FFS, or The Shovel Breaks

[akirlu]

My portable book of the moment is Touch of Evil by C.T. Adams and Cathy Clamp. A post of alg's had made me curious about them. And for a genre romance, it's less dumb than some. But there are structural forms of the genre that tend to drive me right up a tree, so that's the first thing they've got to overcome. And immediately they start with the contrived expositional devices, like fugues of recollection in the middle of conversations, or long dream sequences that replay past events, in order to cram in all the backstory in the first ten pages. So there's that, too. But then the dumbnesses start piling up.

I had forgiven them letting the main character wander off with all the perishable groceries still on the counter on a warm July day, and supposedly right in the midst of getting ready to cook, only to suddenly decide to start working on some improvements in the lobby of her appartment building. After all, she's got a concussion, so her brain ain't quite right. (Though it's a little too obvious that this is all in aid of getting a "comic" introduction to the male love interest.) But to believe that someone who is supposedly a hyper-responsible landlady has left a bunch of saw-horses and tools and paint and construction hazards-to-passing-tenants just sitting out in the public lobby while she's gone for a week is more of a strain. She's not worried about actionable accidents? Add to that the fact that she is supposedly doing professional-quality workmanship on the improvements she's adding to the building but blithely starts trying to tack up wainscotting before the paint on the trim is even dry and my credulity is looking very peaky indeed. She just rips the trim out of the package, skips the sanding and priming stage, slaps a single coat of paint on the thing, and swarms up a ladder to tack it to the wall. (How exactly was she managing to handle it if the paint was still wet?) That's not professional-quality, that's embarrassing slop work.

But okay, I got past that. And let's just breeze by the secondary character who thinks that the events of two days ago happened yesterday, exactly like the main character who slept through yesterday.

So now it's a bit later and she's about to enter a church, and she pauses outside at the point where she always stops to admire the stained glass window. (Outside? Does she always go to church at night? 'Cause stained glass windows don't usually "read" to the outside unless the light inside is brighter than out.) And she notes to herself that the window is a depiction of a famous work of art -- the Pietà. I will pass right over the fact that Michaelangelo's Pietà is merely one of many, not the anything. That's only annoying. But. Michaelangelo's Pietà is. Not. A. Famous.Painting.

I mean, ffs, someone at Tor should have caught that.

I'm not even going to discuss the idiocy of the privatized freight elevator.

Edit: Oh, I didn't read far enough. Right after the window, we find that our Catholic protagonist doesn't know that the Magdalene and the Blessed Virgin are not one and the same. And that the authors don't know that the liturgical color associated with the Blessed Virgin is blue, not russet. Aaaaaargh.

Comments

[athenais.livejournal.com]

Wow, that really sounds annoying. I've given up on romances, though I didn't realize it until about two years ago. If I'm going to read formula I want a mystery.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

I've given up on romances, though I didn't realize it until about two years ago.

Sigh. I hadn't read any newer, explicitly genre romances, in a while. Georgette Heyer had lulled me into false hope. I know, from Heyer, and Mary Stewart, both of whom are eminently re-readable, that romances can be perfectly fine books. But either the publishers insist on too rigid and artificial a set of parameters these days, or the authors think they do, or all the romance authors are bad writers in really similar ways. It's not the formula I object to, it's the badness.

[vgqn.livejournal.com]

Life is hard for those of us who notice things. My personal gripe are what I call teapot conversations. You know, they're the two or three sentence exchanges with no break during which someone has supposedly brought a fully kettle of water to boil AND served tea.

Tangentially, ask me about the new program I'm helping implement that has chosen to hyphenate an -ly adverb in their name, which I must now constantly type. Argh! (And no one else in the program understands. At least wild_irises grimaced understandingly when I told her.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Life is hard for those of us who notice things.

I probably should have that made into a t-shirt.

My personal gripe are what I call teapot conversations.

Weird distortions of the passage of time to suit authorial need are generally a nuisance, yes.

Regarding your program: what, you mean they put a hyphen in the middle of the word, for cuteness' sake, or something? Bleargh.

[don-fitch.livejournal.com]

Yup, "willing suspension of disbelief" does not mean "hang by the neck until it's dead". *sigh* One of the Pet Peeves I have with Historical Mysteries (currently my favorite genre) is a tendency for all of the characters (except The Bad Guys, of course) to exhibit and express 1990s (the writers are a bit behind the times, yes) Feminist & Social Sensibilities. My personal sense of history dates back only to 1930s, but even then, as a kid, I noticed (and remember clearly) that many things were simply not done, said, or even noticed, and I just cannot believe that in more ancient times people were not even more limited in their perceptions and actions. An occasional writer -- Charlotte McLeod comes to mind -- can carry this off by engaging the reader in the idea that this is just An Entertaining Story, but generally they seem to expect the reader to take it seriously, which doesn't work for me unless they put some solid work into making it plausibly authentic.

