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Integrating the Divine into the Story: Island of Ghosts

So, I didn’t think of this book when I wrote the somewhat recent post about deus ex vs true miracles, but I should have: Island of Ghosts by Gillian Bradshaw offers a perfect example of divine intervention.

You’ve probably read this book, right? If not, I highly recommend it – Bradshaw is my favorite authors for Historicals and this is one of my favorites of her books. This is the one where the Sarmatians have recently been defeated by Rome and a troop of Sarmatian warriors have been brought into the legions of Rome as auxiliaries, as was typical, and this troop has been sent to Roman Britain to defend the Roman areas against the British barbarians. Everything about this novel is great – the sense of place, the characters, the writing, the plot, the themes – if Bradshaw had aimed this novel straight at me, she could hardly have written a story more to my personal taste. (She has others I love as much; there’s a reason she’s my favorite Historical author.)

She also sometimes does a particularly good job of integrating the background metaphysics into the story. Island of Ghosts is one of the novels where this is most obvious.

In this case, that means: the metaphysics is integrated into the story, and the characters believe in the metaphysics. It doesn’t, however, mean that the climactic scenes actually depend on miraculous intervention. In fact, the metaphysics is deniably real in the story; the reader could interpret this aspect of the story as not-real in story terms. But the story gains depth if the reader considers the metaphysics real.

Integrating the divine into the story:

“The gods have been kind to me,” I answered.

“I thank the gods!” he whispered harshly.

This, these types of exclamations and comments, won’t, all by themselves, serve to bring the divine into the story in any real sense. Though the fewer have exclamation points after them, the better for making them feel like they’re based on real belief, because everything with an exclamation point is an exclamation, and those aren’t based on real belief, as a rule. In fact, when the Romans exclaim, “Hercules!” in this novel, this isn’t based on real belief, as the Romans rather famously included all the trappings of religion in their rituals and feast days and so forth without believing, generally speaking, in any of it. An accurate portrayal of Rome is therefore a lot like a shallow fantasy novel, because that’s exactly how shallow worldbuilding in fantasy novels often works.

But that’s not how the Sarmatians behave at all. Among other things, when a Sarmatian swears on fire, it’s an important oath and he’ll keep it. Fire is sacred. This is important in this story, where various people do swear oaths that matter to them. And then there are scenes like this:

***

I woke in the middle of the night to the sound of sobbing. It pulled me from deep sleep, and for a moment I could not remember where or when I was. “Artinisca?” I said, sitting up. “Artinisca, love, don’t cry. I’m here.”

The sobbing stopped abruptly, and as it did, I realized it had not been a child’s sobbing, but the hard, painful gasping of a man. I remembered Eukairios.

“I’m sorry, my lord,” came the slave’s voice out of the darkness, still rough with grief. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

I dropped onto my back again and stared blindly into the blackness. “No,” I said. “I am sorry that you grieve so for your home.”

“I didn’t mean to complain,” he told me. “You have been very kind. … It’s foreign to me, but it will get better with time. I’ll learn the languages.”

He was speaking to encourage himself. “Yes,” I said. I closed my eyes, willing myself to be still.

“What does artinisca mean? It’s what you said just now, isn’t it?”

I was silent for a long minute. “It is a name,” I said at last. “My little son. He is dead.”

“Oh!” After a moment, “I am sorry, my lord.”

“Yes.” I pressed my hands against my face, trying to stop my own tears at the thought that Artinisca would never wake me in the night again, never; Tirgatao would never get up to pluck him from his cradle and place him between us, round and warm, and slide her slim arm around my back, leaning her head against my own. Never, never, never.

“What do your people say of the dead?” I asked, saying something, anything, rather than gaze into that black chasm. “Do followers of your cult burn them, like the Romans, or do they lay them in the earth?”

“Either, my lord,” Eukairios said after a surprised pause. “Bury if we can, burn if we can’t. We believe that if we have died in faith, it doesn’t matter how our bodies are treated. … What matters is what they were when they lived, not what was done to them afterward.”

“My people believe that when fire destroys the body,” I said, “the soul is destroyed too. Fire is holy, and death pollutes it.”

“If you think fire is holy, shouldn’t it purify death?”

“That is not what we believe of it.”

We were silent for a little while. I imagined Tirgatao burning, and the pain was so great I couldn’t breathe. I spoke. I had to, even though I was weakening myself before, of all people, a miserable slave. “My wife’s body was burned,” I said, “and my little son’s as well.”

***

This is a powerful scene. Waking in the middle of the night to the sound of sobbing is not the sort of context that leads to a philosophical discussion about the disparate religious beliefs of your people. This is a situation that leads people to talk about things that matter. In contrast to facile Roman exclamations about Hercules or whomever, both Ariantes and Eukairios really believe in their religions. This is terrible for Ariantes because of recent events, especially as I snipped out the grimmest part of that conversation. The death of his wife and son were pretty brutal, but my point is, this conversation contains a lot of emotional heft, and this is how Bradshaw puts the metaphysics into the story in a way that matters. This goes way, way beyond exclamations when someone is angry or surprised. She is establishing that her characters really believe in and really care about the metaphysics central to their societies.

Also, whoa, is this a great pet-the-puppy moment or what? By this point in the story, we have already seen that Ariantes is intelligent, thoughtful, and kind – all subtle, by the way, without the author ever saying, “Look, he’s intelligent;” it’s up to the reader to notice because she’s not outlining anything in neon. This is all fine, but not everybody wakes up out of a sound sleep saying, Don’t cry, I’m here, and then tries to comfort the stranger who woke him, even though he is drowning in his own grief right at that exact moment. This is a great pet-the-puppy moment and a great job of establishing character through situation and dialogue. There’s a reason I love so many of Bradshaw’s novels.

So far, Bradshaw has established that metaphysical beliefs are part of the worldbuilding here, and she has made it clear that her characters really do believe in the metaphysics. This doesn’t have anything to do with divine intervention; this is all just (“just”) lending depth to the worldbuilding and the characters.

Then, much later in the story, this:

***

I dreamed I was riding across a wide meadow in the sunshine, riding a strange horse, a beautiful white stallion that stepped as lightly as snow falling. It was early summer and the grass was purple with vetch, red with poppies, and scented with meadowsweet. I rode over a hill and saw my own wagons below me beside a stream, and my own horses grazing beyond them. Tirgatao was sitting beside the campfire, with Artinisca beside her and a baby on her lap. I gave a shout of joy and galloped down to them. She stood as I approached, but when I dismounted, she waved me back with her hand, laughing. Artanasca jumped up and down, shouting, “Daddy! Daddy!” – but he did not clutch my leg.

“Look!” said Tirgatao, and she held up the baby. It was fair-haired and blue-eyed, and smiled into my face. I smiled back, reaching out my finger for it to grab – and then I remembered that it had died before it was born, and I drew back.

“It’s all right,” Tirgatao said, understanding. “I wanted you to see her.”

“You were burned,” I said in a whisper. “My dearest light, they burned you.”

“That doesn’t matter now,” she replied, smiling at me as though I’d made a joke.       

There’s a bit more. Then, a little later, Ariantes tells this dream to someone else, like this:

“I met her in a meadow filled with flowers, and the children were with her. The baby as well. And there was another thing that will please you: she gave me a dragon to carry me back to this earth, and it was our dragon, our standard.”

***

Does this dream represent metaphysical reality? Ariantes thinks it does, his men thinks it does, the Roman widow who is the female lead in the slow-burn, gentle, low-angst romance in this story thinks it does. This dream absolutely for sure matters, in the sense that it puts heart into Ariantes for that duel, which is important. Does the dream guarantee victory? No; Ariantes doesn’t think so, not exactly, but he still has this conviction buoying him up when he fights the duel.

