Saturday, July 6, 2019

Good King Terrance the Kind . . . or Learning From Other Writers' Mistakes

Instead of picking my nose I figured I’d pick on Terry Goodkind for awhile since I’m currently punishing myself by reading yet another one of his frustrating novels. Terry Goodkind is the author of the Sword of Truth fantasy series and if you’ve read some of my past blogs then you’re already familiar with my and Terry’s love/hate relationship. I don’t know the man personally, I’m just an annoyed reader, but I’ve had several bones to pick with Terry’s writing over the years and I’m going to pick at yet another one now for the sake of a blog post so let’s put on our snarky mean hats and get to work.
I read Terry’s Sword of Truth fantasy novels until I swore them off after reading book 13, Confessor, because I just couldn’t stand the lengthy repeat of political speeches and the profusion of Ayn Rand philosophy injected into my fantasy detachment from reality anymore. Some few years passed and I wanted some books from Amazon so I threw in two more novels by Terry with the others I bought, The Omen Machine and The First Confessor. The Omen Machine was bland but readable yet reminded me why I quit reading Goodkind in the first place, but The First Confessor . . . ugh! I barely made it through that dumpsterfire because I wanted to tear it to shreds. The boring characters drone on and on and repeat every conversation a million times (Terry is known for believing repeating the same information ad nauseam is acceptable so long as it’s worded slightly differently or if it’s another character repeating the same long-winded speech because he thinks readers are stupid hamsters and needs be told something important to the story one-hundred times over lest they forget it), let alone the complete lack of almost any action. The entire novel is basically four long conversations broken by poorly written action that goes almost nowhere fast. But I digress while I adjust my snarky mean hat accordingly . . .
A few more years later and the glutton for punishment that I am, I again picked two more novels penned by Mr. Yeard while I sought more books from Amazon (when not perusing my local used book store I usually turn to Amazon and buy two or three books I know I want then I throw in a few random books for good measure to get that tasty $25+ for free shipping because I’m a cheap bastard). I decided to go with Death’s Mistress and its sequel the Shroud of Eternity because of the controversy over one of the covers as well as I’d hoped Terry’s writing had improved with age.
Boy was I wrong.
Death’s Mistress . . . whew, where to even begin. The ending is predictable yet amazingly totally out of character (though if you’re familiar with Terry’s novels then you’re also familiar with his horrible inability to deliver satisfying endings), and coincidences rule every single event throughout the story. Someone needs a special something to diffuse a dire situation? Well lookie here, it just so happens that rare item is only a stone’s throw away despite how rare it is because PLOT! And here I’ll go into spoiler territory of Death’s Mistress because why not? It might save you some time and a few bucks:
Nicci, an evil sorceress turned good and also known as Death’s Mistress because she’s ruthlessly murdered countless thousands of innocent people in her dark past before devoting herself to the second coming of Jesus Christ Marty Stu Richard Rahl, must kill another sorceress called Life’s Mistress because thinking of better names than a third-grader would come up with is beyond Terry’s 5 second attention span and Google doesn’t exist. To do so Nicci must shoot Life’s Mistress with an arrow dipped in the heart’s blood (yes, heart’s blood, because Terry was absent during biology class and believes the human heart has different blood than the rest of the human circulatory system) of someone Nicci loves, the only problem being every 3 paragraphs of the entire novel Terry reminds us that Nicci loves no one but Richard Rahl who is many far miles away. Oh, and Nicci needs to shoot the arrow with a bow made from rare dragon’s bone--but lookie here! There just so happens to be the only place in all the whole wide world where all dragons come to die a few days’ walk away, now isn’t that conveeeeeeeenient .
Well, Terry has a solution for the heart’s blood conundrum because characters doing things completely out of character for the sake of forcing plot is never an issue for Mr. Yeard (after all, he’s the writer who fathomed such gems as having characters strip naked in the dead of winter, painting themselves white then riding into an enemy’s encampment who outnumber them a thousand to one to scare the enemy as pretend ghosts--and it works! And let’s not forget Terry’s evil incarnate “chicken that was not a chicken” or that Marty Stu Richard Rahl once carved a statue without any practice so inspiring that to gaze upon it defeats communism).
Along her journey, Nicci meets a spunky little orphan girl named Thistle who tags along. Nicci has known Thistle for about a week or so by this point and Terry has Nicci use Thistle’s heart’s blood because Death’s Mistress, the woman with a shriveled black heart who loves no one but Richard Rahl and has murdered thousands of innocent people without batting an eye, for some reason loves Thistle whom she’s known for about two weeks because Terry is still under the assumption that hack writing doesn’t include the fantasy trope that all little girls must be pure good or pure evil with no between so everyone either loves them or hates them and that’s that. But this is not surprising since Terry also still believes nobody’s ever heard of tropes and the best way to show men as evil is to have them raping or trying to rape a woman--which he proves by including rape in every one of his Sword of Truth novels, many of them multiple times. And yes, in Death’s Mistress and Shroud of Eternity Terry reminds us countless times how Nicci was raped so many times she can’t even put a number to it. It’s actually become a running joke how much Terry loves writing about rape. Go ahead, give it a quick Google.
But the nonsense doesn’t stop there. For some reason Terry has become obsessed with similes. Every few sentences in both novels everyone and everything is “like” something. Here’s just a few quick examples.