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

Does she actually call it a painting?

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Yes, they actually do. I believe the phrasing was "Michaelangelo's famous painting". I mean. Bloody hell.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

It's pure laziness. The writers just aren't trying, are they? Those sort of mistakes could be rectified by just the tiniest ammount of reflection and/or research.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Yes, that's it. Although there are other gaffes through the book that make me think that neither of the two of them is a visual thinker at all, so that they're missing that tool for spotting things that don't work. But thinking things through is fundamental to a writer's job. She has to create the illusion of a working world just as a baseline to begin telling a story.

[marykaykare.livejournal.com]

Well, see, they don't realize they need to do the research. Because they is culutured folk and they know these things. In other words, they don't know that what they know is wrong.

Why copy editors don't catch it is a mystery.

MKK

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Why copy editors don't catch it is a mystery.

My suspicion is that copy editors who will tolerate copy editing run-of-the-mill romance have their GFE-spotting burnt out early from contstant contact with corrosive quantities of Great Stonking Dumbness.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Those books are quite popular. Clamp is Nabokov compared to a couple others in that series--again, quite popular. Incredible spectrum of readership, I guess, is about the only conclusion one can draw.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Clamp is Nabokov compared to a couple others in that series

Oh, I get that, I do. I can be a hyperfussy reader and once I get the scent of blood, I start seeing Every Little Thing and most authors are doomed. I continue to be bothered by Georgette Heyer describing Regency dresses as having *flounces* because really, it's no such thing, but Heyer doesn't have many wobbles so it's okay.

It's not even really particular to the romance genre. I've had people I like and respect commend me to Kim Harrison and Jim Butcher, and they're neither of them romance writers, but they separately and collectively make me want to commit crude self-service pre-frontal lobotomy with the nearest sharp-cornered object.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Don't read Wawrsworn, then, from that same line. Not only full of weird errors and Stupid Plot but astounding tyops and grammatical woes.

Heyer made a lot of odd choices, and at least one big error, but her world was consistent unto itself--something a lot of these other folks don't have.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Don't read Warsworn, then

Thanks for the warning. Though I think I was out of danger already. alg's recent (if tempered) praise for Dead Witch Walking pretty well confirmed my suspicion that our tastes are sufficiently out of phase on, for instance, what qualifies as good worldbuilding, that I will probably wait for multiple confirmations before assaying one of her recommendations again. It's good to have a grip on what's popular, but this sample will do me for a while.

Heyer made a lot of odd choices, and at least one big error

Oh? Which big error? Do tell...

her world was consistent unto itself--something a lot of these other folks don't have.

Amen to that, sister.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Well in a sense it's big: she used haut ton for people way before it actually way, which is a kind of social shift that explains a lot about her and her relation to the Bright Young Things than it does about the Regency. during that time I haven't found one single reference to the ton as people, but quite specifically still used in the French sense, "Ton" or high style.

Even Jane Austen uses it once. (In Mansfield Park.)

But then, she really did create her own world...she loved all that slang, and whether she knew that Pierce Egan made a lot of it up--people didn't actually use most of it--or not, she has her characters using it.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Well in a sense it's big: she used haut ton for people way before it actually was, which is a kind of social shift that explains a lot about her and her relation to the Bright Young Things than it does about the Regency. during that time I haven't found one single reference to the ton as people, but quite specifically still used in the French sense, "Ton" or high style.

And presumably also in the sense of "tony," a word which has fallen entirely out of the popular vocabulary in recent decades.

Well, thanks. I Did Not Know That. Might yet come in handy, when I write that timetravel Regency romance with cross-dressing and mistaken identities novel.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

...which ohnighodt I so want to read!

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Heh. Thanks. I blame athenais -- back when, she was mulling the idea that she really should use her travel agenting experience in a romance novel. I immediately hit on an idea and offered it to her, but she didn't want it having already formulated one of her own. So I guess I'll have to write it myself. In the interim, she's written a novel and I haven't, but I think I'm getting closer to novel-writing mode. It's just that now I'm approaching that level of readiness, I have about six of them rattling around my head waiting for first berth. On the other hand, the longer I wait on writing something, the more I wind up knowing about the world it's in and its characthers, so I'm hoping that will grease the skids when I hit my pace.

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

With the usual caveat that all writers' methods vary, I've found that letting ideas sit on the brain back burner to simmer does indeed start accreting more story threads, characters, ideas.

and hey, there is nothing wrong with switching between projects as the energy strikes. It may seem schizy at first, but anything can be gotten used to, and the nice thing is, they gradually build up until one takes fire.

Anyway, good luck: I hope you get that fire before long. It sounds like a dynamite idea.