He would have wanted to win anyway. There’s the new life he’s built here, and he is certain he has to win this duel in order to safeguard his people. Why did the author put this dream, which may or may not reflect the underlying metaphysical reality, into the story? I imagine that she did it because it felt right, because I default to assuming authors are probably intuitive writers unless they explicitly say otherwise. The more straightforward questions is: what purpose does the dream serve?

It reduces the tragedy in the backstory. The tragedy is still tragic and hard, but seeing your lost loved ones waiting for you in a flowery meadow, laughing, is so much better than thinking their souls have been destroyed by fire.

It provides closure for the protagonist. It gives him permission to move forward with his new life, and this helps the reader agree that yes, he can now build a new life.

It reduces tension before the climactic battle. Setting that dream into the story is like the author patting the reader on the shoulder and saying, “It’s all right, don’t worry, he isn’t going to die, there’s a happy ending.”

But wait! you might cry. Isn’t the author supposed to be all about ratchetting the tension upward? And this is a good counterexample, not to mention one more example of writing advice that is somewhat true still being overly broad. No, the author isn’t supposed to ratchet the tension continually upward. The author is supposed to use tension effectively, and what that means will be different for different stories.

This isn’t a horror novel or a thriller. It’s a romance. A slow-burn, low-angst romance with zero spice, so readers who expect angsty in-your-face erotica might not even notice. But it’s still romance, which means a happily-ever-after or happily-for-now ending is guaranteed, and this is one reason why dialing the tension back might work.

But I think there’s another reason. I think Bradshaw meant that dream as a reflection of the real metaphysics underlying the world of the story, and the lift Ariantes experiences therefore comes from something true – true in story terms, I mean. And that means that in this story, the metaphysics that underlies the world is, way down deep, fundamentally generous.

In writing the story this way, including the dream, Bradshaw has created a deeper level of thematic coherence. Ariantes is, among other admirable qualities, kind. A secondary character who first seems brutish and unkind turns out to be kind. The romance is not just slow and low-angst, it’s a kind romance. And on top of all that, way down deep, the metaphysical reality of the story is not just present, but this metaphysics is also kind. If the author hadn’t included the dream, that would have been lacking, and the story would have lost some of its deep coherence. That’s what I think that dream, and Ariantes’ emotional experience of that dream, is really doing there.

I already realized, and a lot of you probably did too, that Island of Ghosts was certainly an inspiration for the Ugaro in the Tuyo world at a shallow worldbuilding level (wagons, tombs, honor). I’m not surprised to feel now that the fundamentally generous sensibility in this novel, and Bradshaw’s novels generally, probably also constituted a different level of inspiration.

As a side note, Bradshaw also does something like this in A Beacon at Alexandria and also in Render Unto Caesar. In each case, this is not a huge or dramatic element of the worldbuilding or the plot. You could practically blink and miss it. Yet, in each case, including a hint of the metaphysical reality underlying the story does the same basic thing – it adds thematic depth and coherence.

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Poetry Thursday: Welcome to May

Quite a few poems involve May Day, it turns out!

Elaine T’s Teen contributed this, and the second I realized May 1st was going to fall on a Thursday, well, I mean, that was a no-brainer.

A May-Day carol

by Alfred Noyes 

The moon shines bright, the stars give a light,
A little before ’tis day;
Our Heavenly Father, He called to us,
And bid us awake and pray.

Awake, awake, oh pretty, pretty maid,
Out of your drowsy dream;
And step into your dairy below,
And fetch me a bowl of cream.

If not a bowl of thy sweet cream,
A cup to bring me cheer;
For the Lord knows when we shall meet again,
To go Maying another year.

I have been wandering all this night,
And some time of this day;
And now returning home again,
I’ve brought you a branch of May.

A branch of May I’ve brought you here,
And at your door I stand;
‘Tis nothing but a sprout, but well budded out,
By the work of our Lord’s hand.

My song is done and I must be gone,
No longer can I stay;
So it’s God bless you all, both great and small,
And send you a joyful May.

***

Here’s another:

May Day
by
Sara Teasdale A delicate fabric of bird song 
Floats in the air, 
The smell of wet wild earth 
Is everywhere. 

Red small leaves of the maple 
Are clenched like a hand, 
Like girls at their first communion 
The pear trees stand. 

Oh I must pass nothing by 
Without loving it much, 
The raindrop try with my lips, 
The grass with my touch; 

For how can I be sure 
I shall see again 
The world on the first of May 
Shining after the rain?

***

One more, attribued to Fionn Mac Cumhal 

May Day

May Day, delightful day
brilliant time of year
birds sing a full lay
before the sun has cast its rays

Loud the cuckoo calls
and nods to the feast of summer
the sickle of the storm ceases
which tore at the branches of the wood

Summer cuts the little stream
swift steeds seek the pools
long spreads the heather
fine fair ferns flourish

Flowers shine from the hawthorn hedge
water flows in smooth currents
bringing sleep to the salt sea

Little strong bees bear
bundles brought from blossoms
The generous mountain carries
lean calves in plenty

Music plays in the woods
harmony bringing healing peace
dust and fog are blown from homes
and from the full lake pool

The cake of well-guarded grain speaks
the high waterfall sings anew
welcome to the warm pool
rustling comes to the reeds

Swallows flit on high
loudness of music pours  from the hills
good fodder for beasts in the meadow
wounds inflicted are healed

Leaves spread on  beech twigs
the cuckoo calls loud and high
the speckled trout leaps
strong is the swift skirmisher’s limb

The strength of men returns
the mighty slopes are young again
Fair are the clear woodlands
fair every great wide meadow

Sweet time of year
gone are the gusts of wicked winter
the forest shines, the waves are wide
all is peaceful, summer is joyous

A flock  of birds comes together
in the place where the woman is
chirping in the green meadow
where the green river flows

Fiercely racing,  horses run
the thronging crowd stands round
brilliant is the shining marsh
the golden iris is there

Weak is the man who fears noise
the strong man sings out loud
he sings in delight
“May day, delightful day!”

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How much backstory can you include in the opening scene?

So, this post is here because of a recent comment by Mary Catelli, in which she commented that past perfect can be a sign of trouble in the opening scene. Which is one hundred percent true, NOT THAT YOU CAN’T USE IT AT ALL, but you really ought to notice you’re using the past perfect and ask yourself why and whether it’s a good idea. And that remains true throughout the novel: if you’re using the past perfect, why, and is that a good idea? And in general I would say that if you NEVER use the past perfect, that’s a problem, because that verb tense exists for a reason and if you don’t know how to use it properly, you should learn. BUT, if you’re putting a whole paragraph or scene into past perfect, why? Are you sure that’s a good idea?

Because there are only two reasons to do that, I think —

A) You’re summarizing something that happened in the past, or

B) You’re in a flashback.

And while sometimes you do want to summarize, that’s usually when something that happened is trivial both in plot terms and relationship terms. If anything was important, than probably it should be on the page in story-present.

And flashbacks can be useful, but are almost always more difficult to handle smoothly than not having a flashback, so you sure want to concentrate on smoothness if you use one. And part of smoothness involves verb tense and deciding how and whether to slide from past perfect to simple past and back again.

***

Now, past perfect is the verb tense that goes: I suddenly realized that no! The villain had actually been Esmeralda! She had been working against us the entire time!

This is a verb tense that puts a FINISHED action in the past; and when we’re talking about writing a novel, then if the novel is written in the past tense, the simple past is acting as story-present, while the past perfect is true past, or finished past. King Arthur had drawn the sword from the stone is story-past. King Arthur drew the sword from the stone is story-present. Mary provided a link to this excellent substack post where she goes into all this and why it’s a problem to use the past perfect when you shouldn’t:

Jane came downstairs with the sword Excalibur glinting in her hand, which she had retrieved from its box where they had put it.

