You're not too big on the idea of behaving with respect and sensitive towards other people and their misfortunes, are you?
What pet peeves do you have about trek books?
- Thread starter Garm Bel Iblis
- Start date
You're not too big on the idea of behaving with respect and sensitive towards other people and their misfortunes, are you?
yes, i was writing in a hurry. pardon me i'm sure.
A number of things:
1. Entire stories devoted to settling off-camera fan debates i.e. Klingon foreheads and TOS technology. While the former admittedly turned out alright (on ENT), the latter in BTRW is just plain ridiculous. Let's keep this stuff in the forums please. I guess I should be glad there hasn't been as much furor about the appearance of TOS Romulans vs. TNG Romulans.
2. Dialogue. Far far too often, not only does the dialogue not sound like the characters, it doesn't sound like how anyone would talk. Just way too much exposition. And strangely, the exposition repeats plot points that just happened a few chapters back. I really wish writers would strive for more naturalism in the dialogue. Need to list your fleet of ships? Why not put a roster at the beginning of the chapter? Let's do that instead of having the captain rattle off the entire list in one sentence while we imagine Reed standing there checking his watch.
3. Repeating plots. This year, we've had not one, but two chief engineers from two different series fake their deaths.
4. Mixing of alien and English wording. Whole paragraphs where everything that can create a context (for example, distance and time in BTRW) is an alien language, therefore meaning absolutely nothing to me. Nijil has worked for five telskaskgsea to create an engine that will travel three gezzewls in just two nequlps. Meaningless.
4a. Sub peeve: Conversely, aliens using human metaphors when there's no humans around. What, they have none of their own?
5. Most trivial peeve of all: italicizing certain words. Does anyone italicize the word 'vodka' or 'tsunami?' If you do, fine. But I've never seen it. So why are common alien terms that humans use in Trek get printed in italics? Why does Sisko order a raktajino with his plomeek soup instead of a raktajino and a plomeek soup? To highlight to newbies that they're eating an alien food? If they're reading science fiction, why feel the need to give it that connotation when it can be safely assumed that they're going to read about made up food?
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1. Entire stories devoted to settling off-camera fan debates i.e. Klingon foreheads and TOS technology. While the former admittedly turned out alright (on ENT), the latter in BTRW is just plain ridiculous. Let's keep this stuff in the forums please. I guess I should be glad there hasn't been as much furor about the appearance of TOS Romulans vs. TNG Romulans.
2. Dialogue. Far far too often, not only does the dialogue not sound like the characters, it doesn't sound like how anyone would talk. Just way too much exposition. And strangely, the exposition repeats plot points that just happened a few chapters back. I really wish writers would strive for more naturalism in the dialogue. Need to list your fleet of ships? Why not put a roster at the beginning of the chapter? Let's do that instead of having the captain rattle off the entire list in one sentence while we imagine Reed standing there checking his watch.
3. Repeating plots. This year, we've had not one, but two chief engineers from two different series fake their deaths.
4. Mixing of alien and English wording. Whole paragraphs where everything that can create a context (for example, distance and time in BTRW) is an alien language, therefore meaning absolutely nothing to me. Nijil has worked for five telskaskgsea to create an engine that will travel three gezzewls in just two nequlps. Meaningless.
4a. Sub peeve: Conversely, aliens using human metaphors when there's no humans around. What, they have none of their own?
5. Most trivial peeve of all: italicizing certain words. Does anyone italicize the word 'vodka' or 'tsunami?' If you do, fine. But I've never seen it. So why are common alien terms that humans use in Trek get printed in italics? Why does Sisko order a raktajino with his plomeek soup instead of a raktajino and a plomeek soup? To highlight to newbies that they're eating an alien food? If they're reading science fiction, why feel the need to give it that connotation when it can be safely assumed that they're going to read about made up food?
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Absolutely. It's certainly not restricted to Star Trek - many fantasy novels, even my favourites, have some ludicrous exchanges - but it can be quite glaring in some novels. The only authors I've found to really get dialogue spot on are Mangels & Martin.
