I have just returned from a trip taking in 3000 miles over 5 weeks, reaching into Wales and as far north as the Moray Firth. The purpose of the trip was to visit family and friends all over the UK. Because of pressure at home and the general inhospitality of the crowded UK to motorhomes, we had no time planned in to ourselves, it was all driving or socialising.
Inevitably, we have arrived home exhausted. And annoyingly, I finished my last book on the way back, so I now the double frustration of being exhausted and having nothing to read.
It beats me how Amazon, starting out as a garage-based bookseller and now enjoying Western World domination, is quite so limited in how it offers potential reads from its near-infinite resource base to regular readers. It either offers you another book from the author you last read, and rarely the next in the series, or a Sunday Times best-seller that other kinds of people liked.
I have tried every other book-finding resource out there, and find little which works for me. I am a very choosy reader, and do not cope with the modern experimental writing trends: present tense, omnipotent viewpoints, low quality, weird, to name but a few.
At least Bezos offers me a sample to read, and I have read many, many samples. I do not really know if my sampling technique is becoming an art form, which quickly rejects 99% of all offerings, or if my fussiness is growing exponentially. It now takes me days to find a book, and in that time, anger can grow at what authors thinks they can put out there and what reviewers will push as being the best thing since sliced bread.
Here’s the thing, though, which I have come to recognise as being critical to the success or not of a book for me to read. It has to throw me into the story quickly, and let me know, very clearly, who is who, and what they are to the story and each other. That way, I can settle in for the ride and enjoy it. If I constantly feel that I’m missing out, confused about who Alice is, for instance, lost in a welter of names, times or places, then I begin to feel stupid and get annoyed, not an experience I wish to pay for.
The prompt, then, an unusual one, is to look at whatever you are reading or writing at the moment and see just how well it throws the reader into the story. Is every new character memorable and distinctive enough that you will know them whenever they appear again in the book? That you may recognise them by context alone, without them being named each time they appear? Has the world they occupy been described well enough that you can see it, smell it, touch it?
Be critical, putting yourself thoroughly into the role of the reader who knows nothing of the book. It’s not easy to do, but a good editing skill to practice!
Image: Oldifan, Pixabay