If [verb tenses like this] are in the beginning of the story, possibly the first line — either these stories are starting too late, or the characters are giving their backstory much too early. In the middle of the story, they are telling events out of sequence, which is less than ideal, and in the end, they are also distracting the readers from the drama of the climatic moment, but in the beginning, where you still have to hook the reader, establish what is going on, and limit confusion, they are a serious problem.

Avoiding the tense does not avoid the problem as such, since history can be festooned about a sentence with different structures.

At their centuries-old castle, the once-prominent noble family gathered to hear the will of the ancient patriarch, a general granted the ducal title by the king, dead long after his wife and many of his children.

I like all this, especially the note that the author might pour the past into a sentence without using the past perfect and that this still means there is a focus on the past, not on story-present. So the question is, are you telling the reader about something that happened in the past, or are your characters moving forward in story-present? Which they should be, most of the time, and Mary notes, correctly, that you can sometimes find yourself skipping the action and then reporting about it for no reason in the world. It just happened, oops, who knows why.

For me — and I noted this in the previous post — it happened because I was in a hurry to get to the next important scene, or the next scene I thought was important, and jumped over other scenes I thought were unimportant, and then discovered that I was reporting about those scenes using past perfect. Realizing this happened constitutes the solution: go back and put in the scenes rather than just reporting about them. I think this is usually how this problem happens for me and how I solve it.

Mary’s post, linked above, is a good one, and of course if you poke around, you will find other posts about this, such as this one: Hold Back the Back Story.

Some writing instructors say things like “no back story in the first fifty pages.” Some editors will be so bold as to say they would be happy if they saw NONE in the entire book. Maybe that won’t quite work for your book, but it’s sad to say that countless scenes start with a line or two in the present, and then, whoosh! There you are reading about the character’s early life or marriage or something she did right before the scene started. Which should make you ask: Are you really starting your story in the right place? More often than not, the answer is no. That’s what second and third drafts are for—throwing out your first scene or two.

Which, sigh, showcases a second common problem, which is overgeneralizing to the point that your writing advice becomes insanely stupid, which this is. I mean both the “no backstory in the first fifty pages” as well as the “no backstory ever,” and ONCE AGAIN I would suggest that novice readers pay attention to what actual authors do in real novels, because OBVIOUSLY THIS IS STUPID ADVICE. Also, I think writing coaches and editors may fall into this mode where they start to fault judge, basically, and throw the manuscript away the first time they see a “had,” and this is by no means helpful to anyone.

The actual, and much better, advice here is: IF you start with backstory, then you should ASK YOURSELF why and whether that is working. And if the answer is YES, then yay, and move on. It’s just that you should probably ask yourself that question. And fine, it’s true that usually you do not want to pile a lot of backstory into the opening scene, not because someone told you not to, but because this really doesn’t work well. But it’s up to you to decide.

But the linked post also includes this:

In an exercise [Donald Maas] had us do, we went through the first thirty pages of our novel, removed every single instance where we used back story or informative narration, and then chose only three brief sentences containing a “back story fact” we felt we really must include in the opening chapters so the reader would “get” the story.

And I think that would be interesting, but unnecessarily strict. I also think it would be as well to note up front that this is unnecessarily strict and you’re doing it because it’s interesting, not because it will actually turn out to be a great idea.

All right, let’s take a look at a real novel beginning and note the backstory, especially the past perfect.

***

Beside the coals of the dying fire, within the trampled borders of our abandoned camp, surrounded by the great forest of the winter country, I waited for a terrible death.

I had been waiting since midday. Before long, dusk would fold itself across the land. The Lau must surely come soon. I faced south, so that my death would not ride up behind me on his tall horse and see my back and think that I was afraid to face him. Also, I did not want to look north because I did not want to see that trodden snow and remember my brother leaving me behind. That might have been a different kind of cowardice. But I could only face one direction. So I faced south.

The fire burned low. My brother had built it up with his own hands before he led our defeated warriors away. Now it was only embers, and the cold pressed against my back. I wished I could build the fire up again. Mostly that was what I thought about. That was as close to thinking about nothing as I could come. It was better than thinking about the Lau. I hoped they came before the fire burned out, or I might freeze to death before they found me. Even an Ugaro will die of the cold eventually, without fire or shelter.

I tried not to hope that I would die before they found me.

Then I heard them, the hoofbeats of their horses, and there was no more time for hope. I held very still, though stillness would not protect me now. Nothing would protect me. I was not here to be protected. They came riding between the great spruces and firs, tall dark men on tall dark horses, with the Sun device of their banner snapping overhead in the wind.

***

And, something I very specifically remember doing with this opening is, in fact, pulling out some of the backstory. Some of the backstory went into the story later and some, I think, disappeared forever, because I did cut this novel hard at the sentence level. Regardless, I obviously did not remove ALL the backstory, because that would have been unncessary at best, stupid at worst. Let me look at that again. Yes, cutting those backstory lines would have been stupid. That’s my opinion. Donald Maas isn’t going to change my mind.

Anyway, 1500 words later, we get this:

***

The Lau are not a brave people, but they are so many they do not need to be brave. When they fight, they stand in close formations that Ugaro cannot break. When we attack their lands, we are quick, striking at undefended farms, then disappearing into our forests. Sometimes they pursue us across the river that marks the border between their country and ours, but not often, for we have taught them better. In the winter country we can evade them and stay out of their reach, and harass them by shooting from a distance their bows cannot match. During the long cold, they must be especially cautious, for our land itself becomes deadly to them. Yet this time they had come in force, disregarding the risk that snow might begin to fall heavily enough to weaken them and hinder their retreat. This scepter-holder was braver or more reckless than most of his people.

***

This isn’t backstory. This is worldbuilding. This is BY NO MEANS the first bit of worldbuilding. It’s the first bit of worldbuilding that isn’t embedded in story-present as a detail. It occurs, as I say, 1500 words into the story, or about five pages. Only a tiny bit of this is in past perfect; most of it is a statement about the world. It’s as condensed as possible given that the world is being built at all. The next paragraphs are in story-present, but they are description, therefore worldbuilding. But not pure description, because those paragraphs are also building Ryo’s character by putting him into the setting.

The above paragraph also shows a different use of verb tenses, because the story is being told in simple past tense, while the backstory is being indicated by past perfect, and at the same time statements about the world are being made in present tense to indicate that these statements are describing the world as it is in story-present.

Which I guess leads to a basic statement that verb tenses should be taken seriously.

***

I wish I had right here in front of me an example of a paragraph where the author should PLAINLY have used past perfect, but did not. This happens a lot, and it’s jarring. I feel editors who get oversensitized to past perfect and backstory may perhaps either miss the OBVIOUS misuse of simple past where the author should be using past perfect, or possibly, some of them, may actually encourage or force the author to use the simple past when it CLEARLY ought to be past perfect.

Here’s an excerpt from Past Tense by Lee Child because I was amused by the idea of using a novel with this title in this post. I’ve only watched the first season of Reacher, by the way; I tried reading the first book, but this is one of the rare instances where I much prefer the TV series to the book. I’m going to bold the two past perfect verbs in this two-paragraph excerpt. This is close to the beginning, but not the opening paragraph.

***

He walked inland a mile or so and came to a county road and stuck out his thumb. He was a tall man, more than six feet five in his shoes, heavily built, all bone and muscle, not particularly good-looking, never very well dressed, usually a little unkempt. Not an overwhelmingly appealing proposition. As always most drivers slowed and took a look and then kept on going. The first car prepared to take a chance on him came along after forty minutes. It was a year-old Subaru wagon, driven by a lean middle-aged guy in pleated chino pants and a crisp khaki shirt. Dressed by his wife, Reacher thought. The guy had a wedding ring. But under the fine fabrics was a workingman’s body. A thick neck and large red knuckles. The slightly surprised and somewhat reluctant boss of something, Reacher thought. The kind of guy who starts out digging post holes and ends up owning a fencing company.
        Which turned out to be a good guess. Initial conversation established the guy had started out with nothing to his name but his daddy’s old framing hammer, and had ended up owning a construction company, responsible for forty working people, and the hopes and dreams of a whole bunch of clients. He finished his story with a little facial shrug, part Yankee modesty, part genuine perplexity. As in, how did that happen? Attention to detail, Reacher thought. This was a very organized guy, full of notions and nostrums and maxims and cast-iron beliefs, one of which was at the end of summer it was better to stay away from both Route One and I-95, and in fact to get out of Maine altogether as fast as possible, which meant soon and sideways, on Route Two, straight west into New Hampshire. …

***

What do we see?

