camille_is_here (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} camille_is_here) wrote,@ 2009-07-02 22:05:00 |
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In my last post, I said "And did I mention plot? I only read the good ones--I stop pretty quickly if they don't start to take me somewhere " and Rhymy asked:
What do you mean by pretty quickly? Can you work out where the plot is going in your head by the first chapter or so? Do you abandon a fic if you're not "drawn in" right away? I'd like to get your take on this.
I thought this was a pretty interesting question, so I moved it up to a post!
I do make some pretty quick decisions. For me, it is a two step process.
ETA: IT IS actually a three-step process. But a truly abysmal story usually reveals itself in the first paragraph or two, though I may give it a page just in the "I can't believe it will really be that bad, that clunky, that boringly put together all in the passive voice (and why did she think that was a good artistic choice?)" way.
Stories that are plotty may have any one of a variety of tempos that set the mood, but the pacing has a trajectory and you can tell pretty quickly that they are going somewhere. If a story goes for more than a page or two with a lot of petty details of daily life--got up, went to the bathroom, made coffee, drank coffee, brushed teeth, and nothing else is going on.... There may be a plot coming, eventually, but I won't hang around to find out. I'll be gone before he gets to his pants. Too static, and I am not, myself, that enamored of an excess of the quotidian in my fiction.
I like the scene sketched in, the telling detail, then we're off--plot, character, plot plot character, more characterplot. Catch me with a description of the color of his pants, maybe, if it is significant to the plot or an insight to the character or tells me something about the setting. Let me catch the mis en scene as we go.
Once I'm tooling along, the plot still has to be satisfying. It has to reasonably well written--glowing prose is great, but if it isn't going for style, it should at least not distract me with clunk (but I'll accept the occasional broken edit or correct the occasional minor error in my head if I really like the story). We've established that it has to move, and really, pacing is probably the most important thing to me. I have to be convinced--that character, in that situation, would do exactly that. I have to believe in the character in that story. I don't read Mpreg or stories that rely on characters suddenly acting stupid (unless stupidity is a character trait) or out of character for the plot to work because they offend my suspension of disbelief. I'll read stories about things I don't generally care about if you can convince me that a character I like does care. But the parts have to click--pacing, the logic of story and the logic of the heart. I'll read as long as I care what happens to those people, but I'll jump ship if you don't keep me caring or you get so tangled in a backwater of "then he put his right shoe on, then he put on the left, and then he..." that i get tired of waiting for you to pick up the plot and gallop again.
Sometimes I will come back to a story I dropped before and like it just fine-- a momentary distraction may have kept me from forming a proper attachment to the character the first time. But some things are pretty clearly not a good fit from the start.
