Let me see if I can recall... I downloaded a bunch of cyberpunkish / sci-fi novels from Amazon and a few have been remarkably good but then they make the not so good stand out. Seeing its title I now remember also: there was just too much emotional overload for my taste too. So there was character, environment and emotional description that just overloaded and distracted from the story for me. Street: Empathy by Ryan A Span. I need a better interface so I can review / remember the ones I did like huh.
Using "Look Inside" the description in that book does seem a bit hackneyed. "She always wore a cheap business suit to work, a form-fitting little number with a skirt so short it could only be examined under a microscope." "Frankenstein's monsters of plastic surgery, like drowned corpses under the neon light?" I can see why you didn't like that book. The metaphors are as overdone as the dinner in the oven when the police break down the door of the apartment of the little old lady who has been dead for three years.
Nicely done I tend to search for a topic (cyberpunk, politics) and just download all the free books, without any further research. Eat the whole chicken and spit out the bones. I think you can learn from bad books as well as good, as long as you are at least aware of the bad bits in the bad books. Just as you can learn more from critiquing work vs having your work critiqued. Books I enjoy don't tend to get critiqued. Books I dislike I am critiquing and making sure I narrow down what it is that I do not like, so the exercise of reading it remains valuable. Kinda.
What a great thread. Thanks for starting it, @Chinspinner . Nice to know the troublesome bits are pretty universal. Unless it's just a sentence or so, I always try to present description through the eyes of a particular character. The character's 'take' on any scene makes it more interesting to read. Plus it gives you the opportunity to do double-duty with your writing. You can set a scene and develop character at the same time. Below is a short example of what I try to do with my descriptive passages. This is part of a scene in the local minister's house from the middle of my novel, Brothers. The references and character names don't need explanation here. The reader already knows the history of these relationships and why Jessie and Joe are waiting in this parlour at this time. However, the reader has not been taken inside this house before. This is just a sample paragraph: She and Joe braced themselves on the horsehair sofa, determined not to slide off while they waited. Jessie turned her head slowly, taking in the spotless papered walls and the rich gleam of varnish and floor polish, remembering other times, sitting in this same bright parlor with Ben on this same slippery sofa, dressed in her Sunday best, waiting for Mrs Kidder to bring them afternoon tea and soda crackers. Ben’s books were still here too, just as he’d left them, neatly arranged in the glass-fronted bookcase beside the piano— I feel this approach works better than just a simple description of the room: The room was bright and spotless, with papered walls, and the floors and woodwork gleamed with varnish and floor polish. There was a glass-fronted bookcase beside the piano, and a sofa covered in slippery horsehair. I think it's always a good idea to show, via a character's insight, what is actually important about a particular scene, even as you are settting it. Once I figured out this trick, I felt my writing improved. As for dialogue, I find that having a strong sense of character makes their words tumble onto the page without any real effort on my part. You do develop a feel for what sounds right for each character to say ...and what doesn't. Sometimes, however, I've written passages where I felt the character's voice was all wrong—but I left the dialogue in anyway, simply because that particular speech needed to be said (for story purposes.) However, reading through the chapter for the umpteenth time, I discovered these anomalies still bugged me. Eventually, after running the scenes over and over again in my head, suddenly the right words popped out and I was able to change the passages so they were truer to my characters. That process is still ongoing, to some extent. Only a couple of days ago I was able to 'fix' a passage, where my character was speaking in a more contemporary manner than he should have been. It always feels great to fix one of these problems. The trick is to revisit the scene IN YOUR HEAD, over and over, till the right words come. You can do this at any time, while washing dishes, walking the dog, etc. Just make sure you've got a notebook handy to scribble down the new dialogue ...otherwise you might forget it and curse yourself for weeks. Purple prose? I reckon I'm still guilty of that, but hey. You should have seen my first draft. The only real cure for that is distance, time, and a few good betas. Once you're aware that you're writing melodrama, it becomes easier to spot instances and tone them down, if necessary. Mind you, a bit of melodrama isn't all that bad, as long as it's not unremittingly hysterical. (As in "losing the plot," not in "funny" ...although both can certainly occur in the same passage.) I think I'd rather read something that's leaning towards melodrama rather than leaning towards being so dry the emotion is sucked out of it. I write what I'd like to read myself. One of the simplest ways to eradicate melodrama is by eliminating excessive use of exclamation marks. Obviously they are more or less forbidden in straight narrative, but they are certainly used (correctly) in dialogue. Just don't use them very often, and you will go a long way towards eliminating melodrama and hysteria from your story. This was another lesson I had to learn the hard way. Yikes. (Note, no exclamation mark. I'm improving. )
Authorial Intrusion- that was the major bugger I missed. EDIT: and forced exposition. Both related and often one and the same.
