The Sword and Laser discussion
Leviathan Wakes
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Does co-writing cause storytelling interruption?
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It depends on the authors who are co-writing. If they get a good balance going the tone of the book is pretty cohesive and isn't disruptive. If you've read The Long Earth, written by Terry Pratchett and Stephen Baxter, the overall tone is quite cohesive: it reads mostly like Pratchett, but the really science-y bits are clearly Baxter. As for Leviathan Wakes, I think the jumps between Holden and Miller's stories can be a little jarring, not least because the genres are quite different. It gets better towards the middle, but it's still a bit weird. I guess it'll take reading Caliban's War to really see if these two authors can write as one voice, so to speak :).
Napoez3 wrote: "You didn't notice!?the first when I notice something was when he was alone in his "hole" and Juliett toke his ex-wife place in his imagination....."Well that's what I'm saying, it doesn't make sense when it happens, not to me.
I didn't get that, obviously the two stories had different flavours, but there weren't in my opinion any glaring inconsistencies. The writers say in the interview that they had a plan for the story before hand, and when one of the writers fleshed out a chapter the other would go over and correct bits. And on top of that it had to make it past their editor.
I thought the characterization was consistent and the story itself pretty smooth. *shrugs*Might be my favorite book this year.
Co-authorship is always hard. In the case of Leviathan Wakes, yes. There are better co-authored stories. Then again, I've also seen far worse. The characterization still remains fairly consistent, despite some random deviations. There just occasionally seems to be a disconnect in terms of how some events are covered. However, that could just be the problem of the perspective characters. We all see or hear about different aspects of the event. Ask 20 witnesses about a car accident and get 20 different stories, all with similar conclusions.
I thought the co-authorship worked well in that Miller and Holden were such very different characters, so it made sense they would be written differently given each of their stories were told from their POV.
Tony wrote: "I thought the co-authorship worked well in that Miller and Holden were such very different characters, so it made sense they would be written differently given each of their stories were told from ..."Exactly. People often view the same events from a different perspective.
Anne wrote: "I think their editor was very lenient."I know this is picky but I'd like to know how this got past the editor:
"Fred Johnson's office was like it's occupant: big, intimidating,and overflowing with things that needed to be done. It was easily two and a half square meters making it larger than any single compartment on the Rocinante"
2½ square metres? That's not an office, That's a closet. lol :-)
That means the room was approx. (158cm X 158cm) or (5ft 2in X 5ft 2in)
Big & intimidating? More like tiny and claustrophobic ;-)
I'm assuming it's a mistake that got missed. 25 square metres maybe. (5 metres X 5 Metres)
Glaring error aside, I am enjoying this book very much.
Tassie, that's the whole point.Everything is so small in space that Fred's office seems big and intimidating to Holden, even though it's actually tiny for our standards.
That scene was entirely intentional to show the contrast between perceptions of "big".
Alex wrote: "Everything is so small in space that Fred's office seems big and intimidating to Holden, even though it's actually tiny for our standards."Any smaller and Holden would have to sit on Fred's lap ;-)
Tamahome wrote: "The metric system is Un-american."and also un-Liberian and un-Burmese ;-)
I'm fluent in both metric and archaic measurements.
To get back OT. I think the writing styles mesh quite well.
There hasn't been a stage where I have noticed any dramatic differences.
All in all I think they have done a great collaboration on this book.
Alex wrote: "Tassie, that's the whole point.Everything is so small in space that Fred's office seems big and intimidating to Holden, even though it's actually tiny for our standards.
That scene was entirely ..."
That's the way I read it too.
I agree that the writing styles mesh very well. I new ahead of time 2 people were writing. But, I couldn't tell. I think that perhaps the writers have very similar styles.
IMO the beginning of the story worked well as a co written piece but it starts to get messy in the middle. I wasn't aware that there were two different people writing the story when I started it and thought that it was great that the characters were so different. Hindsight is 20/20 I guess and it makes some of the inconsistencies make more sense now that I think about it.
Alex wrote: "Tassie, that's the whole point.Everything is so small in space that Fred's office seems big and intimidating to Holden, even though it's actually tiny for our standards.
That scene was entirely ..."
That's a Stan Lee no-prize explanation, but if that were true, then everyone else's "room" was smaller than the door into it, by comparison. Which doesn't make much sense for gangly Belters.
Darren wrote: "That's a Stan Lee no-prize explanation, but if that were true, then everyone else's "room" was smaller than the door into it, by comparison. Which doesn't make much sense for gangly Belters. "And it's proved wrong later on in the book where Fred's desk is described as large.
We also have a scene where 4 people are in there and some are pacing about. In a room that if the floor area was right you could stand in the middle and touch all 4 walls :-?
I think it might be an error in the wording. I would assume they actually meant a 2.5 metre square, rather than 2.5 square metres. It's the only logical conclusion I can come to for fitting 4 people in an office and having room to pace. And given that america uses feet, I wouldn't be surprised if the editor didn't realise that a 2.5 square metre room would only have sides just over 158cm in length (that's actually smaller than the desk I'm currently sat at)As for style and characterisation, I felt that they were both fairly unifrorm throughout. Miller's story and Holdens story were different in terms of characters and context and so needed to have a different style, but appart from the different style for the different stories there were no really glaring inconsistencies for me.
Jonathon wrote: "I think it might be an error in the wording. I would assume they actually meant a 2.5 metre square, rather than 2.5 square metres. It's the only logical conclusion I can come to for fitting 4 peopl..."It's not "2.5" though. It's "two and a half". That's no typo. The quote is:
"The room was easily two and a half square meters [sic], making it larger than any single compartment on the Rocinante." (ch. 21)
Is "meter" how Americans spell metre? I thought they didn't use the word at all /tangent... To be sure, the Rocinante does have small compartments:
"On the Rocinante, the only rooms where Holden could spread out his arms without touching two walls were the galley and the cargo bay." (same chapter as above, 21)
The problem is that the size given for Fred's office is as small or smaller (note the 2, not all 4 walls) than the Roci's compartments. I don't understand the urge to apologize all the time for the author. Everyone makes mistakes, and this was clearly one. It's not really the end of the world.
@DarrenI know that they use "two and a half" in the book, as literary practice dictates, but mathematically "two and a half" and 2.5 (I have a mathematics background so I tend to use actual numbers) are the same thing and the "they" that I was referring to were the authors.
Also, yeah. Americans spell metre as "meter". They know of the existence of the metric system, but they use metre/meter more often for other things, for example the metre of music, referring to the time signature or a fare metre like in a taxi.. But they do use the unit of measurement from time to time.
Jonathon wrote: "@DarrenI know that they use "two and a half" in the book, as literary practice dictates, but mathematically "two and a half" and 2.5 (I have a mathematics background so I tend to use actual numbe..."
@Jonathon
I'm going to resist my natural urge to be sarcastic and assume we misunderstood each other. I do not think one needs a mathematics background to understand that "2.5" and "two and a half" mean the same thing, and I was certainly not implying that you did not understand that. My point was that "25" and "2.5" might be easy to confuse, and be a typo or typesetter error (see above), but "twenty five" and "two and a half" are not.
I didn't know that there were two authors either and it wasn't something I found out and thought "oh that explains things". I really liked that we had two distinct characters and I didn't find switching back and forth disrupted the story. I also didn't notice any inconsistencies between the two view points.
So can I blame those things on co-writing? New authors?