By Michael Howard
Over the past couple years I have read and reviewed dozens of self-published books, most of them novels. As you can probably imagine, the quality of the writing ranges from totally incompetent to quite good. The majority fit into the middle of that spectrum. Many of the novels I review begin on a promising note, only to fall apart halfway through (sometimes sooner). Others slowly gather momentum but, for varying reasons, ultimately fail to deliver what Herman Melville called “the shock of recognition”—the moment when you realize you’re in the presence of exceptional writing.
Let’s consider those reasons now, or a few of them anyway.
Inessential dialogue
Crafting good dialogue is a tricky business. A lot of self-published novelists make the mistake of believing that to write natural and plausible dialogue is enough. They seem to work under the assumption that, as long you’ve got your characters talking in ways that are snappy and convincing and not stilted, you can show them chatting with each other as much as you like.
Of course, achieving a sense of fluency in your dialogue is only half the battle. Dialogue has to serve a purpose: moving the plot along, developing characters, foreshadowing a future event, detailing the setting, anything. Too many of the novels I review contain long stretches of dialogue that have no narrative function at all.
This is particularly fatal to genre fiction because it brings the plot to a screeching halt. Literary fiction leaves more space for meandering, but it can just as easily be ruined by extraneous scenes of dialogue, especially when they recur throughout the book.
Shallow characterizations
Here we have one of the cardinal sins of fiction writing. It’s also one of the most understandable. Building lifelike characters that are interesting and original from scratch is, to put it mildly, demanding work. It’s no less demanding to successfully transfer a real-life personality onto the pages of a novel. The difficulty involved is reflected in shallow, one-dimensional characters—a second fault common to self-published novels.
In thrillers and crime novels—or any story that has “bad guys”—this usually takes the form of black-and-white characterizations. The villains are often cartoonishly nefarious, while the protagonists are overly sympathetic. Such books, presenting a dualistic moral universe without subtlety or ambiguity, are dead in the water.
With regard to literary fiction, character is almost everything. Most self-published novelists are conscious of this and typically take great care to give their main characters depth. The key word there is “main.” In their efforts to flesh out their heroes, they tend to shortchange everyone else. The result is a sort of lopsided cast of characters, most of whom only have one or two traits.
Uneven pacing
Of the three mistakes discussed here, this one is the easiest to fix. Whereas the ability to invent original characters and write engaging dialogue is largely innate, we can learn, or be taught, how to pace a story. I’m not saying that it’s easy. It isn’t, which is why self-published novels are frequently marred by choppy pacing.
Again, literary fiction has more latitude than genre fiction here. A mystery novel can’t succeed if its narrative flow is interrupted by digressive or static passages that don’t propel the story forward. With that said, more than a few literary novels I’ve reviewed have had pacing issues that were severe enough to bog the whole story down.
Part of the issue is not recognizing that certain aspects of the narrative can and should be glossed over. Not every minor event deserves its own scene; for the sake of efficiency, some have to take place off stage. A brief reference to it later is sufficient to bring the reader up to speed.
To sum up
When it comes to dialogue, unless you’re Tennessee Williams, less is more. Regarding characterization, more is almost always better. As for pacing: To include (a scene), or not to include, that is the question—that many self-published novelists get wrong.
Bio: Michael Howard’s journalism, essays, reviews, and short fiction have appeared in a wide variety of print and digital publications. He lives in Vietnam.
