I binge-read four books yesterday. I don’t think I’m going to post the names, despite the fact that I binge-read them (and paid for them, albeit at .99 each) because I want to write about how terrible they were.
The characters were implausible, often stupid, cliche and inconsistent. Wait, not just the characters–the books were inconsistent. In one scene a character knows nothing, in another she wins a trivia contest on the stuff she knew nothing about. A dollar amount changed randomly within a book and from book to book. The plots were ridiculously unlikely, in all sorts of ways and not always for obvious reasons. Sometimes, sure, I can see that it was just easier to do a little hand-wavium about some plot point that wasn’t important to the story, but other times, I found myself trying to decipher the reasoning behind an authorial decision.
And yet the books were fun to read.
This is seriously a lesson I need to learn. I spend so much time dwelling on minute details. Why would this character be in this place at this time? What’s his reasoning behind this choice? Wouldn’t he have eaten breakfast earlier? Why did he skip breakfast? How does skipping breakfast make him feel? Okay, maybe he needs to have breakfast earlier but in that case, why is the proprietor of the B&B not there? Wouldn’t there be other guests? If it’s just the two of them in the room, then wouldn’t he ask his questions? Okay, he can’t have breakfast then… so back to the why has he missed breakfast?
And yet, who will care? Who will notice? No one sits around in the middle of a story wondering why the characters haven’t needed to hit up a restroom in hours or why they aren’t dead of dehydration after their desperate trek through the forest running away from the bad guys. If the reader has time to wonder that kind of thing, the story isn’t doing its job.
I’ve been stuck for days on Grace, not making any progress at all. Part of that is just me. Holidays, the blues, not feeling well, wrapped up mentally in stupid stuff like the kitchen repairs, health insurance and finances… But part of it is that I’m getting stuck on the stupid stuff, on the need for absolute accuracy in who hears what when instead of flowing with the story. One good romantic conversation simmering with unrequited sexual tension is worth twenty pages of precision mapping and timelines in an actual story.
I don’t regret my binge-reading. The books were fun. And if the sixth book in the series had been available, I probably would have bought it and binge-read it, too. But I hope that what I get out of it is not just the few hours of fun, but some motivation to loosen up on my own writing, to relax and let the words take me places instead of tying me in knots.
Off I go to write.
I have to admit that I’ll forgive a lot in a book if the characters are appealing and the story sucks me in.
Ditto! I notice the things that are wrong, but if I’m enjoying the book, I’m usually willing to let it slide. And sometimes books are like junk food — if you stop to savor a McDonald’s french fry, it doesn’t even taste good, but put a hot pile in front of me, and I will keep eating them.
I can forgive flaws in books when the author has a ‘voice’ I enjoy reading or creates characters I like. Sounds like yesterday was a good experience.
My surgery took out 80% of my stomach so I am eating a lot less. I think I have been eating over S.A.D. When I got off work it was gloomy and I felt like crying all the way home. I have to learn some better ways of coping.
Have you tried the lights, Judy? I know if I had to live in a colder climate, I wouldn’t be able to live without them. Three days of cold and rain and I’m ready to go to bed and not get up until spring.
Then there’s me, the anal retentive reader. The one who is jarred out of suspended disbelief by the facts that don’t match. i.e. How can a 60 year old have a 40 year old son when he got his girlfriend pregnant when he was 16?
And (sorry, Sarah) when did the white sundress turn black? (Fixed, thank you!), and when you drive up to the house talking about the beauty of the blue sky then go inside and say how late it is for dinner and go straight to bed, I notice.
I guess my brain ticks like that. When facts don’t match, when times don’t mesh, ages, dates and other minutiae are skewed or off, it bugs me. Do I stop reading or enjoy it less? Sometimes, if the errors are too egregious or often, yes, i do. I can’t get past that feeling that the author didn’t care enough to make simple checks.
Many authors, often my favorites, rarely make these mistakes.
So there is a flip side to what you discovered about yourself as a reader. Some of us are real minutiae freaks.
Allison
Ha! The black dress turned white when I bought a cover and it had a girl with a white flowered dress on it. Then it turned back to black when I decided I didn’t like that cover and would get a new one as soon as I could. But you were reading draft chapters, so they’re always prone to those little discrepancies. (I’m going to assume the other discrepancies were not mine, because I know I haven’t done that with any ages and I usually spend excessive amounts of energy on mapping out my timelines.)
