(no subject)

[chess]

Del asked:

I want to know what you read. Not a list of titles of books I’ve never read. What kind of protagonists do you like? What sort of relationships? What prose styles appeal to you? Do you like circular stories? Flashbacks? Stories told backwards? Stories told in a mix of register or media? Have you ever thought that something could be improved by including a poem? Do you like reading screenplays? What sort of level of description do you enjoy? Do you prefer information delivered in description, told to you by the narrator, demonstrated by action, left for you to figure out or exposed in dialogue? How do you feel about subplots or being taken by surprise by the focus of a story? Do you like rich language or sparse language? Lots of dialogue? How about people writing in dialect? First person, second person, third person, close or omniscient? Past, present, whatever tense? Of the books that are your favourites, why are they your favourites? Are there any unifying themes between your top fives, like father-son relationships or attitudes to death or coming-of-age? Do you read from a particular genre? Do you like pastiche/parody? What are your feelings on allegorical fiction? Fairytales? Folklore? Do you like being TOLD a story in person as well as reading them? Do you tell anecdotes or like listening to anecdotes? What tone or preoccupation characterises the work of your favourite authors? Do you like people who use words to mean something different to their intended use? Do you LIKE adverbs? How frequently do you notice the rhythm of a piece of writing – when it is good, when it is out of synch with the content, or only when it’s a poem?

My answer, which hugely failed to fit in a comment box, was:

When I read, I want to be emotionally affected. I want fear and pain and loss and unexpectedly turning out to care and despair and the death of hope. In order to facilitate this, I want coherant settings subtly
different from the everyday world (or very different but well-thought-out and well-founded in reality), big ideas, ordinary people in extraordinary situations, metahumanity which is subtly and disturbingly different (and consistantly so). If you can't do the emotionally affecting bit, then make me laugh; aliens as humans-in-alien-suits are more suited to the second genre.

I like protagonists that I can identify with; I have read all kinds of tripe because the protagonist is There But For The Grace Of God Go I. Alien / metahuman actual-sole-protagonists have to be fundamentally
human, even if they have a very different upbringing and society giving them a very different worldview to humanity today; they're the contrast with the Other, the perspective which means I can get a handle on your world.

Relationships should be realistic; people should use each other, love furiously but not understand, hold childhood grudges. The best relationships are between characters-I-can-identify-with and The Other,
because they explore the edge of what it means to be human and how The Other differs from our perspectives on life.

I like straightforwards prose that says what it means. If you're having to use flowery prose to evoke your effects, you haven't made a compelling enough world / set of characters.

Circular stories and stories told backwards work well in short story format, but can get irritating as a novel or even a long short story (especially stories told backwards, they really begin to hurt after a
while with all the contrivances you generally need to employ). Occasionally someone manages to pull off "and they all end up back where they started, and nothing will ever change, and life is only worse for
their adventures having given them a brief spark of hope in the darkness" and it's wonderful, but that's quite rare.

I love flashbacks. Flashbacks let you wander off and display another facet of the setting and the mindsets and worldviews of the characters, enriching the whole.

I'm not entirely sure what you mean about 'stories told in a mix of register or media'. In general if you're mixing stylistic features then you're using too many stylistic features. And whereas I often enjoy
graphic novels, I enjoy them because they tend to tell the kind of stories that I like and cut out all the literary devices, adjectives, adverbs and dense description people like to pad novels with, but
generally think they would be more immersive and generally better if written well into prose. (This is partially because I have a very good visual imagination and so I hate to be *shown* what the place and
characters look like, I want to build it up from the important bits mentioned in the writing.)

I am quite fond of poetry as an art form, apart from 90% of all poetry being complete dreck that makes me angry that people would spoil it for all the Really Excellent Poems by trying to pass that off as poetry
(this dreck including, you understand, 90% of my own poetry), but for goodness sake put it as a chapter introductory quote or something one of your characters is writing or singing, not just breaking into verse in the middle of a lump of prose, which is really distracting when I'm concentrating on the world rather than the words.

I really hate reading screenplays. The format just gets to me. Dialogue-heavy, great. Screenplays, not great. If I'm going to read a screenplay, I want a bunch of friends and I want to give each a part and
read it out loud like it ought to be experienced; just sitting and reading the thing leaves me cold.

Description is difficult. I want to read a description of it, quite a thorough one, if it is unusual or novel or generally not something that will likely be part of my previous experience: I want to know what the
weird slimy alien looks like so I can visualise it. I get quite irritated if I suddenly have another limb sprung on me by surprise after I've already established what an alien should look like, for instance.
However, if it's a flower or a lake or a hill or something that a childhood wandering around the countryside has given me a perfectly good idea of the general features of, please do not spend any of my precious time describing it to me, *coughTolkeincough*. Especially not PARAGRAPHS
AND PARAGRAPHS of it. If it isn't something that is completely novel, and/or if the precise features are not going to be suddenly very important later, don't describe it, I know what it looks like already.

Initial visual descriptions of novel phenomena / creatures / constructions should be delivered in description. Background information should be demonstrated by action, even if you need a flashback to do it. Character should be exposed in dialogue and demonstrated by action. Unless the story is first person, the narrator should be quiet and not volunteer any information that isn't direct description of what's going on. If the story is in first person, the narrator should be closely linked to the character's inner monologue and should be potentially wrong about everyone else's state of mind (and indeed the character's, if appropriate), but should feel free to blather on about anything currently concerning the character.

