Libraries will get you through a time of no money...

[jhetley]

...better than money will get you through a time of no libraries.

Off to the library today, dump an armful of dead books and prowl around for sexy new ones. Wife and I work a different library rotation, so I'm still reading one of hers (Jasper Fforde's new "Jack Sprat" series, THE BIG OVER EASY.) I'm afraid I gave up on one of mine, Ken MacLeod, because I just wasn't interested in the characters. Please, writer-people, spend as much time on your characters as you do on the world-building and the gee-whiz.

Still chilly, barely above freezing, still windy. I'm afraid that spring looks depressingly like winter around here.

And Fat Wizard has finally figured something out. Took him long enough. Problem is, now he's going to do something stupid about it. I generally allow my characters _one_ (1) stupid per book. Too many, and I get irritated. If you end up as a character some time, don't irritate your author. It makes us do nasty things to you in revenge.

Comments

[starcat-jewel.livejournal.com]

One stupid is understandable and forgivable; everyone has the occasional brain-fart. Too many, and the reader will get irritated... or, at least, this reader will; apparently there's a sizable subset of readers who must enjoy mind-numbingly stupid characters, given the number of them I've been encountering lately.

And if cardboard characters are the thing that will make me quit reading a book fastest, characters I keep wanting to smack upside the head run a close second. I get enough of that shit in real life, I don't need more of it in my fiction, TYVM.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

>apparently there's a sizable subset of readers
>who must enjoy mind-numbingly stupid characters

In my less charitable moments, I tell myself that such readers need to be able to look down on _somebody_...

[starcat-jewel.livejournal.com]

You and me both. And I suspect that there's considerable overlap between those readers and the audience for "reality TV", for exactly the same reason.

Hmmm... new hypothesis. There are 2 basic reactions to seeing a really stupid fictional protagonist:

1) Schadenfreude -- "Nyah-nyah, I'm smarter than that!"
2) Revulsion -- "Yeesh, I'm supposed to identify with that?"

Why some people have one and some the other, or whether and how they mix, would probably be a good sociological study for somebody.

[jhetley.livejournal.com]

I'd suggest the study to Younger Son for his PhD thesis, but he's working on the psychology and physiology of visual perception. AKA "Why do certain angles of plaid look weird?"

[mindyklasky.livejournal.com]

I have the money/libraries thing on an ALA bookmark, posted on my refrigerator door. It hasn't given me the courage to quit the day-job yet, but it helped when I changed from lawyering to library-ing :-)