tealin | Writing Styles and Subsequent Reader Response

Current Mood: hassled
Current Location: home
Current Music: various electronic hums

Entry tags:

book,
snark

Writing Styles and Subsequent Reader Response

I recently read Sunshine by Robin McKinley, partly for a commission and partly because my former roommate has been recommending it to me for about a year now.

I've never read any of Robin McKinley's books, probably because I had my nose stuck in Redwall and Harry Potter for all the years when girls tend to pick them up, but I'd heard she was good. And Sunshine was ... well, it was good. It had a well-realized world and a distinct take on magic and ... and characters ... and stuff ... but I had a hard time really getting into it, and it seemed like it was taking forever to get anywhere plot-wise. I've been turning this over in my head for the last thee or four days and I think I've figured out one thing at least: there's just so much internal monologuing. It seems like she puts into the narration every bit of world and character development she scraped together in preparing the novel and then added stuff she made up along the way. It almost feels like the book is made up of a series of short stories, in which she has to cram a lot of exposition into not much plot, that have sort of melted into each other to form one longer story that is no less dense. This gives it a sense of authenticity, I suppose, but it throws any pacing right out the window.

To illustrate what I mean by this I've gone and done something dreadful: tried to write. More specifically, I've tried applying Robin McKinley's style to one of my favourite pieces of snappy literature. Here's the original:

At last, however, on a wild, tempestuous evening, when
the wind screamed and rattled against the windows, he
returned from his last expedition, and having removed
his disguise he sat before the fire and laughed heartily
in his silent inward fashion.
"You would not call me a marrying man, Watson?"
"No, indeed!"
"You'll be interested to hear that I'm engaged."
"My dear fellow! I congrat --"
"To Milverton's housemaid."
"Good heavens, Holmes!"

What I especially like about that exchange is that the dialogue implies so much about who the characters are, what they're thinking, what the situation is, and how it changes. This is conveyed not just in what they say but how they say it, and when. It's a marvellously efficient piece of writing. So I wanted to see if I could render the scene in McKinley style...

At last, however, on a wild, tempestuous evening, when the wind screamed and rattled against the windows, I sat in the golden glow of the sitting room dwelling on a troublesome case that had come into my practise earlier that week. A stockbroker had sprained his ankle on a loose cobblestone – a common enough accident in this city of London – but in his subsequent pain had stumbled onto the bootscraper at his flat and now had a serious case of gangrene. It looked as if I would have to amputate it. Any time I tried discussing this with my dear Mary she turned pale and begged me to change the subject, so my professional ruminations had only themselves for company, or in this case themselves and the macaroons Mrs Hudson had so graciously provided even though I hadn't eaten the fanciful pastry since developing a coconut allergy in India. She had either forgotten this or was intent on preventing me from coming back for visits thanks to acute anaphylactic shock, something Holmes and I had debated during the lighter moments of our acquaintanceship. Speaking of Holmes, where was he? He'd been staying out later and later every night, always in that ridiculous (and fragrant) workman's outfit, and I was beginning to worry that he wouldn't return at all tonight. He couldn't be up to any good.

At last he burst through the door, in some sort of good spirits despite the blustery, chilling weather that had driven me to hot, stagnant India in the first place. Thankfully he promptly removed his drenched and fetid wool coat and, without even casting a glance in my direction, took a seat by the fire. There followed a long and slightly awkward silence wherein I debated whether or not to bring up my gangrenous stockbroker in a desperate attempt to get a conversation rolling, but he continued to stare into the fire with a somewhat absent expression and gave no sign he could tell anyone else was in the room. The crackling of the fire was putting me in mind of Mary frying sausages, which she'd promised to make for dinner tonight in exchange for my not mentioning gangrene when meat was on the table. I wondered if I might manage to sneak out without interrupting Holmes' reverie, as he seemed to prefer the company of his own thoughts to that of his best friend who had come all this way on a distinctly unpleasant evening solely to learn why he'd been spending his nights out in, as far as I could tell, a suit he had found in a compost heap. I was about to stand when he laughed heartily in his silent inward fashion, which was nevertheless directed at me.

"You would not call me a marrying man, Watson?"

"No, indeed!" This was quite possibly the very last thing I'd expect to hear from my friend, to whom the term 'consummate bachelor' was an understatement to the extreme. I wondered what this was about; it seemed a complete diversion from the Milverton case, and I'd never known him to wander from the hunt when he was in bloodhound mode. Had he – had he seriously been spending the last week inflicting some sort of charm on a person of the female persuasion? In that suit? I struggled to think of what sort of girl would not faint at such a combined assault of applied brainpower and stench, and could come up only with the wife of an officer in my regiment who had been struck with Malingering Misogynitis, a disease which had deprived her of the senses of sight, smell, humour, and taste, and which left her physically functional but only capable of giggling sweetly should she be directly addressed in any way. But she was already married, of course, and over five thousand miles away.