A) Lee Child doesn’t consider it important to avoid all past-perfect verbs in the opening chapter. That’s worth noting, possibly, though I wouldn’t hold Lee Child up as a stylist. But he writes natural, straightforward prose, and there are those past perfect verbs. And also —

B) Cutting the “had” from those verbs to create simple past-tense verbs would confuse the meaning of the sentences, and this would be stupid, and any editor or copyeditor who wanted to do this would be wrong. And also —

C) Wow, there’s a lot of words being spent on description about a possibly unimportant character plus the highway route. The guy isn’t named, so he may never become important and we may see him only here, in the intro of the novel. Or, possibly, he will be named shortly and will turn out to be at least moderately important; I don’t know, I haven’t read the book.

What are those words doing? Anything? Well, yes, they are building Reacher’s character. He’s supposed to notice stuff and he’s supposed to judge people accurately. This is him doing that. If an editor said, Move it along, let’s get going, action!, this would probably be inappropriate advice. Same with You’re starting in the wrong place, cut your first scene. Though I don’t know for sure because I haven’t read the book, only the opening paragraphs.

***

The tl;dr version: Verb tenses should be taken seriously. All the verb tenses. And if you want an exercise that will force you to pay attention to the effective use of verb tenses, then I suggest you write a time travel story and play with verb tenses such as “We aren’t so much awaiting them as we have been were awaiting them.”

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Voice

Below are nine novel excerpts. Each one includes the first paragraphs of chapter three. The crucial first sentence, first paragraph, first page, and first chapter are behind us. We are still in the beginning, but well in. The protagonist, the setting, the style, and the situation should all be pretty clear by this point.

All but one of the excerpts below are from real novels. One was generated by ChatGPT. I expect you can probably tell which one that is … or can you? I’ll list the titles and authors at the end. Many of you will recognize some of these excerpts. Nobody’s going to recognize them all.

I’m going to put these excerpts in order by ranking them according to these criteria: VOICE, CATCHINESS, STYLE, SITUATION. I’m aware all ranking is idiosyncratic, plus because I know what the books are and who the authors are, I’m sure to be biased at least some of the time. Nevertheless, best to worst. I’m also aware linear ranking emphasizes differences while disguising similarity, so I’ll try to compensate for that.

I’m not sure how to define voice, because it’s an intrinsically nebulous term, but let’s say, for the purposes of this post, voice is the sense that a specific person has stepped on stage, that you don’t have a protagonist-shaped façade going through the motions of being a real character.

I’m not sure how different catchiness and style will turn out to be. For me, I think catchiness has a lot to do with style, but for other readers I think catchiness may have more to do with the situation or something else. The character, maybe. The dialogue, perhaps. These are all short excerpts, so there’s not a lot to get hold of. Even so, see what you think.

***

1.

My room was empty even of the wolfhound. I climbed on my bed and leaned my elbows on the windowsill, and stayed there a long while alone, while outside in the pear tree’s boughs the thrush sang, and from the courtyard beyond the shut door came the monotonous clink of the smith’s hammer and the creek of the windlass as the mule plodded round the well.

Memory fails me here. I cannot remember how long it was before the clatter and the buzz of voices told me that the evening meal was being prepared. Nor can I remember how badly I was hurt, but when Cerdic, the groom, pushed the door open and I turned my head, he stopped dead and said, “Lord have mercy upon us. What have you been doing? Playing in the bull-shed?”

“I fell down.”

“Oh, aye, you fell down. I wonder why the floor’s always twice as hard for you as for anyone else? Who was it? That little sucking-boar Dinias?”

—

Voice: Ultra clear, and so subtle. The author is establishing this character by having him stand still and say three words, which is amazing.

Catchiness: High.

Style: Everything is great here, with the you-are-here description followed by lively dialogue with a historical feel that perfectly suits the story.

Situation: Alive, non-static. That’s what catchy dialogue will do.

***

2.

As the ferry strained forward to reach top speed, it left behind long garlands of white water at the edge of a turquoise wake. A rope hanging loose from a davit swung back and forth in the crosscurrents of wind and with the slight roll of the boat as it reached open water. He had been waiting for her for the longest time, although he had not known he had been waiting. And there she was, standing before him, too beautiful for words.

She spoke first, accusingly, but enjoyably. “Have we met?”

“No, we’ve collided.”

Lost in infatuation, he had moved incautiously ahead to the point where he was in love with even the smallest detail of her. Had she known of each or perhaps any one of the specifics, she would have had the evidence that she had begun to sense, and that had begun to sweep over her in the rare feeling of being adored. Although she had neither designed nor sewn her blouse, nor accomplished the sinuous, restrained embroidery, nor given to the embroidery the gray and rose color of mother-of-pearl, she had put it on, and it embraced her hour by hour, absorbing the heat of her body and the scent of her perfume. The collar, the buttonhole, the button, the threads that made a basket knot within the button’s ivory recess, became for him more than just a symbol, for he had never loved just a symbol, but a part of her – touched, regarded, accepted, and chosen by her.

—

Voice: Wonderfully clear.

Catchiness: High. The “No, we’ve collided” lifts the excerpt to a higher level than the beautiful sentences could do by themselves, adding delightful humor that contributes to the sense that this is someone’s point of view, someone specific, not a generic robot going through the motions of playing the protagonist.

Style: Lovely. Literary.

Situation: Fine with me, even though insta-infatuation is basically a turnoff for me. Everything else here is great, so I don’t care. Not static. The interaction so far already promises action, even if the action is a conversation instead of a fight.

***

3.

With his sword and his cloak, there was really no further reason to stay where he was, and his feet itched to be moving. To see this land he had all but forgotten, and which had surely forgotten him. And good riddance! Tamsin was neither bard nor butcher now.

He did not know what he was, but he could assure himself of that: he was not who he had been.

Even if a melody had started to curl through his mind, and his hand rested in its accustomed curve on his sword hilt.

– If his family were alive – if his mother had not gone Over the Seas with them, after all –

Elves died by violence, very rarely from something like grief. Tamsin’s mother had certainly grieved their going, husband and sons throwing their lives away. But somehow he couldn’t imagine her giving in like that.

Perhaps this unmoored feeling was anticipation. It wasn’t as if he’d had much call to feel that for a while. Hope, yes, he’d held grimly onto that idea of the one day. But anticipation? After he’d realized he was the last elf left Over the Waves, he’d hardly expected anything.

—

Voice: Very clear. There’s no feeling at all that this could be a wooden façade propped up with the pretense that it’s a character. This is a specific person with a clear personality.

Catchiness: High.

Style: Lively, engaging.

Situation: Immediately interesting. This is not static. I realize all these excerpts are so short, it’s impossible to tell what’s going to happen next, whether we’re moving or active or standing still or what. But the anticipation built into this excerpt is so clear, and would be clear even if that last paragraph didn’t pack in words such as anticipation, hope, and expected. With all those words loaded into that paragraph, tension goes way up, and it’s a good tension, not dread of what’s going to happen, but, yes, anticipation.

***

4.

I was not in St Cecelia’s that afternoon. I was seventeen. I had come down from Dublin on the train, not exactly in disgrace – my grandparents, Doady and Ganga, were too contrary and crafty for that – but certainly distant from grace, if grace is the condition of living your time at ease on the earth.