Of course, it's a bit of a complication that Trek characters do not speak as people do IRL - that's a point often made in "behind the scenes" books by writers. The challenge seems to me to be more to make it sound like a Trek script than the sort of dialogue we normally encounter.
The italicising seems to be used for exactly the purpose you describe, to highlight the alien-ness of the food, drink, or distance measurement, but the reason I like it that way is because (especially for point 4/4a) I like worldbuilding and giving an insight into the way aliens talk, the measurements they have for distance/time etc. It makes the story more realistic to me, that these aliens are really aliens and not humans in bumpy forehead make-up. More of an effort should have been made in the TV to do this IMO.
But "vodka" and "tsunami" are loan words that have become accepted parts of English vocabulary through extended use (and the lack of prior English synonyms). So they're technically English words rather than foreign words and are thus not italicized. However, a word like tovarisch (comrade) would still be italicized in an English sentence because it's distinctly a non-English word. So it's got nothing to do with science fiction or alienness. It's a standard prose practice for non-English vocabulary.
True, a case could be made that the word raktajino is commonly enough used in the 24th century to qualify as a fully assimilated English word. (In fact, I very much doubt that's the original Klingon form of the word; it sounds to me as if some human hybridized some Klingon word, maybe raktaj, with "cappucino." The "-ino" suffix for a coffee-like beverage is too much of a coincidence, and it doesn't sound particularly Klingon either.) But these books aren't written in 24th-century English, they're written in 21st-century English and copyedited accordingly. And by the standards of 21st-century English, raktajino and plomeek are foreign vocabulary, so by standard typographic rules, they're italicized.
Well, that's a repetition of plot points, not plots themselves. The reason for, handling of, and resolution (or non-resolution) of the "deaths" of Trip and B'Elanna really have nothing in common.
(Not to mention that the faking of Trip's death happened two years ago, not this year.)
Dialogue is not meant to be a transcription of conversation, however. Well-crafted dialogue should be more concise than conversation, help to dramatize the situation, and move the story forward. The pregnant pauses, the recursive moments, and the inane chatter that make up everyday conversation among two (or more) people -- in other words, the things you call "naturalism" -- have no place in a novel's dialogue.
Robert J. Sawyer explains dialogue better than I can.
You don't want dialogue to be too unrealistic otherwise it is too clunky and doesn't serve the story. There is a balance to find between naturalism and the furtherment of drama in dialogue.Dialogue is not meant to be a transcription of conversation, however. Well-crafted dialogue should be more concise than conversation, help to dramatize the situation, and move the story forward. The pregnant pauses, the recursive moments, and the inane chatter that make up everyday conversation among two (or more) people -- in other words, the things you call "naturalism" -- have no place in a novel's dialogue.
Robert J. Sawyer explains dialogue better than I can.
I prefer characters talking in novels like real people would.
I can only disagree with this.
This has probably been mentioned in the last 15 or so pages of this thread, but my pet peeve(s):
-Starting off a novel on a very archaic world, with very alien names...(I've found those type of novels tend to be slow, or at least bog down whenever we focus on archaic worlds, or do a flashback scene an ancient times)...
-Something that has already been mentioned above, I think: Too much science, or people talking like they all have doctorates in science...(No matter their age or position).
This mostly happens in TNG and VOY books.
I'm reading TOS novels, and even ENT novels, where an order is given to 'do something' and it's done...(No science lesson). Or even if a character has an idea that solves a problem, we don't get an interlude on the history or a--for lack of a different saying--'science lesson' before the plan is implemented....
-Starting off a novel on a very archaic world, with very alien names...(I've found those type of novels tend to be slow, or at least bog down whenever we focus on archaic worlds, or do a flashback scene an ancient times)...
-Something that has already been mentioned above, I think: Too much science, or people talking like they all have doctorates in science...(No matter their age or position).
This mostly happens in TNG and VOY books.
