached deals for the three mentioned.)
-------------------
And, spoiler alert, you have now encountered -- at least in passing -- all but two of the GOOD GUYS CHARACTERS of the book. There's Chains, who trains Lamora and Sabetha and Calo and Galdo. And we KNOW about the training part, he mentions it in passing. We're missing Jean and Bug, who arrive a bit later, but we're halfway down the first page and we have most of the major goodish-guys players in the book AND THEIR RELATIONSHIPS TO EACH OTHER AND SOME OF THEIR BACKSTORIES. We don't have the bad guys yet, but give the author a minute... this is page one, here, we're just getting underway. We have some world-building going on, too. We know Chains is the Eyeless Priest at the Temple, but he doesn't sound very religious. What's up with that? There's no Bless You or My Son or anything, but there's giggling idiots and bad habits. Locke Lamora book is getting a fuckload more done than our Amra book.
Start as you mean to go on. But on I must go for I have spent good money on this thing. *sigh*
