Inklings & Musings

I can probably speak for most Austen fans when I say that she wrote too few books for my taste.  Of course, I say that about Laura Ingalls Wilder and Lucy Maud Montgomery, too, and Montgomery was incredibly prolific.  It's hard for a fan to get to the end of a good run with a fabulous but now deceased author.  The realization that there will never be any more stories from a favorite author is devastating.  In Austen's case, this devastation has led to hundreds of "sequels" and copycats which are to varying degrees, mostly expertly written fan-fiction.  Still, I live in hope that I will someday find new books that write in at least the spirit of Austen.  Over Christmas, I had the opportunity to finally read a popular Austen-like Regency novel from yet another modern author purporting to be a fan of Austen and several other Regency authors. 

Having read the book, though, it is clear that the author doesn't quite understand the historical time period.  Many of the characters had more modern thoughts and attitudes.  Still, it was an excellent read.  And by excellent, I mean that I had to steal the book back from one of my daughters for a second read.  Yum!

 As is sometimes the case, I found a writing lesson for myself that I'd love to share.  

The central problem in the story was that the main character was in love with her sister's love interest.  (A rather common hurdle in books, but an interesting one, nevertheless.)  This might not appear to be a hurdle of much height at first, but that particular problem has been compounded by the fact that the sister in question always gets her way.  Always.  No question.  This point is driven home almost to excess by both words and deeds as if to make sure the readers know this without any doubt in their minds.  There is no possibility at all that the sister will give him up.  And just to make sure that the reader knows that the main character's certainty is without question, the author added the interesting twist that the sisters are twins.  You read that right:  twins.  That means that the main character knows her sister so well that they can almost read each other’s thoughts.  Or in other words:  the main character knows her sister so well--by her thoughts as well as her previous actions--that she along with the readers should be completely convinced that there is absolutely no way in any shape or form that the sister is going to give up the love interest to the main character.

Understand?

I love things like this.  I love reading books were the central problem is a big one because even if I know how the book will likely end, I am driven through the book by a burning desire to see how this enormous hurdle will be overcome.  I want to see how clever the author is in figuring a way out.  I love clever.  I imagine that you do, too.  

It is clear that this author, as well as numerous others, has taken to heart the advice to pile it on.  Why just have one problem when you can have two or ... ten?  Add a ticking clock or a ticking bomb.  Up the stakes.  Over and over we hear this advice.  Make sure that the reader is so sure that the problem is both so enormous and impossible to overcome and that the stakes are so high that they will keep reading.  

This technique is used because it works.  In this book it worked on me like a charm.  Did I already mention that I had to steal the book back from my daughter to read it again?  It was that good.

But now the author has painted herself in a corner.  And she has two choices:  do the hard work of figuring out how to get out of this, or trot out the deus ex machina.  You know, the old "God of the Machine" trick from ancient Greek theater.  

I am sorry to say that this author used the latter. 

The most common deus ex machina that I've seen of late has been to suddenly-and-with-no-explanation-have-one-or-more-characters-act-out-of-character.  It's so common that I've seen it in the last few years in a whole pile of books that have included this Regency-type romance, a bestselling SF trilogy, and an equally bestselling stand-alone fantasy.  

In the fantasy, is was a tale of star-crossed lovers that weren't so very star-crossed after all. The reader was assured that there was simply no way, none--it's a matter of honor and all that that these two characters who are the most honor-bound folks in the universe will never, ever get together.  Still... somehow with no explanation whatsoever, they take a roll in the hay, so to speak, before the middle of the book.  Yeah.  Okay.  Huh.  I felt completely cheated out the the experience of seeing how they overcame the ridiculously high hurdle to get together.  

In the SF trilogy the entire premise of all three books was completely negated by the rushed, no-explanations, 3/4 of the characters acting out of character to achieve the tying up a secondary plot line thing.  Yeah... a secondary plot line.  Two years later, I am still flabbergasted.   

It's a terrible trick to play on the reader.  I always feel like I've been lied to.  

No one likes being lied to.  

One of the most critical writing skills that an author can have is consistency.  The world you write in can be entirely made up entirely out of your imagination, but the details of it must be consistent.  Orson Scott Card once said that he will believe anything as long as you justify it.  And I feel the same way.  I have read books set in the most fantastic worlds with manners, objects, rules of magic and/or rules of science that are nothing like what we would see on Earth--and I believed every word.  

But when an author has painted a character as one thing and then has him or her behave in another way to simplify the resolution to a problem, I feel lied to.  Cheated.  Deflated.  I want the explanation so that I can continue to believe that the problem or idea that I chased through the last two or three hundred pages or so was a real one--not merely a hook to get me to read on, only to be conveniently discarded when it was no longer of any use.  

To be truthful, I have no idea if in any of the above three cases, the cheat was the author's idea or a poor editing decision.  I can almost imagine an editor complaining that you just can't add another 5k words to this book to give the reader a solid explanation of why this really isn't out of character after all because... well, because.  Or it may have been a little of both.  Or a decision made in ignorance.  Sometimes we just don't see our story the way other readers do.  We have these plot points and characters and world building things in our head and sometimes we forget that we didn't give the reader enough of a peek when we were picking and choosing the things to put on paper.  Either way, having characters behave out of character is a writing error that we all need to watch out for. 

We need to do the hard work of finding explanations for our characters' behavior so that our readers will feel like we are trustworthy storytellers and will want to read more of our tales.

What was one of your favorite solutions to what seemed like an impossible story problem?