At the beginning of the year, Cathy Spurling wrote a post about her Goodreads Challenge, which set me thinking. How many books do I read in a year? So I started keeping a list... which, over time, has become three lists.
- Books I have read - Books I abandoned - Books I finished but skipped bits of
That third list intrigues me. What is it that makes readers skip parts of a novel?
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The Padding In one novel, an architect spent an entire chapter wandering around a city, admiring its buildings and finding inspiration. It didn't advance the plot - or if it did, I missed that bit because I skipped to the next chapter. Yes, description is important. It creates the setting and contributes to the mood and atmosphere. It deepens the reader's relationship with the character and submerges the reader more fully in the book. But description for its own sake.... sorry, that doesn't work for me.
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The Lecture Or should that be The Dreaded Lecture? In another novel involving a real theatre, the author had obviously done her homework - the operative word being 'obviously.' She couldn't stop herself blabbing about every single thing she had learned about the theatre's history. It turned into a page and a half of lecture. Keep it to yourself, love. Just because you know it, doesn't mean the rest of us need to know.
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The Back Story A bit of back story here and there is essential to an understanding of the plot, but entire chapters of it...? One book involved a family which, in spite of minor tensions, was clearly happy and united, with Mother as the lynch-pin. Early on in the plot, Mother died in a freak accident. How would her adoring husband cope? What fresh responsibilities would fall on the shoulders of our young heroine? What would happen next? What actually happened was a trip back in time to wander through Mother's childhood and see how she grew up to meet and marry Father. I wasn't interested in that - I wanted to know what happened next.
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Am I skipping the parts of a book that represent the author's self-indulgence? The parts where the author, because s/he loves the book or the character so much, just can't resist adding more? Or am I missing chances to become more immersed in these stories?
How about you? What makes you skip a part of a novel? And what do you think of what I've identified as my own triggers for skipping? I'd love to know what you think.
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Comments (11)
Really interesting post. I love your three lists but it struck me when pondering on them that I have NEVER skipped a section of a fiction book before. I used to hate giving up on books. I'd persevere, hoping upon hope that they'd improve, but a few years ago I decided that life's too short. I found myself choosing not to read, knowing that I was struggling with the chosen book, so I do now abandon them if I've given several chances and just can't warm to them. However, the reasons you cite for skipping sections feature amongst my reasons for giving up on books. Other reasons include not warming to the main character, getting halfway through and nothing significant has happened yet, or struggling with the writer's voice e.g. books that are full of cultural references with which I'm not familiar. Mind you, I do sometimes forge on when I don't warm to the main character because I still find myself intrigued as to what will happen in the end. On a good day, that is. Sometimes I'm simply not in the mood!
Great post :-)
Jessica xx
As someone who loves research, I've often thought it's fortunate I don't write historical fiction as I suspect I'd be more tempted there to add in all the fascinating details that intrigued me but, as you rightly say, don't advance the plot.
I'm getting better at picking up pacing issues in my writing but it's still an ongoing struggle, especially where description is concerned. Highlighting text in different colours (e.g. dialogue, back story, etc.) often helps me see where passages I may love but which serve no useful purpose can be cut.
Often it's hard to gauge how much a reader might already know, so you have to decide whether or not to tell them what it might mean, for example, for a man to own a falcon in the fourteenth and then not to own it. If you do tell them, it should only be sentence or two and not a complete treatise on hunting in the fourteenth century.
I feel that some writers think either that they have to show that they've done their research or that they've done their research and they're going to use it all, regardless of whether it helps the story or not. One of the worst offenders is a very popular writer of thrillers who lost me as a reader by all but including the specs of an aircraft he was 'describing'. It was irrelevant, took up a couple of pages and reminded me that I was reading a story, when I should have been captivated by the story.