Best Seller: Worst Writing
As you know, aside from all the science books I write about here, I also read crime fiction, about which I write much less frequently. Last night I finished the collection of short stories called A New Omnibus of Crime, edited by Tony Hillerman and Rosemary Herbert, contributing editors Sue Grafton and Jeffrey Deaver (Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2005, 434 pages). It's a pretty solid collection representing quit a few big names in the genre. However, it seemed a little low-key compare to the Best American Mystery Stories series, edited by Otto Penzler.
But talking about the book, which I think is a good read, is not my point of the moment. Rather, I want to make fun of one of the authors represented: Jeffrrey Deaver. His story "Copycat" appears as the last offering in the book.
Indulging in a bit of synecdoche I sometimes let Jeffrey Deaver serve as an example of the things I generally don't like in the best-seller writing of best-selling thriller writers. I hope Mr. Deaver doesn't take it personally, but that seems unlikely since he is, and has been for some time, a best-selling author without my help.
Usually, with the best-sellers, it's a matter of the writing. Plots are often thrilling and fast-paced despite being frequently a bit outlandish. However, with some, the plots can be so excitingly propelled that I can overlook occasional inelegancies in the writing.
One the other hand, there's Mr. Deaver, whose plot points often beg my credulity* and don't get it. In realistic fiction I really expect the world that the characters inhabit to follow the same physical laws as the world of the reader. It also helps if the characters occasionally exhibit some credible motivation for their actions, but this does demand that there be some credible characterization to work with and that is not so common in Mr. Deaver's writing. Alas, the poor characterization is not salvaged by the scintillating and natural-sounding dialog of the characters, of which there is none to be read.
Then there's the writing. One of the quickest indicators of irritating best-seller writing that I know of is the one-sentence paragraph as punch line, something to add a little dash of spice to the previous, tasteless paragraph of prose. I can usually look through the first 10 or 15 pages of a novel and spot a potential irritant with great accuracy using this one-sentence-paragraph indicator.
But wait! There's more. It was only upon reading this story "Copycat", which did display many of the plot and characterization deficiencies already noted, that I was reminded of a couple of further best-selling irritants.
First off, the verbless fragment [this is the entire sentence, which is to say all of the words that came between its beginning and the full stop]:
Twenty minutes from town, driving at twice the posted limit. [p. 413]
Necessarily, I suppose, the verbless fragment also travels without its subject, making it exceedingly difficult for the reader to figure out what the sentence is about or trying to express. Were the main characters twenty minutes from down and driving at the indicated speed? Where they there and merely wondering how long it would take to reach town? Was the author merely trying out an interesting to say how far it was to town should the characters decide to drive there? Was someone standing by the side of the road singing this song?
Do you imagine that perhaps it just takes too long for someone facing the urgencies of finishing his next best-selling manuscript to type sentences complete with verbs? Maybe it's not the typing but the time consumed in thinking of some suitable verb that cannot be afforded?
I get the feeling that writing like this is supposed to express gritty realism and fast-paced action, but it sure slows me down.
Next, consider this amazing bit of stage direction:
Thanking him, Carter's wife folded the paper up and set it aside with the stiff gesture of someone who has no interest in memorabilia about a difficult episode in one's life. [p. 415]
Woo hoo! Do you suppose this is a best-seller example of "show, don't tell"? I try to imagine how the actor would respond who found this in the stage direction of a playscript. How to distinguish this particular stiff gesture from, say, the stiff gesture of someone with a modest interest in memorabilia about a difficult episode in one's life. Or, from the stiff gesture of someone who has no interest in memorabilia about the good episodes in one's life? Does this stiff gesture actually work for all memorabilia or merely for printed ephemera about a difficult episode in one's life? What about gestures that are not quite stiff but more on the firm side, or ever so slightly dismissive? What if the actor accidentally cast it aside, or threw it aside, or merely dropped it–would the whole sense of the drama be derailed?
I find it curious that I didn't notice any such distractions in the first 400 pages of the book.
__________
*In the one novel of his that I can remember bothering to finish, I was continually amazed at how he expected cell phones to work even underground in a remote area certain to be a hundred miles from the nearest cell tower.