Holmes broke in on my recollection with more force than a mutineer's rifle. "You'll be interested to hear that I am engaged."

The sheer unreality of what I had just heard, and whose mouth I had heard it from, made it impossible to think further, not even of how Sgt Ratberger's wife might have travelled all the way back to England, sans husband (who might have been done in by his fondness for vindaloo), and be in a place where Holmes in his filthy disguise might ply his affections on her. Even the word 'affections' in the same thought as 'Holmes' caused enough discord in the orchestra of my brain that the conductor leapt off the pedestal in despair. Decades of rote etiquette kicked in and prompted me to say, "My dear fellow! I congrat –"

He interrupted before I the rest of the sentence could tumble from my astonished mouth. "To Milverton's housemaid."

Ah, so that was it. He wasn't off the Milverton case at all, instead he had sunk to the very lowest trick for him yet to employ, and had used the tender, sweet heart of an innocent (though, I had to admit, probably senseless) young lady merely to achieve his own ends. Of all the dastardly tricks! Had he not even cast a thought to what would become of the poor girl when she discovered that both he and his engagement were no more substantial than the stockbroker's leg would be by this time Monday? I tried to express the enormity of both my shock and disapproval but could only come out with "Good heavens, Holmes!"

Perhaps I was a bit cruel. She doesn't deserve my derision and I'm certainly not qualified to cast it, being an admitted devotee of cinematic books. She wrote well enough to make me crave cinnamon rolls for the last two weeks. On top of that, writing that whole thing and then coming straight here has meant I've written this whole entry in her style and rendered me even more hypocritical than I usually am.

But it was fun.

12:50 am
I just realised the far more efficient way to say all of that is: I am a firm believer is showing, not telling. Ms McKinley seems to be all about the telling with very little showing; even outright action is filtered through the character's recollection into being told about action rather than seeing it for ourselves.

Show, don't tell. Three words in place of, what, two thousand? Yeesh.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I know exactly what you mean about Robin McKinley!!! And you got it perfectly right about telling the story rather than showing it >_<'
Her story was good-- i really liked Sunshine--- but the narration drive me insane x_x

Here via FriendsFriends.

Yours is my reaction to Sunshine. In lieu of action, which allows readers to interpret, her style is, "My world is like this ...." and a strung of anecdotes with explanations fills the chapters. Very little happened in the now of story action. I finally skimmed to the end, figuring this was another tale of a special girl with special powers that all the vampires longed to control or have as their special companion.

I love Robin McKinley, but you really have to be in the mood for description when you read her! As I remember, the other books of hers that I like best (Hero and the Crown and The Blue Sword) aren't quite as bad for that.

Sunshine is atypical of McKinley on the whole, and I don't really care for it at all. The only strong emotion it induced in me was the desire to eat a cinnamon bun the size of my head, and since I adore cinnamon buns anyway, that doesn't take much.

I would recommend Beauty, which was the first McKinley I ever read and (to my mind) still the best. It's short, tight, beautifully characterized, and Disney borrowed from it shamelessly for Beauty and the Beast, or if they didn't then it's the biggest coincidence in the known universe. I also loved The Door in the Hedge, which is a collection of retold and/or invented fairy tales -- beautiful language, but she doesn't RAMBLE with it, thank heavens.

Funny, because when I've mentioned my conclusions on what made me so impatient with Sunshine they've independently said 'Oh yeah, that's Robin McKinley.'

I'd personally disagree with that, because if all McKinley's books were like Sunshine I would never have started reading her in the first place, much less claim her as one of my early influences.

I don't like all of McKinley's stuff by any means -- in fact, I'm indifferent to at least half of the books she's written. But when she's on, she's really on, IMO. And I know very few people who don't like Beauty. (On the other hand, I also know very few people who aren't still scratching their heads over why McKinley would choose twenty years later to write a muddled and inferior version of the same fairy tale and call it Rose Daughter. Go figure.)

lol thats just about it! I don't mind Robin McKinley, I've only read Beauty and one of her books with short-stories in it, but I agree there's a limit to wordiness... I like practical books, Lord of the Rings and classics are really the only thing with lots of drawn out wording that I can handle, and even then it's only the classics I like.

I love your version of Holmes in a McKinley style! it made me chuckle!

If you are getting paid by the word however . . .

