Susan sent us a link to a Charlaine Harris blog entry about the nature of the writing process, and the part readers play in that process.
I’ve noticed lately that quite a few readers seem angry if books don’t turn out in a way that would have made them happier. That’s an attitude I find hard to understand. (Maybe it’s my age? I don’t know.) … I know that readers have every right not to be happy with the way a book ends, or with the way characters meet their fate. But to be angry with the writer? The characters belong to the writer. I know in a certain sense they belong to the reader, too; but the characters live in the writer’s mind and at her/his will.
Well, there’s anger, and then there’s anger. But I don’t think the feelings of betrayal are that inexplicable—Misery is an effective horror novel because Annie Wilkes is a rather mundane, everyday creature exaggerated to grotesque extremes, which tends to be a specialty of King’s. She’s your biggest fan—and you don’t want to piss off your biggest fan.
Reading for pleasure is a deeply personal process—and when you’re reading fiction, it’s also a deeply emotional process. I know I’ve become angry at authors for fucking up their stories. It’s not the personal, directed rage I’d feel towards somebody who had actively done me wrong, and it’s not the deep, sustaining slow burn I feel when I encounter what I perceive to be social injustice. Later on in the blog, Harris mentions that the writer is God, and I think she’s hit the nail on the head, because you know what? People get angry at God all the time. It may not be rational—it may, in fact, be a completely useless endeavor, but it’s a very human urge.
There are different types of anger, too, and I think it’s important to distinguish between them. There’s the anger I feel when I finish a truly awful book. When the craft displayed isn’t inept so much as in need of major reconstructive surgery—so much so that I have no idea how the book got published—I tend to feel pissy at the time and money I’ve wasted. I don’t expect a choir of angels singing every time I open a book, but I do expect a base level of competence.
And then there’s the anger at an author when she starts out terrifically, and then fucks it the hell up further down the line (with certain authors, like a certain somebody whose name starts with “L” and ends with “aurell K. Hamilton,” the fucking is literal as well as metaphorical). In a rather strange way, it’s a compliment to the author. The readers are obviously emotionally invested in the book and the characters; the fact that they’re unhappy with the turn of events may be tiresome (and I’m all for an author staying true to her vision, because writing solely to please the fans is a pretty disastrous proposition) but it shows that at least somewhere down the line, you did something right.
I do find the question of who the characters belong to to be an interesting question. The author has ultimate control, but the reader plays a crucial part in the interpretation process. They may not spend as much time with the characters and story as the author does, but the ties that are created can be every bit as strong and real. The readers don’t—and really shouldn’t—get a say in how the story goes, but I can certainly understand their proprietary urges.
The writer is determiner of fate for his or her characters. Writing is a lone pastime, not a group endeavor. It doesn’t take a village to write a book. It takes one person, shut up in a room for hours on end.
This little bit here made me think about the creative process and how we tend to have this idealized vision of the author as this Glorious Isolato, struggling with her vision and her muse. And then she hands it in to the editor, who asks her to cut 5,000 words so the story is tighter and finds a continuity error that needs to be fixed, and the copyeditor, who catches some typos and points out gently that switching tenses every other sentence makes for a jarring read. Yes, a book is written mostly alone, and as I’ve already said, when it comes down to reader whims vs. authorial vision, authorial vision should win, but I think writing a book is a somewhat more collaborative effort than what we give credit for. A good editor is worth her weight in gold; it’s not a coincidence that certain authors start sucking when they hit the big time and are given more space to be self-indulgent. Cf Rice, Anne and BATSHIT INSANITY.
So some things to think about (and if they sound a little like textbook discussion questions, blame law school for putting me in that frame of mind):
What was the last book you got angry about?
Why were you angry?
Were you mad at the book, or at the author—or both?
Who do you think the characters truly belong to: the author? The readers? Both? Neither?
Authors out there: how strongly do editors influence your vision?
Editors out there: How do you keep your authors happy?
Katie, LKH wrote a novel for the tapletop RPG Ravenloft. My husband has been a gamer since middle school, and collects the novels from a number of different gaming worlds. I’ll play any game, but woo boy, some of those books are not pretty.