Shroud of Eternity page 409: “A rain of sharp metal quarrels peppered the rampaging bull, leaving it looking LIKE the pincushion of a greedy seamstress.”

Page 433: “Daylight spilled through cracks in the walls, and dust motes swirled in the air LIKE gold dust in a stream.”

Page 437: “Dorbo removed his whip and cracked it through the air LIKE serpentine lightning strikes.”

Page 442: “Nicci’s anger built LIKE a distant, ominous storm.”

Page 445: “Seeing Nicci, he turned to face her, a grin lighting up his face LIKE a sunrise.”

Page 459: “Nicci could sense the roiling power of the sovrena’s gift building around her LIKE a cocoon of invisible but deadly magic. Her complex tapestry of woven braids twitched and writhed LIKE snakes around her head.”

But Terry is a crafty bastard and sometimes disguises his similes thusly: Page 439: “The sovrena stared directly back, her sea-green eyes AS cold AS a howling blizzard.”

You should try and only use similes in a first draft as placement holders for better description you’ll return to putting in later but you happen to be on a hot streak of writing and so don’t want to slow down. Leaving so many in your finished manuscript (LIKE weeds in a garden, sarcasm intended) is amateurish at best. But I digress--again--while adjusting my snarky mean hat because this is not a book review and I’m not Terry’s editor.
The point of this post is to point out how one learns to better their own writing by editing the writing of other, more successful writers. Take for example this random passage from Terry Goodkind’s Shroud of Eternity (chapter 49, page 405):

Nicci hurried forward, summoning her magic, while Nathan drew his sword and kept pace with her. They heard the shouts of frightened people in the streets, the growls and roars of rampaging animals. Arriving on their heels, the wizard Quintin looked only partially dressed, and Elsa bustled up from a side street, tugging to adjust her purple robe. Damon was the last to arrive.

Bleh. Really? The above passage is fine if it’s taken from a first draft, but this is from a professionally edited and published novel.
Let me just say that along with Terry’s newfound penchant for similes, Mr. Yeard has also become obsessed with character filters. That means he describes environmental sights and sounds by having a character seeing or hearing them which filters them for you, the reader, because describing them without character filters is too much like work. Both are bad and lazy writing. So let’s break down Terry’s passage and how best to edit it, shall we?

Nicci hurried forward . . .
--Did we expect her to hurry backwards? Sideways? How else would she hurry but forward? And hurry? Seriously? There’s a plethora of options for running and you chose hurry? Thesauruses exist, Terry. Thesauruses exist.

They heard the shouts of frightened people in the streets, the growls and roars of rampaging animals.
--“They heard . . .” Character filter right on cue. Heard, saw, felt; cut these 3 unnecessary character filters from your writing and you’ll be the better for it.

Arriving on their heels, the wizard Quintin looked only partially dressed . . .
--Did he LOOK only partially dressed or was he IN FACT partially dressed? Be specific. And show, don’t tell.

Damon was the last to arrive.
--Here comes the passive train: chugga . . . chugga . . . chugga . . . choo! choo! ‘Was’ is almost always poison to damn near every sentence containing it. I believe every writer’s writing would improve 10 fold if the only thing they do is remove ‘was’ from their writing and restructure their sentences.

So now that we’ve picked at this poor passage, let’s rework it into a superior scene thusly:

Summoning her magic, Nicci sprinted toward the frightened shouts of people panicking amid rampaging animals growling and roaring in the streets. Startled, Nathan drew his sword and kept pace alongside her. Arriving on their heels, the wizard Quintin tugged at his unbuckled pants to stay them from falling, right arm flailing to achieve inside his flopping white sleeve as he fought on his shirt mid run, bare feet slapping the wet pavestones. Elsa bustled up from a side street, tugging adjustments of her disheveled purple robe. Damon arrived last.

