In a recent post on the Writers in the Storm blog – another highly recommended site for writing advice – Janice Hardy identified five red flags that might indicate your novel is going to be too much work for your reader.
Ever the optimist, my first thought was “I bet I do all of them.” However, rather than hitting morally questionable protagonists, transactional sex, and ambiguous endings, Hardy highlighted more foundational aspects of story.
How did I do? Let’s take a look.
The story requires the reader to do “research”.
Hardy defines this as the author inserting newspaper articles, poems, songs, or other elements that aren’t strictly part of the narrative, but which need to be understood to help the reader fully understand the characters or plot. Lots of writers use tidbits like these as color, either providing a small bit of new information or reiterating something the reader already knows. However, if your reader has to read your articles and poems like tea leaves in order to figure out what’s going on, they might not bother.
Hardy doesn’t mention it, but I’d also include writers who use ten dollar words or reference historical figures or events without any context that would allow the reader to intuit their meaning or importance. I’m a reasonably intelligent fellow, so if I hit an esoteric word or have no clue about the context of some historical event , I have to wonder who the writer’s intended audience is. If I have to go to Wikipedia, there’s a good chance I’m going to get stuck in a research hole, rather than come back to your novel.
Verdict: Not guilty.
The story has too many characters.
I love big casts and sweeping stories. My weakness is trying to introduce every character early in the story, regardless of whether they all need to arrive yet, which of course is the problem that will cause your readers to give up. I’ve set aside the two or three really ambitious projects to focus on work with a single protagonist and a small group of major supporting players, and this is working out for me.
Verdict: Guilty but on probation.
The narrative has too many points of view.
That said, POV was one of my strong suits. The beta readers of my Big Epic Novel specifically mentioned that each character had a distinctive voice and each chapter had its own tone and atmosphere. The story was a mess, but the characters were strong, even if there were a few too many.
Verdict: Guilty, but when I do it, it’s stylish.
The names are all too similar, or too hard to pronounce.
In my back burner project, I introduced a Ted, Tommy, and Tim without realizing it until the third or fourth draft. I kept Ted and Tommy since they are minor characters and are often mentioned as bookends, so it’s ok if the reader thinks of them as a matched set. Tim had to go, but a year later, I still find myself writing Tim instead of Chip in my notes. I’m certain I’ll find a few dozen Tims when I run a find and replace at the end. Chip suits the vibe of the character, but I like the name Tim better, but I liked Ted and Tommy for the bookends even more. It’s a crap shoot.
It’s also a good idea to vary name length, for visual interest if nothing else. It can also help with the lyricism and variety in your narrative, if you construct your sentences around sounds and rhythms, in addition to meaning.
Hardy also mentions one of my biggest pet peeves: science fiction and fantasy writers who give multiple characters, objects, and locations unpronounceable names. If the back cover blurb introduces characters with multiple apostrophes or six syllables in their names, it goes back on the shelf. When various names are incomprehensible, chances are good they’ll start to blur together in the reader’s mind. Is the Mighty Gorlock a person, a city, a river, a sword? Who knows!
My current WIP stars Jack, Calvin, Pris, Flower, and Young Tom, as well as a few characters with unique, but pronounceable names. Minor characters are generally referred to by their title or role in the story, and the fancy fantasy names are reserved for gods and locations.
Verdict: Not guilty.
There’s not enough backstory or reminders of key details in the later books in a series.
I don’t write series fiction, so this is a moot point, but this does come up often in series I enjoy. Jo Nesbø’s Harry Hole series has swapped out detectives and forensics specialists so often I have a hard time keeping track of who’s who in the later books. Is that blood spatter expert the woman Harry slept with or is she the one who had the baby with the detective who was killed by…
And that’s in a series that is fairly static, compared to fantasy and science fiction series.
Verdict: Not guilty.
One and a half guilty verdicts out of five. Not bad. How did you rate?
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