Teddypig,
I am so incoherent. What I meant to say was this: I didn’t like Lady Elyssa what-ever-the-rest-of-her-name-was from the Vampire Queen’s Servant. She was too dark. Which makes me sound like a whiner for expecting a nicer vampire, but, hey, that’s just me. She was all: “I kill humans, deal with it. I am evil dark dark dark”, and he was all, “Yea babe, that’s cool. Where do I sign on?” NOT sexy. She had 1000 years worth of baggage, which just made the relationship too much work. I couldn’t finish the book. Waa. Sadly, it hit the wall.
I’ll down load the Joey Hill tonight cuz it looks very, very good. 😉
Oh, too funny and how timely. I just did a blog at the LotC blog about 13 Pet Peeves of a Cranky Bibliophile because I read a really awful batch of books in the last few weeks.
Let’s summarize the blog:
1 – Getting the facts wrong.
2 – Getting the culture/vernacular of other countries wrong.
3 – Getting foreign languages wrong because you’re too lazy to crack open a dictionary.
4 – TSTL characters.
As for my editor, I LOVE her. She has an eagle eye, makes suggestions for improvement, but knows when not to push because there are somethings I just won’t give in on (e.g. comma placements).
I’m with Chicklet on Stephanie Plum. Number 12 gave me the creeps. I’m done. No more of the love triangle, no more Grandma, no more bloody funeral home, no more Lula – I just can’t take it anymore. What else is there for her to do other than die in one of her cars that constantly seem to blow up or get married to Morelli and have his damn babies? I just can’t be excited about a character who hasn’t grown AT ALL in the entire time these books have been coming out.
FFS make a bloody decision all ready and be done with it!
My verification word? Taking43. Make that taking 43 very deep breaths to calm down!
I remember the first time a book’s ending upset me—I was five and the story was “The Little Mermaid.” So I simply tore out the last two pages of the book and stuck in my own ending. Problem solved (except for the parental lecture on not tearing pages out of books). Silly as it sounds, when a book’s outcome annoys me, or a character development bothers me, I rewrite it in my head. As far as I’m concerned, Scarlett always gets Rhett back and Lady Helen Clyde is still alive and kicking. When I re-read, I just stop reading before the bad bits. Hey, it works for me. Although I realize that it does raise all sorts of other concerns about authorial ownership and the integrity of the story….
Thomas Harris
Hannibal
SPOILERS
Except I don’t really care if I spoil this book, because IMHO, people need to be warned off.
Clarice Starling, one of my all time favorite strong, female characters, becomes a drug-addicted, cannibal love slave.
There are other parts of the book that are merely, wall-bangingly bad. But the ending is an abomination. It doesn’t just read as a character violation, or shameless cash grab by the author. It’s as though Harris wants to punish his audience for liking Hannibal Lector too much, and demanding too much gore and depravity.
The vibe I got, as reader, was that he held me in utter contempt. And it’s even more annoying that it’s beautifully written.
The movie has a totally different ending, and is 100 times better than the source material.
~Can anyone say pandering?~
I can understand and accept that any reader doesn’t like characters I write or a storyline, or, well, pretty much anything inside the book.
But I don’t get what you mean by pandering. See, this assigns a motive to me, as the writer—who you don’t know. And it becomes about me and my motivations—which you couldn’t possibly know—and not about the story.
It’s like: Say you think I screwed the pooch on any given book. Okay with me.
Say you believe you know why I screwed the pooch. Not so okay with me.
I’m still violently bitter at Suzanne Forster for The Morning After.
GIANT SPOILER ALERT:
The hero drugs the heroine, marries her and has sex with her to get her pregnant while she’s roofied up, all so he can steal her amniotic fluid to cure his dad of some rare disease, and lies to her about who he is through the entire book, and she just lets it go? WTF?!
See, six years later, and still violently bitter.
For my editor self, it’s a fine line, especially on the first book with an author… it’s a giant trust issue until you’ve built up a good relationship where they know you know what the heck you’re talking about.
I’ve asked for entire chapters to be cut, and while the author was really upset by the suggestion, in the end, she was very happy with the finished book.
As for keeping my authors happy, I try to pick my battles. Let it be a bit of a give and take as far as edits go. I’ve played devil’s advocate, I’ve offered compromises and I’ve stood firm on the really really big things.
