[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.

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