It’s Fiction Friday, and I had planned to share a review of a novel by an Aussie or Kiwi author.
But you know what they say about plans …
I didn’t enjoy the book I’d planned to review, so I chose another. The substitute started and ended well, but I didn’t enjoy the middle (and I can’t write a review praising the plot twist that introduced one of my favourite tropes at the three-quarter mark—readers and authors alike cry foul at reviews with spoilers).
So I turned to my Kindle to-read folder. Surely I could find something in the almost-200 books there. I finished one book, but ended up wishing I’d abandoned it at the first sign of trouble. I sampled two more and DNF’d (did not finish) them almost straight away (you can probably blame the one I finished for that decision).
I tried. Reader, I tried. Truly.
But I’ve run out of time and motivation, so now you’re getting a different post.
What went wrong? Why can’t I give any of these books glowing reviews? Why did the last two end up in the dreaded DNF (did not finish) dump?
Let’s consider each of the books I haven’t reviewed today. Note that I am going to be deliberately vague and not mention titles or authors— as I said, this isn’t a book review.
So let’s look at what stopped me reading
Or what would have stopped me reading, if I wasn’t trying to read a novel and write a book review on a deadline.
TSTL Characters
TSTL is a common acronym in Romancelandia, meaning “too stupid to live”. It’s the character who goes into the dark basement to see what the strange noise is. It’s the character who calls the police, then does exactly what the emergency services operator tells them not to do. It’s the character who is faced with two logical options and instead chooses a third option—one that makes Hannibal Lecter’s preferred diet seem as normal as veganism.
That’s stupid. Too stupid.
If the character has to go into the dark basement or back into the house, then give them a reason. A motivation. A missing friend, a missing child, a missing pet. Anything. As long as it’s something we can believe the character would risk danger to find. Otherwise the character risks becoming TSTL.
I don’t like TSTL characters. I especially don’t like TSTL female characters. Ladies, there are centuries of English literature portraying women as brainless victims. As modern women, readers, and writers, we do not need to perpetuate that lie. Please, writers, make your heroines intelligent enough to realise that when a small child says something is wrong, then something is wrong.
Saggy Middle
One novel took a well-known trope and combined it with some little-known historic events. That was a unique and interesting beginning. The novel also ended well—very well—with one of my favourite tropes (and no, I’m not going to tell you which trope because #spoilers).
But the middle was a challenge. It dragged. It seemed like both the hero and the heroine went back and forwards on their feelings and nothing changed. Sure, there were a whole lot of scenes. But nothing happened. The plot didn’t seem to be going anywhere. It was a classic case of the saggy middle.
I was tempted to give up. In fact, I did. Twice. But I’d paid real money for this book, so was determined to finish it. I’m glad I did—the last quarter was excellent.
But not excellent enough to make up for the saggy middle.
No GMC
GMC is goal, motivation, and conflict—the title of a book by Debra Dixon that all would-be fiction writers should read. In essence, GMC asks three questions of each main character:
- What do they want? (Goal)
- Why do they want it? (Motivation)
- Why can’t they have it? (Conflict)
Characters—especially your hero and heroine—need a reason to exist. Without a goal, they are wasted pixels. Without a character-driven motivation, they are the author’s tools to preach at the reader. Without conflict, they are boring.
Top tip: the best characters have internal and external conflict … and it comes from the characters.
GMC does not come from the author trying to manipulate the characters … as happens all too often.
Factual Errors
Call me picky, but nothing brings me out of a novel faster than a factual error … especially a factual error that manipulates the characters into doing something that real life would never allow.
For example, ladies of the ton in Regency England went to Gunter’s Tea Shop to eat ice cream, not chocolates (which weren’t invented for another fifty or more years). A girl inherits the title of “Lady” from her titled father, not from a Dowager Countess she’s never met. In Germany, the “early days” of World War II were late 1939 and early 1940, not mid-1942 (we might forgive an American living in America for making that mistake, but not someone living in Germany. And especially not someone who had been living in Germany since 1933).
I might not stop reading a novel that makes such an elementary* historical error. But the novel invariably drops a couple of stars in my mental rating system, and it means the author has an uphill battle to draw me back into the story.
*I define “elementary” as anything that can be disproved by checking Wikipedia.
No, Wikipedia is not a satisfactory source reference. But it’s a great fact-checking tool, and always gets details like the start of World War II right.
Avoiding the Dreaded DNF
As it happens, I spent last weekend at the annual Romance Writers of New Zealand conference. One of the guest speakers talked about why readers DNF books, and the reasons she’d discovered in her research were essentially the same as mine.
One on hand, that’s reassuring: I’m not the only picky reader out there. On the other hand, it’s depressing, because the RWNZ speaker writes in a completely different genre to what I usually read, yet readers in her genre had the same issues. That means these issues aren’t unique to Christian fiction.
Wow, very interesting and very true! I don’t like books that just drag on and on and not much happens, I love books that are very good page turners and are hard for me to put down. This is so sad, when this happens , that we just give up on a book because it does not keep our interest. Thank you for this post, I enjoyed reading it. Have a Great weekend. God Bless you.
I love the page-turners as well (although they have their own problems – how to put them down and cook dinner or go to bed).
Your list pretty well nails it for me, Iola. If the beginning was great, I might skip a badly sagging middle to read the last chapter just to see how it turns out, but I might not. There’s too little time for reading for me to fritter it away on a story I don’t care about anymore. But I will probably keep reading if the middle sags in places but still has many scenes that don’t sag.
Historical inaccuracy is something that bugs me in anything written since the internet made fact-checking easy. I cut pre-internet authors a lot of historical slack. You had to own the reference book or have a great library handy. I don’t expect Lew Wallace, who wrote Ben Hur while governor of the territory of New Mexico (USA) in 1880, to know that Roman warships were rowed by professional sailors who were trained to fight so well they could be transferred to serve in a legion that lost too many men in battle. Judah Ben Hur would never have been a slave rowing a Roman galley into battle. But if something’s easy to learn about or factcheck on the internet, I expect an author writing today to have done their homework.
Back in the old days, when I mostly read fiction in paperback, I’d often skip to that last chapter. If it was intriguing enough, then I might keep reading – sometimes from where I’d got bored, but I’d often skip pages and chapters until the book started getting interesting again. But I don’t do that now I mostly read fiction on Kindle.
I didn’t know that about Ben Hur! But you are right – I give older books a lot more leeway in terms of factual accuracy than modern books.
Having said that, much of the historical fiction I read in years gone by was written by authors who’d undertaken a lot of primary research, to the point where the author’s note would apologise for having moved a key event by a couple of weeks to better fit the fictional story. Those were my favourite authors, because I was confident they’d got their facts right.
The only novel I remember I DNF was a Jeffrey Archer about the English/British parliament, I can’t remember the title, that how good it was, boring 😐
I remember reading that one and enjoyed it – I also enjoyed his novels about the US political system. It shows we’re all different, and sometimes it comes down to our moods.
True that, Iola 🙂
I so very rarely DFN as I just HAVE to find out:
a) if it gets any better
b) how it finishes – but never go straight to the last page
My exceptions are:
a) it is so badly/amateurishly written with no story value/interest to keep me reading
b) too much gratuitous and/or explicit sex
c) the genre holds no interest – usually a book that has been given to me
The main reason I’ve started DNFing is because I found the books didn’t get better – or only rarely got better. It’s much more common that I force myself to keep reading and end up finding more and more issues with the book.
I have had a few I DNF One was due to language, It was set in the Civil war with an English officer who used a word that is ok in America but here is swearing. I could have handled it once or twice but in 2 chapters I think I counted it more than 20 times. If he died I could have kept reading but he didn’t and I just couldn’t read it or review it except to give a warning to Aussies.
Another I read the first chapter or so and the book made no sense at all I couldn’t work out who was who and what was happening so I stopped it.
One other reason I DNF was I started reading a book when mum was close to dying. The book itself was dealing with someone who was caring for a person who was dying or was looking like losing and it was just to close to home at the time. The same happened with another where the hero was having chemo at the same time a friend was also suffering and again to close to home.
I had another I had to read and judge years ago for a contest The first third or more was so confusing trying to work out who was who. The author took so much time creating as fantasy world but it was so confusing. But the second half it moved so well and ironically it was a character there who explained things in a very short time that made it make sense. If she had used the same idea to explain things right back early in the book it would have flowed so well and would have been a great book but if not for having to read it I would have given up cos it was so confusing.
I’ve come across a few words that Americans use freely without realising they’re inappropriate in other English-speaking countries 🙂
You make a good point in that the book has to start well. If I can’t get through the Kindle sample, then I’m not going to buy or read the book (and I don’t even count that as a DNF). It’s important to anchor the reader in the time, place, characters, and conflict as early as possible.
That’s why I love you to edit my books. You pick up on these things and tell me in no uncertain terms why things aren’t working. It doesn’t mean I’m always able to fix everything, but I try!
Thank you 🙂
That’s also why I love editing – because it gives me the opportunity to let the author know what isn’t working for me, because if it’s not working for me, it’s likely to confuse others as well.