Ultimately, my only goal is to produce the best, most awesomest book evah. And I just hope that my authors remember that when they’re stabbing my voodoo doll. *grin*
I think that until the book is released, the characters belong to the author. Once the book is out, it becomes more collaborative because the readers start to imagine different endings or missing moments, etc. This is where fanfiction comes in.
I have two examples of books that made me rather angry.
1) Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. At that time, I was a fairly active fanfiction writer and clearly imagined where I thought the story should go. Apparently, JKR did NOT get my memo and the book totally did not meet my expectations. I HATED it at first. Now, with time and distance, I see that the book is just fine. The issue was with me and my overblown reader expectations.
2) I just finished the Twilight series by Stephanie Meyer. I love, love, love her conception of vampires. The Cullens are amazing. That didn’t stop me from wanting to kick her TSTL heroine, Bella. Seriously, could she be more of a selfish, self-absorbed brat? And that obnoxious werewolf, Jacob, is just as bad. I suspect I’ll read the next one because I really do love the vamps but I wanted to toss the book across the room last night.
“The characters belong to the author. Period. I have come to tolerate fanfic as an expression of how captivating an author’s world is, but in the “canon†works, the author is God, and the readers can dig it or they can stop buying the books.”
I can’t disagree more strongly with this statement. As soon as the book is published it belongs to the readers and they can interpret it any way they like. The author is only ‘god’ in the sense of creating the world. Like ‘god’ they then stand back and let people do whatever they please.
If a book in a series sucks royally and the author assassinates her own characters, I’m quite within my rights to shrug, dismiss it completely and go off and read a better-written fanfic.
Yeah JK Rowling, I’m looking at YOU!
In general, the things that piss me off about stories are these:
1.Infidelity. Yes, I know it happens in real life. If I wanted real life, I would go the fuck outside.
2. Stories where nothing gets resolved and everyone’s unhappy at the end. I mean, screw that. Read above about real life and going the fuck outside.
3.The characters are miserable for the entire book. When I read, I’m sucked in, and everything is happening to me. I get upset and frustrated, instead of having a good time. THE FUCK OUTSIDE.
But the things I hate the most, the absolute most, that make me fling books across the room in fury, are:
4.When the author is trying to say something with the book, and it’s bullshit and/or isn’t backed up. I read Citizen Girl a while ago, and let me tell you, I was ready to set the book on fire. The author wanted to say that pornography was wrong—fair enough, convince me—but she spent the whole book preaching to the choir. The exaggerations frustrated me along with some pretty stupid assumptions, but it only made me support pornography out of spite at the end.
5.Old style science fiction bothers me. I know it’s a product of its time, but I can’t deal with books where all the females are either simpering, boring, overly-sweet twits, or BATSHIT INSANE. My own fault for reading old scifi, which was written for teenage geeky boys, but seriously buddy—just because girls don’t make sense to YOU does not mean we don’t make any sense at ALL.
Lord, back in the day I would get really angry about reading bad books.
Back in the 70’s or 80’s, the guy (Eric something) who wrote Love Story went on the write a book called The Class, I think, and it absolutely reeked! I wanted to go out and find him but I think I was in Spain then. I still think I got robbed.
A while back I read a book called The Reluctant Miss Van Helsing. It was so godawful it prompted me to write my first amazon review. And I can’t get rid of the frikkin’ book now. UBS doesn’t take romances. I’m still pissed about that experience and won’t give that author a second chance. Ghastly!
Any takers?
Then there’s LKH naturally, big surprise.
J.R. Ward irritated me with her first book (that stupid lingo and spelling) but I probably could have moved on if I hadn’t started running into her freaky fans, but I guess that’s a different topic.
I know which Charlaine Harris series in which she killed off the husband, then she killed the cat, from old-age she said – it was only seven years old! And she had the heroine marry that skinny writer – he was so dull. Kind of a let down. I’m more annoyed that she ended the Lilly Bard series. If Sookie’s started to slip maybe I won’t go back to it.
There are other writers I got turned off of because of weak writing, bad research. I usually don’t get to far with those and sometimes if I hear good things about them I occassionally give them another chance.
