What stuff do you like in fictional books?
11-16-2016, 05:48 PM
What stuff do you like in the novels you read? Certain character archetypes, certain character arcs, certain settings, certain genres, certain themes? Do you like the descriptive, ornate style of writing or simpler Hemingway-ish style?
I have read a fair bit in almost all genres but I prefer pulp adventure fiction, science fiction, and epic fantasy. I've been trying to get into horror/paranormal lately.
More on what I like at the end of this post.
What stuff do you fucking hate in the novels you read? Again, archetypes, character arcs, settings, genres? Happy endings? Bad endings? Mixtures of both?
Things that will make me stop reading immediately:
- Gimicky style, formatting, etc. Don't use quotation marks for dialogue? Done. Write in the second person? Done. Don't use paragraphs? Done. Fuck that shit.
Failing to follow proper written-word storytelling conventions--which are not all that rigid to begin with--doesn't make you special. It makes you a fucking imbecile. It's the literary equivalent of refusing to wear a seatbelt or use your turn signals because you don't want to be like everyone else. Looking at you, McCarthy.
- Writing large chunks of dialogue in a foreign language, without translating. Again, it's not special. It's rude and idiotic. Obviously there can be exceptions, depending on the POV and situation. But since the intended effect would be for the character not to understand the people talking, it would be better not to use written-out dialogue at all, because then if the reader does know then language you just blew the scene for them.
- Egregiously inept storytelling. A good example I've run into several times in the last few months is blowing the opportunity for dramatic tension by creating a situation that should be perilous, then immediately saying "but I found out later it was not actually dangerous at all!" Holy. Fuck. That makes me want to throw the book through the wall. It's such a huge mistake I could hardly believe the author did it the first time I saw it.
Things I just hate:
- Cunty grrlpower characters who are clearly supposed to be liked by the reader. Especially if male characters are interested in those cunty women despite their shitty behavior and attitudes toward the male characters in question. The absolute best example of that I can think of is Murphy from The Dresden Files in the first two books. I would've told her to fuck off and let her get eaten by a werewolf if she treated me the way she treated Dresden.
- Irredeemable male protagonists. I don't mind if a character starts off weak and wimpy and grows into something better. That's the whole Hero's Journey schtick, after all. But if they have flaws that never change despite all the problems the flaws cause, I know I'm never going to like the character and I'll start wishing they would just get killed off. This usually happens because the male author is a fucking idiot and thinks the flaws are actually good qualities.
- I am sick to death of reading basic training sequences. I don't even think it's because I went through real basic training and I already know what it's like. It's just been so heavily overused I never want to read another goddamn basic training sequence in my life unless it's significantly different and interesting, and almost no time is spent on the tough drill instructor business.
I honestly believe most writers who write these boring-as-fuck arcs are doing it to burn through 10-15k words without having to be creative at all. If I ever have reason to write a basic training sequence I swear I'm going to insert a little block of text saying: "If you know what basic training is like, these are the brief differences in my universe. Now skip to page XXX to continue the story." If it's an ebook, I'll put a link to make it easy for them to skip forward. I mean, who the fuck hasn't seen Full Metal Jacket, read Starship Troopers, etc?
How do you like your protagonists?
Not too stupid. They should learn and grow. I am not a fan of "chosen one" protagonists who have unique powers or abilities without even trying. That's lame. Unusual powers or abilities are okay, if other people can have them (or similar powers/abilities) but they're just rare.
How do you like your antagonists?
Realistically evil. One thing I find annoying is when bad guys are irredeemably, absolutely evil. Even truly monstrous people like H.H. Holmes weren't as one dimensional as that.
Outright evil-and-love-it characters should not be main antagonists, in my opinion. It's boring, and it's unrealistic that they would ever gain much power because the people around them wouldn't be loyal. They're likely to just get killed by a subordinate they mistreated unless they're so powerful they basically can't be beaten, which again is boring.
It's much easier to engender loyalty when you convince your followers they're doing God's work, so to speak. Even if what they have to do is terrible, if they believe it is for the greater good, they will do it anyway. You don't buy loyalty and commitment with money, and fear only works on people who have something to lose.
Besides the realism aspect, people who do terrible things out of good intentions are much more dangerous than people who simply take pleasure in hurting people and destroying things.
^ A well-done example of that was the Chairman in Larry Correia's Grimnoir Chronicles. He was a nearly invulnerable tyrant who ruled Asia with an iron fist. He subjugated hundreds of millions of people and stole gifted children from their families, then put the children through brutal academies where many of them died. Disobedient children were used in horrific experiments. Very Unit 731-esque stuff. But, he did all that because he alone perceived a world-destroying threat on its way, and he was trying to build a powerful army that might defeat it to save Earth.
Long novels or short novels?