I must admit, I didn't find anything wrong with your rewrite. Granted, there's a time for mental meanderings and a time for consiceness, and I bet a whole book of that rather than several papragraphs is a lot harder to choke down.

You should try writing more often. ^_~

Oh, there's nothing wrong with it, objectively, it just spoils any opportunity to translate the words on the page into a movie in my head because time slows to a crawl while the narrator natters away. I picked that specific passage because everything that needs to be said is said in the dialogue, and you lose so much when the narration gets in the way of the rapid-fire exchange.

And yes, a whole book gets rather tiring.

I can only write when someone provides the characters and outlines the plot for me. :) And usually not even then.

Well, I can't really argue with you that huge chunks of the book are just plain exposition. I guess what makes it one of my favorite books (enough to commission you!) is that it's RAE who's doing the narration. I love Rae. She's one of the most fully realized characters I've ever read about, and it's because you get so much of her - the way in which she narrates all that glut of information about her world tells you so much about HER. Really, all that worldbuilding is, in fact, Raebuilding.

But I will certainly admit that it might be an acquired taste. Unlike cinnamon buns, which everyone loves.

Oh, I didn't dislike the book. It was entertaining and there were times when I couldn't put it down (usually at 1 a.m. when I shoud have been sleeping). The exposition was all interesting, taken on its own, though I don't really know that it was all necessary; I composed a mental list of Things You Need To Know to Understand What's Going On and it didn't seem to merit three hundred pages of narration. It's just ... such a writer's book. As for Rae, well ... I felt, at the end, that for all I was reading her mind for the last three hundred pages, if I were to be assigned to write a fanfic with her, for example, I wouldn't know where to go past merely mimicking the writing style. I suppose I've just got a square-shaped fiction hole in my brain and Sunshine was a round peg.

I am enjoying working on your commission though. :)

haha, my sentiments exactly. She does tend to gorge on detail a bit much, however, i recommend you read 'The Blue Sword' also by McKinley. Great story and once you get past the meandering at the start(which i kind of glossed over)its really quite good and doesn't drag.

Just a nitpicky note, not for you because you seem to get it, but generally speaking: people are talking in comments about description, but that's not description. That's exposition. Description would be if one dwelt at excruciating length on the color and texture of the curtains and the exact cut of Holmes' suit and the particular placement of the stains.

It's incredibly easy to go overboard on exposition--it's something I fight a lot myself--because you've got all these ideas and you've got to get them down somehow oh gosh oh gosh get them all out of your head make them STOP TALKING TO YOU AT NIGHT.

Or you get high on research and assume that everyone will find your little trove of werewolf lore absolutely fascinating, too, and won't mind stopping in the middle of the hero's nervous breakdown in order to discuss the meaning of the term "vairouvarie" as used in 16th-century Guernsey court records.

So yeah... you're right, it's terribly dull when overused, but it's easy for me to sympathize with the author (although I've not read any Robin McKinley so I can't say whether this is exactly what's going on).

...Or was it 17th-century? I know it was Guernsey, anyway.

Dang. There goes my geek cred!

I adore McKinley, but you're right about Sunshine's exposition glut. I rationalized the really irritating bits - going on and on about pastry when she's, like, about to be eaten herself - as part of the character's pathological need to deflect, but it's...a bit much.

I think what hacks me off even more, though, is that there are just so many story threads that are left hanging. What did happen to her father and her grandmother? What's the deal with Mel? What's the deal with the Goddess of Pain? And how in hell is she going to balance her commitments to her family/the coffeehouse and the SOFs and Con? All that worldbuilding would be great in a setup novel for a series, but McKinley's stated the odds of a sequel are low. So...arrgh.

As for whether it's just this one book or all of them...it's definitely more typical of her later work, I'd say. It makes Rose Daughter nearly unreadable unless you're really wanting a lot of gardening info; on the other hand it works remarkably well in Spindle's End which is sort of "Sleeping Beauty" by way of Lud in the Mist.

But if you want something where the plot actually, like, moves, I'd really recommend either Deerskin or The Hero and the Crown. Both of which are fabulous.

Rose Daughter is probably the worst example of the McKinley problem- within five or six verbose chapters, we see her father die and the sisters move to a new town, something that would have taken one or two chapters max in another book. I just don't like that you can read it for a long time, and the same thing is happening when you stop as when you started. Spindle's End was fun, but all the stuff about Kat in the beginning should have been replaced with stuff about Narl, so the ending isn't so out of the blue. I love the bits with Peony, though.

Oh, Deerskin is wonderful; dark and twisted and beautiful with it. It is, however, the only McKinley book I made my daughter wait until she was older (14, now) to read.