I do believe that writing is a solitary process with the help of a good editor. Sometimes the author sees something in her story arc that needs to be addressed that her readers are unwilling to accept. But I also think an author should pay attention to her readers when they bitch about editing or lame plot lines; then the bottom line is in peril.
That was way to long…
My latest disappointment was Eclipse by Stephenie Meyer. I was upset because the actions of the heroine seemed to completely contradict her behavior from Twilight. Eclipse simply ruined the magic of Twilight, if I reread Twilight it just won’t be the same.
Dumping Billy by Olivia Goldsmith. I don’t think this was actually written by her, she died around the time it came out. Still it sucked rocks and I was motivated to write a cranky review on Amazon. Especially galling since I loved her other books and her characters were funny, human and she even threw in a little social commentary from time to time (Fashionably Late). Bad Boy stank too but it had some good moments and a geek hero.
The public wants unique, brave and inspired fiction. It does not want pandering crap. In order to get unique, brave and inspired fiction, you need to give the author the authority to do her thang.
However.
If a writer wants to get published, then she has to write material that other people enjoy reading. Yes, she depends on her own instincts and talent to do that, but she is still applying those instincts and that talent to the problem of giving others what they want. It’s not a selfish endeavour.
Where authors like Anne Rice, et ilk, go wrong is in thinking the books they write strictly for themselves deserve to be published.
It’s the difference between masturbation and sex. If you’re having sex, then you need to think about someone else’s pleasure, as well as your own.
What we readers are complaining about, when we complain about an about an author who disappoints us, is that we signed up for sex and instead had someone masturbate on us.
The only book I can think of that ever seriously pissed me off was Adele, later reprinted as Thornfield Hall, by Emma Tennant. If somebody wrote the same story with different names inserted and it had nothing to do with Jane Eyre, I would probably have just thought it was cliched crap that occasionally contradicted itself, and not particularly hated on it. But I don’t think that you get to use somebody else’s characters when the only resemblance is the names. I read that book during the summer reading club at the library last year, the staff version of which involved filling out slips to be drawn for free ice cream. This is what I wrote on the slip for that book:
“This is the worst book ever. I need ice cream to get the bad taste out of my mouth.”
(I got it, too. The person who drew it laughed.)
An author is god to his or her characters. We can like what happens to them or not, but we have to recognize that we don’t get to make the decisions. Here I’m thinking of the end of Robin Hobb’s Tawny Man Trilogy. There are a lot of people who think that it’s a bad ending because their favorite ship didn’t become cannon and are desperate for her to write more and make it cannon. I don’t care for the ending much myself, but I say it’s because she didn’t sell me on the ending well enough- in fact, for most of the trilogy she seems to be selling the exact opposite. An author can do whatever she wants to her characters, but I expect her to convince me that it makes sense.
The only author I have been angry with is Sandra Brown. The first book I read by her was Unspeakable. I loved it. Some of the passages were truly poetic and I felt I gained insight into the world of the deaf. Then I bought 6 (count ‘em) six more of her books, looking for the magic again. And I hated every single one of them. One was set in New Orleans. I hated living there for awhile as a child. Ok, maybe that’s why. Next book, hero sucked. His own mother couldn’t love him. The sixth and final book had the sucky twins and I was done with her forever!
As for Sweet Revenge by Nora Roberts. Robin wrote a post at Romancing the Blog, I think, about seductive reads, books that ought to bother you and don’t. Well, I hate sheik books and I hate books where the h/h are crooks. But I really enjoyed the story in Sweet Revenge. Her triology with the vampire. I detest neck biters. Squicks me out. But I thought, ok, LaNora, I’ll give it one chance. Wound up really enjoying the trilogy. So I guess that the authors are correct, they write what they think will be appreciated and sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t.
But I am still pissed at Sandra Brown for writing 5 crapass books after one that I loved and I will not forgive her during this century.
Knight in Shining Armor
Jude Deveraeux (sp?)
A wonderful story, great heroine, great hero, funny scenes etc..the ending made me throw the book at the wall.
Years later I re-read it, threw it at the wall again LOL.
Moral of the story, men are disposable, just find another with the same eyes.
creeeeeepy.