I'm more interesting in pacing than length. I don't like meandering, slow stories. I enjoy fiction ranging from 5000 word short stories to many-volume series.
Lots of dialogue, lots of description, both, something else?
I'm not wild about excessive description. LOTR is unbearable in that respect. To this day I've only made it through Fellowship twice, Two Towers once, and I've never finished Return of the King. The only Tolkien book I actually enjoyed was The Hobbit because he didn't do that shit.
Set the scene and let me imagine the details. IMO that's the best way to go. Obviously include the important details but don't wank around for pages at a time trying to paint me a picture.
Otherwise, I dunno, it depends pretty heavily on the story.
I will say having an enormous cast of characters is obnoxious. A few dozen isn't that big a deal if they're introduced slowly but once you're into ASOIAF territory it's ridiculous. I shouldn't have to struggle to remember who the fuck someone is because you haven't mentioned them in 400 pages.
How much time do you get to read fiction in a week?
I always read before I go to sleep, so 4-5 hours minimum. If I'm focusing on writing, I read several hours a day minimum. I regularly read novels straight through in a single sitting.
Do you like short chapters or long chapters?
I don't care much about chapters, frankly. I never try to stop at the end of a chapter or anything like that. I usually barely process that new chapters are happening. To me, chapters are tools to break POV and move around in time. They're like scene breaks on steroids.
I am not a big fan of stories that put a specific datetime on every scene and chapter break, though. It can work in the right circumstances, but if the exact day and time only occasionally matters to the story, I'm likely to start ignoring the datetime and then get confused when it suddenly does matter.
As said, any information you guys could give me on this stuff would help educate me in my writing career. Appreciated in advance.
Specific questions answered, here are some more thoughts:
Stories are about people
1. So, people should be realistic
---- A. Men and women especially should not be interchangeable. They have different motivations, strengths, weaknesses, etc.
---- B. As an example of something I see frequently, if women are fighting alongside men that needs to be handled realistically.
-------- i. Manpower shortage, and women handle support roles.
-------- ii. Royal guards, and since the royal family has both men and women, you need both available because nobody is going to let horny, dangerous, exciting soldiers guard a 16 year old princess
-------- iii. I don't find the typical science fiction excuses of nanotech boosts, powered armor, etc very convincing because with the nanotech example the gap would still exist, since men have a higher baseline ability. With the powered armor type stuff, men still have temperament and reflex advantages. There would have to be other tradeoffs, like only women get boosted, which makes them more or less equal to men, but it chops 20 years off their lives. There's no such thing as a free lunch.
2. Relationships should make sense, unless there's a good reason otherwise
---- A. I don't mean just sexual or romantic relationships, I mean all relationships between characters
Internal consistency
- Magic? Fine, but there should be rules that aren't broken. Once I get to know the world, I should be able to understand the consequences of character actions and circumstances without having my hand held.
- Handwavium? See: Magic
Random stuff
Since to me the interesting things in stories are the people, make sure they're about the people. Too many authors get wrapped up in their Big Idea and fail to write characters I give a shit about.
Characters should be consistent. They can change over the course of the story, yes, but they shouldn't suddenly behave out of character for no good reason.
Don't break suspension of disbelief. I'm willing to buy into worlds that don't follow our rules, but I do need reasons why the worlds are different. I don't recommend messing around with human nature too much, as that would make stories difficult to relate to.
Things should matter. What the characters are doing should matter. There should be a point to it. There should be conflicts, challenges, goals. Success and failure should have consequences.
Conflicts and challenges should be difficult. Characters should fail sometimes. If they get through everything too easily, where's the tension? A number of times in the last couple years I've simply lost interest in novels because none of the challenges actually, you know, challenged the characters.
Lampshading is extremely difficult to do well if you're not writing comedy. I recommend avoiding it.
"Rising to the challenge" is bullshit and it always jerks me out of the story. In a stressful situation, you don't just rise to the challenge. You default to your training. This is mostly a skill thing. People really do find courage when they don't expect it, but you don't suddenly become good at something without practice just because you really need to. That's Disney thinking.
A lot of that stuff ^ boils down to "be a good storyteller", frankly.
I'll write about the blue pill audience / self-insertion fantasy thing in another post.
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Fiction is my field of interest and will be my full profession one day, so I'm out doing -- if you will -- "market research" to tune my later writing. I doubt I'll ever write the sort of novel that would have traditional mass market appeal to women, so I plan instead -- as Cernovich did -- to focus on marketing to men.
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But would a red pill man develop any real rapport with a bunch of average romance genre-loving women? I doubt it. I certainly don't get along with them in normal circumstances if we talk about anything more significant than the weather. If I publish romance, it will be behind a new pen name and I will do what I can to hide who I am. I may even hide that I'm a man.
