Rachel Neumeier's Blog, page 18

Bad Writing: Creating Unnecessary Distance

So, a question came up on Quora recently that caused me to say that as far as I’m concerned, Terry Brooks is not a great writer — with explanations about why I don’t think so.

The thing is, taking apart an excerpt of one of Brooks’ more recent books turned out to be interesting, in that I noticed a problem that I don’t think I clearly understood before, a problem which has to do with creating unnecessary distance from the reader. So, let me take a more extended excerpt of one of Terry Brooks’ books and actually look at it in some detail here. This is the beginning of The Last Druid. Scroll down past the excerpt for the commentary; I don’t want to bias your ability to look at this selection more than I already have. I realize that just saying, “Hey, I’m going to criticize this” will make everyone read it more critically than you might otherwise. Even so, here’s the selection. This is 1400 words or so, enough to see the style properly. Italics in original.

***

Tarsha Kaynin was not dead. She should have been, but she was not.

It surprised her when she woke from the blackness into which she had fallen when she had gone over the cliffs of Cleeg Hold and dropped toward the churning waters of the Mermidon several hundred feet below. She could feel sheets of hard rain beating down on her, soaking her clothing and chilling her body. She could hear the sounds of the storm all around her—the staccato slap of raindrops against the stone walls of the Rock Spur cliffs, the howl of the wind, and the thunder of the rain-swollen river as it surged wildly down its narrow channel. She was dangling from something that had snagged her and now held her fast. Yet as the buffeting winds set her swaying back and forth, she was reminded of how precarious her situation was.

Still, she was not dead.

Her aching, throbbing head provided further proof. She must have hit it as she fell. Perhaps the blow was even responsible for saving her. Perhaps it had slowed her just enough, arresting her fall sufficiently to allow the cliffs to catch hold of her. She could not remember, and she would likely never know for certain. But one thing she did know: She could not remain where she was. Sooner or later, the winds would tug her loose and she would begin falling once more.

Her eyes were tightly closed—in part to shut out the fury of the storm, and in part to protect her vision. The rain was falling so hard that each drop stung the skin of her face, and she did not want to chance what it might do to her eyes if she opened them. But the darkness allowed her the space and time to regain herself, to recall the events that had led to this moment. Her memory was momentarily fuzzy—a result not only of the blow to her head, but of something more . . .

Tavo!

It all came rushing back in a flurry of terrible images. Drisker, her brother, and herself landing on a rocky shelf high on the cliffs of the Rock Spur at the entrance to Cleeg Hold. Clizia Porse, using her magic to attack them from hiding, striking Tavo so hard he went down in a heap. Drisker rushing to strike back. A gap in time opening as she cradled her brother fearfully, willing him to wake once more. And the storm all around them—the flashes of lightning and the booming of thunder, the darkness and the rain, the overwhelming sense of everything having gone wrong . . .

Then a blow of such force—a strike of dark magic launched by Clizia Porse before either she or Tavo could prepare for it—and she was thrown through the air and over the cliffside into . . .

Unconsciousness, emptiness, the dark.

What had happened to her companions? She had no way of knowing.

Carefully, so as not to jar her position, she lifted one hand to shield her eyes from the rain so she could peer upward. She could see the cliff wall behind her and the rocky projection that had caught the collar of her heavy cloak to stop her descent and hold her fast. A one-in-a-million chance of this happening, and yet it had. Again, she recalled Parlindru’s words, foretelling her future: Three times you shall die, but each time you shall come back to life. Surely, this qualified as one of those times. Was this the last of the three? Tavo had nearly killed her twice, so mustn’t it be?

She forced herself to concentrate, to stop the rambling flow of her thoughts, and to study the rain-slickened rock she must somehow climb to safety. She could not see the edge she had tumbled over; it was too far above her and lost in blackness. But it didn’t matter. She knew she had to find a way to reach it.

What skill did she possess—what magic—that would allow her to do this? She tried to ignore the aching in her head; the pain made it hard for her to think.

Drisker had helped her to develop a considerable range of talents, and she had taught herself others. Yet she saw no projections on which she could gain any handholds save for the one that had snagged her, and one was not enough. She searched for foliage or vines she might grip, but there was nothing. She could try calling for help, but that would be dangerous. If Clizia was still up there, she might hear—although the sounds of the storm were so furious that she couldn’t imagine anyone hearing anything.

Then, as if in response to nothing more than contemplating the possibility, lightning flashed and a dark figure stood at the edge of the cliff, leaning over. Tarsha’s glimpse of this apparition was fleeting, but she knew instinctively it was the witch. She kept watching. Looking away now would not help; either she had been seen or she hadn’t. So she waited, eyes fixed on the point where she had spied the other woman. Then the lightning flashed again, illuminating the cliff edge, and Clizia Porse was gone.

Tarsha held her breath. Had Clizia seen her dangling against the cliffside? Was she visible from above? She waited, the minutes ticking away in her head. She imagined her death dozens of times over—a drop into the abyss of the canyon, everything brought to an abrupt end. She imagined what it would feel like.

Then she heard a new sound, one she recognized—the whine of power generated from diapson crystals as thrusters engaged and an airship lifted off. The sound heightened then slowly died away as the airship moved farther off. Clizia was gone.

Tarsha waited until she was certain, then cried out for Tavo and Drisker, one after the other, over and over. When there was no response and she realized no help was coming, she knew she was going to have to save herself.

But how could she manage it? Even if there were hand-and footholds to be found on the cliff face, she would have to swing close enough to the rock wall to grab onto them before her cloak tore loose. It was a faint hope at best, but without any way to gain purchase on the cliffside, it was unthinkable.

For a while she just hung there, a steady erosion of any hope breaking down her failing confidence, certain that—with the next gust of wind—she was going to die. She tried to tell herself that she just needed to think it through, that something would occur to her if she did.

But her situation suggested otherwise, and she began to despair.

Then, still running through the list of skills she had acquired while mastering the wishsong’s magic, she paused momentarily when she remembered her ability to appear in one place while actually being in another. Like the Skaar almost, but . . .

She caught herself, stumbling over a possibility that seemed so remote and unlikely that she almost dismissed it out of hand. But desperation forced her to consider it further.

If she could make herself appear to be in one place when she was really in another, might it not be possible to actually move herself elsewhere? To transport herself, in the flesh? Was it not a logical extension of how the wishsong could make the impossible manifest? Logic and life experience told her otherwise, but her understanding had progressed beyond both of these barriers. If necessity was the mother of invention, then why couldn’t her desperation make the impossible real? Just because she had never tried it didn’t mean it couldn’t be done.

And what other choice did she have now?

She closed her eyes once more and began to hum softly, summoning the magic. She had to be very careful. She had to both free herself from her cloak and place herself in virtual form back atop the rocky shelf. And she had to accomplish this and hold it all in place while she took it one step further and moved her corporeal form into her apparition. She was not even sure how she would do this—only that she must find a way.

Even more daunting, she could not experiment, but must make it happen on the first try.

Three times you shall die, but each time you shall come back to life.

Let it be so.

***

Okay, so, first, I do think the use of italics is MUCH less obtrusive and silly than in last week’s example of bad writing. This excerpt is bad in a totally different way from that one, and by “bad” I mean not THAT bad, because that excerpt from last week was terrible. But let’s take a look at this excerpt again. This time, I’m going to strike allllllll the words I think shouldn’t be there and adjust the prose just a tiny bit along the way to enhance flow.

***

Tarsha Kaynin was not dead. She should have been, but she was not.

It surprised her when She woke from the blackness into which she had fallen. when she had gone over the cliffs of Cleeg Hold and dropped toward the churning waters of the Mermidon several hundred feet below. She could feel sheets of Hard rain beat down. on her, soaking her clothing and chilling her body. She could hear the sounds of The storm surrounded her—the staccato slap of raindrops against the stone walls of the Rock Spur cliffs, the howl of the wind, and the thunder of the rain-swollen river as it surged wildly down its narrow channel. She was dangling from something that had snagged her and now held her fast. Yet as the buffeting winds set her swaying back and forth, she was reminded of how precarious her situation was.

