[Writing] Robin Hobb vs Trudi Canavan: The Gold Coins of fiction

[elfs]

I've been reading two books parallell recently (along with my studies and my research for the new novel): Trudi Canavan's The Magician's Guild and Robin Hobb's Ship of Magic. And as I read through them I come away with a curious sensation: Robin Hobb is a better writer than Trudi Canavan, but I'm much more likely to buy one of Ms. Canavan's books than I am one of Ms. Hobb's.

One of the conversations we've been having on rec.arts.sf.composition recently is about "Your least favorite prescription." Well, one that I hadn't heard before but makes a lot of sense for me is "Leave gold coins in your reader's path once in a while." The easiest thing a reader can do with a book is put it down and forget about it; the only way to keep the reader reading all the way through until the end is to ocassionally drop in a scene, a line, an emotional moment-- whether up or down doesn't really matter-- that's compelling enough to reward the reader to keep reading. To want the next golden moment.

It's clear to me that Trudi Canavan does this far more readily and easily than Robin Hobb. There are more moments of pyrotechnics, of revelation, of characters being put through well-illustrated wringers, however brief, in The Magician's Guild than there are in Ship of Magic.

Both books are told with a light touch on the omni-third point of view, changing POV among characters between scenes, and Hobb is trying to make us sympathetic to all of her characters, but I get from her books a sense of contrivance that doesn't seem to be a part of Canavan's work. Hobb and Canavan have a similarity to Clute and Gibson: one writer is very obviously *working* at being good to the story, the other achieves a sense of naturalness and effortlessness that helps the reader along.

I don't know yet how to do this consciously, to lay the groundwork for rewarding moments that keep the reader convinced that the whole of the story is worth his effort to read. That I feel the need to plan for it consciously makes me feel that I'm more in the Hobb/Clute spectrum of writers than the Canavan/Gibson, and I'm not sure I'm happy with the revelation that that may be where I belong.

Comments

What?

[rkda.livejournal.com]

Elf, have you looked up your sleeve lately? Having read every thing you have posted under your fiction heading, I have found more than enough gold coins in your writing to keep me coming back for more. I don't necessarily like all of your writing, some of it does not play to my sensibilities, but I have read it all. And, in most everything of yours that I have read, there was some little tid bit that made the whole thing worth reading. Even the stuff I did not particularly enjoy, had enough interesting story to it to keep me coming back for the next story you write.

In case you have not figured this out yet, the people who read everything you write, do not read it for the sex any more. We read it for the stories, the characters, the worlds, the sex is just a bonus.

Re: What?

[(Anonymous)]

ditto here!

Thanks...

[velvet-wood.livejournal.com]

I've been wondering why I have such a hard time getting through RH's books, even though I _know_ they're well-written, and the worlds are great, and the plots are good. Everything is good, and yet...the book isn't. I want to like it, I think I should like it, but I'm yawning all the way through it. Reading what you wrote though, and thinking about it, you are absolutely correct; Hobb's books seriously lack 'grab the reader by the heart/hormones/soul' moments.

However, I honestly don't think feeling like you have to plan those moments makes you someone who belongs in the class of writers whose work feels forced and contrived, especially as you say you don't know how to do it consciously, and yet you still _do_ it. If you do it, you do it, and thinking you should plan it makes you a thoughtful, introspective writer, not a contrived one.

Velvet

Re: Thanks...

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Having read a little more of Liveship Traders, I have to say that one other fault, if I can call it that, with her work is that she tries way too hard to be fair to everyone. It's hard to hate Kyle when his personal flaw is so well-balanced by the fact that he's trying hard, and when Hobb shows him you can see that his position is well-thought-out, moral, and as responsible as he can be. He doesn't understand Bingtown's ways except intellectually, but that doesn't make him a bad person. Althea, our nominal heroine, makes mistakes that we can sympathise with even as we desperately want to reach into the book and correct the problems ourselves.

It's much harder to read a book about good people making bad decisions that drag everyone down, than it is to watch a character face the antagonist in a fair fight.

The villain in Canavan's novel may have wound up being almost a mustache-twirling evil overlord type; you could understand his position ("rank and class are god's will") without being sympathetic to it, see how he thought it was a moral position, and accept that his failing was the violation of one set of standards in support of another. Our understanding of the story is that the standards he ignores are the ones that we the readers value more. The heroine understands this too, and undergoes her own transformation to reach this understanding.

No such conflict, and so no chance for pyrotechnics, exists in Hobb's novel so far. If Kyle violated his values with respect to women, we'd cheer but we'd feel cheated; if Althea succumbed to her mother's wishes and became a landlubber, we'd feel really cheated of a happy outcome. All of Hobb's conflicts therefore happen at the expense of someone with whom we can sympathise. It's hard to cheer for those moments.

Re: Thanks...

[woggie.livejournal.com]

So is the point of a really good villain to paint them and their actions in an unflattering way with the eyes of the hero (perhaps), but at the same time with words said that reveal themselves as the misunderstood or quite reasonable hero?

And I guess I'm really not sure what the definition of a gold coin is, or what the optimum distance between each would be. I try to write so that it's all interesting, or else I'd get bored and wouldn't want to write about it, so maybe I'm placing the gold coins anyway. I just like to know that I'm doing something, and exactly what I'm doing, so I'm better able to judge my own writing.