Agatha Christie is one of my favorite authors, and 10 or so of her 60 books are masterpieces. But as she aged, her writing diminished. The Clocks is an example of a really bad book.
If you want to learn how to pad a novella into a book, this may be the template to use.
Christie weaves two plots together. Colin Lamb (actually the son of Superintendent Battle, although for some reason Christie never comes right out and says this) is a spy catcher, and he is walking along Wilbraham Crescent looking for the address of a possible spy for the Russians. (The 1960s were all the rage for such folk as Kim Philby and Guy Burgess, defecting to Russia and bringing secrets with them).
He's standing outside a house when a girl rushes out screaming - a man is lying dead in the sitting room and she found him.
So we have two mysteries - the spy mystery and the murder mystery. We have two narrators - an omniscient narrator when Detective Inspector Hardcastle is investigating, and Colin Lamb in the first person when he's working on his own case.
Surprisingly, of the 30 or so reviews on Amazon, 15 give it 5 stars, 14, 4 stars. Just goes to show that you can't trust those ratings, the book is abysmal and full of padding. And of course, while coincidences certainly happen in real life, they shouldn't happen in books, and this book has a humongous coincidence...which really leads me to believe that Christie had intended the story to end one way, and then was forced to add another 20,000 words or so and forgot to wind up that plot thread.
I'll go further into this tomorrow.
Showing posts with label writing exercises. Show all posts
Showing posts with label writing exercises. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
Monday, June 14, 2010
Examples of poor writing #1 - Excessive use of similes
Yesterday I commented on how poor a writer Cussler is.
Poor writing does not necessarily mean the book is unreadable. Cussler knows how to get the reader interested in the story. But, when a book is uninteresting as to plot and all you have our characters, and the writing is terrible, then you typically lose readers.
(Then there is the other side of the coin, people who read Cussler thinking he writes excellent prose, thus blunting their ability to recognize good writing. Much as people who listen to rap or heavy metal will probaby never be able to recognize actual music.)
Reaading through Cussler, it is not as if every sentence and paragraph is actually bad. It's more his use of conventions - in describing things he always compares them to something else, as in a metaphor - but usually a poorly chosen simile. And occasionally he uses the wrong word entirely.
First, some definitions:
Metaphor: a figure of speech in which a term or phrase is applied to something to which it is not literally applicable in order to suggest a resemblance, as in “A mighty fortress is our god.”
or:
A figure of speech in which a word or phrase that ordinarily designates one thing is used to designate another, thus making an implicit comparison, as in "a sea of troubles" or "All the world's a stage"
Simile:
A figure of speech in which two unlike things are explicitly compared, as in “she is like a rose.”
or:
A figure of speech in which two essentially unlike things are compared, often in a phrase introduced by like or as, as in "How like the winter hath my absence been" or "So are you to my thoughts as food to life"
Here are examples from Cussler:
From Polar Shift, a Dirk Pitt novel written with Paul Kemprecos:
First off, the first two paragraphs which show exactly how overboard the author goes with metaphors:
I don't think a four ton car is going to float over a "cushion" of new fallen snow, to begin with. And "slumbering" cornfields?
More similes:
The ships lined up three miles apart and combed the area like a search party looking for a lost child in the woods.
The arrow-slim kayak flew across the sapphire of Puget Sound as if it had been shot from a bow.
Perhaps not so bad taken on their own, but when you read the books and every other description is of this nature, it simply becomes wearing on the nerves.
Poor writing does not necessarily mean the book is unreadable. Cussler knows how to get the reader interested in the story. But, when a book is uninteresting as to plot and all you have our characters, and the writing is terrible, then you typically lose readers.
(Then there is the other side of the coin, people who read Cussler thinking he writes excellent prose, thus blunting their ability to recognize good writing. Much as people who listen to rap or heavy metal will probaby never be able to recognize actual music.)
Reaading through Cussler, it is not as if every sentence and paragraph is actually bad. It's more his use of conventions - in describing things he always compares them to something else, as in a metaphor - but usually a poorly chosen simile. And occasionally he uses the wrong word entirely.
