Common First Author Mistakes - What are they, and are there SF speficic ones? - rec.arts.sf.written

Message from discussion Common First Author Mistakes - What are they, and are there SF speficic ones?

Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)

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More options Jul 4, 7:58 pm

Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written

From: "Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)" <seaw...@sgeinc.invalid.com>

Date: Fri, 04 Jul 2008 10:58:19 -0400

Local: Fri, Jul 4 2008 7:58 pm

Subject: Re: Common First Author Mistakes - What are they, and are there SF speficic ones?

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Dorothy J Heydt wrote:
> In article <b3fb00d6-b38e-4f61-a13f-665e545fa...@m73g2000hsh.googlegroups.com>,
> <phdu...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> I was reading one of the Locus First Novel threads, and LWE said:

>> <i>I can report that
>> at least one person I trust says it's got all your standard
>> first-novel problems and isn't very good.</i>

>> And I was wondering, what are these problems? The only one I can
>> think of is the 'kitchen sink' problem, where every cool idea the
>> author's ever had shows up in one book, but I'm sure there's more.
>> Are there any sfnal specific first novel problems?

> Mary-Sue-ism, probably, in which the author models her*
> protagonist on herself* and paints her* much larger than life.

> E.g.,

> http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20051212

> Deus ex machina is also a possibility....
> *Or if masculine, it's a "Barry Stu."

I've usually seen "Marty Stu", actually.

Another common first author mistake is "overkill" in the background.
Sort of related to the Kitchen Sink problem, the author in this case is
afraid that the reader may miss some aspect of the background the author
thinks is important, and ends up with thousands of words of infodump and
As You Know Bobbing that turn out not to be really needed.

Some first authors have the opposite problem: things that are obvious
to them, they assume are obvious to the reader, and thus critical,
need-to-know information... isn't there.

--
Sea Wasp
/^\
;;;
Live Journal: http://seawasp.livejournal.com

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