I am not one to get angry at a book. I am like many others that I will be disappointed with an author every once in a while. I have stopped my auto-buy of Linda Howard books.
The one that I remember making me mad was Wuthering Heights. UGH. Two more selfish, self indulged humans that had NO IDEA how to love anyone or anything but themselves I’ve not seen again. I was mad that I expected a great romance and got those two. I was also mad because of the small part of my poor brain that said ‘no, you just aren’t smart enough to get the story’.
I still think it was an awful book though.
Sam
Amazon.com thinks I’m a god. Don’t believe me?
Check my blog:
PROOF
btw, my submit word is his59
I’m not even going there.
I agree with a lot of points brought up here. An author is definitely god of their own universe, but if she puts a book out there for readers to read, she should expect criticism of it.
I usually don’t finish books that make me angry, although ones recently that annoyed me were Stephenie Meyer’s
Twilight
, which I was expecting to be the best YA paranormal book ever, and which, well, was not. I got so annoyed with Bella, and found her relationship with Edward more squicky than romantic that I just couldn’t finish it.
Before that I read Christine Feehan’s
Dark Prince
, while my inner feminist shrieked at me and told me that there’s no way I will ever find codependent women with psychotic men sexy at all. Except I clearly wasn’t all that angry with the book since I went on to read the next book and liked it a lot better.
I usually get annoyed by lazy research in books. The last book I became very annoyed about was a Nocturne—Harlequin? Where the author screwed up a bit of forensic evidence that she could have researched by watching CSI. Luckily I had picked it up at a thrift store and it went right back the next trip.
Then there was Cast in Shadow. At the very beginning it started to remind me too much of Simon Green’s Hawk and Fisher series, then I discover that she really wants to be a Healer and Do Good Works. I gave up right there because that was a one/two punch that I didn’t enjoy. I could have dealt with Hawk and Fisher reprise—after all there is not enough fantasy police procedural—but Healer heroines are right out of it.
Annoyed at the author in the Nocturn, the Cast in Shadow just left me uninclined to read any further.
Characters belong to the author but he or she better not bore me with them or I won’t read that person any more.
Right now I am luxuriating in Phil Rickman’s Merrily Watkins mystery series—She’s a “Priest in Charge” (vicar) if a small village and a “Deliverance Minister” (exorcist)attached to the Herefordshire Diocese and he writes a very believable female character—in fact most of his female characters are quite believable.
Don’t know how so many romance readers miss the mark with women in romances heroines and villains.
Oh man, I forgot the one author who I refuse to read any more: Anne Tyler. I had to read The Accidental Tourist for senior English. Hated. It. Hated the characters, hated the story, hated the movie. So, of course, I read Breathing Lessons willingly thinking it couldn’t be as bad. I was wrong. I have worked very hard to block this book from my memory but all these years later I remember that I got violently angry at it.
And I got angry at Anne Tyler. I got angry with her for writing such horrible unlikeable characters in such depressing situations. It was completely irrational, especially since I read one of her books willingly (I got angry with my English teacher for making me read The Accidental Tourist)
But very few books incite anger or hatred in me at either the book or the author. Anne Tyler is just very special. She could write the greatest book in the world that every one loves and I still would not read it.
I just bought (and extremely disliked) Real Vamps Don’t Drink O-Neg, by Tawny Taylor. Catchy title, eh? Not so much related to the book, as far as I could tell. Well, there ARE vampires in it. But to be fair, I have to concede that two-thirds the way through it I just started skimming to see if the ending resolved any of the plot points, so maybe the o-neg mystery is resolved and I missed it. Anyway, the back sounded kinda sexy, and I have this vampire thing lately, so I went with it. The beginning and initial setup was interesting, and then it went nowhere. In the end, I was just angry I spent $13.
The Midnighters series by Scott Westerfield.
It was one of those happy happy fun books where everything goes right in the end. Of course there was conflict, and they were very good books, but you always knew the ‘Justice League’ would prevail, and that Jessica and Jonathan would fall in love and get married and have lots of babies. In the end of the third book, he just screws everything over with this awful not-happy ending that makes you want to track him down and throw rocks at his windows so he can’t sleep.
