Why it's good to read bad fiction
Jul. 8th, 2012 06:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chocolatepot(I've been on vacation for the past week and so I've seen very few posts and I should write about what I did, and I will later, but right now this.)
It's very rare that I won't finish a book. I think getting free ones for the Kindle is helping me get to the point where I can say, "Okay. This is not getting better. Let's not bother." The book pushing me onward this week is called His Not-So-Sensible Miss.
The first quarter or so of the book is seriously just about the hero and heroine, with nobody else appearing. The heroine, Emily, is the ward of a local duke (you will notice that I am unfazed at the casual use of a duke, because I am a broken woman) but the daughter of a vicar's daughter and a professor at Oxford, both deceased. She comes across the hero, Dillon Chambers, when he's working on this cottage he bought in the country and thinks he's a laborer - he lets her because he wants to ~get to know her~ without his money coming into it. They meet repeatedly at his cottage and have picnics and fall in love. Then he tells her to go have a Season like the duke/duchess are trying to get her to do and if she's still in love with him in a year to meet back there. Then he goes to London as well and meets her and of course she's angry and thinks he was fooling around with her. He starts pretending to court her not-sister, Claresta, to get near her, and Claresta agrees to help. This is about halfway through and where I put it down. (I should also mention that the Chamberses are a wealthy old family in the vein of the Darcys, but Mrs. Chambers is intent of getting a wife for her son with a courtesy title. This makes little sense. 1. That's not going to do anything for Dillon, he's not going to get a secondary courtesy title of his own. 2. It's not going to do anything for his children, unless he marries an only child whose father's title has nobody else to come to except his son. 3. That would be a worst-case scenario for any nobleman, sorry, men with titles could marry heiresses but noble daughters tended not to marry out of the nobility as they took their husband's status, so did their children, and the title could pass to someone who horrendously worked for a living.)
The biggest thing this has taught me is that: conflict is so important. Whenever I read Regency romance, I always have Austen in the back of my mind, and the contrast is showing up the strongest here. In Austen, the heroine has few or no people she can confide in and who will defend or comfort her, parents/guardians are either useless or actively a problem, and most of the marriages around her are troubling, making it seem that there's some potential for her not to make a good one. In this, the heroine's guardians want her to come out in society, Claresta likes her and treats her as a sister, people in society (besides Dillon's mother) approve of her modesty and prettiness. Mrs. Chambers doesn't care about her because she's a snob, but thus far she doesn't do anything but ignore her. The hero has several male friends, three of whom are happily married (from previous books in the series) to women that they adore. And it is boring, boring, boring. Emily has a massive inferiority complex and sees herself as Claresta's companion and future chaperone, not fit to be married by anyone in the gentry or nobility, but everyone is constantly telling her she's wrong, so I have no idea where she got the idea. Claresta even tells Dillon that Emily has taken it all on herself, the duchess tells Emily that her father was a gentleman and would have been welcomed into society (wrong), the duke engaged dancing masters to help her get ready for her own Season, which she turned down. Rather than making me wonder where her low self-esteem came from, reading on to hope to see why she feels this way, it strikes me as the author trying to shove conflict in without making more than one character unkind.
It's also making me think more about accuracy things. In an issue of the Romance Writers' Report a few months or so back, there was an article about accuracy vs. plot, and most authors interviewed said that they put the plot above accuracy, skipping out on accuracy if something or other needed to happen. I think a lot of people do this, but not just in plot-important areas that can't happen without some inaccuracy, but just in a general way. The trouble I've noticed, however, is that the inaccuracies tend to make the story worse, and not just in a "you only dislike it if you know the way it ought to be" fashion. A very, very good portion of the time, the inaccuracies only seem to exist to remove conflict - either internal conflict, where a character does something that would be socially unacceptable and doesn't have anything internalized about that making them wicked, or external conflict, where everyone seems to be fairly enlightened and doesn't judge main characters for acting outside social norms. It's rare that an inaccuracy jumps out at me where it doesn't remove a conflict (usually it's about the number of underthings a character is wearing, which could be described as removing a conflict against getting the heroine's nipple in the hero's mouth). Do you want your hero and strait-laced heroine to have secret meetings in the woods? Go ahead, but it makes no sense for your heroine not to worry that people will discover her secret, or to worry that she's a scarlet woman even if other people don't find out because she considers such behavior ruinous. I think that's the heart of it: characters never seem to feel remorseful or that they've done anything wrong unless it's something that happened prior to the beginning of the book which will turn out to be not their fault. The excessive use of first names and hugging between Dillon's friends (who knew Emily when her father taught them, and when he insisted on the leveling of status by using first names) and Emily removes conflict in trusting them, and I think that's also an inaccuracy that would just jump out at you even if you didn't know it were inaccurate.