I'm reading TOS novels, and even ENT novels, where an order is given to 'do something' and it's done...(No science lesson). Or even if a character has an idea that solves a problem, we don't get an interlude on the history or a--for lack of a different saying--'science lesson' before the plan is implemented....
Indeed. Some of us are often told it has no place in BBS posts as well.
No, you really wouldn't. You need to spend a day as an observer in a navy vessel's bridge, or a corporate boardroom, or a teachers' staffroom, and you'll hear naturalistic dialogues - and extraneous pauses, obscure in-jokes, technical language, contractions and random trivia - that simply do not progress a storyline with the speed needed to hold the attention of anyone without deeper insights into the workings of such environments.
Starfleet is made up of the best and the brightest, and its primary mission is science. A great many Starfleet personnel do, in fact, have doctorate-level knowledge in their respective fields.
If you say so...
^Did you read the Robert L. Sawyer piece linked to in post #288? That's a good explanation of why truly naturalistic speech is unpleasant to read and why it's better to find a middle ground between stilted, artificial speech and genuinely natural speech.
Storytelling isn't about exactly replicating reality, but about distilling it. Even "realistic" narrative and dialogue isn't exactly like real life, because it still needs to be coherent, comprehensible, and interesting, things that reality often isn't. The key is to create the impression of naturalistic speech while still streamlining it, cutting out all the "uh"s and stumbles and repetitions and clumsy usage that most listeners will mentally edit out anyway.
Storytelling isn't about exactly replicating reality, but about distilling it. Even "realistic" narrative and dialogue isn't exactly like real life, because it still needs to be coherent, comprehensible, and interesting, things that reality often isn't. The key is to create the impression of naturalistic speech while still streamlining it, cutting out all the "uh"s and stumbles and repetitions and clumsy usage that most listeners will mentally edit out anyway.
Yes, I read it. And his claim was that it was more work to read. I don't agree with that. Shakespeare is also more work to read. Are we going to rewrite it? And science fiction literature that makes heavy use of technobabble shouldn't be worried about speech being more work to read. I'm also wondeirng why he thinks that his "reader has to sit through hundreds of pages [in a novel]". You don't have to sit through it, you want sit through it, don't you?
And the suggestions he makes are very stereotypical. I only seem to agree with what he says about non-English speekers.
He also replaces "And then - pow! - I'm on the sidewalk." with "And then - pow! - he knocks me on my ass." for no apparent reason. Seems he doesn't trust the reader would be able to understand the meaning of it, although he also claims that everyone talks like that in real life.
When a character is nervous, excited (like the guy who just got "knocked on his ass") it's natural and realistic that he makes heavy used of contractions, inflections, pauses and repititions.
When a character is self secure, knows what he is talking about, there will be less pauses in his speech, what he says will be concise.
Speech is part of the characterization. Some people have a good quality of speech, others make heavy use of "uhms" and "aahs", some people talk very stiff. And dialogue only comes to live with stuff like this.
That's my opinion on it, and I stand by it.
^In principle, there's nothing wrong with what you say. The key is to know how much to apply it. As with most things in life, this isn't about a choice between two opposite absolutes, but is about finding a balance between too little and too much.
In real life, most people, even those who are "self-secure," have a lot of uhs and ums and stutters in their speech. I've read one or two exact, unedited transcriptions of interviews posted online by people who didn't understand editing, and they were arduous as hell to read. Yes, sure, if you want to express hesitancy, you want to include enough stammering to convey that impression to the reader, but that's not the same as exactly duplicating the way actual people talk.
The bottom line is, prose is not the same thing as spoken language. It's a distinct form of communication, with distinct rules and patterns. A slavishly exact translation of speech into prose is going to be very awkward prose, just as much as dialogue that strictly follows the rules of written language is going to be very awkward dialogue. The ideal is to structure your prose in a way that conveys the impression of natural speech while still being structurally and aesthetically viable as prose, since prose is what it ultimately is. You can sculpt a block of marble to look like a live human being, but it's still going to have the texture, color, and feel of marble. No medium can ever exactly duplicate the content of another, nor should it. Even when it conveys the essence of the thing it's simulating, it still retains its own distinctive qualities.
