Today I spent a couple hours with Nick F. and Kate in the Barnes and Noble over on Rockville Pike doing research. I’ve been waffling on the novel I’ve been working on. I’d sent first draft copies out to a couple of friends and had two positive reactions, one negative one and several deafening silences. The novel is kind of clunky, of this I’m relatively certain (and no, it’s not my first written novel – I probably have about two or three others that predate this one) but my big question is why. I want it to be a pageturner, something that’s fun to read, and I’m afraid that my tendency for long passages of character dialogue and investigations into the interpersonal relationships over, say, stuff blowing up, might be sort of a drag on the pacing. To test this theory, I went and started flipping through a couple bestsellers by authors that Kate recommended: Nicholas Sparks and James Patterson.
Both of them write relatively short, straightforward sentences, and have paragraphs that are only about two or three sentences long. Readers of this weblog will recognize that this not the way I tend to write. Now, all is not lost – I’ve realized that as far as that tempo is concerned, I have more in common with authors like Neal Stephenson and Stephen King, who like to write long, winding sentences and paragraphs. (Note that this can also be a Very Bad Thing – I picked up a book by Tim Powers which looks very good indeed, but I was having a hard time sorting out what exactly his sentences were meaning to say.) So there is hope. But Kate made an interesting point: this occasionally-languid writing style may not be suited for pageturners, but may be more suited for art.
Longtime friends of mine will be able to imagine a fairly accurate reproduction of my silent scream.
Could it be that I’m accidentally creating art when write these things that attempt to combine light sci-fi plots with more intense interpersonal relationships? Dear sweet Jesus, I hope not.