Stasia

Love it! That's her to a t. Or to a tea, or possibly a tee. I really liked The Hero and the Crown, which seems to be slightly more action-oriented than her other books, but it's incredible to me that I'll finish a sentence that began two pages ago, and within all the sub-clauses I've forgotten how the sentence began! She has some really original takes on fairy tales, but someone needs to pare her down a bit, especially with things that don't have any bearing on the plot at all.

Iv'e read sunshine, I thought it was an amazing book, I found the clear discriptions gave me a better understanding of the book.. However, it dosen't leave much room for visualizing charecters..

And completely off topic... I wish I could eat cinnamon rolls. Im cutting my wisdom teeth and if I can't munch it to a mushy masss I can't eat it.. so..

~Grafin

I haven't read sunshine (i've read some of her others), but this definitely hearkens back to a conversation i was having with myself in a shower. Why the shower?

I think better in one.

That's besides the point. I was trying to figure out if its better to dramatically begin a scene and take forever getting to know the character (which i am terrible at but sounds good) or just ignoring that and getting to all the fun bits and hope that the character will come out.

Mostly because i am very, very impatient with my own writing. I want to get to the good parts.

..And i just read Terry Pratchett for the first time. heather leant me "Going Postal".

Dear lord, why must you send me a temptation such as Mr. Pratchett's series of books when i am in my third semester?

(ALSO. this is Kadi... are you back at Bardel?)

HI KADI! Good to see you on LJ!

I, personally, think that if YOU (the author) know the character inside and out, then no matter what's going on in the story the character will ring true. It's nice to put some background and stuff in the book but you learn as much about someone from what they do as what their backstory is (if not more). I mean, look at Moist! I don't think I've ever known a character better by the end of a book but he spends the whole thing ... doing stuff. You should figure out the character's story and personality and all that at some point in the writing process but you don't need to include it all in the book; knowing it, and perhaps making slight references to it, will come out in how the character is written.

My two cents, anyway.

As a not-even-amateur writer.

And – haha – yeah, Pratchett in third semester. I've been there! It's handy to have when you reach the point where you just HAVE to take a break from looking at your drawings (this helps productivity, BTW, counterintuitive as it may seem) and you can take an hour or so to read while eating dinner or whatever. Other than that, well, it'll make Christmas break all the more rewarding!

AAAAH I LOVE GOING POSTAL!!!

I have to come visit you guys at some point ... work too far away to make it to life drawing in any sort of decent time ... :(

understandable... worked in the summer when lifedrawing started at 6:30, so by the time you got there, there was still almost two hours to draw.

We should start the character design club again, and then we will force you to come! ... and by force, i mean by your own leave, of course.

I have like, A THING, when it comes to books that feature well. Books.

Anything with a library inside, and i am SO THERE. So Going Postal was a post office, but the letters SPOKE TO HIMMMMM. I have a sudden urge to draw things, which is usually very hard for me. I don't seem to visualize characters in books, like so many seem to. I guess mostly because the characters are rarely clear enough for me to actually visualize them.

I felt SO BADDDDD for Mr. Pump being re-assigned. Was it just me, or was his voice in the book slowly changing the longer he was with Moist? Because right before he went away, he said hello to Moist, and it was without the vast use of capitals. But i might have been reading wrong.

loved Airborn. Tried to get Bardel to make it in to a movie. Failed. Cried. Drew pictures. Forget to save them on the computer. Cried some more.

Have you read anything by Garth Nix? If not, try the Abhorsen series, it starts with Sabriel. My favourite is the second book, Lirael. Mostly because she works in a library LOL. I also LOVE the keys to the kingdom series.

Its like... harry potter but a LOT of neat visuals.

Ah! Mention of Going Postal reminded me... that its sequel, Making Money comes out ON TUESDAY! September 18! So squeeful!

SHUT UP I DON'T GET IT TILL OCTOBER 2nd! D:

Got it on pre-order though.

Aw, poar Tealin! I shall say nothing more about it until October 2nd then!

Haha, duuuude, I am going to stay up ALL NIGHT reading it. Everyone at work will wonder why I'm so tired but SO GIDDY. I'm even getting giddy right now thinking about it! Whee!

Aw crap... my sources are confusing me. The Terry Pratchett website says Tuesday... but Chapters.ca says October 2. I guess it's wher you are. TT.TT

'S probably the UK vs North America or something ... or maybe those darn Yanks have got the draw on us again.

YESSSSS.... damn it will take me forever to get this one if you guys had to re-order.

AGGHHHhh....

which other pratchett books are good?

