Something I've noticed in books I haven't finished reading over the last couple of years is a problem with pacing. This includes both indie and trad. I don't know if it's my collection of experience over the last fifteen years, my jaded view of entertainment, or if it's really getting worse as the years roll on.
What is story pacing? It's the rhythm of a story. The lulls and peaks in action. I've seen it described as the manipulation of time, an EKG graph with increases intensity, or the stages of sexual response.
A story should lead to a satisfying conclusion for the genre in which it is written. That doesn't necessarily mean a "happily ever after" (HEA) or a "happy for now" (HFN) ending.
In Gone with the Wind, Scarlett's machinations result in Rhett leaving her at the end. Most of the story is Scarlett fighting her own stubbornness, vanity and impulses. She can't see the damage she's doing until it's too late. While her husband has left her, the story does not end on a sad note. Scarlett swears to win Rhett back.
Scarlett's story is marked by a series of high and low points. While it seems like the escape from Atlanta should be the high point of the entire story, it's not. This false win is followed by an even worse crash--starvation and danger in the aftermath of the Civil War.
As Scarlett rebuilds her post-war life, there is a series of peaks and valleys once again. This stage shows our heroine gaining more independence with each step. The penultimate tragedy is the accidental death of her youngest daughter Bonnie Blue. Rhett leaving Scarlett was foreshadowed by Ashley's statement to the effect of a couple needing the same temperament.
These rhythms don't necessarily have to match exactly for both the main plot and any subplots. In fact, opposing rhythms are a hallmark of romantic suspense. It's difficult to have any sexy time when trying to solve a murder or when someone's trying to kill you. A lull in the action gives the protagonists' budding romance to build. If it's done right, solving the crime/catching the killer comes about the same time as the couples' declaration of togetherness.
Those books I mention that I did not finish? There's a discordant rhythm. The stakes for the protagonist(s) did not rise. Sometimes, they even went down.
In an sf romance I actually managed to finish, two people are trying to stop an assassination. Except they weren't personally involved other than their learned knowledge of the crime which was supposed to take place on a planet in an entirely different solar system. Some place they weren't even going to. In other words, there was plenty of time to build their romance.
In fact, there was too much time. The writer had to invent contrived reasons to keep the couple apart because they never left the space station. Oh, and how did they prevent the assassination? They called the police on the planet where it was supposed to happen.
By the way, this was a trad published book.
*eyeroll*
Pacing is something you learn through practice. Yeah, I know, "practice" is a dirty word among some writing circles. But seriously, if you're a plotter, draw a graph of the high/low points in your story. If you're a pantser, draw your graph after the first draft. It'll give you a starting point of what needs to be fixed.
Remember! Craft is king, and no one's going to recommend your book to their friends if they are mumbling "WTF" while they are reading it.
Bad Sisters: A Review. Not Sure What It Is, But It’s Great
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The series Bad Sisters is funny at times. But it’s also shocking. And sad.
I really can’t pigeonhole this series, which I really like. I love it when
somet...
13 hours ago
Re: bad SF romance, I've never read a tradpubbed SF romance -- published as an SF romance and shelved in the Romance section, as opposed to a romantic SF book shelved in the SFF section -- that I thought was worth spit. I remember when SF romances (or, excuse me, futuristic romances [eyeroll]) first started to appear in the 80s, I was delighted. I love SF and I love romance, and there's no reason they can't go beautifully together. SF is defined by its setting while romance is defined by its plot. No conflict, right?
ReplyDeleteExcept I have yet to meet a romance writer who can do any kind of halfway decent job writing SF. For like eight or ten years I bought and read every SF romance I could get my hands on, and I was disappointed every time. I finally gave up buying them on my own. I read a few on recommendation, but they all sucked too. [sigh]
I read... I forget the title, but it was by Rebecca Brandewynne, who was a huge bestseller. Presumably she knows how to write a romance. But this SF romance she wrote sucks swamp water, and the romance -- and the fundamental building blocks of writing a novel -- suck just as much as the horrible SF elements. Her main characters didn't just say the kind of stuff normal people say. Instead they made speeches. They declaimed their dialogue. I was expecting them to start pulling out collapsible soapboxes or portable podiums to climb up on at any point. :/ And the writer told us (over and over and over) how wonderful and brilliant and perfect the girl was, but never showed her doing anything wonderful or brilliant or perfect. All the other characters, discussing her among themselves at various points, agreed about how awesome she was, but the reader never got to see any evidence of it. A clear "show, don't tell" error, the kind baby writers make. :/
And the SF, of course, was horrible. The guy was literally a man in a tinfoil suit with a fish bowl on his head. Their ship took weeks to tool around the solar system (stopping at planets like Venus and Saturn and Neptune to pick up oddly-colored but otherwise perfectly human native women (it was, for real, a "Mars Needs Women" plotline, where the Dude's home galaxy had lost all its women and had come to the Sol system to kidnap females to breed with so they wouldn't die out, sweartaghod) but when it was time to sip off the the guy's galaxy, that trip only took a couple of days. [huge freaking eyeroll]
It was seriously horrible. And even overlooking the sucktastickness of the SF elements, the rest of it was inexplicably awful too. It's like, they sit down to write something skiffy, and everything they knew about writing leaks out their ears. Very disappointing.
Angie
ROFLMAO!!
DeleteI can handle that stuff from ERB and the other SF writers from the late 19th/early 20th centuries, but from a contemporary? As Uncle George would say, "Ohhh, Myyy!"
Exactly! This wasn't something from the 1920s, when melodrama was new and in, something like that. This was the 1980s, when people supposedly knew better. [sigh]
DeleteI heard on GEnie that Ms. Brandewynne, after publishing whatever it was called, came swanning into a SFWA meeting, expecting to be welcomed with open arms as a fellow bestselling SF writer, and perhaps sucked up to a bit, her being all famous and everything.
Instead, being SFWA, the folks who'd read the book apparently gave her chapter and verse on exactly how and why it sucked, with detailed explanations. Word is she was greatly miffed by this, and flounced off, expressing the opinion that they were all just jealous of how much more awesome than she was. [smirk]
Angie
Oh dear! That's the reason I haven't tackled sci-fi yet. There's so much research I'd have to do for a concept I want to do.
DeleteI have enough history research to do with the freakin' Justice series!
Which is fine. Doing SF right does take a lot of research, just as doing historicals (or historical fantasy) takes a lot of research. If you know that, you make a decision as to whether you're willing to tackle that research.
DeleteI don't know how many writers of futuristic romances I've heard claim that they don't have to do any research, because they've been SF fans all their lives and they've got this stuff, totally!
Then you read their books, and they've got the forest planet, and the swamp planet, and the desert planet. And space ships zip through the galaxy, practically going "Whoosh!" as they pass by. And all the aliens are humans with weird ears or foreheads, or with tails, or with strange colored skin. And cetera. And you realize that all their experience with SF has been watching Star Trek or Star Wars, that kind of thing. And they have no clue that media SF is decades behind written SF. Even written space opera is held to a higher standard than Star Wars and Star Trek. But they don't know that, because they've never read any SF (except maybe a few tie-in novels?) so they think they're doing just dandy
It's like, they're writing underwater-setting fiction. They're getting their "experience" from Marine Boy, and Sealab 2020 (anyone but me remember that one?) and Spongebob Squarepants, and have no clue why the audience whose standard is Blue Planet isn't impressed. :/
Angie