Give the reader what they want

Hey everyone,

I had thought about writing an article about the new Starwars movie (which  I finally saw yesterday) as an exercise in storytelling but that would take a whole post and I want to stay focused on writing. I will talk about the novel I read last week (I can call reading novels research now, Huzzah) though.

 You will all be happy to know that I was able to put down a bit over 5000 words last week. I know what you’re thinking, 5000 words isn’t a lot. Well since I wrote about 5000 words in December I call it a step in the right direction. Don’t forget that the official length of a novel is about 60000 words. Anything shorter is first a novella than a short story. Anything longer is just a long novel. And then you get novels like Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix which has like 270,000 + words which is mega long but I am not going for that at the moment.

 So technically, if you do 5000 words a week you will have a novel in three months. Of course that is assuming it is a usable 5000 words but the first step is getting something down on paper. I am using scrivener at the moment and everything is divided up into scenes and chapters so I am unsure exactly how much I have written so far. I do know that I have 3-4 chapters left so should be around 20000-25000 words to go.

 And then I have to rewrite the beginning. I am happy with the way last week’s writing went as it really flowed and I feel that my writing is getting better as in there will be less of a need to rewrite these later chapters. I read somewhere than when you start writing a novel once you are finished the first draft you will have to rewrite the first third of it. I am not sure that will be the case but a bit of work will be needed. I don’t think there is anything wrong with the plot other than what I plan to change already but I will have to go over it all again to make sure the writing is up to scratch.

 I think now that I can finally see the end of the tunnel for the first draft I am starting to get jitters in thinking that other people will be reading my work in a few months which gets me start thinking. Is it good enough? Is it long enough? Should I add more in? Are there scenes missing? Will the reader understand why I am writing it this way? There is a temptation to start adding things in just to keep the writing process going and avoid asking people what they think but I think that is just nerves so I will do my best to avoid that. 

The novel I read this week,  written in 1985 by Chelsea Quinn, was called “To the High Redoubt.” It had an interesting premise. It takes place in 15^th-16^th century Poland. A captain is discharged by his margrave for valuing the lives of his men over the commands of his superior. He travels a bit and buys this blind girl being sold as a slave. She convinces him to travel east with him to go revenge her family. For the first fifty pages of the book the story was interesting and then it got boring. Why did it get boring? Because nothing really happened.

 First of all, the main protagonist is meant to be a warrior. He has exactly one fight in the whole book and that one is in the first fifty pages against some bandits. The girl he buys is some sort of Taoist/Buddhist master who can astral project and when they have sex she can project them into some sort of dream world. So basically the rest of the book is them traveling east to Samarkand and having sex. There’s a little discussion of eastern religions vs. catholic church of the time but it doesn’t get much more deep than “Oh you know nothing” and “that’s blasphemy.” What annoyed me the most about the book is that after 150 pages of travel and sex (and anyone who’s written about traveling knows that after about three pages the traveling all sounds the same and not even good sex scenes as they are really only having sex so that they can project into the dreamworld but they are not even really doing anything in the dreamworld so it feels like there is no point) they finally meet up with the bad people who have been maybe/maybe not annoying them on their trip.

The warrior, who up till now has been following every suggestion the girl makes because they’ve fallen in love and whose power has been proven again and again all of a sudden decides to ignore her warnings and just make fun of her as the bad guys make their approach.

And then they get captured, without even attempting to fight. After the buildup of the whole novel of this guy as a warrior he doesn’t even attempt to fight. Then they escape, without fighting. Then they get recaptured, without fighting. Then they escape again without fighting.

The protagonist is meant to be a medieval warrior who deals out death on a daily basis. I put it to you, what would a medieval warrior do if he managed to cut his bonds, he has a knife in his hands and his three captors are asleep? I think he would take his knife and cut their throats but no this guy just runs away.  

In the end the bad guy who is also some sort of Taoist mystic but from the dark side gets defeated by some more mystic Taoist mumbo jumbo. Now I have nothing against a good Taoist novel such as Sean Russell’s excellent Initiate Brother duology but when your main character is a warrior, forgive me if I expect there to be fighting and for him to act like a warrior. Also throughout the book every trouble is avoided by the girl being able to warn them instead of them actually having to deal with trouble. It’s almost like a chase novel but without anyone actually doing the chasing.

 Anyway what I learned from this novel is don’t toy with your reader’s expectations. If you set up your novel to be one thing don’t make it into another. If your novel hints at action than it had better deliver action. It’s like writing a romance novel but forgetting to put the romance in. The reader wants to read a certain type of novel, which is why they are reading the book. The author’s job is to give them the type of story they book has promised to deliver not twist it around and say “haha you thought you were reading an action novel but it’s really a romance novel.” Actually this novel sounds suspiciously like the novels I’ve seen lying around my parent’s place so maybe my mom would like it. My novel is called “The space greenhorn.” You can be sure that it is not going to be an office romance.

TLDR: Give the reader what they want