What I was like then is hard to capture, the Crowe-ness in me manifest mostly in self-contradiction, my character an uneven construct that swung between flashes of fixedness and rashness, immovability and leap. One such had landed me in a briary boarding school in Tipperary. Another had put me down in the thorny austerity of a seminary, and another out of there when I woke one night with a fear I couldn’t name, but later came to think of as the fear I might not discover what it meant to live a fully human life.

I’m not sure what I thought that was at the time, but I had enough sense to know there was a lack, and somehow that was to be feared. If it is true that each of us is born with a natural love of the world, then the action of my childhood and schooling had been to vanquish it. I was too afraid of the world to love it.

—

Voice: Clear. This is an elderly man looking back, the second one in this set of novels, which is pure coincidence. His voice is literate, educated, wry, more tolerant than judgmental. I’m not sure I like him particularly. I don’t, in fact, think that grace is “the condition of living your time at ease on the earth,” so I’m not sure we’re going to be all that sympatico.

Catchiness: Medium-High, but I’m a little wary of the protagonist.

Style: Excellent.

Situation: Static.

***

5.

“Where did you find it?” Sam asked.

“Near Raka, Prince Samahti.” The trader was short and trim, with a mustache that grew wild as trailing ivy, the tips brushing against his collarbone. “We found a nest on the beach on one of the outer islands. There were three eggs, but we only had time to take the one.”

“We could see its mother swimming back,” the second trader added. They appeared to be close family. Brothers or cousins, not yet thirty. “We barely made it off with our skin still on.”

They were in the royal menagerie on Tamarind. Catamara stood by the door, dressed in his practical animal-keeper clothing, along with Sam’s guards, Liko and Bayani. The menagerie’s distinctive odors drifted their way. Seaweed and kelp, along with the earthier aroma of land animals.

The traders had brought with them a large crate that, when pried open, had revealed an egg, at least three feet tall. Its color was a brilliant, blinding pink.

—

Voice: Weak, but not nonexistent. This prince goes by Sam, for example, and he’s interested dragons or dragon eggs, which right there is neat. I can guess that you’d get a much better feel for the voice if you read more of this story than just this excerpt.

Catchiness: Medium-high.

Style: I like it. It’s not at all literary, but it’s good. The dialogue is lively. The details are vivid.

Situation: Ooh, dragons! Tell me more! Not static. Something is going on right now, and more will be going on as the scene unfolds.

Rank: 5th place. Situation does matter, it turns out, because I would choose to read this over the novel I ranked 4th and depending on my mood maybe above the one I ranked 3rd.

***

6.

“Hello? Kate? Are you there?”

She should have been. Whichever one went first had sworn to come back to guide the other into the Beyond: for decades, we had held this as an article of faith between us.

Except … no Kate. Not even any light.

A fog had descended, so dense I could barely see my hands until they were in front of my face. Shingle rolled under my feet. Off to my left, I could hear the hushed surge of the sea, muffled as by layers of padding.

“Kate?” I turned on my heel and called her name to all four directions: front and back, left and right. Nothing.

I had no idea what to do. I had genuinely believed I knew what was coming. We’re born alone and we die alone, but I hadn’t expected still to be alone here.

Desperate, I turned a slow circle on the shingle. The fog was growing heavier. Now, I couldn’t even hear the sea.

Alanna?

The call came from my right. Giddy with relief, I turned to walk inland, and then, tentatively, testing the feel of it, I ran.

—

Voice: Clear. This is a real person in a real situation.

Catchiness: High.

Style: Engaging. Not yet clearly literary or clearly lively, but I think it’s already engaging.

Situation: By far the most active situation out of these examples. Here, the situation is definitely pushing up the catchiness.

***

7.

The hum of the station was constant now—like a heartbeat no one wanted to acknowledge.

Rael adjusted the seal on her helmet for the third time, more out of habit than necessity. The decompression chamber’s walls were close, claustrophobically so, even for someone who’d grown up in the orbital stacks above Ganymede. Outside, beyond the final door, Europa’s ice stretched in every direction like a frozen ocean caught mid-roar.

“Telemetry stable. Suit integrity at ninety-nine percent,” came the voice of Navin through the comms. “But Rael, I’m telling you—if that signal spikes again, protocol says you wait for a full team.”

She ignored him, eyes fixed on the flickering screen on her wrist. The signal—still pulsing in that precise triplet pattern—wasn’t natural. That much she knew. Radio interference didn’t repeat with that kind of mathematical clarity. Something was transmitting beneath the crust. Something deeper than the probe drones had ever dared to go.

The inner hatch cycled open with a hiss, cold mist flooding her boots. Rael stepped forward onto the icy surface. Above, Jupiter loomed like a wounded god, amber bands swirling in silent fury. The stars barely flickered, swallowed by the giant’s radiance.

She moved carefully, boots gripping the crystalline terrain. A hundred meters east: the fissure. The source. Her breath fogged her visor despite the anti-condensers.

Navin was still in her ear. “You’re five clicks from the tether line. If that ice shifts again, there’s no retrieval window.”

“Then you’d better make sure it doesn’t,” she muttered.

—

Voice: Decent. I think Rael comes across as a real character, not a wooden puppet pretending to be a real character.

Catchiness: Good

Style: Fine

Situation: Active. Intriguing.

***

8.

The Bombadier flew for about two hours.

We could be anywhere in southeast Asia, CJ thought. Thanks to the blacked-out windows, she didn’t know if they had flown in a straight line or in circles.

The Chinese were very keen to keep the location of their new zoo secret.

When it finally landed, the Bombardier taxied for a few minutes before coming to a halt at an airbridge. The six American guests disembarked to find themselves sanding inside a brand-new airport terminal. The walls and floors gleamed. None of the many shops were open but they looked ready to go. The entire terminal, built to handle the movement of thousands of people, was eerily empty.

High floor-to-ceiling windows revealed the landscape outside: spectacular mountains and moss-covered limestone buttes.

“Ah-ha, we are still in southern China,” Seymour Wolfe said. “If I were to hazard a guess, I’d say we are in the north of Guangdong province.”

—

Voice: Nonexistent. Why can’t CJ have some sort of not-totally-neutral reaction to the situation?

Catchiness: Low.

Style: Annoyingly short paragraphs, which is becoming a pet peeve of mine when there’s no reason for it, as here.

“We are still in” and “we are in” are both stilted. If this character is supposed to sound like he’s speaking natural English, he doesn’t, because normally both of those would contain contractions. But maybe he’s ESL or extremely formal, and in either case this would be fine.

Situation: I mean, there’s a zoo, so that’s automatically interesting. Static. We’re going to draw the scene, I presume. If I didn’t know there was a zoo, I would be uninterested.

***

9.

“Captain on the bridge!”

“As you were, Jackson said with a dismissive wave. He climbed up into the raised command chair and began navigating through menus on the display attached to the left armrest. “Ensign Davis, what is the crew status?”

“All crew accounted for, seven still not aboard,” the short, shapely operations officer reported, consulting her display. “Those even are being brought to the ship by local law enforcement. A ship’s officer will need to meet them at the gangway to secure their release.”

“XO to the bridge,” Jackson said loudly. The computer would automatically ping Commander Wright’s commlink and inform her she needed to report to the captain on the bridge. “OPS, tell the marines at the main gangway that the new exec will be down shortly to deal with the locals.”

“Aye, sir,” Ensign Davis said, speaking into her handset.

—

Voice: Nonexistent. This is exactly what I mean by “a protagonist-shaped façade going through the motions of being a character.”

Catchiness: Low. Really low. Anti-catchy. Negative catchiness.