I was mad at the author. The book can’t help who writes it and how stupid he is.
Definitely the author. A writer friend of mine based a character off of me and she is in no way mine. I would do the same to her.
As an author who sends stories out to be critiqued by friends, chapter by chapter, things are very much influenced. It’s always good to get a second opinion.
LB
Also, I have to confess I was new to Nicholas Sparks when I picked up True Believer. I love love loved the book and was thrilled when I found out there was a sequel, in which the heroine dies in the end. Sorry to spoil it for you if you, dear reader, are unaware that they all die in the end with Mr. Sparks, as I was. I was so angry I’ve never been able to read anything else by him, even knowing in advance that they’re gonna die. =)
My feeling on reader anger is this: all through a novel, the writer builds certain expectations, and the reader is . . . prepared, conditioned, inclined, whatever you choose to call it, to have those expectations fulfilled. If the author decides to twist the ending, for added angst or because they think “look how original I’m being!” or whatever, the reader’s not to be blamed for being upset. There’s a promsie in a story and that promise had better be delivered.
My editor’s a doll and I love her to bits, because she couldn’t have made things more smooth for this beginner.
I hate to say mad, because I rarely get mad. Dissapointed? The books that Jennifer Crusie has written with Bob mayer are the most recent.
I love Jennifer Crusies books, “Welcome to Temptation” I have bought 3 books on tape (wore the first 2 out) and have gone through 2 paperbacks of.
I actively didn’t like “Don’t look down.” but decided to give “Agnes” a chance because of good reviews… I wrestled with why I didn’t care for the book and came to the conclusion that the characters were so busy doing, that the wonderful characterization that I loved so much in earlier books is missing.
I think if Agnes had been a book by any other author I might not have disliked it so much. I have come to expect certain things from Crusie and it just hasn’t been there for me. I hope that I will get over this bias because I do believe Agnes was a good book, just not what I wanted when I saw Jennifers name on the cover.
Linda Howards last few books have been that way for me also.
I won’t even get into the LKH debacle except to say that they may be her characters, but when you create characters and use them in more than one book, it would be nice if everything from their age to their eyecolor would stay the same from book to book. We won’t even go into the characters turning into pod people.
Such a great topic! I think it’s fascinating how every time someone reads a book it in a sense becomes a collaboraration between that reader and the writer. The reader may interpret things dffierently from how the writer intended, may imagine scenes that aren’t in the book, mentally continue the story after the book ends, rewrite the ending. As a writer, this doesn’t bother me—I’m just thrilled if someone’s reading my books :-). I recently had a chance to read through one of my books and make minor changes for a re-issue. I got to a scene where a character dies, and I found myself thinking “this is so sad, I don’t want it to happen.” I realized that while I had had total control over those characters and that story while I was writing the book, now that the book was published the world of the story was no longer in my control.
But I do think a writer should have total control over where she or he wants to take a story (I’ve never had my editor pressure me at all to take a story in particular direction). Of course as a reader if I’m unhappy with the direction a series takes, it’s totally within my control to stop reading the series :-).
Oh, man, this is strange. I just blogged about authors’ Pygmalionish (looks like Pygmy-lionish, ain’a?) tendency to view characters as real people, although it had started out being a blog about weirdass fannajamma readers who see characters that way. (I chickened out, though, because I didn’t want to offend anybody.)
Anyway, I truly don’t care what authors do with their virtual people and stories as long as they DO IT WELL. Nothing crimps my cranium more than looking forward to a book—maybe even getting into it a bit—only to have it rapidly turn to crap before my very eyes, as if I were watching a digestive tract in operation.
Novels with ambiguous or up-in-the-air endings can make me a little crazy, but again, if the tale was well wrought, my needs as a reader have been satisfied. (Anybody read In the Lake of the Woods? That novel exemplifies what I’m talking about.)
I routinely get angry at non-fiction and academic books, either for poor argument/analysis or historical bastardization. I tell myself it’s all in the service of intellectual integrity. Whatever. Makes me feel marginally better about getting mad at a book.
