Do you know the kind of stories I'm talking about? They are the novels that are exciting to begin, but by the halfway point, though you like the characters and have no urge to wall-bang, you feel like you know exactly what is going to happen from now on. It's inevitable, even within the inevitable confines of commercial fiction. Sure we know the hero and heroine are going to wind up together, justice will be served and so forth, but in these books, there are no surprises left as to HOW.

These are the novels that I skim. It takes me about ten minutes to go through the second half and I'm on to the next book.

I'm a long-term voracious reader, and maybe this problem is more common for people like me, but still, there's many a book that can grab me from one word to the next. One series I've continued to read every word of recently is the Final Prophecy (or Nightkeepers) series by Jessica Andersen. No skimming there! And I read three of them almost back to back last month.

The worst thing is if I'm skimming a new-to-me author's book, I'm probably not going to give them a second chance. It doesn't mean they aren't a good writer, they just aren't, what? Exciting enough?

This is a writing problem I'd like to understand better. Perhaps it is simply a variant of the good old sagging middle problem.

 

What did you think of this article?

Liked
Disliked
No Opinion