Tiffany Aching series may be the best ^^

Haha, don't worry, she's well into Discworld now. :)

TRUE THAT. I just read... good omens and nation not too long ago. Blast the slim pickings of the local library!

*snickers madly* I love Doyle's concise style -- half of any random Holmes story is likely to be simple, unadorned dialog, but so much is conveyed that there's no creeping set-piece atmosphere. Showing rather than telling... words to live by.

If I were to order it though my bookstore I wouldn't get it till the end of the month of October.. So.... COLES SUCKS!!!! The only books that iv'e ever orderd from them that came in on time was Harry Potter..

This reminded me of Owl from Winnie the Pooh when he starts telling "amusing little anecdotes".

No, seriously, you can write!

If you don't like long internal mololouges, I suggest you stay far, fra away from Robert Jordan's works...

I was planning on that anyway. :)

I think it's a shame that telling is so firmly pushed against in modern literature. Scanning the list of bestsellers it's populated with the likes of Dan Brown, who can't write beautiful, reflective prose to save his life, and concentrates far too much on action. McKinley's style is certainly not for everyone, but there are still those of us who like a slightly slower, more ponderous, read.

Anyway, that's a rather random comment. :p I drop by occasionally to admire your artwork, but as always, a literary post pulls me out of lurking ...

I think there's a time and place for beautiful reflective prose, and a certain type of book that needs it ... something exploring the psychology of an individual, or close personal relationships, or ideas about life, the universe, and everything. Books that don't rely on visuals. There are lots of them out there, usually with an unsaturated landscape photograph on the cover and a title written in a dignified, quiet font. If my experiences with 20th-century American literature in school are anything to go by, all the 'classics' fall into this category, so if you want to be taken seriously, slow and ponderous is the way to go. But in a society that pays billions of dollars a year to watch dumb snappy action movies, the majority of the reading public wants the same sort of thing from their books. That's why they're bestsellers. You never see those sort of books on awards lists. It's a matter of quantity over quality.

As for me, and I suspect a fair number of other people, I am an extremely visually-oriented person. I read books to see the movies they make in my head. If you block my view of what's happening with swathes of text that don't really add anything relevant, and completely throw off the flow of scenes, I'm not going to like it. There are people out there, and perhaps you are one, who don't have the movie-in-the-head thing going on, and for whom more text is better. It doesn't matter that the text is just talking to them rather than making pictures in their heads, because that's how they get their information. This is fine, far be it from me to deny them their medium, but when I read a story, I want it to be a story, with things happening one after the other in a way that makes me feel I'm there. Internal monologues and philosophizing should happen between the times that something is actually going on. Having a theme or idea you want to explore with your story can add a lot, and of course good characterization is absolutely essential, but your efforts to communicate both should complement rather than impede the story. I like slow thoughtful explorations of ideas and events but I'd much rather read them in nonfiction.

I really liked reading this. I kid you not, I was about 50% through your version when I just started thinking "show, don't tell!" only to see your 12:50 am note. (For a non-writer like me to pinpoint the problem is a reason to be extremely proud IMO).

Personally, I am VERY bitter about Robin McKinley. I have had some horrible experiences with her in the past!
The first book I read of hers was The Hero and the Crown when I was in 6th grade. I absolutely adored it... until I got to the (implied) sex. Which was with a man she wasn't engaged to, and did not end up marrying. I LOVED the man she eventually married, and it broke my heart that she would do that to him, so I proceeded to completely hate the book. I know, it's sort of stupid, but keep in mind I was about 12, didn't know a lot about sex or love, and was raised Catholic. You do the math. It seems like she was going to hell and I completely lost any liking for the character.
I decided to give her another shot. I picked up Spindle's End.
Now, I should add that I was a very avid reader, a book a week, will trudge through anything no matter how much I hate it kind of kid. If it was difficult, then I relished the challenge. Now, I thought the Hero and the Crown was difficult, but the plot was interesting enough for me to make it.
No. Spindle's End went on, forever and ever, with very little plot development and thick, impossible language. I found it god awful. Not just that. I was frustrated. One day, I had had enough with it. I was SEETHING MAD AT THIS BOOK. So I flipped ahead to the very end of the book, skimmed through the last 3-5 chapters, and wrote down a crapload of spoilers, and stuck it about 3/4 of the way through the book and walked away so that anyone who got further than me would have the book ruined for them. It was the best way of punishing the book short of burning it I could come up with at the time.

I do not remember ever being that mad at a book. I find it so funny that I remembered this; it's been a really long time.

But I did read Beauty much later and enjoyed it a lot, so... there you go.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Writing Styles and Subsequent Reader Response

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

oh lawdy

Re: oh lawdy

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject