Why I'll Never Be an Acquiring Editor
Sep. 4th, 2005 11:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ksmithTucked on my hard drive is a long, sort of rambling semi-review of The Historian. There it will stay. I'll never be a reviewer, either. I get to a certain point in the proceedings and lose interest. Wonder if the faults I'm finding in the work in question are just as evident in my own books--the mote in their plot and the beam in my own.
I started out wanting to like this book. The reviews I read were uniformly good, and I found the premise interesting.
I found scattered sections of TH quite gripping. Then about a third of the way through, it turned into peanut butter soup. The revelations consisted of discoveries made over the course of travels from Amsterdam to London to Istanbul and Eastern Europe. Academics, uncovering documents and making connections. The problem isn’t sense of place--Kostova is quite good with description and setting scene. I felt, unfortunately, that the level of background/description fought with the thriller aspect and came out on top too many times.
There are three main POVs, all academics, and at times I found it difficult to determine whose head I was in. I did not find their voices distinctive and their personalities strong. I didn’t care about them. That's a red flag for me because if I don’t care about the people I'm reading about, it turns into an exercise in reading to get to the end, which I don’t enjoy as a rule. But I wanted to see if I could determine why this book was worth $2 million, so I kept going.
At this point, Kostova can't write action to save her life, and the opportunities were there. This is Dracula, for crying out loud. Blood, and stuff.
The ending should have been a riveting culmination. For me, it seemed a fizzle with a not particularly satisfying twist. Again it's worth noting that Kostova can't write action to save her life.
Thing is, there's a copy of JONATHAN STRANGE & MR. NORRELL sitting on my shelf waiting to be read, and if it's anything like TH, I'm not sure I want to read it. I have heard that it's a slow mover and that Nothing Much Happens, and well, I just read NMH and didn’t have much fun.
Is this a trend in mainstream fantasy/alternate history/whatever? I've heard that Stephenson's QUICKSILVER books move slowly as well, with much convolution along the way. So what's the deal--folks who don’t normally read genre can convince themselves that they're still pure because they've digested all this chewy, nutritious, historical fiber along with the sweet, soft, caramel plot center?
I'm not a shallow all-action hussy--I enjoy Ian Rankin, Le Carre. The MAPP & LUCIA books are some of my favorites, for crying out loud. The first one begins with a multi-page description of Mrs. Lucas walking home from the train station. By the first few sentences, I was hooked.
Shortest form: Plenty of people love this book. I didn't. If I were an acquiring editor and had read this manuscript, I've have offered a low five-figure advance and an axe. So much for my editorial career.
I started out wanting to like this book. The reviews I read were uniformly good, and I found the premise interesting.
I found scattered sections of TH quite gripping. Then about a third of the way through, it turned into peanut butter soup. The revelations consisted of discoveries made over the course of travels from Amsterdam to London to Istanbul and Eastern Europe. Academics, uncovering documents and making connections. The problem isn’t sense of place--Kostova is quite good with description and setting scene. I felt, unfortunately, that the level of background/description fought with the thriller aspect and came out on top too many times.
There are three main POVs, all academics, and at times I found it difficult to determine whose head I was in. I did not find their voices distinctive and their personalities strong. I didn’t care about them. That's a red flag for me because if I don’t care about the people I'm reading about, it turns into an exercise in reading to get to the end, which I don’t enjoy as a rule. But I wanted to see if I could determine why this book was worth $2 million, so I kept going.
At this point, Kostova can't write action to save her life, and the opportunities were there. This is Dracula, for crying out loud. Blood, and stuff.
The ending should have been a riveting culmination. For me, it seemed a fizzle with a not particularly satisfying twist. Again it's worth noting that Kostova can't write action to save her life.
Thing is, there's a copy of JONATHAN STRANGE & MR. NORRELL sitting on my shelf waiting to be read, and if it's anything like TH, I'm not sure I want to read it. I have heard that it's a slow mover and that Nothing Much Happens, and well, I just read NMH and didn’t have much fun.
Is this a trend in mainstream fantasy/alternate history/whatever? I've heard that Stephenson's QUICKSILVER books move slowly as well, with much convolution along the way. So what's the deal--folks who don’t normally read genre can convince themselves that they're still pure because they've digested all this chewy, nutritious, historical fiber along with the sweet, soft, caramel plot center?
I'm not a shallow all-action hussy--I enjoy Ian Rankin, Le Carre. The MAPP & LUCIA books are some of my favorites, for crying out loud. The first one begins with a multi-page description of Mrs. Lucas walking home from the train station. By the first few sentences, I was hooked.
Shortest form: Plenty of people love this book. I didn't. If I were an acquiring editor and had read this manuscript, I've have offered a low five-figure advance and an axe. So much for my editorial career.
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no subject
Date: 2005-09-06 03:59 pm (UTC)Do the same people who read Terry Goodkind read Susan Elizabeth Phillips? Probably not. But okay, one may say, those are very definitely genre books, so they have a kind of "special case" attachment to them.
Less than half of literate American adults read a whole book last year. Most paperback books are romance novels. The biggest bestsellers in the USA are actually religious books, but you won't always see them on the NY Times list due to the Times's arcane selection system, or on the Big Box Store lists because they sell significant numbers at specialty independent bookstores.
So what makes a "bestseller"?
One way or another it has to reach into a lot of brains and make them jump. But people have such radically different ways of thinking. A book can be a bestseller by appealing to a small percentage of lots of different types of people (a "mainstream" bestseller), or by appealing to a huge percentage of a specific subset of people (a "genre" bestseller).
Nothing can guarantee a bestseller, but I think there are steps a writer can take to increase the odds:
1. Be excited about what he or she is writing. I suppose some can fool the audience, but I'm pretty sure most bestselling writers really enjoy what they're writing. There's an energy that's almost impossible to fake.
2. Write in well-structured prose. This doesn't mean talk down to the readers, and it doesn't even mean write in straightforward language. I can't define the quality, and it's probably different for different groups of readers, but what puts me off a book more than anything else are clunky or dull sentences. Sure, I can tell what the author is saying, but it could have been said with life and grace. (Now ask me to define how this is accomplished. Ah ha ha ha ha! I wish I could. But I know it when I read it.)
3. Engage multiple parts of the reader's brain. This is a new idea for me, but it seems to hold true for many bstsellers. It goes along with my First Dictum ("all scenes must accomplish at least two things"). A simple story and plot can be fun, but readers will be more engaged if more is happening. The Harry Potter books, frex--very simple story, right? Boy vs. Big Evil Wizard. But it's everything else that makes those books so enjoyable. All the creative worldbuilding bits, the little mysteries, the interpersonal conflicts...it adds up to a lot of moving parts, and the readers' brains are engaged by trying to keep track of it all.
Just my thinking on the subject.
no subject
Date: 2005-09-06 06:40 pm (UTC)I know what all bestsellers are not the same. But when I read one, I usually find something that grabs me, and I understand why the book hit. I liked DVC for the puzzle. I read Ian Rankin for his wonderful takes on office politics, situations that I think touch a lot of his readers the same way they touch me. Sometimes it's because one character just gets to me.
It's when no aspect of the book grabs me that I wonder, what am I missing?