In Romance, I got seriously pissed off at one book and, by extension, the author, because IMO the history was bad, the characters offensive, and the plotline abhorrent. I won’t share the title or author, but suffice it to say that I wanted to lock her in a room until she had read every feminist text ever written. She might be a very intelligent and wonderful person, but when I read books, I generally don’t think of the author as a person, but rather as a persona. Ditto for the blog presence. So if I find myself disliking a book or an online personality, it doesn’t really feel personal to me.
As for Charlaine Harris’s rant, if I didn’t think so highly of her books and the quality of her craft, I’d find her post insulting, I think, if only because I think it’s a bit disingenuous for an author, especially a series author, to say she doesn’t get reader anger. IMO, genre fiction is really aimed at securing extreme reader loyalty, and at making readers feel very personally connected to the books. So then when readers get angry and feel betrayed, it’s like an unwelcome surprise to the author, when those gushing fan letters weren’t? That doesn’t mean an author shouldn’t have exactly the mindset Harris does about authorial autonomy—in fact, I wish more authors felt that way about the integrity of their authorial vision. But I think it becomes a sort of double vision for the author—in understanding and appreciating reader loyalty, there needs to be some recognition of the flip side of that (i.e. feelings of betrayal). I don’t think most readers hate the author as a person, but as more of a *name* or a *voice*, and even if that makes authors feel uncomfortable—totally understandable reaction, IMO—it shouldn’t, IMO, be a complete surprise to authors. It doesn’t mean the author is culpable of any crime toward the reader, but I think the author can recognize that invested readers might feel angry and betrayed without authors themselves feeling or copping to any wrongdoing or sense of deserving the reader’s ire. At that point, it’s like two realities—that of the author and the reader—in parallel formation rather than cooperative engagement in bringing a book to life.
Yay Sandy O! Another Bill fan! And ITA about Harris’ last book. I’m so glad I didn’t buy it, but borrowed it from a friend. I stopped buying her books awhile ago. I’ll still read them, but I’m not paying for them..
Here’s what gets me.
1. Historical fiction authors who write about lords and ladies but who don’t bother to take a few minutes to learn how nobles are addressed or referred to. It comes across as an arrogant form of reverse snobbery. Either learn how to refer to them or don’t write about them.
2. Writers whose characters exist in a different culture but who act as if they were the writers’ next-door neighbours. The most egregious wallbanger recently had a Canadian character (right out of the Bob & Doug McKenzie School of Elocution) who during his time studying for his undergraduate degree at “college” (NO) attended the big “college football” (NOOOO) game in his “college town” DO NOT WANT DOES NOT COMPUTE PC LOAD LETTER
3. Unattractive, paunchy middle-aged nebbish lands unimaginably hot babe, then dies to save the universe. I’m talking to you, Robert Harris. (Fatherland put a dent in the wall.)
4. The miracle HEA. It doesn’t just happen in romances, either. The first book I actively loathed was The Andromeda Strain, and it was precisely for this reason.
The last book I got really mad at was Lilith Saintcrow’s new book The Devil’s Right Hand.
Dante went from being an emotionally stunted bad-ass to being an insecure, wishy-washy, liability. I’d have cheered if Japh would have smacked her at least once. And still, the author refuses to throw us any kind of useful “bone” regarding the whole “Fallen” situation. It’s my last Dante Valentine book, no matter how much I love Japh.
I’m glad, too, that there were other people who found Lyssa from Joey Hill’s The Vampire Queen’s Servant totally unlikeable. I love Natural Law and the Ice Queen/Mirror of my Soul series so much and Vampire Queen really seemed to lack that sense of intense interpersonal interaction that those other books had.
I understand that authors have the right to do whatever they want with their characters, but sometimes I wonder like with Harris/LKH if they don’t introduce so many new love interests because they don’t want to—or can’t—do the difficult work of making a really complicated relationship between two people interesting? Is this like the equivalent of adding a cute kid to a sitcom when the ratings go down?
Meredith
The last book that made me mad for the time I spent reading it was
Twilight
. It had gotten such good reviews, here and elsewhere, that I was expecting it to be pretty good, and it wasn’t.
Here’s my review of it.
Grave Surprise
by Charlaine Harris also annoyed me because it felt like she’d all-of-a-sudden decided on a new writing style for the first half of the book. After that it went back to what I remembered, but the choppy sentences and sparse descriptions with repetitive sentence structure in the first half was a bit unnerving.