Finally, it occurs to me as it's done many times that giving both the hero and heroine points of view in romance novels removes all of the suspense. I don't understand why it's so necessary in the genre. What on earth is the point of multiple chapters of a character going, "He doesn't love me," interspersed with multiple chapters of another going, "I love her so much"? Is there anything as sublime as Sophie realizing Howl knows she's not an old lady, etc., and would it have been improved if the reader had been certain of it all along? No, it would have been rubbish. Who started this biperspectival nonsense and why did it catch on?
(Finally finally, the editing is not very good. The second page had the hero curse, "Bullocks," and there are a lot of other typos - conservation for conversation, ridicules for ridiculous, etc. There are numerous clues dropped (for things I haven't found out yet) that come off as nonsense rather than intriguing foreshadowing.)
A couple of illustrative quotes:
Not inaccurate, but not good writing.
Removal of conflict twice: heroine has a champion who will look out for her interests; heroine's champion is of higher rank than anyone else and can interrupt and correct without fear.
It's very rare that I won't finish a book. I think getting free ones for the Kindle is helping me get to the point where I can say, "Okay. This is not getting better. Let's not bother." The book pushing me onward this week is called His Not-So-Sensible Miss.
The first quarter or so of the book is seriously just about the hero and heroine, with nobody else appearing. The heroine, Emily, is the ward of a local duke (you will notice that I am unfazed at the casual use of a duke, because I am a broken woman) but the daughter of a vicar's daughter and a professor at Oxford, both deceased. She comes across the hero, Dillon Chambers, when he's working on this cottage he bought in the country and thinks he's a laborer - he lets her because he wants to ~get to know her~ without his money coming into it. They meet repeatedly at his cottage and have picnics and fall in love. Then he tells her to go have a Season like the duke/duchess are trying to get her to do and if she's still in love with him in a year to meet back there. Then he goes to London as well and meets her and of course she's angry and thinks he was fooling around with her. He starts pretending to court her not-sister, Claresta, to get near her, and Claresta agrees to help. This is about halfway through and where I put it down. (I should also mention that the Chamberses are a wealthy old family in the vein of the Darcys, but Mrs. Chambers is intent of getting a wife for her son with a courtesy title. This makes little sense. 1. That's not going to do anything for Dillon, he's not going to get a secondary courtesy title of his own. 2. It's not going to do anything for his children, unless he marries an only child whose father's title has nobody else to come to except his son. 3. That would be a worst-case scenario for any nobleman, sorry, men with titles could marry heiresses but noble daughters tended not to marry out of the nobility as they took their husband's status, so did their children, and the title could pass to someone who horrendously worked for a living.)
The biggest thing this has taught me is that: conflict is so important. Whenever I read Regency romance, I always have Austen in the back of my mind, and the contrast is showing up the strongest here. In Austen, the heroine has few or no people she can confide in and who will defend or comfort her, parents/guardians are either useless or actively a problem, and most of the marriages around her are troubling, making it seem that there's some potential for her not to make a good one. In this, the heroine's guardians want her to come out in society, Claresta likes her and treats her as a sister, people in society (besides Dillon's mother) approve of her modesty and prettiness. Mrs. Chambers doesn't care about her because she's a snob, but thus far she doesn't do anything but ignore her. The hero has several male friends, three of whom are happily married (from previous books in the series) to women that they adore. And it is boring, boring, boring. Emily has a massive inferiority complex and sees herself as Claresta's companion and future chaperone, not fit to be married by anyone in the gentry or nobility, but everyone is constantly telling her she's wrong, so I have no idea where she got the idea. Claresta even tells Dillon that Emily has taken it all on herself, the duchess tells Emily that her father was a gentleman and would have been welcomed into society (wrong), the duke engaged dancing masters to help her get ready for her own Season, which she turned down. Rather than making me wonder where her low self-esteem came from, reading on to hope to see why she feels this way, it strikes me as the author trying to shove conflict in without making more than one character unkind.