There. Much better. Not perfect but much better than before. And it took me all of about 15 measly seconds to improve it.
Now go back, read the original passage, then read our new and better passage. I’ll wait . . . . . . see the difference? Not passive, no character filters, more descriptive and thus more visual, and though it’s not a slice of fried gold the second reads much better than the first.
Let me take off my snarky mean hat now . . . no, wait, apparently I’m unfinished.
I do apologize to Terry Goodkind for singling him out, by the by. I’m sure he’s a polite and humble man . . . even though he’s claimed in multiple interviews that he single-handedly changed the fantasy genre forever when not publicly shaming talented artists who created him excellent novel covers because Terry didn’t approve of Nicci having tall heels on her boots and so decided to embarrass the hard-working artist only doing their job instead of keeping the matter private, or better yet just shutting the **** up about it because at 69 years old Terry has yet to learn that life is unfair and we don’t always get what we want. But if you want the deets on that you’ll have to Google it yourself.
So what have we learned with all this nitpicking? Stop using character filters because better description exists, cut ‘was’ out of every sentence it poisons, never use similes because you’re not in elementary school anymore, and please oh please don’t have your characters act out of their norm for the sake of forcing plot because one little slip can ruin an entire novel.
I’ll end this post with a bit of extra advice, because some people tend to view things only in black and white. While I’ve advised you to “never” use similes in your writing, don’t take it as a commandment. I did much the same when I first began writing, reading the advice of famous authors I adored and thinking their words were written law that shall not be broken. Heck, I remember one writer advising that you should never use an exclamation point but for only once per an entire novel! Of course you can use similes in your writing, just as you will use ‘was’ because it’s impossible not to. Variety adds spice. The point of “never” is for you to develop a novice habit so when you do slip any rules you do so on purpose and not out of pure laziness.
There, rant ended and snarky mean hat removed.
I’ve come down pretty hard on Terry Goodkind in this post, but remember that he’s a seasoned veteran writer with more than 20 novels under his belt, some of them the literal size of bricks. Terry has made millions of dollars selling millions of novels and I’m just a nobody complaining on the interwebs so what do I know?
Hold on, lemme fetch my snarky mean hat again . . .
I’ll leave you with this, another example passage from Terry’s novel Shroud of Eternity where, yet again, comes his profusion of similes which run rampant throughout his recent works. Warning, spoilers ahead.

Shroud of Eternity, chapter 74, pages 604 & 605:

Before Nathan and Elsa could reach the high foyer at the front of the mansion, the wall opposite them cracked and shivered. A loud pounding blow crashed LIKE a battering ram, and the thick walls toppled. A huge figure threw stone blocks aside LIKE a squirrel scattering leaves in autumn. Nathan’s mouth dropped open in disbelief.
The mammoth warrior was LIKE an insane juggernaut smashing through the support walls.
“Dear spirits, he awakened one of the Ixax warriors!” Elsa cried. Nathan reached out an arm and swept Elsa behind him. The gigantic soldier turned the iron shell of its cauldron-sized helmet toward the sound of Nathan’s voice. Its yellow eyes blazed through the slit.
“Those things were never meant to be activated,” Elsa said. “I didn’t even know they were still alive.”
“Alive and angry it seems.” Nathan raised his hands in a placating gesture, speaking directly to the titan. “But I’m not the one who tormented you. We aren’t your enemies.”
Fifteen feet tall, the Ixax crashed through the broken stone and lumbered into the great foyer. Nathan and Elsa backed toward the vine-covered front entrance. The warrior swung its boulder-size fists, crushing one of the stone blocks into powder.
“I don’t suppose you’d listen to reason?” Nathan pleaded.
The Ixax warrior charged LIKE an angry bull the size of a mountain.
They scrambled through the spacious foyer, but Nathan knew the Ixax could easily run them down. The enormous armored warrior might merely crush them, or perhaps, LIKE a child tormenting an insect, pull them apart limb by limb.
The titan confronted one of the marble support columns that rose to the arched ceiling. It wrapped its armored arms around the column and strained, cracking the stone, uprooting the pillar LIKE an angry bear tearing up a tree.

I could go on but I’m not about to dictate the whole chapter--and yes, the entire novel reads exactly the same, rampant similes and all. Nor will I edit it because I’ve little patience for doing so and Terry doesn’t pay my bills. I will, however, point out some glaring flaws. 24 sentences containing 6 Like similes. Ugh. And believe you me there’s an abundance of more Likes if I felt like typing the entire chapter. Also, Terry already told us the Ixax stands fifteen feet tall, yet farther on he then likens it to an angry bull the size of a mountain. I don’t know about you but mountains are not a mere fifteen feet tall. Poor choice of metaphor.
Anywho. Point being even successful writers who’ve made millions of dollars selling millions of novels make glaring amateur mistakes. And some, as with Terry Goodkind, grow lazy after enjoying many successful years and so let slip an abundance of similes and other such no-no’s into their writing because, maybe, they just don’t care anymore. Crap sells--obviously--but do try and learn from their mistakes if you can help it.
Happy Writing!

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