skimming a book
I read a lot, but it occurred to me today that I also happen to skim things a great deal.
So, what do I skim?
–Battle scenes. This is perhaps hypocritical, since fight scenes are my absolute favorite things to write evah. Still, sometimes fight scenes are charged with tension and emotional force, and sometimes they are not. Like, say you’re reading the first book of a series, and the main character gets into a fight, and you’re pretty sure that the main character survives to the end of the series, and that the author only inserted the fight scene there because he needed another five pages to pad out the damn chapter.
(I’ve done that.)
–Sex scenes. To employ a metaphor, sex is rather like replacing the screen in a laptop computer, or repairing a transmission, or some other demanding technical task. It demands your full attention, but if you’re not the one actually doing it, it’s really boring to read about.
So also with extended scenes of romantic congress. Off the top of my head, I can think of a dozen powerful fight scenes that have stayed with me over the years: Eowyn and Meriadoc vs. the Lord of the Nazgul, Fingolfin vs. Morgoth Bauglir, Harry Dresden vs. Nicodemus on the boat in Lake Michigan, Ivanhoe riding to challenge the villainous Templar for Rebecca’s life, Colonel Moran attempting to strangle Sherlock Holmes in the abandoned house. I cannot recall any extended description of lovemaking that had similar power.
This is definitely a category where less is, in fact, so much more. The romantic storylines I do remember were ones where the author managed to describe what had happened in a single sentence.
Understatement has power. And the more powerful the topic, the more powerful the understatement.
–Painfully obvious worldbuilding. I appreciate the difficulty of worldbuilding, I really do. Still, I tend to skim the conversations that, for lack of a better term, are Infodumps Disguised As Casual Conversation. They tend to go like this:
Bob: Gosh, taxes sure are high here in the kingdom of Subworldia!
Tim: Yes, they are! Because, as you know, the King of Subworldia has declared war on the Duke of Villainia, and he must have the taxes to support his troops!
Bob: Well, I don’t like paying the taxes. But the troops don’t pay for themselves. Especially after the recent battle, which took place so close to our quiet little village!
Tim: Why, that is crazy talk, that is. Our King of Subworldia won’t let the war get this far!
Now, in real life, people don’t talk about politics like that. In real life, political discussions tend to go like this:
Bob: I don’t care for that [Obama/Palin].
Tim: You got that right.
Or like this:
Bob: I don’t care for that [Obama/Palin].
Tim: You [Marxist/Fascist] freedom-hating bastard!
–Boring religious stereotypes. Because all religions in fantasy fiction are either poorly disguised clones of fundamentalist Christianity or, more rarely, fundamentalist Islam. So I usually skim over the bits containing the strawmen constructed out of what the author can recall about his childhood Sunday School teacher.
So what don’t I skim over? Scenes that have tension, that have emotional power. Where the outcome is not immediately obvious, and it seems that horrific consequences await every choice (kind of like real life). That sort of emotional tension is very hard to do. But when the writer can pull it off…that’s when you stay up until two in the morning reading, never mind the fact that you have to get up at six to go to work.
No two ways about it, friends and neighbors; storytelling is hard work. And I myself have been guilty of at least three of the things I complain about above.
-JM