What Did You Say?

 

Another one of my pet peeves is when a writer uses foreign terms and dialogue that doesn’t enhance the story.  

I’m not opposed to using some foreign language in a novel. In fact, my recently completed manuscript Not the Enemy uses a limited amount of German dialogue. I had two rules for using it, however. First, it was purposefully designed to enhance rather than detract from the story. Second, the reader must be able to understand the meaning without having to check with secondary sources.

In Not the Enemy, the German words and phrases are spoken by a grandmother who refuses to learn English. Their use provides insight into both the grandmother and her very American granddaughter. I was also careful to provide the necessary context clues and to limit the amount and the length of that dialogue. (Since it is a children’s book, however, I also cheated slightly by putting a glossary at the end.)

The author I’m going to use to show the wrong way to do it is probably not the best example because of the era she wrote in, but it’s the one I most recently suffered through. If it wasn’t a classic by a well-known writer, I probably wouldn’t have finished it.

I’m talking about Villette by Charlotte Brontë. The book begins in England and has an English heroine, but most of the novel is set in a fictional French-speaking European city. The story is written in the first person and is narrated mostly in English, but occasionally it includes long sections of French dialogue. Since most of the French is narrated in English, there seems to be no good reason for the occasional lapse into French.

Obviously, I don’t know Charlotte Brontë’s motivation in using so much French in Villette, so I might be misjudging her. And in her defense, in that era many of her middle- and upper-class readers would have been taught at least some French. Still, I’m sure some wouldn’t have known the language.

My experience with Villette was especially painful since I was listening to it as an audio book and it wouldn’t have been easy to simply skip over the passages. Skipping over them in the physical version wouldn’t have resolved the problem anyway, since there were few context clues and I would have wondered what I was missing.

Either way, the use of a foreign language is another device that should be used carefully to ensure that it doesn’t detract from the story.

__________

To make the graphic at the top of this page, I used Google Translate to translate “What did you say?” from English to French.

Don't Be a Show-off

 

It bothers me when authors feel the need to show off their superior knowledge. Even good ones can fall into this trap, though.

One of my holiday reads was A Christmas Party by Georgette Heyer. I enjoy her light murder mysteries when I am in the mood for something that doesn’t require much thought. So I was disappointed when I read this:

When a leaden sky heralded the advent of snow, he began to talk about old-fashioned Christmases, and to liken Lexham Manor to Dingley Dell.

In point of fact, there was no more resemblance between the two houses than between Mr. Wardle and Nathaniel Herriard.

Georgette Heyer used that as a lead-in to describe Lexham Manor, which was the setting for her story. I understood the allusion only because I had recently listened to Charles Dickens’ The Pickwick Papers as an audio book. Since I have only read about half of Dickens’ works, I could easily have missed the reference. I image that many of Heyer’s readers would have had no idea that Dingley Dell was a country manor owned by Mr. Wardle in The Pickwick Papers. Fortunately, Heyer’s use of literary allusions was minimal and easy to overlook.

I’m not saying that a writer should never refer to something a less-well-read reader doesn’t know about. I often have my characters reading the books they would have read during their period of history, but I do it to show the characters as readers and use only the titles since the content of the book is irrelevant. Or, if it is relevant, I give the reader enough information to understand my use without having to research it.

Hidden or double meanings can even be fun at time, but allusions that some readers will miss work if—and only if—they don’t interrupt the flow and the surface story is interesting without them. Disney handles this issue well. Its animated films are filled with adult humor that children won’t get, but that doesn’t matter because the story is also told at a child’s level. If my enjoyment would depend on specialized knowledge or Mensa-level thinking, however, it isn’t the book for me.

If you want to infuse your manuscripts with allusions that show how smart you are, make sure they work on an everyday level as well.

Because it isn’t very smart to write a story nobody wants to read.

__________

The illustration at the top of this page is “Christmas Eve at Mr. Wardle’s” by Hablot Knight Browne (known as Phiz) drawn for The Pickwick Papers in 1836. It is in the public domain because of its age.  

Hidden Puzzles

I enjoy books where the characters have to solve puzzles as part of the plot. This includes middle-grade children’s books such as The Westing Game by Ellen Raskin, The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart, and Escape from Mr. Lemoncello’s Library by Chris Grabenbstein. But it really annoys me when I’m expected to solve a puzzle on my own without any help from the characters.

It isn’t that I don’t like puzzles. On the contrary, putting together jigsaw puzzles and solving crosswords are among my favorite pastimes. What I don’t like is when I’m reading a book and a puzzle takes me out of the story.

I recently read The Christmas Murder Game by Alexandra Benedict. The guests at a country house have been invited to solve twelve days of riddles, many of which are based on family experiences that are unknown to the reader. That means the reader can’t solve the riddles but must wait for one of the characters to announce the solution.

That’s not what annoyed me, however. No, I was annoyed by the puzzles that the author wove into the text but not the story. Looking for those answers would have been a distraction that would have ruined the book for me. Fortunately, they were hidden well enough that they didn’t create any bumps in the story, so I simply ignored them.

But I’ll never understand why an author would choose to use a device that takes readers out of the story.

 

Down with Info Dumps

 

Morocco has beautiful countryside, but the sight is marred by the litter dumped along the roads.¹ To mangle a well-known cliché, you can’t see the landscape for the trash. Information dumps in fiction work the same way, distracting you from the story.

An info dump is just what it sounds like. A writer takes everything in a character’s background and dumps it into the story all at once. It usually happens in the first chapter, but not always.