Still, she was not dead.

***

Let’s pause for thought right here. Two things are pushing the reader away to a distance in the opening paragraph. One is the overuse of specific place names that are unfamiliar and do not matter. The other is that this is a report of a girl in a hazardous situation, by a narrator standing at a distance. The narrator is telling the reader: She is surprised. She can feel this. She can hear this. She pauses to consider how precarious her situation is, and this last bit is practically unforgivable in my opinion, because nobody, nobody in the entire universe, who was actually in this situation would need to be reminded of how precarious her situation is. That part is something that should be viscerally felt.

Visceral reactions are totally missing from the above. That’s the problem. That is what I meant when I said this writing style is distancing. I’m also cutting, what, about half the words? This is verbose, wordy in a way I specifically dislike. I’m trying to cut everything that pushes the reader away from the scene and the experience.

Let’s go on.

***

Her aching, throbbing head provided further proof. Her head ached, a sharp pain. She must have hit it as she fell. Perhaps the blow was even responsible for saving her. Perhaps it had slowed her just enough, arresting her fall sufficiently to allow the cliffs to catch hold of her. She could not remember, and she would likely never know for certain. But one thing she did know: But she could not remain where she was. Sooner or later, The winds tugged at her; she swayed with the force of gusts, precariously near falling. threatening to pull her from her precarious perch, and she would begin falling once more.

Her eyes were tightly closed—in part to shut out the fury of the storm, and in part to protect her vision. The rain was falling so hard that each drop stung her skin. The wind shoved her toward the unseen sea below her, but as she fumbled for a grip on the slick rocks, she suddenly thought — of her face, and she did not want to chance what it might do to her eyes if she opened them. But the darkness allowed her the space and time to regain herself, to recall the events that had led to this moment. Her memory was momentarily fuzzy—a result not only of the blow to her head, but of something more . . .

Tavo!

It all came rushing back in a flurry of terrible images. Drisker, her brother, and herself landing on a rocky shelf high on the cliffs of the Rock Spur at the entrance to Cleeg Hold. Clizia Porse, using her magic to attack them from hiding, striking Tavo so hard he went down in a heap. Drisker rushing to strike back. A gap in time opening as she cradled her brother fearfully, willing him to wake once more. But she could not remember what had happened because this is totally the wrong time for a summary of past events, sorry for the interpolation. The storm all around her—the flashes of lightning and the booming of thunder, the darkness and the rain, the overwhelming sense of failure everything having gone wrong … she was alone. She had no idea where her brother was, whether he had fallen past her, whether he was lost, drowned, dead.

Then a blow of such force—a strike of dark magic launched by Clizia Porse before either she or Tavo could prepare for it—and she was thrown through the air and over the cliffside into . . .

Unconsciousness, emptiness, the dark.

What had happened to her companions? She had no way of knowing.

Carefully, so as not to jar herself loose from her position, she lifted one hand to shield her eyes from the rain so she could peer upward. She could see the cliff wall behind her and the rocky projection that had caught the collar of her heavy cloak to stop her descent and hold her fast. A one-in-a-million chance of this happening, and yet it had. Again, she recalled Parlindru’s words, foretelling her future: Three times you shall die, but each time you shall come back to life. Surely, this qualified as one of those times. Was this the last of the three? She hadn’t actually died, so maybe not. Tavo had nearly killed her twice, so mustn’t it be?

She forced herself to concentrate, to stop the rambling flow of her thoughts, and to study the rain-slickened rock she must somehow climb to safety. She could not see the edge she had tumbled over; it was too far above her and lost in blackness. But it didn’t matter. She knew she had to find a way to reach it.

What skill did she possess—what magic—that would allow her to do this climb to safety? She tried to ignore the aching in her head; the pain made it hard for her to think.

Drisker had helped her to develop a considerable range of talents, and she had taught herself others. Yet she saw no projections on which she could gain any handholds save for the one that had snagged her, and one was not enough. She searched for foliage or vines she might grip, but there was nothing. She could try calling for help, but that would be dangerous. If Clizia was still up there, she might hear—although the sounds of the storm were so furious that she couldn’t imagine anyone hearing anything.

Then, as if in response to nothing more than contemplating the possibility, lightning flashed and a dark figure stood at the edge of the cliff, leaning over. Tarsha’s glimpse of this apparition was fleeting, but she knew instinctively it was the witch.

***

Let’s stop so I can just mention that she most certainly did not know this instinctively, and I WISH WITH ALL MY HEART THAT PEOPLE WOULD QUIT USING INSTINCTIVELY WHEN THEY MEAN SOMETHING ELSE. Usually, what people mean is “reflexively.” In this case, what Brooks means is “intuitively” or “magically” or “she was afraid it was.” What he does not mean is instinctively, because that means something else.

I think I’ll stop here. The above is plenty to notice that I’m cutting A LOT OF WORDS, and this in spite of the obvious fact — I think it’s surely obvious — that I have no trouble with long books that contain lots of words, that I have no trouble with a slower pace, that I’m fine with prolixity as long as those words are doing something for the narrative. I mean something good.

Yes, the author should work in the backstory. But it should be more subtle and it should happen in moments of leisure. If your protagonist is clinging to a cliff above a high drop to certain death, in a thunderstorm, with enemies possibly lurking, then this is not the time to think about the backstory. She has enough to think of that is of far more immediate importance. Trying to summarize the ending of the previous book prevents you from drawing the reader into the story at this present moment.

Worse, you should NEVER, EVER say “She forced herself to concentrate to stop the rambling flow of her thoughts,” because that is just clumsy and unnecessary. She shouldn’t need to concentrate because she shouldn’t have been rambling on about whatever backstory nonsense in the first place. Do you know what actually serves wonderfully well to concentrate the thoughts? Hanging above a high drop to certain death, in a thunderstorm. This sort of thing is exactly like a YA heroine fighting for her life and getting distracted because the guy trying to kill her is cute. Nothing is sillier than cramming in unnecessary musing upon the backstory or the cuteness of the enemy while the protagonist is literally trying not to die at that very second.

But the part that was new to me was realizing I also wanted to take out all the She was surprised and She heard the rain and One thing she knew and It was likely she would never know, all those phrases. And I do think, I’m pretty sure, that this is not just because those words are unnecessary. I think, on the spectrum of telling versus showing, that this is a kind of telling. And, while telling is fine when you want to summarize something unimportant, it’s not fine when you want a scene to feel urgent and immediate.

This is what’s happening here: a narrator is reporting about the protagonist, rather than the protagonist herself telling the story. This situation should be exciting, but the only way it can be is if the reader skims across it fast and uses their imagination to compensate for pretty bad storytelling. That’s what I think, and that’s what I think has to happen for a writer who is not that great at the sentence level to be popular.

***

It’s not that I can’t enjoy books that aren’t written all that well, because I can. Not Terry Brooks particularly, because The Sword of Shannara is so purely a derivative of TLotR, except badly written, and from what I understand, his books in general are derivative cookie-cutter fantasy novels, and that doesn’t interest me at all. But other books by other authors, sometimes, yes.

I’ll be doing a workshop pretty soon, though, and so I wanted to pull out what I think is bad about the writing here because I think the problems here are pretty common, and it helps me think about what those problems actually are when I write a post like this.

Here’s the original Quora question and answer, if you’re interested.

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A request

I’m thinking of trying to get a BookBub featured deal for something. I will just note that the Death’s Lady trilogy appears to have permanently moved to a higher level of sales following its BookBub promotion. In this case, that doesn’t matter a whole lot because I didn’t handle that in an ideal way, I’m pretty sure. Next time, if I get a featured deal with an omnibus, I’m going to add the omnibus to KU immediately — that’s the main thing I think I should have done differently.

But here’s the request: If you wrote a review for Invictus: Captive AND / OR Invictus: Crisis, could you take a minute to copy that review to the duology boxed set? At the moment, the individual books have 150 or so ratings each, while the boxed set has ONE rating, with no reviews. I would REALLY APPRECIATE IT if you would copy a review to the boxed set, so that I can apply for a featured deal for the duology.

One of the (many) annoying, small projects that I’m trying to get through this week is making boxed sets of various kinds for the explicit purpose of trying to get featured deals. They’re hard to get, so I would prefer to have a few more ducks lined up in a row if possible — meaning reviews. I expect I will probably be making a similar request now and then as I get boxed sets in order and drop them on Amazon.

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Update: Spring Break is Springing

So, this is spring break for me, which means ORDINARILY I would be writing A TON and finishing something, in this case the Tano book I’ve been working on.

However, this particular spring break is very busy for me, because allllll the stuff I needed to do sometime, I scheduled for this week, on the grounds that it’s convenient to do stuff in spring break plus we’re not likely to have an ice storm in March (I realize I could have been mistaken about that, but luckily no, we’re having beautiful weather). Many, many smallish projects, plus putting heaps of papers in order to hand to a CPA, plus starting seeds, plus the beautiful weather means all the dogs ought to go to the park. All I can say is, last year at this time, Morgan had puppies, and bam! there went that spring break. So nothing is that busy or nearly that stressful this year.

Meanwhile!

I suddenly realized I should add another vignette to the vigil chapter in Midwinter [not the real title], I wrote another chapter of “Sekaran,” and yes, I’m also moving ahead with Tano’s book, but not that fast at the moment.

Also, I am now, as of last week, on a grand jury for the next six months. Yes, that was the third time I got a jury summons in two years, but this time the summons was for the local court system, thank heaven, and for a grand jury instead of a regular jury.

I had to look up what a grand jury actually does, which, to put it in a nutshell, is this: the grand jury listens to a fifteen-minute presentation by the prosecutor’s office regarding a specific case and decides whether there is enough evidence to move forward with that case and bring it to trial. We do that over and over, for around thirty cases per day. It turns out that here, in my small town / rural county, this is not a big deal. Or rather, this is obviously a giant big deal in terms of responsibility, but it is not something that is a huge time commitment, because the prosecutor’s office stacks up all the cases and presents them in one day per month.

And — again, I think this probably depends a lot on locale — but it turns out the court and the prosecutor’s office here is remarkably easy to work with. The judge explained what the grand jury would do and the basic commitment and then asked who, out of the fifty summoned potential jurors, would actually like to serve on the grand jury. About seven people stood up. Then the judge asked who had a problem with serving, and one at a time various people stood up and explained that they were the mother of triplet toddlers or whatever — I’m making that up, of course. I mean whatever might be a concern. I said my mother was 89 and she was fine right now, but what if something happened? And the prosecutor stood up and said, basically, “We should have explained this earlier, but there is no problem if some emergency gets in the way. We’ll have a zillion alternate jurors. If you can’t make it on a specific day, that’s fine.” They even turn out to be flexible with the dates. “Which would work best for you all, this date, this date, or this date?” So there are no problems with conflicts with the dates and this sure was a load off my mind.

So I said, “Really? Well, in that case move me to the list of people who would be fine with serving on the jury.” The judge selected basically everyone who volunteered and then about ten more people. Then they dismissed the alternates and everyone who had been selected for the actual jury heard a dozen cases that very afternoon.

And this is going to be somewhat grim at times because it turns out that one of the main reasons the prosecutor’s office decides to use a grand jury for a particular case is that the case involves child abuse and they are keeping the child out of the courtroom as much as possible and reducing the amount of crap the child is going to have to go through. That’s not the only reason, but it’s a big one. So that is going to be ugly. But at least it is a darn good reason to go through a grand jury. Also, did you know — I bet you did not know — that there is such a medical specialty as a “child abuse pediatrician”? Because I did not know that. I can’t imagine a worse medical specialty. If you lined every possible medical specialty up in a long, long list with the easiest at the bottom and the hardest and worst at the top, that would be at the very tippy top of the entire list and the next worst would be way, way down below that.

So that was last week.

Despite all the myriad tasks lined up for this week, it IS spring break and I DO expect to get a lot done. Including putting together the next newsletter, which I will send out on the 15th. It’ll be the 15th every month this year unless I have some important reason to move it; eg, a sale is scheduled for some other time.

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Not Yet the Jetson’s but Getting There

Check this out:

How this growing Texas town became a testing ground for flying taxis and Uber-style gondolas

Click through to see the pictures. I love the Uber-gondolas, though I don’t think “gondolas” is at all the right word — isn’t a gondola a boat? — but nevertheless, this is a step into a pretty neat SF future-of-mass-transit.

This link is from Astral Codex Ten. Let me see if there’s anything else here especially fun or noteworthy …

Well, here’s a post about the is-it-fake art Turing test that Astral Codex Ten hosted last year, so if you found that interesting (Elaine’s Teen, I’m thinking of you, but I also found this genuinely interesting), here’s this post, by the guy who generated many of the fake art pieces used in that test.

Oh, here’s another AI type of link: I am pleased to report that AI is now a better poet than William McGonagall

McGonagall is apparently a famously bad poet. That name does sort of ring a bell, a little bit. Fine, okay, let me look at this … okay, McGonagall wrote this in 1880, after a famous train disaster:

Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silv’ry Tay!
Alas! I am very sorry to say
That ninety lives have been taken away
On the last Sabbath day of 1879,
Which will be remember’d for a very long time.

Seven more stanzas if you want to click through. The post about an AI writing better poetry than McGonagall is specifically focused on this Tay Bridge disaster. I …. think … that all the poems are pretty bad, Deepseek’s and ChatGPT’s first stanzas clearly beats Claude and Gemini. I only read the first stanzas. Here’s the one I think is worst:

Gemini:

The Tay it flowed, a silver gleam,
Reflecting sky, a winter's dream.
A bridge of iron, proud and tall,
Spanned the waters, heeding no squall.

Here’s the one I think is best:

Deepseek:

Beneath the bruised and tempest-driven sky,
The iron spine once bridged the firth’s cold breath—
A marvel spun by mortal hands, stretched high
To clasp the shores of life and rails of death.

If you’re really interested, you can click through and read the full poems.

Lots of other links, but nothing else I feel like following up personally, so I’ll stop there.

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Poetry Thursday: Elizabeth Barrett Browning

Turns out Elizabeth Barrett Browning was born on March 6, 1806, so how about looking at a couple of her poems today? Not “How Do I Love Thee,” because I’m bored to death with that one. Thus we see that it might be better not to collect the same exact poems in every single literature book and “best of” collections, because look what can happen, you can cause people like me to think if they never see “How Do I Love Thee” ever again, it’ll be too soon.

Among all female poets of the English-speaking world in the 19th century, none was held in higher critical esteem or was more admired for the independence and courage of her views than Elizabeth Barrett Browning. During the years of her marriage to Robert Browning, her literary reputation far surpassed that of her poet-husband; when visitors came to their home in Florence, she was invariably the greater attraction. She had a wide following among cultured readers in England and in the United States. An example of the reach of her fame may be seen in the influence she had upon the reclusive poet who lived in the rural college town of Amherst, Massachusetts. A framed portrait of Barrett Browning hung in the bedroom of Emily Dickinson, whose life had been transfigured by the poetry of “that Foreign Lady.” From the time when she had first become acquainted with Barrett Browning’s writings, Dickinson had ecstatically admired her as a poet and as a woman who had achieved such a rich fulfillment in her life. So highly regarded had she become by 1850, the year of Wordsworth’s death, that she was prominently mentioned as a possible successor to the poet laureateship. Lots more at this link.

Obviously EBB must have written lots of other poems, including some I have never seen before, but would like. Let me just poke around a bit … okay, here, how about this one —

A Musical InstrumentWhat was he doing, the great god Pan,
Down in the reeds by the river?
Spreading ruin and scattering ban,
Splashing and paddling with hoofs of a goat,
And breaking the golden lilies afloat
With the dragon-fly on the river.

He tore out a reed, the great god Pan,
From the deep cool bed of the river:
The limpid water turbidly ran,
And the broken lilies a-dying lay,
And the dragon-fly had fled away,
Ere he brought it out of the river.

High on the shore sat the great god Pan
While turbidly flowed the river;
And hacked and hewed as a great god can,
With his hard bleak steel at the patient reed,
Till there was not a sign of the leaf indeed
To prove it fresh from the river.

He cut it short, did the great god Pan,
(How tall it stood in the river!)
Then drew the pith, like the heart of a man,
Steadily from the outside ring,
And notched the poor dry empty thing
In holes, as he sat by the river.

'This is the way,' laughed the great god Pan
(Laughed while he sat by the river),
'The only way, since gods began
To make sweet music, they could succeed.'
Then, dropping his mouth to a hole in the reed,
He blew in power by the river.

Sweet, sweet, sweet, O Pan!
Piercing sweet by the river!
Blinding sweet, O great god Pan!
The sun on the hill forgot to die,
And the lilies revived, and the dragon-fly
Came back to dream on the river.

Yet half a beast is the great god Pan,
To laugh as he sits by the river,
Making a poet out of a man:
The true gods sigh for the cost and pain,—
For the reed which grows nevermore again
As a reed with the reeds in the river.

***

Here’s another one:

Change on Change

                                                          1.

Three months ago, the stream did flow,
    The lilies bloomed along the edge;
And we were lingering to and fro,—
Where none will track thee in this snow,
    Along the stream, beside the hedge.
Ah! sweet, be free to come and go;
    For if I do not hear thy foot,
    The frozen river is as mute,—
    The flowers have dried down to the root;
    And why, since these be changed since May,
        Shouldst thou change less than they?

                                                          2.

And slow, slow as the winter snow,
    The tears have drifted to mine eyes;
And my two cheeks, three months ago,
Set blushing at thy praises so,
    Put paleness on for a disguise.
Ah! sweet, be free to praise and go;
    For if my face is turned to pale,
    It was thine oath that first did fail,—
    It was thy love proved false and frail!
    And why, since these be changed, I trow,
        Should I change less than thou?

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Deus Ex Machina vs Divine Intervention

Deus Ex is, of course, a criticism lobbed at a book, or at an author, when at the end of the story the day is saved by the arbitrarily whimsical hand of God, which is to say, of the author. OR, equally, when the heroes are crushed and their hopes destroyed by the same arbitrary whim, except this time by the active malice of God (which is to say, of the author). The latter is sometimes called Diabolus Ex Machina, which is peachy, but I’m going to refer to both as Deus Ex here because it just simplifies everything to include all fake miracles where the author intervenes in the story by one term, whether for good or ill.

Also, this doesn’t have to be literally the end of the story; deus ex moments can and often do occur at the end of a scene, often but not always the climactic scene. The farther this is from the ending of the story, the faster the pace, the farther the story continues, the more likely the reader is to read through the deus ex ending of a scene and keep going without necessarily thinking too much about it or being too disturbed. Though I think the reader is going to notice the beneficent or maleficent miracle at least a little, at least in the back of their mind, and from then on read the book more skeptically / lose belief in the story / trust the author less / take a more distant emotional stance toward the story / in the worst case, lose interest and stop reading.

When the ending of the whole story suffers from a severe deus ex moment, then the reader may, with or without knowing why, decide the ending was not satisfying, and there’s no better way to make sure the reader gives up on the author’s work entirely. Therefore, ending a book with deus ex machina is bad artistically and also it can turn out to be a really dire mistake commercially (though if the author is sufficiently popular, maybe it won’t matter enough to mention).

Regardless, when the author wants a happy ending, but has painted her characters into an inescapable corner, she has four choices:

A) The author accepts that, oops, the ending is unhappy. I don’t think any author ever does this.

B) The author goes back into the earlier part of the story and does sufficient revision to provide a means of escape from the inescapable corner.

C) The author thinks of a clever way for her characters to escape the inescapable corner, and if necessary adds sufficient foreshadowing to the earlier part of the story to make this clever escape work.

D) The author reaches into the story and lifts her characters out of the inescapable corner by means of a miracle, which is to say, the author commits deus ex.

For a negative deus ex, the characters have arrived at a position where they have indeed saved the day, or the part of it that matters most to them, but the author wants a tragic ending. Therefore, the author:

A) Accepts that the ending will be unexpectedly happy. I don’t think any author ever chooses this option.

B) Goes back into the earlier part of the story and does sufficient revision to prevent the characters from getting into their strong ending position.

C) Thinks of a clever reason the characters’ position turns out not to be nearly as strong as it seemed, with sufficient foreshadowing to make this work.

D) Reaches into the story and deliberately crushes the characters and destroys their hopes by means of a malevolent miracle, which is to say, deus ex.

And it is the author’s job to tell a story without resorting to (D).

One of the important jobs of a beta reader or developmental editor is to read a book, point to the ending of a scene or the ending of the story, and say, “For crying out loud, what the hell even is this?”, thus drawing attention to a deus ex moment which the author, because of natural authorial blindness, has not noticed. Then it becomes the author’s job to pick (A) – which never happens, as far as I know – or (B) or (C). Or else the author might, of course, choose, because of laziness or fast-approaching deadlines, to just go with (D) and hope readers don’t notice. Which is a vain hope with more discerning readers, but the author may hope that the many non-discerning readers will carry the book up to a decent star rating. Which, for really popular authors, is exactly what will happen, even though more discerning readers may quit reading that author’s books forever. (Yes, I have an example in mind; just wait for it.)

OR ELSE THE AUTHOR CAN CHOOSE TO JUSTIFY DIVINE INTERVENTION

Deus ex endings can be fine! Readers can be happy with a deus ex ending! Which is a good thing, since I have done deus ex endings, let me see, maybe half a dozen times. Or more. Nor am I alone. Other authors have done deus ex endings that also work just fine. You don’t need a lot of clear examples to demonstrate how to make a deus ex ending actually work, though I can think of others, which I’ll mention in a moment.

How do you make divine intervention work? You do it by separating the divine from the hand of the author. There are two necessary prerequisites:

First: The metaphysics of the story has to really be there, all the way through.

If you want divine intervention to work, the divine has to be present in the story, not just at the ending, but all the way through. This doesn’t mean the gods have to be chatting with each other in their own special pov chapters, which by the way totally destroys any possibility of a numinous feel to the story. That can work in a more humorous fantasy novel, which is not really what I’m thinking of here. I’m talking about metaphysics that are a lot less chatty, but still obviously present, underlying the world, all the way through the story.

I suppose I would say that a sense of the numinous is the sense of the divine, or at the very least a sense of the reality of the metaphysics, and that having gods playing dice on stage while chatting about the fate of mortals reduces the gods so far that they don’t seem divine at all. The author can then have them be arbitrarily nice or malicious and that’s fine because the author has established the gods = just exactly like mortal people except more powerful. Then, when the gods intervene at the end, this isn’t a deus ex moment because they aren’t really gods, so whatever they do isn’t a miracle. Therefore, the ending can fail for lack of setup or lack of foreshadowing or lack of believability, but nobody is going to point at that ending as a deus ex ending.

Moving on, though, the other necessary precondition to making divine intervention work –

Second: The characters have to believe in the metaphysics.

If the characters don’t believe in the metaphysics, neither will the reader.

Therefore, if the author writes a story in which the characters say, “By the gods!” when they’re surprised, but never think about or care about the gods, and there’s no evidence any of the people in the world think about or care about the gods, then the author hasn’t really put gods in that world at all, and in fact I’d say this is still true even if the gods are shown in little chatty chapters throughout the story. Or else that would create such a severe disconnect between the metaphysics and the way people behave that it would destroy the world’s believability, and I mean totally crush the believability, so severely that only the very least discerning readers could possibly tolerate the story. (I can’t offhand think of an example.) (But I bet there are some.)

If the metaphysics is real, that means the people in the story have to believe in the metaphysics. Their society should show that. So should their behavior as individuals. Individual characters who serve the gods know that they’re serving the gods and act like they’re serving the gods. Individuals who reject the gods know that they’re rejecting the gods. Minor characters  who are just living life in the background nevertheless act like they believe the gods are really there. If the metaphysics doesn’t involve literal gods, then just substitute the word “metaphysics” or “divine reality” or whatever suits the story.

The point is, if the metaphysics is real, then events that happen can draw on the underlying metaphysical reality of the story and this is perfectly fine, especially if the characters refer to, draw on, influence, or in some other way interact with the metaphysics during the divine intervention scene.

This is how you create a literal deus ex ending for a scene or a story, meaning divine intervention, and make it work for readers: it isn’t YOUR hand providing the miracle at all. Deus ex machina is a false miracle provided by the hand of the author. Actual divine intervention is a real miracle provided by the real metaphysics active in the story.

If you do that, then the only reason readers will reject the story is that they don’t like the tone, meaning they’re repulsed by the underlying metaphysics, in which case they most likely don’t get to the ending anyway.

I’m thinking here of grimdark. If the tone is grimdark and grimdark metaphysics underlies the world, then I probably would be so strongly repelled by that that I wouldn’t get through the first chapter. That one year when I accidentally read half a dozen grimdark novels and watched Saw, which I still can’t believe anybody recommended to me, but anyway, that year sensitized me so strongly to grimdark that I really think I pick up that attitude and tone much, much faster now and either drop the book immediately or read it in a very emotionally distant way, engaging only at the most superficial, intellectual level. (And then, when the story does indeed turn out to be grimdark, never read anything else by that author.)

So, to reiterate, deus ex machina works when it is actually true divine intervention, meaning the divine or other numinous metaphysics is truly present in the story.

And no doubt there are a fair number of examples, but some sure leap to mind, so:

Tuyo, Tarashana, Tasmakat, Suelen, Tano (epilogue only), Marag.

Also the Death’s Lady series, though there the metaphysics at what we might all the intermediate level is a lot more visible and active than the deeper level. Also Winter of Ice and Iron, with a very different metaphysics. Also White Road of the Moon.

In contrast, there’s no obvious metaphysics or else no connection of the metaphysics to a true sense of the divine in the Griffin Mage trilogy, in the House of Shadows duology, in The Floating Islands duology or Keeper of the Mist.

I already pointed to LMB, because everybody points to the Five Gods stories as worldbuilding where the religion “feels like a real religion,” which it does. And the reason it does is that this religion is sufficiently consonant with real religions that it feels like real people might really believe in it, which a lot of fantasy religions do not; plus the metaphysics is present in the stories, plus the characters believe in the metaphysics. 

Another example is From All False Doctrine by Degan, and here the challenges were different because the religion in question is a real-world religion. Degan’s challenge therefore lay in treating the religion as real all the way through, pulling the metaphysics out where the reader could see it, and utilizing the metaphysics in the plot of the story – my favorite moment of divine intervention here is not the ending, but the scene where Kit experiences the church crashing down around him and then that experience is transmuted to a wholly different experience. That’s a beautifully written scene, not easy for vision or dream scenes, and also the emotional reactions during and especially after the scene create a sense of reality and truth. Because, I should add, separate from everything about metaphysics, a sense of reality and truth comes, I think, from the consonance of the emotional experience of the characters with the reader’s own emotional experience. A sense of falsity comes from emotional dissonance. Which is a different topic, I guess, except that saying “the characters believe in the metaphysics” means “their emotional experience is consonant with their own belief in the metaphysics and with the reader’s emotional experience in connection with the reader’s own deep beliefs.”

Which is a big topic, so back to examples.

A negative example, that is, an example of deus ex machina rather than divine intervention, occurs at the ending of Duma Key by Stephen King.

This book was written during a period in which Stephen King included, in every single book he wrote, a nice female character who dies in order to produce a tearjerker moment. I don’t know whether he’s kept that up, because I stopped reading his books after Duma Key. His use of a nice-female-character’s death was so consistent that it became possible to begin a new book by King, and the INSTANT this character stepped on stage, point to her and say, “She’s the one! There she is!” Sure enough, toward the end of the story, that character would die and it would be very sad, especially if you didn’t see the careless, facile manipulative setup. In Duma Key, it seemed that this character might survive, because the protagonist conquered the evil (don’t remember anything about this) and the Tearjerker Girl was still alive.

But lo! Even though the protagonist has solved the problem, a remnant of the evil nevertheless lingers in the world juuuuuust long enough to kill the Tearjerker Girl, and no doubt everyone wept except me and readers like me. I threw the book across the room and I have never touched another Stephen King book. It wasn’t the death of Tearjerker Girl, though that kind of obvious manipulation of reader emotions should be handled in a way that is far, far more subtle. The problem was the obvious deus ex as the author deliberately and openly reached into the story and crushed the protagonist’s hopes himself, in one of the most blatant deus ex moments I have ever seen, in order to force a tragic ending into this story. He’s so popular, and so many readers read his books so uncritically, that this book has a fine star rating. Nevertheless, ugh.

What are some other clear-cut examples of storytelling successes that include divine intervention? Or storytelling failures that result from deus ex?

Because of Duma Key, it sort of pains me to acknowledge that Stephen King pulled off a fine example of divine intervention ending in The Stand. Throughout The Stand, the characters keep moving forward even though they doubt victory is possible and even though they doubt divine intervention is really possible, but they sort of think it is, really. The metaphysics is there, underneath. Therefore, when the hand of God intervenes, it works. Or I think it does.

Looking for negative examples, A Court of Wings and Roses pops up as an example of bad deus ex. I haven’t read it, because the first book of the series begins this way:

The forest had become a labyrinth of snow and ice.

I had been monitoring the parameters of the thicket for an hour, and my vantage point in the crook of a tree branch had turned useless.

And I got to that second sentence and thought, Wait, does the author know what “parameters” means? How did the copy editor miss this? Did the copy editor flag this and the author said No, stet, because she was committed to using “parameters” in this completely incorrect way? In fact, if the author thought this word was the same as “perimeter,” how could she have used “perimeters” plural, when a thicket probably has only one perimeter?

And I was so utterly put off by this stupid wrong word in the SECOND SENTENCE OF THE BOOK, for crying out loud, that I did not get past this paragraph, deleted the sample immediately, and dropped the author on my “never bother with” list.

***

I wound up thinking about that because of various people saying, “Neumeier uses deus ex a lot in her books, but for some reason, it works.” So, this is my take on the difference between deus ex and diabolus ex moments versus actual real divine intervention, and why the former doesn’t work but the latter does.

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Great Writing

So, this past Friday, I posted the prologue of a new bestselling fantasy novel and said (brief summation): Ugh.

Here, then, is the prologue of a different novel. I wanted a prologue because it’s not entirely fair to compare a prologue of one book to chapter one of a different book. Here, then, is a prologue, not chosen at random, because I specifically looked for prologues from authors I think are great writers. I found this one:

***

If you were a spirit, and could fly and alight as you wished, and time did not bind you, and patience and love were all you knew, then you might rise to enter an open window high above the park, in the New York of almost a lifetime ago, early in November of 1947.