In real life, most people, even those who are "self-secure," have a lot of uhs and ums and stutters in their speech. I've read one or two exact, unedited transcriptions of interviews posted online by people who didn't understand editing, and they were arduous as hell to read. Yes, sure, if you want to express hesitancy, you want to include enough stammering to convey that impression to the reader, but that's not the same as exactly duplicating the way actual people talk.
The bottom line is, prose is not the same thing as spoken language. It's a distinct form of communication, with distinct rules and patterns. A slavishly exact translation of speech into prose is going to be very awkward prose, just as much as dialogue that strictly follows the rules of written language is going to be very awkward dialogue. The ideal is to structure your prose in a way that conveys the impression of natural speech while still being structurally and aesthetically viable as prose, since prose is what it ultimately is. You can sculpt a block of marble to look like a live human being, but it's still going to have the texture, color, and feel of marble. No medium can ever exactly duplicate the content of another, nor should it. Even when it conveys the essence of the thing it's simulating, it still retains its own distinctive qualities.
I just thought of another pet peeve -- something that seems common in Trek lit.
It's the use of some common English noun along with an alien-sounding modifier, in place of creating a wholly alien name for something.
The prototypical example comes from "Where No Man.." when Mitchell hands Dehner what is clearly a papaya, but calls it a "Kaferian apple."
I find usages like "Tarkalian Tea" annoying. Why not make up an entirely alien word? Raktajino would be infinitely less interesting if it was simply called "Klingon coffee."
It sometimes feels like it's done deliberately, to create a warm familiarity when introducing something alien. Look! Worf may be a big, angry alien, but he drinks Klingon coffee! So he's just like us! Only a nasty, nasty alien would drink something called raktajino.
It sometimes comes across just a bit lazy -- it saves having to drop an infobomb somewhere indicating "raktajino is a lot like coffee, only stronger" if you just call it "Klingon coffee" in the first place. (This is a fictitious example I just made up -- nobody has ever referred to raktajino as "Klingon coffee," as far as I know.)
I can't come up with any examples off the top of my head, and it's not a big enough deal to actually force me over to the bookcase to look some up, but I have the memory of growing impatient with the practice in some recent Treklit titles.
I want to point out that it's not a deal-breaker by any stretch, just something I find mildly annoying when overused.
It's the use of some common English noun along with an alien-sounding modifier, in place of creating a wholly alien name for something.
The prototypical example comes from "Where No Man.." when Mitchell hands Dehner what is clearly a papaya, but calls it a "Kaferian apple."
I find usages like "Tarkalian Tea" annoying. Why not make up an entirely alien word? Raktajino would be infinitely less interesting if it was simply called "Klingon coffee."
It sometimes feels like it's done deliberately, to create a warm familiarity when introducing something alien. Look! Worf may be a big, angry alien, but he drinks Klingon coffee! So he's just like us! Only a nasty, nasty alien would drink something called raktajino.
It sometimes comes across just a bit lazy -- it saves having to drop an infobomb somewhere indicating "raktajino is a lot like coffee, only stronger" if you just call it "Klingon coffee" in the first place. (This is a fictitious example I just made up -- nobody has ever referred to raktajino as "Klingon coffee," as far as I know.)
I can't come up with any examples off the top of my head, and it's not a big enough deal to actually force me over to the bookcase to look some up, but I have the memory of growing impatient with the practice in some recent Treklit titles.
I want to point out that it's not a deal-breaker by any stretch, just something I find mildly annoying when overused.
That's an ironic example, since Worf's drink of choice is usually prune juice, and it's the Human/Trill characters on DS9 who generally drink the Klingon stuff.It sometimes feels like it's done deliberately, to create a warm familiarity when introducing something alien. Look! Worf may be a big, angry alien, but he drinks Klingon coffee! So he's just like us! Only a nasty, nasty alien would drink something called raktajino.
IIRC, someone on DS9 mentioned needing "something a lot stronger than Klingon coffee" when referring to it...