It's also making me think more about accuracy things. In an issue of the Romance Writers' Report a few months or so back, there was an article about accuracy vs. plot, and most authors interviewed said that they put the plot above accuracy, skipping out on accuracy if something or other needed to happen. I think a lot of people do this, but not just in plot-important areas that can't happen without some inaccuracy, but just in a general way. The trouble I've noticed, however, is that the inaccuracies tend to make the story worse, and not just in a "you only dislike it if you know the way it ought to be" fashion. A very, very good portion of the time, the inaccuracies only seem to exist to remove conflict - either internal conflict, where a character does something that would be socially unacceptable and doesn't have anything internalized about that making them wicked, or external conflict, where everyone seems to be fairly enlightened and doesn't judge main characters for acting outside social norms. It's rare that an inaccuracy jumps out at me where it doesn't remove a conflict (usually it's about the number of underthings a character is wearing, which could be described as removing a conflict against getting the heroine's nipple in the hero's mouth). Do you want your hero and strait-laced heroine to have secret meetings in the woods? Go ahead, but it makes no sense for your heroine not to worry that people will discover her secret, or to worry that she's a scarlet woman even if other people don't find out because she considers such behavior ruinous. I think that's the heart of it: characters never seem to feel remorseful or that they've done anything wrong unless it's something that happened prior to the beginning of the book which will turn out to be not their fault. The excessive use of first names and hugging between Dillon's friends (who knew Emily when her father taught them, and when he insisted on the leveling of status by using first names) and Emily removes conflict in trusting them, and I think that's also an inaccuracy that would just jump out at you even if you didn't know it were inaccurate.
Finally, it occurs to me as it's done many times that giving both the hero and heroine points of view in romance novels removes all of the suspense. I don't understand why it's so necessary in the genre. What on earth is the point of multiple chapters of a character going, "He doesn't love me," interspersed with multiple chapters of another going, "I love her so much"? Is there anything as sublime as Sophie realizing Howl knows she's not an old lady, etc., and would it have been improved if the reader had been certain of it all along? No, it would have been rubbish. Who started this biperspectival nonsense and why did it catch on?
(Finally finally, the editing is not very good. The second page had the hero curse, "Bullocks," and there are a lot of other typos - conservation for conversation, ridicules for ridiculous, etc. There are numerous clues dropped (for things I haven't found out yet) that come off as nonsense rather than intriguing foreshadowing.)
A couple of illustrative quotes:
"Regardless of your intentions, Emily is hurting."
"And do you think she is alone in that?" Dillon yelled.
Not inaccurate, but not good writing.
"Excuse me, Mrs. Chambers," Her Grace interrupted. "I believe you have forgotten to introduce Ellings' ward, though I don't believe an introduction will be necessary, however. Your son and Miss Frasier are already acquainted, I believe."
Removal of conflict twice: heroine has a champion who will look out for her interests; heroine's champion is of higher rank than anyone else and can interrupt and correct without fear.
no subject
Date: 2012-07-10 03:57 am (UTC)And while I'm not a big fan of a book's suspense being in the hero and heroine's feelings for each other, I'm definitely a fan of conflict, both internal and external. A great way to put characters through hell is to keep them from the people they love, and I've always felt that's part of the point of a romance novel, for me anyway. Two perspectives = twice the angst!
With this book in particular though, I don't get what the book is supposed to be about. If there's no conflict, what's the point? I don't understand how anyone could put all the time and effort it takes to write a book when they're not at least partly driven by the conflict in the story.