Style: Uninteresting to the point of being off-putting. The worst thing here is the explanation that the computer would automatically ping etcetera. Yes, we know, that’s totally obvious from just saying, “XO to the bridge,” especially doing so “loudly.” Oh, wait, the actual worst thing here is that Ensign Davis is apparently saying, “Aye, sir,” into her handset rather than to her captain.

Situation: Static.

***

1. The Crystal Cave by Mary Stewart. I know I’m surely biased here, but honestly, I do think this is very good.

2. In Sunlight and In Shadow by Mark Helprin. I haven’t read it; it’s on my TBR pile.

3. The Bone Harp by Victoria Goddard. I haven’t read it; it’s on my TBR pile.

4. This is Happiness by Niall Williams. I’ve only read to this point so far, but it’s beautifully written.

5. Dragonfruit by Makiia Lucier. This is the author of The Year of the Reaping, which I liked a lot. I picked up this book on the strength of that one, and I know some of you have recommended it.

6. Any Human Power by Manda Scott. I want to post about this novel eventually, because many things about it are worth comment. It’s a novel with enough power that I had trouble with it — it’s infused with anger, and I set it aside for a long time because I could not read it. For various reasons, that bothered me less later and I have finished it now.

7. Chat GPT. Who guessed that? Anybody? I think there are two elements in this tiny excerpt that suggest that, but I also think I would have missed those if I hadn’t known this was generated. The first is drones daring to go wherever. I mean … they’re drones? They don’t dare or fail to dare under any circumstances, do they? That line about not letting the ice shift, how in the world could anyone prevent the ice from shifting? I will add that in my opinion, the generated feel came through more clearly three lines after this excerpt and I deliberately cut it off before it got to that point.

8. The Great Zoo of China by Matthew Reilly. It’s both static and boring, the pov protagonist has no life in this excerpt, and the stilted dialogue did not seem right, though if the character had been established properly before chapter three, it could have been fine. The zoo is filled with “dragons,” actually dinosaurs of some kind, I happen to know, though I have not read the book. This is an internationally bestselling novel, it says at Amazon. Nonstop action, say the reviews. I guess none of that action happened to appear here at the beginning of chapter three.

9. Warship by Joshua Dalzelle, who is, it says on the cover, a USA Today bestselling author. Unbelievably bad and boring, well below ChatGPT, at least in this very short excerpt. All of this, everything here, is so blandly boring that if you picked it as generated, I wouldn’t be one bit surprised. The pointless and cliched tags – he waves a dismissive hand for no reason, and look here, she’s “shapely,” and good God, never describe a female character like this.

If I hadn’t known which entry was which, I would almost certainly have picked this one as generated. Since I’m not familiar with this author, I don’t even know for sure it ISN’T generated. Okay, I just checked the date of publication, which is 2015, so I guess not.

I picked this book up because it was free via Amazon Prime reading, and I have to say, looking at it makes me less inclined to pick up the next thing I see that is free and could be interesting, because I find this deeply unimpressive. If readers can remotely suspect that your novel is generated, seriously, that is not great and you ought to up your game, and I mean a lot.

What do you think? Agree / disagree? Anybody spot the ChatGPT one? If so, what made you peg that one?

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Update: a scalpel rather than an ax, so far

You know, the very easiest way to drop 10,000 words in a hurry is to realize a thirty-page chapter isn’t doing anything useful. Whoosh! Thunk! One swing of the ax takes care of that.

I’m exaggerating, but not a lot. I cut a chapter from Tarashana and one from Tasmakat, with just a bit of splicing to join the remaining chapters together. Nothing like that with Marag, which was much tighter. Nor from Rihasi.

More typical, lots and lots of delicate slicing with a scalpel rather than big swings of an ax. Lots of that with Hedesa. It’s slow, but not unsatisfying. I realized I never turned on music this past weekend, which means I was absorbed enough not to think of it. I’ve dropped from a high of 238,000 back to a less-insane 223,000. All at the level of sentences and occasionally paragraphs, while neatening up continuity along the way.

Sunday evening, I arrived at Ch 25, and having skimmed lightly through this chapter and the next one … I think … not a lot is happening in these chapters, and today I may be pulling out, if not an ax, maybe a hatchet.

This, by the way, is where I will rename the file, in case I’m like, Oops, shouldn’t have cut that scene. But I think I will be cutting these chapters A LOT. Like cutting half their length. Then possibly combining them. This would be fine. They are remarkably long chapters given nothing much is going on in them. We’ll see how much I decide is building relationships or in other ways doing something useful.

Chapter 27 will be different! Fun, important stuff happens there. Ch 28 is largely transition. Ch 29 is the final chapter, probably not counting a short epiloguish chapter that ties up this book and leads to the next. I haven’t written that part yet. I’m thinking short like five pages, but not sure, of course.

Three more days in April! Can I finish this draft, including primary revision, before May? I doubt it. But honestly, I’m getting close!

Meanwhile! Cool weather all weekend. I put out about a third of my baby plants, of which a squirrel immediately destroyed three seedings, dratted little nuisance. Good thing I have more, and I threw a lot of cayenne everywhere to discourage the varmints. It’s too muddy to plant the rest just yet. The remaining babies will have a harder time, as it’s supposed to get hot abruptly. But hopefully I’ll remember cayenne or cinnamon for the rest before the squirrels destroy any. They don’t eat the seedings, by the way. They nip them off at ground level and drop the corpse to wither, for absolutely no reason other than sheer peversity.

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Audio Sale: Tuyo

Just letting you know that, if all is happening as it should behind the scenes, the audiobook of Tuyo will be $0.99 at Chirp now. The price should stay down for almost a month.

***

***

Chirp is associated with BookBub, I certainly have been finding their sales tempting personally, I hope Tuyo finds a lot of listeners this way.

Meanwhile, I will just add, I have been discouraging people from asking me about Tasmakat. Obviously you have realized, if you’ve thought about this at all, that there is a problem with this audiobook. I’m working on this, I don’t feel it’s right to rant publicly about it, I’m not going to go into details. An audiobook will appear eventually, but I’m not sure when. But I will take really serious steps if it hasn’t appeared by the end of the year, so there will be a limit to how long this delay will continue.

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Poetry Thursday

Okay, one mildly entertaining (???) note is that if you google, for example, “George Oppen copyright,” Google’s AI will tell you that George Oppen died in 1976 and therefore his works are likely out of copyright because copyright lasts 70 years. This is ridiculously wrong. First, George Oppen — whom I googled because he was born on April 24, so I thought I might focus on some of his poems today — died in 1985. Second, if Oppen had died in 1976, then that’s still only 49 years, not 70, hello. Also, if you do the exact same “George Oppen copyright” search multiple times, you’ll get different statements about when he died — the AI appears to be picking a random year, though I would bet it’s a year something of his was published and therefore a year that’s associated with Oppen in some post or other. But the AI rather persistently says that his works are probably not under copyright, even when OBVIOUSLY this is not correct.

Still not convinced the problem with AI having no clue is going to be solved any time this decade. It’s impossible for AI to tell true from false because, I mean, it still has no brain and no judgment and no intelligence of any kind. Thus throwing random numbers into an answer.

Since I mentioned George Oppen, here’s a poem of his with a great title, ‘And Their Winter and Night in Disguise.” I don’t like this poem, so I would not have chosen to feature his poems today anyway, but there it is if you would like to click through and read it.

Meanwhile, a different poet, someone who was writing much longer ago. Hmm. All right, how about Charles Baudelaire — also someone I’ve never heard of, also born in April, but way back in 1821. That way I know for sure everything of his is out of copyright. Let’s take a look …

Sorrows of the Moon

Tonight the moon dreams in a deeper languidness,
And, like a beauty on her cushions, lies at rest;
While drifting off to sleep, a tentative caress
Seeks, with a gentle hand, the contour of her breast;

As on a crest above her silken avalanche,
Dying, she yields herself to an unending swoon,
And sees a pallid vision everywhere she’d glance,
In the azure sky where blossoms have been strewn.

