Fiction
Related: About this forumA problem in a lot of modern fiction
that I've been noticing lately is that plot threads are not pulled together into a satisfying ending. Instead, the author writes the story for a while, telling us about the people and events, and then it just ends.
Has anyone else experienced this?
Another thing I've noticed, although mostly in YA fiction, is that characters and plot points seem to be taken from some kind of a chart or program that says you must have this and that and this other.
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Curmudgeoness
(18,219 posts)I do read modern fiction as a bubble-gum-for-the-mind kind of thing....when I am burned out from thought-provoking or very emotional books. But I agree with you. The ends are usually unfulfilling and just hit you. I find that too many modern fictions are all about action and high drama instead of a well-turned story with a great ending.
I am particularly fed up with the girl who is perfect and runs all over the place saving the ass of some guy who is hopeless. She is always beautiful, even when it seems that no one has slept in four days of running around.
I am always shocked when I find a decent book that has been written recently.
fadedrose
(10,044 posts)and in this week's list of books . . .
Curmudgeoness
(18,219 posts)I just finished a very crazy bubble gum book. I have just been in that mood lately.
I realized after I posted about the super woman in most modern books----there were rarely females of importance to books in the past, unless they were helpless and the man was always there to save them. I suppose that I shouldn't be complaining about the way they write today.
fadedrose
(10,044 posts)Doss takes care of all details, usually in a very satisfying manner.
Don't read it at the information desk. People will think you're some kind of loon grinning and chuckling for no reason.
OMG, I just out of curiousity clicked your name and see you are in NM. I love reading about that state. The fictional Doss book takes place in Colorado, but Doss himself stayed a lot in NM at the site of many of his stories, and worked at the Los Alamos Lab.
Your library must have skads of Doss' books.
SheilaT
(23,156 posts)My library does have a bunch of them. Thank you for the suggestion.
Actually, I also work on my novel on the job. I am very much not good at plotting, having an actual narrative arc. I think this is in part because I have written a reasonable number of short stories, and the plotting problem isn't quite as obvious in them. Anyway, one evening last week I just starting writing as roman-numeral numbered paragraphs my story arc. The first ten or so were what I already have drafted, and then I took a deep breath and plowed on ahead with what needs to come after. When I actually came to a conclusion, I raised my hands and said, "Yes!" and laughed out loud. A co-working, walking by said, "That certainly looks like a victory dance!" I then told her what I'd done.
What's best about working on the novel as compared to reading a book, is that it's not quite as obvious what I'm doing. The book is right there, and I'm clearly reading it. When writing, I'm heads up looking at the computer screen so I see people as they approach me and can immediately switch over to what I'm being paid to do. Revising from hard copy is slightly only more problematical, but as no one has ever looked askance at me or my manuscript pages, I think they assume that it's work-related.
If this novel is ever published I will have to include a line of appreciation to the place I work, thanking them for making it possible.
Oh. I had to give up reading Bill Bryson's books in public because I start laughing hysterically, and it was usually over something somewhat off-color, so it wasn't a good idea to try to share what was so amusing with a total stranger.
fadedrose
(10,044 posts)Sometimes I think that the books I liked best were actually 3 or 4 short stories with no similarity that an author cleverly connected together with a couple of characters knowing each other in a slight way. I think the foreign authors do this a bit more than homegrown.
Anyways, good luck, love and enjoy your characters.
getting old in mke
(813 posts)
raccoon
(31,518 posts)Goblinmonger
(22,340 posts)It is very hard for high school students to read that because they are just plopped down in the middle of something and then it just ends.
I kind of like it if done right. Sometimes there isn't a nice resolution and often the resolution isn't the point. When a student complains about the lack of resolution to me, my answer is generally "If there isn't any resolution then the resolution isn't the point and isn't important."
mainer
(12,213 posts)Popular fiction presents a problem and solves it. (eg., mystery -- the killer's caught. Romance -- the lovers unite.)
Literary fiction presents a problem and never gets around to solving it.
Maybe it's your choice of genre?
SheilaT
(23,156 posts)much of the literary fiction genre. But maybe what I'm thinking of as straightforward mainstream actually is in the literary genre and I'm not recognizing it. But I do tend to think of literary fiction as the kind of highfaluting thing that I don't like. I recently read a short story in some one of the mainstream magazines (Good Housekeeping, maybe) that was their contest winner. That was apparently intended to be a literary piece by your definition, as things happened and the essential problem was never resolved.
I read a lot of science fiction, any number of mainstream novels, likewise mysteries, historical novels, and so on. It's easier to state that I don't generally read westerns or romance.
Straightforward mysteries do tend to solve the problem. One of my gripes, not really connected to my initial complaint here, is that 95% or so of mysteries are part of a series of some kind. I very much prefer stand-alone novels of all kinds, although there are exceptions in that I do love the Janet Evanovich series and a couple of others.
Anyway, I've also been noticing this problem in science fiction lately. Especially in books that are really science fiction but get published as mainstream novels, such as The Age of Miracles, which I liked a lot until the ending, which felt like she'd written herself into a corner and had no idea how to write her way back out.
mainer
(12,213 posts)otherwise you won't read the next book in the series.
AngryOldDem
(14,176 posts)And I think YA fiction is the poster child for formulaic fiction, which to me is kind of an insult to its readers. Kids can appreciate a well-told and well-written story just as much as anyone else.
I just finished "Year of Wonders," by Geraldine Brooks. It's been out for a couple of years and was the topic of a recent segment on NPR's Diane Rehm Show. On the show, the panel gave glowing reviews of the book, except for the ending, which they called implausible. After reading it, I have to agree. Up until that point the book was compelling. I don't know if authors just reach a point where they just don't know where to take the book next, or if they just want out of it so they end it.
It's one thing to leave a reader wondering in his or her own imagination what happened next to the characters, but it's another thing entirely to have the feeling that everything just fell off a cliff, if you get my meaning.
SheilaT
(23,156 posts)fiction lately, precisely because so much of it is, in my opinion, really good.
However, more than once all of a sudden it will feel as if the plot or characters was drawn from some kind of novel-writing software. There's just a kind of creepy formula aspect that I'm having trouble articulating. In one particular book, it was as if the software said, if you have this kind of character you must have this other kind. Now, I've never myself looked at, let alone made use of, novel-writing software, and as a semi-creative person myself, I am highly suspicious of such things.