So, one of the editors of the Star Trek range is saying they're publishing a book where it sounds like characters talking, not people....
Yeah, that's one passage in one book. Yeah, it's unfair to pick on it. Jeez, it's not like the other guy's going to win any awards, either. But instead of picking on a guy called Pink Raygun who writes a blog, pick on your authors.
They're not "his" authors. Keith is a freelance writer/editor, not a member of Pocket's full-time editorial staff.
Can we at least admit there's a problem?
No, because a single out-of-context passage is not evidence of a systemic problem.
Again ... look, I'm not trying to pick a fight, here ...
Well, you're doing a good job of it without trying.
that's not exactly a great rah-rah for the books. Like David, you're not leaping to the defence of the quoted passage.
That's because I don't have to. I won't legitimize the attack by buying into the premise that anything needs to be defended. It's a matter of individual taste. You may find problems with a passage that another reader would be fine with, and vice-versa. And even if one passage in a book feels awkward to you, you might find that the rest of the book is perfectly all right and even has some brilliant parts. You can't assume that every paragraph in a book is going to work equally well for you.
Now, I don't want to put words into either of your mouths, but you could have said 'that prose really sings, the dialogue's great, it's an amazing way to start a novel'.
I don't even know if it is the start of the novel. That's another unsubstantiated assumption.
Also, whether I like the passage or not is totally irrelevant. The question is about whether it's fair to assume a single isolated example is representative of the entire line.
At the same time, the guy on that blog who picked you up on the sixteen million plates of duranium line had a point. Although it's 'twenty thousand tritanium plates, phase-transition bonded into a seamless whole'. It's on page 10. There's not a house style, but there is a ... general standard.
I have no idea what "the guy on that blog" said about that line, but my choice to include it had nothing to do with any "general standard." My particular style, as a hard-SF writer, is to go into technical specifics and detailed explanations. I do that because it's what I like to read and what I want to present to my audience. I write my tie-in novels in the same way that I write my original fiction. But there are few other Trek authors who would go into that level of detail about a technical point. That's not their style, for the most part. So to use my writing as an example of a "general standard" among Trek novels is just as wrongheaded as using Andy & Mike's writing as an example of that.
At some level, you can get away with that in Star Trek because you know that some of your competition can type 'resigned sigh' and 'portentious bark' and think they did a good day's work. At some level, you're writing like it's 'a Star Trek novel', not 'a novel', and it has little tics like needing to endlessly namedrop telly episodes we've all seen, odd little genre-type phrases.
Bull. Absolutely, utterly wrong. As I said, I write my Trek fiction on the same level I use for my original fiction. I'm writing it like it's a Christopher L. Bennett novel, and any stylistic choices I make are entirely my own. I promised myself long ago that I would never lower my standards on a book just because it's a tie-in. I find that unprofessional -- and also self-defeating. If a writer has both tie-in and original credits (and I do hope to publish original novels before much longer), then the tie-ins can be an advertisement for one's original work. So it's just good sense to put your A game into your tie-in fiction as well as your original fiction, so that people who read it will go "Hey, I liked that enough that I'd like to read more from this person."
And given the quality and diversity of Trek novels in recent years, I'm certain there are plenty of other authors who are striving to write Trek fiction on the same level as their original fiction.
And how the hell is "resigned sigh" a "genre-type phrase"? Doing a
Google Book Search for the phrase "resigned sigh," I see F. Scott Fitzgerald used it in
This Side of Paradise (not the Trek episode), as did Frances Hodgson Burnett in
A Little Princess, a trio of psychologists in
Ethnicity and Family Therapy, and plenty of other diverse examples.
It's prone to neutral, uninvolving prose. It's prone to concentrate on what can be seen and heard ... because you can't smell or feel or touch or taste stuff on the telly.
Totally untrue. On the contrary, any first-time novelist who turned in a manuscript like that would be specifically told by the editor to revise it with all the senses in mind. Track down the accounts of screenwriters who move into prose, and you'll find this as a recurring theme. Writing to all the senses is basic stuff, and if you think that Trek novels are not doing that, then it's obvious you haven't read many of them.