When sometime, in her weariness, upon her sphere
She might permit herself to shed a furtive tear,
A poet of great piety, a foe of sleep,

Catches in the hollow of his hand that tear,
An opal fragment, iridescent as a star;
Within his heart, far from the sun, it’s buried deep.

***

The Enemy

My youth was nothing but a black storm
Crossed now and then by brilliant suns.
The thunder and the rain so ravage the shores
Nothing’s left of the fruit my garden held once.

I should employ the rake and the plow,
Having reached the autumn of ideas,
To restore this inundated ground
Where the deep grooves of water form tombs in the lees.

And who knows if the new flowers you dreamed
Will find in a soil stripped and cleaned
The mystic nourishment that fortifies?

—O Sorrow—O Sorrow—Time consumes Life,
And the obscure enemy that gnaws at my heart
Uses the blood that I lose to play my part.

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Evaluating services for writers: Scammer adjacent

Here’s an article by Kevin Duncan at Kindlepreneur, which takes apart a new “service” offered by a company called Books.by —

Books.by Review: What Authors Should Know

Here, Duncan does a stellar job digging into Books.by, thus demonstrating what an author should do before working with a new business or service Here’s one important item from this post (not the only important thing he hits, but telling).

4. Repetitive Reviews

On Books.by’s homepage, they showcase their 4.8 star rating from almost 400 reviews. That’s very impressive… But there are some oddly specific patterns we noticed in the reviews — identical phrases, repeated names, and similar claims. Could be coincidence, but it’s worth noting as you do your research. Here are a few that we found. Of the 366 reviews:

5 called it “the best platform ever!”4 claimed they “doubled” their income “overnight”17 say they were able to “3X” their revenue compared to KDPOver 60 highlighted the platform’s “transparency”3 came from someone named “Priya S” (“Priya” is a lovely name, but out of 366 reviews, what are the odds…)

You get the idea. There are more like these too. This doesn’t mean the reviews aren’t legit, of course. There really could be lots of people who value “transparency”, could have exactly 3X’d their income, and who have the first name “Priya” (and a last name starting with S).

This reminds me of a “book reviewer” who (many years ago) contacted me and suggested that she’d be happy to review my book for a fee. I don’t remember what book this was; this was so long ago it was probably a traditionally published title. Here’s what I do remember: if you clicked through to her book review site, she had A LOT of comments under most of her reviews. Twenty, fifty, more than that, a lot. BUT, if you clicked through to the comments, then here’s what you’d see:

All the comments were short.Half the comments were from the reviewer, as she answered each and every comment, so the list alternated one comment / the reviewer / second comment / the reviewer, and so forth.Repetitive phrasing from many of the comments.

I thought, This smart “reviewer” is faking ALL these comments. That’s what it looks like to me. So, of course, I deleted the email and forgot about the so-called offer, until now, when this note about possibly (probably) fake comments reminded me.

So this is yet another thing to keep an eye out for.

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Story Structure: The Classics

This post at Jane Friedman’s blog caught my eye because of the recent Mythcreant’s post about how story structures are fool’s gold and foxfire and will lead you into peril and disaster. (I’m summarizing the basic tone of the Mythcreant’s post.)

Anyway, here’s the one at Friedman’s blog: Structural Mastery: Why the Classics Endure

These books have endured not because of subject matter alone, but because they were structurally effective. The right moments happened at the right times to elicit reader investment and momentum. … So, let’s take a closer look at why structure works—not as a mechanical template, but as an emotional engine that corresponds to human nature and thereby drives a reader’s engagement.

This post is focusing on standard beats: inciting incident, point of no return, rising action, midpoint with emotional uncertainty, all is lost, climax, resolution. More about each of these at the linked post, but this is all, as I say, standard.

However, the linked post then looks at various classics and how they fit this structure. The Old Man and the Sea. The Great Gatsby. I read them both in school. I sort of didn’t hate The Old Man and the Sea, but I don’t remember it well, only that I didn’t hate it. I thoroughly disliked Gatsby and after reading the brief summary at this post, no wonder. Once again the perennial question: Why do teachers feel they have to assign only tragedies? And of course we know why: Because tragedies have more depth. [Insert eye roll here.]

Anyway, back to the post.

Why it works: thematic and structural alignment

The structure of The Old Man and the Sea keeps the reader emotionally engaged by balancing tension, release, and inevitability. Santiago’s struggle isn’t just about catching a fish—it’s about proving to himself that he still has strength and purpose. The reader is drawn in by his determination, rooting for him even as the odds stack higher.

The midpoint flashback shifts the reader’s perception of Santiago. Until then, he has been losing ground, pulled farther from safety. But the memory of his arm-wrestling victory reframes the battle—Santiago has overcome impossible odds before, and now the reader has hope that he might do it again. This moment raises the stakes and deepens the emotional investment in his final effort.

The false victory—Santiago harpooning the marlin—gives the reader a moment of triumph before pulling the rug out. When the sharks arrive, the emotional turn is one of devastation, not just for Santiago but for the reader, who now realizes that the victory was never truly his to claim. The final resolution, where Santiago returns home empty-handed but still admired by his young companion, Manolin, provides a quiet catharsis. The reader feels the weight of loss, but also the endurance of dignity.

All right, that one isn’t actually a tragedy, because if the story is abut proving to himself that he still has strength and purpose, then he did prove that to himself. Also to his young companion.

Gatsby is a tragedy, the worst kind, a pointless self-destructive plot arc that is just really annoying to me personally, no matter what you think of the structure:

By structuring The Great Gatsby as a mystery rather than a straightforward tragic romance, Fitzgerald deepens the reader’s emotional investment. Instead of presenting Gatsby’s story chronologically, he withholds key pieces of information, allowing Nick—and by extension, the reader—to gradually uncover the truth. This creates intrigue, transforming Gatsby from a mere lovesick dreamer into an enigmatic figure whose past, motivations, and eventual downfall must be pieced together. The emotional weight of the novel builds not just from what Gatsby wants, but from the slow realization that his dream was always doomed.

If Fitzgerald had told Gatsby’s story in order, it would be a simple rise-and-fall narrative: a man amasses wealth to reclaim lost love, only to be destroyed by forces beyond his control. By filtering events through Nick’s perspective and revealing Gatsby’s past in layers, the novel fosters suspense and a sense of inevitable tragedy. The structural delay means that by the time the reader fully understands Gatsby’s quest, it is already unraveling.

The forces weren’t beyond his control. If he’d focused on something else besides trying to re-seduce a woman who had rejected him and married someone else, I expect the story would have had a different ending. BUT FINE, given this brief discussion, I expect the structure probably contributed to the story’s success.

I’m sure plenty of people must have analyzed novels I actually like. Okay, here is Persuasion, fitted into the Save the Cat structure.

Here’s The Hunger Games, fitted into a four-act structure.

Oh, The Hunger Games is a popular novel for this sort of analysis. Here’s another, this time in seven points. There are a lot. This one goes Hook, Plot Turn 1, Pinch Point 1, Midpoint, Pinch Point 2, Plot Turn 2, Resolution. No climax? ??? That’s seems strange when talking about structure. Looks like this post calls the climax part of the resolution. I wouldn’t.

What’s a pinch point, you may ask. (I asked that.) Here’s “Pinch Point 1”: This is where more pressure is applied. This is often used to introduce the antagonist. All right, so what is Pinch Point 2? It’s this: This is where even more pressure is applied. The story takes the ultimate dive. The character is at his/her darkest moment. He/she has lost everything. Okay, so that’s the “dark night of the soul.”