First, some definitions:
Metaphor: a figure of speech in which a term or phrase is applied to something to which it is not literally applicable in order to suggest a resemblance, as in “A mighty fortress is our god.”
or:
A figure of speech in which a word or phrase that ordinarily designates one thing is used to designate another, thus making an implicit comparison, as in "a sea of troubles" or "All the world's a stage"
Simile:
A figure of speech in which two unlike things are explicitly compared, as in “she is like a rose.”
or:
A figure of speech in which two essentially unlike things are compared, often in a phrase introduced by like or as, as in "How like the winter hath my absence been" or "So are you to my thoughts as food to life"
Here are examples from Cussler:
From Polar Shift, a Dirk Pitt novel written with Paul Kemprecos:
First off, the first two paragraphs which show exactly how overboard the author goes with metaphors:
The Mercedes-Benz 770 W150 Grosser Tourenwagen weighed more than four tons and was armoured like a Panzer. But the seven-passenger limousine seemed to float like a ghost over the cushion of new fallen snow, gliding with unlit heeadlights paat slumbering cornfields that sparkled in the blue light of the moon.
As the car neared a darkened farmhouse that lay in a gentle hollow, the driver gently touched the brakes. The car slowed to the speed of a walk and, approached the low-slung, fieldstone structure with the stealth of a cat stalking a mouse.
I don't think a four ton car is going to float over a "cushion" of new fallen snow, to begin with. And "slumbering" cornfields?
More similes:
The ships lined up three miles apart and combed the area like a search party looking for a lost child in the woods.
The arrow-slim kayak flew across the sapphire of Puget Sound as if it had been shot from a bow.
Perhaps not so bad taken on their own, but when you read the books and every other description is of this nature, it simply becomes wearing on the nerves.
Sunday, June 13, 2010
Clive Cussler - great formula trumps lousy writing
I have written a few times about how bad Clive Cussler's writing is, and that it hasn't improved since he's gotten ghost writers for each of his series (the Dirk Pitt, Oregon Files and Kurt Austin books.) (Well, technically they're not ghost writers since their names appear on the covers, but I think it's pretty obvious they do all the writing...Cussler probably just provides the ideas.)
And the ironic thing is of course that Cussler is a multi-millionaire because of his books, although it was his third book, Raise the Titanic, that set him on the patth to fame and fortune, because people in the 1970s were fascinated with the Titanic, and the thought of being able to find and raise her...everyone's dream! (Unfortunately in real life the ship broke apart as it sank...still, it would have been so cool...)
Which just goes to show that as far as guys are concenred...they'll read anything as long as there is a lot of specificity about the types of toys in use (the kinds of cars used and their history, the kinds of watches, the clothing....the vast attention to detail that Ian Fleming was so fond of for his James Bond character. Plus of course the guns, transport such as cars and tanks, aircraft and so on.)
ANd frankly, that's why I read the books. As a woman I prefer more nuanced writing, but I'm also into cars, planes, trains and automobiles, not to mention history. That's another part of Cussler's formula. Most of the books befin in times long past, with a certain artifact that will turn out to be of valuable use in the present day. For Raise the Titanic it was a type of fuel that would render the US energy-independent, for Night Probe it was a treaty signed during WWI that would cede Canada to the United States, and so on.
I'll share some examples of bad writing - and how they should have been written, tomorrow.
And the ironic thing is of course that Cussler is a multi-millionaire because of his books, although it was his third book, Raise the Titanic, that set him on the patth to fame and fortune, because people in the 1970s were fascinated with the Titanic, and the thought of being able to find and raise her...everyone's dream! (Unfortunately in real life the ship broke apart as it sank...still, it would have been so cool...)
Which just goes to show that as far as guys are concenred...they'll read anything as long as there is a lot of specificity about the types of toys in use (the kinds of cars used and their history, the kinds of watches, the clothing....the vast attention to detail that Ian Fleming was so fond of for his James Bond character. Plus of course the guns, transport such as cars and tanks, aircraft and so on.)
ANd frankly, that's why I read the books. As a woman I prefer more nuanced writing, but I'm also into cars, planes, trains and automobiles, not to mention history. That's another part of Cussler's formula. Most of the books befin in times long past, with a certain artifact that will turn out to be of valuable use in the present day. For Raise the Titanic it was a type of fuel that would render the US energy-independent, for Night Probe it was a treaty signed during WWI that would cede Canada to the United States, and so on.
I'll share some examples of bad writing - and how they should have been written, tomorrow.
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