I recently finished a Christian novel by a writer who seemed to believe that info dumps were expected. Or maybe she was just too lazy to do it the right way. She isn’t well-known and you aren’t likely to read her anyway, so I won’t embarrass her by using her name.

The first chapter was dominated by an info dump about the female protagonist’s life. While most of it was important to the novel, we didn’t need to know it right away. In fact, dumping it in the first chapter took away some of the suspense the author could have used to her advantage. Both the first chapter and the book as a whole would have been much better if she had woven the background in where it fit with the story.

The second chapter, while not as bad, also contained an info dump, this time about the male protagonist’s life, and not all of it was necessary to the story. On the positive side, she did weave his trouble-making propensities as a boy in later where it fit.

If I hadn’t had other reasons for reading the book, I would have put it down after the first chapter. Or maybe I would have given her the benefit of the doubt and waited until I came across the second info dump, but I wouldn’t have finished it.

Info dumps are a good way to ruin an interesting plot. For one thing, they bore a reader who hasn’t gotten into the story yet. For another, they eliminate suspense. And they can be avoided by waiting and weaving the information into the story when it becomes necessary for the reader to know those particular facts. For example, if your character feels guilty for abandoning her children when they were young, you can show the guilt without the cause and let people know she has a secret without letting them in on it. Then, when she unexpectedly meets her daughter, the information can be gradually revealed or, if it makes for greater tension, can be revealed all at once. But you don’t have to do it in Chapter 1 if she doesn’t meet her daughter until Chapter 12.

No author does herself or himself a favor by telling too much about her characters too soon.

__________

¹ I took the photograph on a recent trip to Morocco.

Get a Clue

 

On New Year’s Eve, Roland and I watched a movie loosely based on the board game “Clue.” I won’t go into the reasons why we chose it, but it was a bad choice.

Filler is one of my pet peeves. That’s when a writer (usually of a book, but in this case of a movie) throws in extra material to lengthen a book (or a movie) even though it doesn’t add to the story. That’s often the sign of a lazy writer, although sometimes it is simply the sign of an amateur.

The movie “Clue” drove me crazy because the principal character kept running around and reenacting parts of the crimes (multiple murders) to show us how they could have been done. There were simpler, less annoying, ways to show it, but they wouldn’t have been as long. As it was, I was so annoyed that if it had been a book I would have put it down. The author got away with it only because it was a movie and I knew the agony wouldn’t last much longer.

That doesn’t mean that a writer can’t attempt to make a story longer. In fact, sometimes it needs filling out just as an emaciated person needs to put on weight. But the additional material must be a seamless part of the story, flowing with and enhancing it. That takes work and creativity, which are the lazy writer’s enemies. For me, it’s a challenge that give me an adrenaline rush.

Next week I’ll talk about info dumps.

Reading as a Reader

 

Over the years, I’ve attended a number of writers’ conferences and read many books on how to write fiction. Usually I agree with the advice that the presenters and authors give, but not always. One piece of advice that I do NOT agree with is this: read with an eye to discovering what the writer does right or wrong. If I had time to read a book again right after the first read, I suppose I would be okay with doing that on the second read, but I have too many books on my reading list to read any of them twice.

Why do I disagree with the advice on a first read?

I read for two main reasons: research and pleasure, and sometimes a book (such as a diary or journal) provides both. If I’m reading for research, I’m interested in the facts or the situations or the emotions that are portrayed, and how well the book is written is often irrelevant. If I’m reading for pleasure, I don’t want to get distracted by analyzing the writing. Because that’s what it is: a distraction that takes me away from the story.

That doesn’t mean I never notice the author’s skill or use of particular writing devices. Sometimes I do, especially if the devices are themselves a distraction that pulls me out of the story. I’m going to use my next few blog posts to highlight some of these devices that I would classify as pet peeves. As a reader, you will probably agree with me, and if you’re a writer, I hope you will get the message and avoid using them.

Next week I’ll talk about obvious filler.

Finding Names by the Side of the Road

 

Roland and I went to Raleigh, North Carolina, over the holidays to celebrate Christmas with our children. On the way there and back, we drove by Mount Airy and Pilot Mountain. That’s Pilot Mountain in the photo.

For those of you who don’t know, Mount Airy, North Carolina, was Andy Griffith’s childhood home and the inspiration for the fictional town of Mayberry on the Andy Griffith Show. Mt. Pilot was the fictional county seat on that same show. It’s obvious where the name of the county seat came from, and apparently the name of the town came from Mayberry, Virginia, just across the state line.

Not all names are that easy to come up with when writing a story. Still, I have noticed that road trips provide me with a great resource. When Roland is driving, I read the exit signs and write the town names in a notebook for later use. Sometimes they are common names like Monroe, but at other times they are more unusual, such as Gallipolis or Litchfield.

Since I write historical fiction, I often use real locations. It would be hard to write about the Great Chicago Fire or the siege of Vicksburg without setting those stories in Chicago or Vicksburg, respectively. But when I’m writing about something that happened throughout the U.S., or at least in a relatively large area, I may create a fictional town to give me more flexibility in the layout, shops, and general characteristics of the setting. In that case, I look at the names on my list and consider using one, but I do a Google search to ensure that the state I am locating it in doesn’t have a town by that name. Since I collect names from all over the country, I can usually find something that works.

That’s a secondary use of my list, though. I primarily use it for surnames. Most of my characters have last names that I pulled from my list of towns, such as Girard or Morton or Waldon.

But whether I use the names for characters or locations, interstate exit signs can be a great resource.