After days of rain and unusual warmth, the skies are now the soft deep blue that is the gift of an oblique sun. The air is cool but not yet dense enough to carry sound sharply. From the playing fields, the cries and shouts of children are carried upward, sometimes clearly, sometimes muted, like murmurs, and always eventually to disappear. These sounds inexplicably convey the colors of the children’s jerseys, which seen from the eleventh storey are only bright flecks on grass made so green by recent rains and cool nights that it looks like wet enamel.

Coming in the window, you might wonder who had left it open, for the apartment is empty, its silence, to a spirit, thundering like a heartbeat. Perhaps you would turn back to glance at the gulls bobbing in the reservoir, as white as confetti, or to see how the façades of Fifth Avenue across the park and over the trees are lit by the sun in white, ochre, and briefly flaring yellow.

The wind coming through the window, as you do, unseen, moves a shade to and fro as if gently breathing, its circular pull occasionally leaping up enough in contrary motion to tap against a pane as if it wants to speak. No one is in. In a breeze that enters and dies before it reaches the back rooms, you ride above particles of dust propelled across polished floors like snowflakes tumbling in a blizzard. In the air is a remnant of perfume, strongest by the door, as is often the case. The lights are off, the heat not yet been turned on, and the brass front-door lock silent and immobile, waiting to be turned and released.

In the room overlooking the park the bookshelves are full. Hanging above the fireplace is a Manet seascape with flags and pennants snapping in the wind; in a desk drawer beneath the telephone, a loaded pistol. And on an oval marble table in the entrance hall near the immobile lock and its expectant tumblers is a piece of card stock folded in half and standing like an A. Musical staffs are printed on the outside. Inside, sheltered as if deliberately from spirits, is a note waiting to be read by someone living. On the same smooth marble, splayed open but kept in a circle by its delicate gold chain, is a bracelet, waiting for a wrist.

And if you were a spirit, and time did not bind you, and patience and love were all you knew, then there you would wait for someone to return, and the story to unfold.

***

What are the obvious differences between this prologue and the previous one?

Well, the sentences make sense, to start with. There are no weird word usages or strained metaphors, such as the other half eternally dunked in shadow so thick it seeped into the stone and cast it black.

Also, the author here is not trying to explain the background, the mythology, or the history of the world. Instead, this prologue is being used to set the scene and establish the mood — which, as far as I’m concerned, are appropriate uses for a prologue. Not the only appropriate uses, but vastly more likely to succeed than any attempt to explain the world.

In addition, this prologue is brief. Also, there is no attempt to cut every sentence away from every other sentence and shove it into its own paragraph, and thank you for avoiding this pernicious modern tendency, which I think I dislike more every time I see it. The sentences are much (much) more complex, as a rule. There aren’t any fragments. Not that I object to artistic fragments. Whether the fragments in the prior prologue were artistic, you can judge for yourself if you want to click back to that post and look at them.

The above prologue is from In Sunlight and In Shadow, by Mark Helprin. This is a historical novel I have on my Kindle, but haven’t read.

So, there we go: awful and great prologues, side by side. I will just note in passing that Helprin’s book has a similar star average and only 2.5% as many ratings as Parker’s When the Moon Hatched, sigh.

***

Elaine T suggested Honeycomb by Joanne Harris as an antidote to terrible writing, so while we’re on the subject, let’s take a look at that one.

Here’s a review, with some passages quoted in full.

There are many doors between the worlds of the Faërie and the Folk. Some look like doors; or windows; or books. Some are in Dream; others, in Death. And some simply wait for one person—the right person—to find them and to pass through.

So it was with the Lacewing King. Banished by the Spider Queen, he was dragged through the space between the Worlds into a different place and time; into a different ocean. He found himself drifting there, alone; under strange stars, with no land in sight; and no sign of his ship, his crew, the Spider Queen, or the Barefoot Princess. Exhausted from his long ordeal, lost and at the mercy of the waves, he drifted in the darkness, watching the river of stars above and the glimmer of phosphorescence below, thinking about the Barefoot Princess, and what might have befallen her.

Beneath him, shoals of angel fish swam through arches of coral. Great whales passed like shadows; Moon Jellyfish rose and fell in the depths. For a moment the Moon Queen herself glanced up from her midnight cradle, and saw the man floating far above her. Her tentacles had grown so long that they almost reached the surface, drifting like a bridal veil, and for a second they brushed the soles of the feet of the Lacewing King, and he looked down and saw her.

Here’s a description:

[Honeycomb is] a set of collected short stories – 100 in all – that read well both individually or, as you progress through the book, cleverly intertwine to tell a tale that is greater than the sum of its parts.

That’s clever. It sounds challenging to write.

From Amazon:

Full of dreams and nightmares, Honeycomb is an entrancing mosaic novel of original fairy tales from bestselling author Joanne M. Harris and legendary artist Charles Vess in a collaboration that’s been years in the making. The toymaker who wants to create the perfect wife; the princess whose heart is won by words, not actions; the tiny dog whose confidence far outweighs his size; and the sinister Lacewing King who rules over the Silken Folk. These are just a few of the weird and wonderful creatures who populate Joanne Harris’s first collection of fairy tales.

And I’m chuckling, because of course I was once very familiar with a tiny dog whose confidence far outweighs his size.

Lotka, 1994-2008

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Update: Suddenly Spring!

Or not that suddenly, since it’s March 3rd. But quite spring-like, since it’s a warm-ish day, but damp.

I am dithering. Is it time to start flower seeds under lights? If you start seeds too early, then the weather is bound to be dreadful in May, and all your little flowers will be crying out for more space and banging their heads on the lights and trying to flower while still crammed together in cell packs. If you start seeds too late, then early May is lovely, while your tiny seedlings are an inch tall and only have about four leaves apiece. It’s a yearly conundrum. I believe I will muse upon this dilemma for another week or so and start seeds in mid- to late-March, on the grounds that starting seeds a little late is less likely to be a problem than far too early.

I will start super easy seeds, by the way: marigolds and zinnias. The deer and rabbits don’t bother them … much … although I SWEAR that this year I will get the deer repellant out EARLY and prevent those MONSTERS from eating my hostas and biting the tops off my butterfly weed (Asclepias), which the deer ABSOLUTELY did last year, several times, and don’t tell me that butterfly weed is deer repellant. Not at my place it’s not.

I need strong colors, vibrant orange like this, bright yellow, deep red, because this is the sunny strip along my driveway and pale colors disappear in strong sunlight. It’s not a huge area, but not that tiny either, and therefore I prefer to start seeds myself because I want a fair number of plants. Also, I prefer the single marigolds, Lemon Gem and those types; and very short, single zinnias, and those aren’t that easy to find at nurseries.

I guess I might start a few vegetables too. The long, thin types of eggplants that you can’t get at a normal grocery store, things like that.

MEANWHILE, enough musing about spring. I’m kind of avoiding admitting that I didn’t do anything with Tano’s next book last week. BUT I DID finish “MIDWINTER,” so, I mean, there’s that.

Here’s something else to muse upon:

Should I call it “Midwinter” or should I think of a poetry title for it? I hadn’t intended to treat it like a real book, but it’s nearly as long as Shines Now and, for that matter, markedly longer than The Year’s Midnight. It is therefore a real book in the series, and how about that, I sure didn’t expect that to happen when I started it.

It’s not Thursday, but let’s do something fun with poetry —

Here are the two John Donne poems from which I took the phrases for the four book titles. I’m bolding and italicizing the book titles, not that you could miss them. I wonder if anything else in these two poems might be useful for this book? Appropriate images would include midwinter, but also spring. Along with phrases already used for book titles, I’ll bold and italicize phrases that seem potentially to fit “Midwinter.” St Lucy’s Day is, by the way, celebrated at midwinter and would fit beautifully for that reason.

A Nocturnal Upon St Lucy’s Day

‘Tis the year’s midnight, and it is the day’s,
   Lucy’s, who scarce seven hours herself unmasks;
       The sun is spent, and now his flasks
       Send forth light squibs, no constant rays;
          The world’s whole sap is sunk;
   The general balm th’ hydroptic earth hath drunk,
   Whither, as to the bed’s feet, life is shrunk,
   Dead and interr’d; yet all these seem to laugh,
   Compar’d with me, who am their epitaph.

  Study me then, you who shall lovers be
  At the next world, that is, at the next spring;
      For I am every dead thing,
      In whom Love wrought new alchemy.
         For his art did express
  A quintessence even from nothingness,
  From dull privations, and lean emptiness;
  He ruin’d me, and I am re-begot
  Of absence, darkness, death: things which are not.

  All others, from all things, draw all that’s good,
  Life, soul, form, spirit, whence they being have;
      I, by Love’s limbec, am the grave
      Of all that’s nothing. Oft a flood
         Have we two wept, and so
  Drown’d the whole world, us two; oft did we grow
  To be two chaoses, when we did show
  Care to aught else; and often absences
  Withdrew our souls, and made us carcasses.

  But I am by her death (which word wrongs her)
  Of the first nothing the elixir grown;
      Were I a man, that I were one
      I needs must know; I should prefer,
         If I were any beast,
  Some ends, some means; yea plants, yea stones detest,
  And love; all, all some properties invest;
  If I an ordinary nothing were,
  As shadow, a light and body must be here.

  But I am none; nor will my sun renew.
  You lovers, for whose sake the lesser sun
      At this time to the Goat is run
      To fetch new lust, and give it you,
         Enjoy your summer all;
  Since she enjoys her long night’s festival,
  Let me prepare towards her, and let me call
  This hour her vigil, and her eve, since this
  Both the year’s, and the day’s deep midnight is.

*** *** ***

A Hymn to God the Father

Wilt thou forgive that sin where I begun,
        Which was my sin, though it were done before?
    Wilt thou forgive that sin, through which I run,
        And do run still, though still I do deplore?
            When thou hast done, thou hast not done,
                For I have more.

    Wilt thou forgive that sin which I have won
        Others to sin, and made my sin their door?
    Wilt thou forgive that sin which I did shun
      A year or two, but wallow’d in, a score?
          When thou hast done, thou hast not done,
              For I have more.

  I have a sin of fear, that when I have spun
      My last thread, I shall perish on the shore;
  But swear by thyself, that at my death thy Son
      Shall shine as he shines now, and heretofore;
          And, having done that, thou hast done;
              I fear no more.

*** *** ***

I’ll have to think about this. And consider other Donne poems. I would want to stick to Donne, probably, since all four of the earlier books draw on Donne’s poems.

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Bad Writing

I have to admit, I do sometimes enjoy reading a well-written, highly negative book review. This one in particular interests me because it’s not a book review; it’s an analysis of the opening prologue.

Lessons From the Bad Writing of When the Moon Hatched

When the Moon Hatched is a traditionally published bestselling fantasy novel, and honestly, right off the bat, I do have this reaction to it:

Because for crying out loud, big publishers are supposed to have a clue and it’s just painful to see a terribly written history-lesson prologue in this book. No wonder so many aspiring self-publishing authors ask questions like, “Do I have to have a prologue in a fantasy novel?” and think that this kind of prologue is either just fine or actually required.

Actually, the reviewer at the linked post thinks some of the prologue is beautifully written. I don’t. I think all of the prologue is badly written and some of it is excruciatingly badly written.

The world began with five.

First was Caelis, God of Aether, invisible to the naked eye. The empty space no one thought about. Where matter formed, he was simply shoved aside.

His baritone song was so full of substance, yet lacked it entirely. A lonely echo that haunted the empty space between near and distant suns—inaudible in its depth, no matter how loud he sang.

Desperate to be noticed, it was he who offered an empty canvas for the others to fill.

***

I’m done already. Actually, I was done, let me see, one and a half lines into this prologue. But if I’d gotten this far, I would now be done. There is literally nothing I like in the above, plus give me a break, the first god’s defining characteristic is desperation to be noticed.

The author really means it, too:

Others fell upon a silver book some say Caelis wrote in his desperation to be heard. Who found a different form of power in those runes nobody could read or pronounce, discovering that the strange markings could be wielded. Could mend bones, charm blood, glamor objects …

His desperation to be heard. Just kill me now.

Here’s the whole prologue, without snarky commentary, so you can judge for yourself, not that I haven’t biased your perceptions, probably, but you can see what you think. Italics are in the original.

***

***

The world began with five.

First was Caelis, God of Aether, invisible to the naked eye. The empty space no one thought about. Where matter formed, he was simply shoved aside.

His baritone song was so full of substance, yet lacked it entirely. A lonely echo that haunted the empty space between near and distant suns—inaudible in its depth, no matter how loud he sang.

Desperate to be noticed, it was he who offered an empty canvas for the others to fill.

Bulder, God of Ground, sculpted the sphere with one belted bellow, building a sturdy globe that did not spin. A world half bathed in sunlight, sprinkled with a rich ripple of rust-colored sand, the other half eternally dunked in shadow so thick it seeped into the stone and cast it black. 

With more blunt and droning words, Bulder sculpted the terrain, creating dips, dollops, and cracks in the world. Forging a wall that cut through the Fade — where sunlight and shadow refused to meet — the sky a forever splash of pink, purple, and gold.

The Goddess of Water came next.

Rayne fell upon the ground in a billion yearning teardrops of unrequited love, puddling in Bulder’s dips, filling his gorges with her gushing affections. Upon the shaded side, she descended in a patter of heavy flakes, dusting the sharp mountain ranges in a frosty hug.

Her love was a screaming torrent. The deep, gut-wrenching wail of an avalanche. The near-silent cry of sprinkling rain.

Her mournful song was so unlike that of her sister Clode—Goddess of Air—who hinged on the precipice of immeasurable madness. Her voice was a ribbon of silk, soft to touch, unless it turned to the side and slit you with its edge. 

Her whispered words swept past branches laden with leaves, tilling them into a flirty dance. Her violent shrieks ripped around sharp corners at a voracious speed simply because she liked the sound. Unable to stand Rayne’s somber still, Clode’s gusty howls often churned the Loff into a heaving mass that dumped upon the shore like a drum.

Ignos was a glutton for Clode. The God of Fire feasted on her. Consumed her. 

Loved her so much he could not breathe without her.

His searing song was one of ferocious hunger and impassioned greed, but Clode could not be tamed by his rabid affections, even as he blazed jungles and gave her smoke to dance within. Even as he melted bits of Bulder’s stone until they were molten rivers of red, desperate to woo Clode with volcanic blasts that shook the sky.

Bound to his mournful solitude, Caelis watched all this, jealous of the other creators for their ability to be seen, touched, or heard, but thankful to be part of something.

Anything.

And he watched in quiet wonder as, upon this lush and fertile canvas he’d gifted his emptiness, life bloomed. A various cacophony of folk who littered the land and snow and sand—some with hearing sharper than the tips of their ears, making them privy to the four other elemental songs. A number of whom learned their languages. Spoke them. 

Found power in them.

Others fell upon a silver book some say Caelis wrote in his desperation to be heard. Who found a different form of power in those runes nobody could read or pronounce, discovering that the strange markings could be wielded. Could mend bones, charm blood, glamor objects.

Many beings filled all corners of the world, but none the Creators were more proud of than the great winged beasts that lorded over the sky. 

The dragons.

Upon the seemingly uninhabitable crown of The Burn, where the sun’s harsh rays bubbled skin into fleshy welts, the Sabersythes thrived—big, bulky beasts with black and bronze and ruddy scales. With ferocious aptitudes that could not be matched. 

They made Gondragh their spawning ground. 

Some folk were brave enough to venture close. To raid a nest and snatch an egg. 

Brave … or stupid. 

Less volatile than their distant kin, the Moltenmaws found their home in The Fade. In Bhoggith—a foggy scrap of marshland that gobbled almost everything in muddy, sulfurous burps.

Their honed beaks were sharp enough to slash, their claws just as severe. Veiled with feathers as colorful as the ever-vibrant sky in their part of the world, no two Moltenmaws bore the same glorious plumage.

To steal a Moltenmaw’s egg, one also needed to be brave or stupid … but perhaps a little less.

Netheryn, however, was almost imossible to raid — the chosen spawning ground of the ethereal and cunning Moonplumes.

Being farthest from the sun, Netheryn was the darkest crown of The Shade, bearing a cold so deep it could turn the blood of most common folk slow and sludgy. But not the Moonplumes, with their luminous, leathery skin so chill to the touch. With their long silky tails and eyes a crush of glitter and ice.

Tucked amongst snow and ice and a hungry quiet that swallowed sounds then spat them out like a warning roar, the Moonplumes flourished, growing in number, strength, and brilliance.

Only those as unhinged as Clode or bearing enough power to protect themselves would attempt to steal a Moonplume egg.

Most failed, consumed by the fearsome, thrashing beasts or the hostile land.

Some succeeded — a celebrated few who used the dragons to wage wars for sprouting kingdoms.

But as castles grew taller than mountains, and as kings and queens decorated their crowns with bigger, sparklier jewels, so too did folk learn how to shed dragon blood. 

For many Moonplumes, Moltenmaws, and Sabersythes … their eternal lives were slashed. 

The Creators did not expect their beloved beasts to sail skyward upon their end. For many of them to plant themselves just beyond gravity’s grip, curl into balls and calcify, littering the sky with tombstones. 

With moons.

They certainly did not expect those moons to fall not long after they found their lofty perch. For them to collide with the world in a clash of splintering doom that threatened to devastate everything that had come to be. 

It took seven moonfalls before Clode, Rayne, Ignos, and Bulder realized Caelis was to blame. That his empty space which yearned to be filled was strong enough to displace a dragon from its resting place and rip it from the sky. 

It took them yet another moonfall to devise a plan to save the world they loved so much.

Wielding empty promises and faithless vows, they lured Caelis into their trap and captured him. 

Subdued him.

They sang their whipping, burning, breaking songs, mincing Caelis’s essence into pieces small enough to trap in a cage of ebony crystal no larger than a pip, henceforth known as the Aether Stone.

Threads of his silver cloak tore free as he thrashed and fought, but the other Creators did not bother to round up the scraps, leaving them to tether to both poles of the world. A luminous aurora that spun around the globe, giving folk something to track their daes and slumbertime. 

Caelis himself was set within a sterling diadem embellished with a collection of runes that bore malicious strength. Enough to keep him trapped within the stone for eternity, so long as the runes had something to feed on. 

A guardian.

A mighty fae warrior known for his strength and wisdom was bestowed a gift from the Creators themselves: power immense enough that he was able to host the Aether Stone upon his brow and keep Caelis contained. A gift that passed down his familial line like skipping stones.

Many aurora cycles passed, and more moons littered the sky … 

Stayed there.

Peace eventually reigned, despite a slew of tragedies and ill-timed deaths that swallowed the Aether Stone’s catastrophic origin, its very meaning for existence becoming a scrambled myth passed around campfires or sung to babes to hush their fussing cries.

Until one aurora rise, for the first time in more than five million phases …

Another moon fell.

***

There you are. That’s the whole prologue. Various reviews at Amazon mention the great writing. The snarky critique I originally linked says:

There are many beautiful passages with evocative phrasing and lovely imagery.

And I really, really wonder where those beautiful passages are, because I’m not seeing them. This is aside from the annoying tendency to make Every. Single. Sentence. Into. Its. Own. Paragraph. Which is barely an exaggeration, and of course looks worse when spacing between paragraphs, which is how WordPress wants to do it, so avoiding that is a pain and a half, but admittedly that does make this tendency to super-short paragraphs look worse and more extreme than in the real world. But my point is, I’m seeing a LOT of clumsy, awkward, inferior writing here. A LOT. And how is it possible the reviewer who critiques it doesn’t see that?

His baritone song was so full of substance, yet lacked it entirely. What?

no matter how loud he sang. You mean “loudly”?

eternally dunked in shadow so thick it seeped into the stone and cast it black.  “Dunked”? “Cast it black”?

dips, dollops, and cracks in the world. “Dollops,” really?

Rayne fell upon the ground in a billion yearning teardrops of unrequited love, puddling in Bulder’s dips, filling his gorges with her gushing affections. I can’t bear it.

The deep, gut-wrenching wail of an avalanche. Avalanches wail?

On and on, I see a handful of sentences that don’t strike me as painful, but MOSTLY this is painful to read. 35,000 ratings on Amazon. 4.4 average star rating. I just … the editor at whatever publisher — oh, Avon, which is an imprint of Harper Collins — anyway, to be fair, the editor did her job, which was to recognize a book that had the potential to be catchy and package it up in a way that would sell. Good for her, I guess, but for crying out loud, I wish she had failed to make this sell, because it’s not great to see something as badly written as this jump to the top of the bestseller lists. I realize tastes differ, but honestly.

The linked post also says:

The prologue serves the story by getting world explanations out of the way and setting up the story’s throughline.

And I am here to declare that you should not need to explain the world and you most emphatically should not need to “get the world explanation out of the way,” for crying out loud, stop that. How about you integrate the worldbuilding into the story as you write it, the way every good author actually does it, and this kind of explanation of the world’s mythology is lazy as well as boring, even if it is well written, which this one is not.

The linked post finishes:

This prologue is simply not a replacement for actually starting the story, for meeting the main character and forcing that main character to deal with a threat. Ideally, Parker would sketch out the basics of the world – eternal day and night, the dragons – while that happens. That depends on putting the main character in the right situation to start. You don’t want a first scene where nothing happens just so you can explain the world. But it’s usually possible to choose a good opening problem that also lets you show the world off.

Yeah, what she said.

Although I wouldn’t say I’ve NEVER seen a mythology-of-the-world prologue that worked for me — I might have seen one I loved and forgotten about it — I can say that I don’t REMEMBER ever seeing one that I thought was a good idea, while I’ve seen a fair number, including some by well-known and popular authors, that were terrible plus completely unnecessary. This is another one like that.

Here are the first sentences of chapter one:

I curl my shoulders forward, crumbling my posture into something that appears trodden.

Scared.

Just skip the prologue, stop right here after the first fourteen words of the actual story, and try to tell me this book is well-written. Because if anybody thinks wow, such great writing, I swear, I will just give up.

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Planets everywhere!

Had you heard about this?

All the planets in the sky at the same time — I didn’t know this was rare, but apparently it’s rare. But this is apparently happening now, so if you have binoculars, you might be able to see all the planets.

Stargazers will need no equipment to see Mercury, Mars, Venus, Jupiter, and Saturn, but binoculars or a telescope are necessary for Uranus and Neptune. Planets can be told apart from stars because they shine steadily, rather than twinkling.

Saturn will be the lowest planet on the Western horizon and the hardest to spot with the naked eye.

It sets shortly after the Sun, and there will only be a few minutes while the planet is above the horizon and the sky dark enough to see.

Mercury should be visible just above Saturn, and higher still will be Venus, which is the brightest in the sky.

Jupiter will be in the east just above Rigel, the brightest star in the constellation of Orion. To the east of Jupiter, Mars will be visible.

Neptune and Uranus both appear between Jupiter and Venus, and resemble non-twinkling blue orbs. Experts recommend using an app to find them.

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