Life has subplots, and so should stories. Occasionally they should kick over what you thought was the main plot and drag the characters screaming out of the way. On the other hand, I generally do not want to be taken by surprise by anything - if I have to be taken by surprise, then the book won't have so much re-reading value.

I like sparse language. Rich language bores, sickens and generally irritates me. I also like lots of dialogue, as it is the best way to get into characters' heads and explore their relationships and tell jokes
and stuff.

I am actually quite fond of people writing in dialect. Even if they're the narrator. I liked Feersum Endjin a lot because the bits narrated in dialect forced your mind to conform to the patterns of the protagonist's
mind much more, in order to read it, facilitating deeper immersion.

I like all varieties of person, preferably swapping between them as the story warrents. I am fairly sure that I don't like first or second person omniescent - if you're writing first or second person, write from
the perspective of the character! You can always drop into third person if you need to. At least have the decency to contrive 'I am writing this diary after the event' if you feel the desperate need to insert cryptic
bollocks like "(alas, if only we had known!)" (which I occasionally do).

The books that are my favourites are my favourites because there is a real sense of 'here is a complete, living, breathing, self-consistant universe' in which either Weird Shit Happens or People Are Insanely
Clever At Problems or Social Upheaval Occurs And Shows Off How Society Works or any combination of those. Because they are consistant and solid and *real*, even if they are completely insane and crazy nightmare realities, the emotional impact really works. (For reference, my favourite books are currently The Diamond Age, Cryptonomicon, Neverwhere, Glass and Diaspora, with Permutation City getting an
honourable mention.) I don't think the top five have a unifying theme except for that, although they are all basically SF (with Neverwhere shading into Fantasy).

I read SF almost exclusively, because it gives me the nice juicy Worlds that I like. Fantasy doesn't do it for me because there is generally very little attention paid to internal consistancy and building a
compelling world, or too much description of grass and flowers and paths and horses. I also like modern / historical fiction which depicts an interesting part of society (by 'interesting' I mean 'something that is basically an alien world to me'), like Down And Out In Paris And London, or that Rome series by Colleen McCullough. I'm actually a complete wordivore and will happily devour modern romance novels too (as long as they are not flowery, the one thing I cannot abide is dense flowery prose).

Pastiche generally means 'disappointingly unfunny', in my experience *coughUncyclopediacough*. Parody is sometimes entertaining on the Internet and in webcomics and stuff, but should only be taken in small doses.

Allegorical fiction is beautiful in short story form, and occasionaly works in longer pieces, but I am strict with my allegories and think they should also make sense as a story in their own right, and be at
least almost as good if you completely fail to spot the allegory. Short stories get away with less sense as long as they are thought-provoking or emotion-evoking.

It is possible to do fairytales right; Neil Gaiman's book-that-I-forget-the-name-of which was based on fairytales worked really well. It is also very possible to make fairytales into Bad Fantasy. Fairytales are good as long as you work out the implications of the fact the world works that way, whatever way that is.

Folklore is endlessly fascinating but not a story in its own right. The story is "what are the consequences of this piece of folklore being true?" or "what are the consequences of people feverently believing in
this piece of folklore?" or "some other story, with added flavour to the society featured because they have lots of folklore".

I adore reading stories aloud. I do not generally adore other people reading stories aloud because they tend to stumble and generally Not Do It Right. Occasional people can Do It Right, at which point the activity is about on a par with reading it quietly myself. I get my co-operative storytelling fix from RPGs, and occasionally stay up into the night telling random stories with tienelle's input. I think that if you are going to tell a story straight off and haven't written it down or learnt it by rote, you should encourage audience participation to make decisions for characters and introduce new elements, because this is more satisfying for your audience. Once you have audience participation you lose something in continuity and consistancy, which is probably why I am happy with fantasy RPGs much more than I am with SF RPGs because Fantasy isn't meant to make as much sense / feel as 'real'.

I tell anecdotes when I can, and listen to anecdotes even more endlessly. I love anecdotes. Tell me all your anecdotes. Mostly the anecdotes I hear and pass on are War Stories, that is, tales from LARP
events and re-enactment battles.

The tone that characterises most of my favourite authors is Progress, and What Happens when you put People into new situations.

I mildly dislike people who use words to mean something different than their intended use; the only excuse for that is that it's your *character*'s fault, not you (so they're speaking or it's first-person
narration). I hate adverbs, but use them anyway. I only notice the rhythm of a piece of writing when there is an obvious rhythm that shouldn't be there, or when it's a poem.

Um. This probably isn't interesting to anyone who isn't Del, and I should be writing my dissertation, but I hate forcing words out and these ones flowed instead.

Comments

[hatter.livejournal.com]

You might want to add a cut for your answer, too, maybe.

[apiphile.livejournal.com]

We agree entirely on description, aye, and there are some interesting things to consider in here. THANK YOU for being so clear on what you do and don't like and so articulate in describing it. *chew*

[rochvelleth.livejournal.com]

I found it interesting, indeed to the extent that I think it would make a good meme. It's a good thing I have my thesis to write and no time for such things...

[hatter.livejournal.com]

No wonder it didn't fit in the box, and was more appealing than thesising. It's obviously something you haven't necessarily put a lot of thought into before, but when prompted, experience kicked in to figure out all the things that can be good or bad hen you're reading. Still, now your muses are singing to you, trick them back to work on the big T.


the hatter