As for me, I’m definitely an anal-retentive reader, too. But the author who wrote the books I was binging on is a NY Times and USA Today best-selling author. I can call her books terrible, but she’s doing a lot better than me and thousands of people have paid for them and enjoyed them. As a reader, I might object, but as a writer, I need to think about where I put my energy. 🙂
If the characters are engaging, or I’m interested in the setting, I can forgive a few mistakes. The absolute best author in the world may have trouble keeping series details organized in a timeline. (One of my favorite series had a character. albeit a minor character, whose funeral was held in Book X, and then in Book Y, the fellow turns up alive and well — because the author forgot to update her time line. I can forgive that because the successor to that character would have behaved the same way as his father.) BUT: poor research drives me buggy. If an author tells me we are in England, during the Regency, I expect him/her to have at least read Georgette Heyer and to have a grasp of the period. Don’t give me an Earl of Piddling-in-the-Marsh with a surname of Frogstone, and tell me he’s Lord Frogstone. No, he’s Lord Piddling-in-the-Marsh. Probably called Piddles by his friends (or his enemies!). Don’t have a young lady of gentle breeding jaunting around London without a maid unless you can justify it, because young ladies just didn’t. Similarly, if your book is set in the high desert of New Mexico, and the character wakes up to a pouring rain, there had better be a good reason for it. I’ve enjoyed the Tassamara books — though I must have gotten the corrected version. (grin) I don’t recall a black sundress!
The sundress was corrected before the book (A Lonely Magic) ever went out to the world — Alison was reading the draft. But I know just what you mean about historicals — it’s why I don’t think I will ever write one. I’d need to spend years on research before I felt comfortable. Example: I spent three hours yesterday reading about dogs to find out what kind of dog a girl in Florida in the 1950’s might have owned, for two lines in A Gift of Grace. Multiple those three hours by the number of lines in a book and it’ll be obvious why I’m a slow writer!
Allison’s a good detailist. I’ve been doing historical research for YEARS. I finally set up a private wiki to organize the research in. If it comes to dogs, obviously, you use a Dachshund in Florida in the 1950s! ALAS, BABYLON was one of the first of the apocalyptic novels, published in 1959, and I will always remember the line from the first chapter where the viewpoint character sees “an interminable length of dachshund” emerging from under his front porch. I should note that I am prejudiced towards the positive use of Dachshunds in novels, having had them since 1970. Current set is a 16 yr & 9 month red longhair, and a 2 yr black and tan longhair. And before Allison thumps me, there is also the unexpected Beagle who is 5 yrs. (Allison is Babette Beagle’s dog godmother.) I have just downloaded A Lonely Magic and will be looking forward to it when I finish my current read.
I went with a Beagle, because the internet promised me that it was the most popular dog of the 1950s! One of the dogs I live with (Macie, the biggest one) is a dachshund mix, and my brother had dachshunds, so that would have been a good choice, tho. The internet failed me. 🙂
I think it depends on where one is as to what dog is popular! I have a Beagle, also. Didn’t plan on it. Miss Babette Beagle turned up abandoned on our doorstep the night of my Mom’s memorial service, and she has been a trip. Mr. Shadow, a standard red longhair, celebrates his 17th Christmas today. He is taking a vote on whether I should be feeding Hounds or playing with my computer. And then there’s Master Harper (yes, named for Anne McCaffrey’s Pern series), a black & tan longhaired Dachshund. If you want to learn more about Beagles, I recommend Doranna Durgin’s Word Play, or her Facebook page. She has Connery Beagle (who has his own Facebook pages), Dart Beagle, and will soon have Tristan Beagle. She trains in agility, obedience, tracking, and Barn Hunt.
I appreciate the time you took on details. I ordered The Gift of Ghosts at 11:39 am, started reading it shortly thereafter and just finished at 4 pm…barely noticing both the lunch and dessert that accompanied my binge! You’ve written the most entertaining book I’ve read in years, and I look forward to reading more.
Well I just binge read YOUR books over the weekend. Downloaded Gift of Ghosts free before heading off to relatives for the holidays. Read it, really enjoyed it and began searching for more. Got a B&N gift card for Christmas, immediately pulled out the old ereader and downloaded the other 3. Next I saw the comments at the end of “Thoughts” about a free Maggie short story and here I am! I have found several great authors by downloading that first series book free. Dana Stabinow and J.D. Nixon to name a couple. It works! Keep it up!