The second page had the hero curse, "Bullocks,"
That gives me an image of a bunch of little Sandra Bullocks running around thwacking the hero.
no subject
Date: 2012-07-10 11:58 pm (UTC)I think it's supposed to be about people breaking through poor Emily's shell of poor self-esteem, but the fact that everyone has apparently been nice to her forever makes me very impatient with her to the point that I can't care. I mean, my kind of Idfic is similar, but I want terrible past trauma where the guardians tell her she's worthless even though she's actually a high rank, and everyone ignores her, and basically she has to be Fanny Price and hold on until someone else can see how intelligent and wonderful she is.
Preferably a Henry Crawford type.I have no idea whose Id fantasy is "everyone is nice to her and she still hates herself".no subject
Date: 2012-07-11 02:08 am (UTC)Honestly, suspense of any kind annoys me at least as often as it interests me. I don't think a story needs to be suspenseful to be good. There needs to be conflict, but that's a different thing.
no subject
Date: 2012-07-12 02:28 am (UTC)I probably have just read too many romance novels. There is a certain amount of churning-out in the profession, tropes get overused, it gets to the point where I might as well skip to the end because each step feels like it's just going through the motions. Mind you, the fact that I only pick up free ebooks is probably part of the problem.
no subject
Date: 2012-07-12 02:38 am (UTC)I know that feeling. With me, it's too many "girl becomes strong warrior and does exactly the stuff boys do but better" books. I'm totally unfair to them now.
For me... hm. The way I like to write is to have at least two povs. Generally, the main one is the heroine. The secondary is the hero. Then other characters get povs when they're doing interesting stuff, or the scene affects them far more than the hero or heroine. And the villains get povs too. In stuff I like, the hero and heroine do generally know pretty much what the other is thinking -- they just disagree with each other :D. I'm not a fan of the "Big Misunderstanding" school of plots in stuff that's supposed to be serious. (I often enjoy it in comedy. "Okay, so I've dressed up this llama in a hoop skirt and cowboy hat, that's what you wanted, right?")
no subject
Date: 2012-07-12 11:29 am (UTC)Ah, yes, that makes a difference. I'm perfectly find with a double PoV when there isn't some kind of big misunderstanding between them, I just forgot that it's possible for a romance novel to have a plot that doesn't revolve around one because so many of them do.
no subject
Date: 2012-07-12 07:45 pm (UTC)I'm reading one right now where the main character protests that she can't be beautiful solely because she has brown hair, dark eyes, and full lips, wtf is wrong with her
One of my so-called friends said to a guy who was flirting with me that brown eyes are ugly. I have brown eyes. This girl had been my supposed friend for well over 10 years. So I would guess that writer you're talking about has some Issues she's working through about her own looks, but doing it in a heavy-handed manner that doesn't necessarily make sense for the character.
no subject
Date: 2012-07-13 12:11 am (UTC)not like that bitch Elizabeth Woodville" trope and didn't want to bother to put the effort into making it work logically. In fairness, very few other people bother either. At least half the time they go with "I'm so plump and unattractive, what man could be interested?" "No, you have curves in all the right places and large breasts, you're beautiful!" ... Theoretically it works for me, but in practice it always breaks down into thinking they're stupid.What a shitty friend. I've always thought that all eyes are pretty.
Have you read any of Janet Mullany's romances in the Little Black Dress (I think) line? Rules of Gentility, Improper Relations, Mr. Bishop and the Actress ... they're humorous and fun.
no subject
Date: 2012-07-13 03:19 am (UTC)I can't stand the way women angst about their appearance in most books. Sometimes it's fine and realistic, like the way Anne and Diana each wish they looked more like the other in the Anne of Green Gables books. But usually these days it seems only to exist so the hero can tell the heroine how gorgeous she is and to put down thin women and/or blonde women. And it occurs in books that have fat-shaming, too -- like, the heroine has big boobs and an hourglass shape and isn't "too" fat, but look over there at that "really" fat woman shaped like a pear, ick.