I gave this a rather flippant response before, which I apologise for (that it was salesmanship rather than fundamental crapness at writing). Pacing: If you are planner, hopefully you have some of this worked out. If you are pantser I imagine you are more likely to come unstuck. Dam, Stephen King suffers from horrible third acts regardless of his huge popularity by virtue of being a pantser. How the hell is a giant spider scarier than an evil clown? Give me the spider any day of the week (unless you specifically suffer from arachnophobia, but even then I would contend it is the movement on a small scale that shits you up, rather than a large lumbering version of the same thing). I tend to think of pacing as something that can be cleaned up, much like editing a movie. You just make it work, insert scenes where they are needed and cut them where they are not. Cheat words: Yes. I have read this many times. You read a book and you see the same phrase or unusual word choice used time and again, and every time it stands out like a sore thumb. Again, I would hope an editing issue. It is bound to happen, dam we have had people repeat the same phrase over and over in conversation (usually "um" if put on the spot). I'd like to think given the time and information they would clean it up. Market expectations: Here we get into marketing. Dunno, to be honest if this is a good or bad thing. If you write more of what is popular do you risk missing the boat? If you don't, do you risk the boat never being there in the first place? EDIT: Stick a question mark after each. Posed as questions rather than statements.
I agree, I think most of my issues can be cleaned up in editing... I think most people's can be! At least, I hope they can. The market expectations is definitely a different kind of issue. I think there's an important distinction between trends and general market expectations, though. Trends come and go, but most markets have a pretty firm set of expectations that last over time. For example, if I were left to my own devices, I'd probably write a lot of stories with bittersweet endings. But I know that, especially in romance, those books don't meet market expectations, so I've learned to make my endings more upbeat. But there are other expectations I seem to resist harder, and it's always a balancing act to decide how hard I want to push at the boundaries of the genre.
I think we need to be careful when talking about writing "mistakes." None of the things mentioned seem inherently bad to me for various reasons. One, a lot of those things are subject to interpretation. What I may consider too much showing you may consider not enough. It usually boils down to stylistic differences. Two, depending on context, a lot of those things can actually improve the piece. For example, having "unrealistic" characters may be appropriate when the characters are meant to represent ideas rather than actual people (for example, Dostoevsky's characters). The same goes for homogeneous dialogue, etc. Finally, if the word fits, it fits. Don't go eliminating adverbs just because some guideline suggests it. Think carefully about each and every word if possible. That being said, you do have a point: these guidelines came about because a lot of new writers tend to overdo certain things. As I said above, this isn't inherently bad, but the issue here has more to do with the writer's experience than anything else. An experienced writer will know exactly why he's breaking these guidelines; a newer writer will not. Just my two cents.
Thinking about my first attempts at fiction, yeah, I perpetrated some godawful headhopping, a good deal of telling-rather-than-showing, and most of the other crimes against literary art @Chinspinner speaks of. With a few years experience I'd say I'm doing a lot better at avoiding those. But even now, the mistake I have to guard against most is treating my characters, especially the minor ones, like a child's paper dolls and not like real people. I thought my novel was "done" last spring. But I keep finding places where I've made a character do something he or she wouldn't do, simply because I wanted it done. Like the hired assassin who spends AN HOUR AND A HALF at the door of my heroine's apartment building trying to get someone to let him in so he can go up and kill her. Did I mention this is the front door, on a Friday night, with people constantly coming in and out? "But--- but--- I gotta have everyone see him so her downstairs neighbor can tell her the next day about the weird guy who was hanging around, and my heroine can say, 'Boy, I missed all the fun by being out last night'!" No. Just, no. (That one has been corrected.) The other thing I have to watch out for is self-indulgence. Like I'll think of something funny or profound or witty one of my characters might say on a subject close to their--- and my--- heart. (This is when I'm treating them like real people.) I'll put it in and feel really pleased with myself . . . till I reread the passage. Then that guilty feeling creeps in. Does my bon mot do anything to forward the plot? No, it doesn't. Out it goes.
Yeah, especially that final one you mentioned. You write something you just LOVE for your character to say ...and it's not right. You might even know then that it's not quite right, but you think ...nah, that's got to stay because it's GOOD. This is where waiting a long time before seeking publication is a great idea. Every time you read through that passage during subsequent edits it will bug you—because that character would not have said it. Or would not have said it like that. Eventually, you either reword, replace or remove it. And you feel that wonderful rush of self-satisfaction. There. It's done. Kinda like cleaning the house after procrastination has allowed it to get into a bit of a state. (I contend that people who never allow their houses to get into a mess will never experience that rush, but how would I know?) Editing really is fun. It's not a chore, like housework. It's fun. Really it is. Really.
Or they would have said it, but they can bloody well say it on their own time, not on the reader's. As for editing being fun . . . unfortunately, you're right. So much fun I've done little or nothing on Novel No. 2 for months.