Patricia Briggs’ husband, Mike, said it best, I think. Here’s the link and scroll down to Jan 19, 2007.
http://www.patriciabriggs.com/news.shtml
Octavia (9/13, 5:29), I’m trying to figure out where what I said contradicts your position at all.
I strongly object to readers demanding that writers do this or that with the characters in future books. The author’s obligation to the readers is to tell them a competently written story, not to tell them the story the reader dictates. If the reader wants a different ending, they can write their own damn book, or fanfic if they insist it has to be these characters.
If a reader hates where an author is going overall, that’s the time to stop buying that author’s books.
I stop buying author’s books all the time. Much as I wish Laurell Hamilton would write books with mystery and plot as she did in the first four Anita Blake novels, I recognize that LKH doesn’t owe me a goddamn thing. If she wants to paint Anita purple and have her skip off into the land of daisies and dildos, that’s her business. I won’t know about it because I stopped reading them many books ago.
The most recent book to make me angry isn’t a romance. It’s a kids’ book from the 70s. If it weren’t a library book—an interlibrary loan book at that—it would have hit the wall.
And it’s just one line that really made me mad. The first person narrator, a boy of eleven or twelve, made a throwaway comment about the general stupidity of all women and how they can’t understand anything important in the real world. He was talking about his mother. It’s not out of character given his age and the time when the book is set, but… the comment’s not necessary to the story. It doesn’t add depth to the characterization. It’s just the narrator’s voice telling the reader that women are stupid
The book is The Big Kerplop by Bertrand R. Brinley, published in 1973. It’s a prequel to a pair a of books that I loved when I was ten—The Mad Scientists’ Club and The New Adventures of the Mad Scientists’ Club. I could deal with the way that those two books excluded female characters, particularly since I read them in the 70s when there weren’t a lot of better options, but I don’t remember that sort of casual misogyny. It may well have been there, but I don’t remember it.
Nicholas Sparks – “Message in a Bottle.” That blew chunks. It was based on a bunch of hugely coincidental things…too many. And then the ending…? What the hell!?
Joanne: I’m so glad it wasn’t just me! I’m actually reading Stephanie Lauren’s
Beyond Seduction
right now and I just can’t seem to finish it. Which is so strange for me because I’ve adored every single one of her books, to the point where I devour them in a day. Last night, I fell asleep while reading a sex scene! The whole book is giving me the deja vu feeling that you discussed—been here, read that.
Kimberly Anne: Thanks for clearing up the title for me. That book can still give me nightmares.
Re: Vampire Books In General I love ‘em. But I’m also glad that I wasn’t the only one who was underwhelmed by Stephanie Meyer’s
Twilight
trilogy (I only read the first two). As someone mentioned earlier, the fascinating Cullens did not make up for Bella’s lack of character development.
Someone else mentioned about not liking Nora Robert’s
Circle Trilogy
and I think that’s a good point. Some people just don’t like vamp books. My Mom and I take turns buying Nora Robert books because we share them but as soon as I saw the
Morrigan’s Cross
, I called Mom from Target and said that she wouldn’t be liking this new Nora Roberts book. Vampires and witches are not her thing at all, whereas I squealed to my husband that Nora Roberts was writing about vampires now!
I can’t stand Fern Michaels (someone mentioned her, as well) because her books are written by two people and YOU CAN TELL.
One last bit of randomness: Is anyone else enjoying Libba Bray’s
A Great and Terrible Beauty
series? Even though they aren’t vamps like in Meyer’s
Twilight
, they are definitely paranormal and Bray writes with the passion, and eloquence that I felt was missing in the
Twilight
series.
(Also: Shout-out to Meg Cabot and
Princess of Puke
! For my birthday, I told my husband that I wanted some more
Princess Diaries
books and he got SO embarrassed having to wander around Borders looking for a pink book. I would TOTALLY have read
Princess of Puke
. But that’s because I love you and will go anywhere that you take me.)
(Speaking of… does anyone else have a husband/SO who is somewhat embarrassed by your love for romance novels? Mine tries to be understanding but he turns red when I pull one out of my bag to read.)