Leaving Stuff Out

I went on a week-long writing retreat to rough draft a short story. The absolute upper limit of the submission word count is 9000 words, and my draft finished at nearly 11,000. A weeeeeee tad bit too long, eh?

So now I'm going back through and polishing and cutting.

The point of pounding out a draft during National Novel Writing Month is to just pound the thing out, to just get the story down, to get to the end. It's okay if there are repetitions; later, you decide what the best place for that information is.

So my first pass through the draft has been to trip repetitions and streamline awkward sentences. I've cut a bunch, added some, and I'm still above 9000 words.

Now comes the hard part: Now comes the part where I have to cut stuff that isn't awkward and isn't repetitious.

Luckily for me, I know where to go first.

I'm almost finished with Cixin Liu's Three Body Problem Trilogy. It's insanely satisfying: Hard science fiction plus strong, rich characters. But, although the author realizes any number of worlds and societies, the books contain no animals. No, I tell a lie, there are a couple of ants, some passing birds, and mention of a pet cat. Otherwise, humans are the only animals on earth or in space.

So I put some animals into my story.

And now I'm going to take them out.

If cutting those bits give me enough wiggle room, I might be able to stick a reference in here and there, just a tiny brushstroke suggesting much more.

Wish me luck!

And read that trilogy!

Marian Allen, Author Lady

A Book Review Without a Title

I just finished a book that was very strangely composed.

The first two-thirds consisted of a group of men telling another man what they knew--or had been told by others not present--of the puzzling events of a particular day. Yes, two-thirds of the book take place on one evening, although the events they relate on that evening go back much farther than that.

The next part of the book skips around, with no notice, between the book's present and the past from the points of view of characters who weren't present at the first part's conference.

The last few chapters were only one scene long, while the chapter headings (In which so-and-so does such-and-such and this-and-that happens) have grown so long and detailed that they're longer and more informative than the snapshot or snatch of dialog of which the "chapter" consists.

Interesting, no? Well, no. It won the Booker Prize, and I'll never forget it, but I would never recommend it.

If one of the aims of a writer is to write a book which enters into a relationship with the reader, this book succeeds brilliantly. Unfortunately, it's a dysfunctional relationship, and, ultimately, a broken one.

During the first part of the book, I felt enfolded, drawn into the world described, that of gold-rush New Zealand. I learned things I never knew about the time and the setting, felt I had an insight into the psychologies of the characters, and was deeply invested in finding out the answers to the puzzles.

The second part of the book, in which the puzzles are supposedly answered, broke that spell with its more disjointed time hops and character switches, its competing explanations, its iffy timelines, and a big glob of magic realism that pops in like a gold tooth in a sausage.

That rapid-fire final section pushes you right outside of the story and only gives you glimpses of it, as if you're outside peeping through a keyhole.

Then there's that post-reading section that all powerful books have, in which you mull over what you've read. In the case of this book, there's a lot of, "Wait a minute.... That doesn't make any sense." After two or three episodes of, "But, why would she do THAT? That's just stupid," I stopped thinking about it. I believe the author did this on purpose, as a meta-message about what we can know or fail to know about situations and people. As if the reader hadn't been slapped upside the head with that often enough in real life, right?

There are some relationships you're just well out of. I could reread the book to see if things fell more neatly in place the second time through, but once bitten twice shy. No way am I going to give a toxic relationship a second go at me. Not the same damn one, anyway.

You'll notice I haven't named the book. The odds of the author of that book reading this post are so slim, I can probably safely say that if you're reading this, the book IS NOT YOURS. If you know me personally, the book is DEFINITELY not yours. You don't play unpleasant games with your readers.

I'm not going to name the book or the author, because I don't want to recommend the book even by warning against it. I know how that goes with human relationships. No, if you met Frankenstein's Monster, he would NOT be your bestie, unless you're an old blind violinist.

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Marian Allen, Author Lady
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Holmes, You Pre-date Me OR Kaye George Does Neanderthals #BookReview

DEATH IN THE TIME OF ICE by Kaye George is the first in her People of the Wind series. She places various hominid peoples in North America, including this tribe of Neanderthals. Using the most current research findings (at the time of writing) and what I can only call a stunning imagination, she creates a culture specific to one particular group of people.

I read and loved Steven Mithen's AFTER THE ICE, and there was nothing in George's book that made me go, "Naw. Uh-uh. Got that WRONG." I could absolutely believe that these people behaved and thought in these ways. I say "these ways", plural, because George writes about individuals.

Okay, the death. Somebody kills the Hama, or Most High Female. The tribe wants to blame it on an outsider -- any outsider. One woman, though, believes the culprit is one of the tribe. Not a popular opinion.

There are sub-plots galore, none of which get in the way of the main storyline. There is a wealth of detail about building techniques, burial practices, climate change, and so on, none of which bogs down the flow with info-dump.

The only drawback I can find is a tendency to repeat questions and musings a little too exactly and a little too close together.

"You call that a drawback?"

Hey, if I said it was perfect, I would draw the attention of the gods to the book. You don't wanna draw the attention of the gods, amIright?

I've bought and read the sequel, DEATH ON THE TREK, and the sequel holds up. If there's another in the series, Imma buy that, too.

Marian Allen, Author Lady
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