Wow, googling “structure of the lord of the ring” gets you to a Wikipedia article with plenty of citations:

Tolkien scholars have noted the unusual narrative structure of The Lord of the Rings, describing it in a variety of ways, including as a balanced pair of outer and inner quests;[7] a linear sequence of scenes or static tableaux;[8] a fractal arrangement of separate episodes that successively elaborate upon recurring themes;[9] a Gothic cathedral-like edifice of many different elements that combine to create a space with varying lights and vistas;[9] or an elaborate medieval-style interlacing of intersecting threads of story.[10]

I get a kick out of this. I like all these brief descriptions EXCEPT “a linear sequence of scenes or static tableaux,” which applies to juuuuust about any story ever told, minus the smallish fraction that are nonlinear. That line is as meaning-free as any phrase I have ever seen in my life. It just means, “TLotR is a linear story,” and gosh, that’s an acute observation, good job with that. Also, the story is so broken up, with Frodo captured by the orcs and let’s pause for the battle of Helm’s Deep before he’s rescued, that actually I don’t even think I’d agree it’s simply linear.

What do you think of the fractal arrangement notion? Maybe, maybe. At least it sounds neat and you can think about it. I do enjoy describing TLotR as a Gothic cathedral. I sort of feel Tolkien might have enjoyed having TLotR described that way.

Anyway, I’m mildly inclined to see if I can fit Tuyo into Save the Cat, but only mildly. Eventually maybe I’ll try that when I don’t have anything else pressing to do.

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Interesting post: Fantasy by the Words

I stumbled across this post at a blog that seems to be called Self Published Fantasy Month, which is an odd title for a blog. It seems very temporary. Still, here is this post: Fantasy by the Words

All writers have heard it: “You’re not the exception. Follow the rules.” But when it comes to the rules of word counts, there is one major exception that everyone seems to overlook. Epic Fantasy.

I think this rule is overstated, plus Historical is just as much an exception as epic fantasy, and so is what we might call epic science fiction. However, this isn’t the part that caught my eye. What did, first, was that this author is separating epic fantasy from high fantasy, which is great. She’s not doing it exactly as I would, but I’m happy to see someone else who doesn’t think the terms are synonymous, which they clearly are not.

But this post is really about word counts. That’s why I found it, because I googled “word count kushiel’s dart” because I wanted the rough word count of a long debut novel, and this one sprang to mind. The word count is given at 276,000 words, by the way, which is about what I expected. It’s a really long book, and really good, though you have to be okay with scenes that are not just explicit, but also include a strong sadistic flavor. But my point is, I intended to point out that many novels do not fit the so-called guidelines for word length, and this is true for debut novels from non-established authors. That is the exact point this post is making. It was written by Chelsea Harper, by the way. I think this is most likely the right Chelsea Harper, and if so she only wrote one book, so possibly life interfered.

Regardless, Harper says: Literary Agents Read Too Much

And I think she is right. Here’s what she says about this:

But the more agents read, the more they get frustrated with seeing the same things over and over. “80’s Fantasy” came back into style about fifteen years ago, and it went back out of style before many readers ever got tired of the revival. Why? Because agents and editors saw so many books in that style (undoubtedly hundreds more than they published) that publishing got over-saturated and bored with the common tropes in those fields long before the reading public did.

This is true. Actually, the reading public never gets tired of ANYTHING because (a) normal readers don’t read as many samples of badly-written Terry Brooks / Twilight / Hunger Games clones per week as agents do, and (b) normal readers are continually being created through the normal process of shifting from picture books to novels. Agents, editors, and professional critics all say, “Another Twilight clone, yawn,” but there is, was, and will be a market for however many similar novels get written. That’s what I think, and I’m glad to see a post that lays this out nearly the same way I would.

Harper then adds: Traditional Publishing Misreads Why Some Things Don’t Sell

I think this is also true, and I think the example given here is perfect:

Hunger Games was a sensation, but Divergent wasn’t as good. Not because it came later and people were tired of those tropes, but because the book actually wasn’t as good. Tris was a boring character who rebelled simply because she wanted to feel pretty and was forced into the revelation that she was “special.” In contrast, Katniss was someone who wanted to sneak by under the oppressive ruler’s radar and took calculated risks for the benefit of people she loved, who sacrificed herself early in book one to save her sister. In the long run, Tris was proven to be the one person born with special powers that confirmed a theory of humanity, while Katniss remained a normal girl who fought against being something she wasn’t and eventually confronted the fundamental corruption of rebellions that create figureheads for promotional purposes. From book one, Hunger Games kicks Divergent’s ass. Post-apocalyptic YA novels that sort children into factions aren’t out of fashion, YA novels with boring characters are out of fashion.

All of which I agree with, but also, the worldbuilding for Divergent was utterly ridiculous. I don’t know how many readers cared about that, but I did. It was ridiculous because dividing into castes according to a chosen virtue would be impossible — human people do not act like this, it’s obvious people do not act like this, I honestly don’t see how anyone could take this backstory seriously. Also, you don’t teach kids to fight by saying, “Go to it!” and standing back. Even if you’re both sadistic and an idiot, it’s very plain that this method of quote teaching unquote would not be at all efficient. I’ve seen this kind of idiocy in other books too, and it seems remarkable to me. Does the author genuinely not realize that it works far better to actually teach the kids to fight if you want them to learn how to fight?

I rather enjoyed Divergent, by the way. It’s just I was also aware that it wasn’t very good.

But here’s something I didn’t think of, that is probably also true: Traditional Publishing is Scared of Failing

That’s not a new or interesting observation. Here’s the part that’s new (or I hadn’t thought of it, anyway) and interesting:

To combat the damage that self-publishing did to their safety nets, publishing made a decision. Books over 120,000 words are high risk investments, even in a subgenre where books surpass 200,000 words regularly. What they’re missing is that those word counts are killing the epic fantasy subgenre. People are combining epic fantasy with high fantasy and scaling the definition back to just “anything set in a secondary world” because there’s very little outside Brandon Sanderson that even fits the more traditional definition of epic fantasy anymore.

Now, I haven’t noticed a lack of epic fantasy, but I haven’t been reading a lot for the past few years, and I certain HAVE noticed a frequent inability to distinguish between EPIC fantasy and HIGH fantasy, in exactly the way this author describes. I’m not sure this is at all new, however. It’s been a common issue for as long as I can remember.

Let us consider the word counts of one or two very recent traditionally published SFF novels.

When the Moon Hatched is estimated at 150,000 words.

The Pomegranate Gate is estimated at 178,000 words.

Of Blood and Fire is estimated at 175,000 words. I don’t know anything about this book, by the way, I just googled “recent epic fantasy” and plugged this title into the wordcount estimator I found. I think it’s grimdark, so don’t dash off and buy it unless that’s what you want.

How accurate is the counting tool linked above? It may be undercounting; I don’t think it’s overcounting: it tells me Tuyo might be 125,000 words, and it’s actually 160,000, so its estimation is 20% too low, a big difference. It pegged Tarashana at 200,000, which is close enough for horseshoes, but a little low. It suggested 285,000 for Tasmakat, which is 10% too low.

Given these results, I’d say the three novels above are WAY over 120,000 words, which is often cited as a limit for fantasy. Two of them are debut novels and the other is the author’s third book, so I don’t think I’d say she’s necessarily established.

Therefore, although I do like this post about Fantasy by the Words, I also think the ultimate conclusion, that publishers are getting much more rigid about upper limits on wordcounts and that this is killing epic fantasy, may be overstated, for two reasons: I’m pretty sure people have been conflating epic fantasy with high fantasy for decades, not just a few years; and it only took a few minutes to find three recent traditionally published fantasy novels that are massively longer than the supposed upper limit.

Which is good, because hard rules about “We won’t even look at anything over 120,000 words” are bad rules. On the other hand, self-publishing is so viable now that I’m not sure it would matter all that much if every traditional publisher in the world did institute that kind of hard rule. But it would still be bad, so I’m glad this doesn’t necessarily appear to have happened.

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