I’ve been reading a lot of Star Trek genre fiction lately. Not internet fan fiction, dear god not that; actual published fiction, that an editor reviewed and decided was worth putting to paper.
Doing this sort of thing can lead you to some pleasantly competent and entertaining pieces of fiction, but at times it can be like walking through an H.P. Lovecraft novel; a dangerous enterprise which must at all times be bound by obsessive caution and unwavering respect for certain rules, lest your sanity be brutally flensed away by the boundless, nameless horrors surrounding you.
There are things to watch for, sure signs that you have ventured into the abyss of hack pulpery that composes the bulk of commercial genre fiction. Beware!
1. Familiar Faces Factor
All of the main characters are cherry-picked from various shows. There isn’t any real reason for all of these people to be hanging out together, except that they all have their fanbases and surely someone wants to see Barclay and Quark and Yeoman Rand have a bunch of scenes together, right?
Be wary of any plot summary whose main cast is composed of characters from 3 or more different series. Even worse if at least one of those series doesn’t overlap in time at all with any of the others.
2. Cameo Syndrome
The events of the novel are peppered with walk-on cameos by yet more notable franchise characters who have no reason to be there, and exist for no reason beyond to name-drop and then shuffle off to whatever ignomy they were previously engaged in.
The stand-out example for me of this was the novel about Riker’s dad, on the lam from a murder investigation (or a murder attempt against him, I honestly can’t remember), who coincidentally finds himself in a hospital right when Ben Sisko’s son is being born and of course they know each other and Ben gives Riker’s dad a helping hand and then is never mentioned again. This drives me crazy because it makes the universe feel like 30 people in a one horse town who keep bumping into each other.
3. The Law of Continuity of Trivial Plot Elements
The plot, if indeed it can be referred to as such, will all end up tying into the plot of a forgettable one-off episode of The Next Generation somehow. Everyone will be involved in the creation or consequences of a problem which was barely important enough to get us through 45 minutes of serial television. Nothing happens that doesn’t end up impacting Jean Luc Picard’s day (or, God help us, Janeway’s day) somewhere up the road.
Doing this sort of thing can lead you to some pleasantly competent and entertaining pieces of fiction, but at times it can be like walking through an H.P. Lovecraft novel; a dangerous enterprise which must at all times be bound by obsessive caution and unwavering respect for certain rules, lest your sanity be brutally flensed away by the boundless, nameless horrors surrounding you.
There are things to watch for, sure signs that you have ventured into the abyss of hack pulpery that composes the bulk of commercial genre fiction. Beware!
1. Familiar Faces Factor
All of the main characters are cherry-picked from various shows. There isn’t any real reason for all of these people to be hanging out together, except that they all have their fanbases and surely someone wants to see Barclay and Quark and Yeoman Rand have a bunch of scenes together, right?
Be wary of any plot summary whose main cast is composed of characters from 3 or more different series. Even worse if at least one of those series doesn’t overlap in time at all with any of the others.
2. Cameo Syndrome
The events of the novel are peppered with walk-on cameos by yet more notable franchise characters who have no reason to be there, and exist for no reason beyond to name-drop and then shuffle off to whatever ignomy they were previously engaged in.
The stand-out example for me of this was the novel about Riker’s dad, on the lam from a murder investigation (or a murder attempt against him, I honestly can’t remember), who coincidentally finds himself in a hospital right when Ben Sisko’s son is being born and of course they know each other and Ben gives Riker’s dad a helping hand and then is never mentioned again. This drives me crazy because it makes the universe feel like 30 people in a one horse town who keep bumping into each other.
3. The Law of Continuity of Trivial Plot Elements
The plot, if indeed it can be referred to as such, will all end up tying into the plot of a forgettable one-off episode of The Next Generation somehow. Everyone will be involved in the creation or consequences of a problem which was barely important enough to get us through 45 minutes of serial television. Nothing happens that doesn’t end up impacting Jean Luc Picard’s day (or, God help us, Janeway’s day) somewhere up the road.
The warning sign for this hackery is the moment when you realize that the alien or macguffin or waveform sounds kinda like something that Data had to exposit about in an episode that you kind of remember. When done well, you the educated reader connect the dots of an elegant little understated connection in a way that informs everything else that happens, and then feel clever; but usually you are beaten over the head with the connections between the forgettable novel you're reading and a mediocre filler episode that honestly you could have lived without remembering.
4. Plotting of Convenience
This is a problem for all bad fiction but for some reason it’s endemic to bad genre fiction. Things happen for no good reason beyond the plot requiring it to happen. Motivation becomes murky. In the best case scenario you actually get one character asking another why they did/are doing something and the, for lack of a better term let's call them the protagonist, say they don’t know; their own motivations are murky and mysterious to them, and they haven’t quite figured it out yet, but it’s important to them somehow.
Always remember the three key elements of plot, and hope that the writer did too.
5. The Awkward Recap
This isn’t necessarily the writer’s fault, but it makes the list regardless. In any serialized piece of genre fiction the first 2-3 chapters will be shot through with summaries and recaps of the previous novel, which of course you just finished. Whenever a character reflects about that time that they arrived on the starship and all the things that happened, start skipping pages. If they handle this exposition by telling someone else about it, even though they both already know about it, find something else to read.
The Awkward Recap is like taking off a wetsuit; there’s no elegant way to do it, and it probably has to happen, but that's no reason not to get it out of the way as quickly as possible so we can all start drinking.
6. Show Don’t Tell Squared
Yet another key element of hack fiction everywhere. Two characters are talking and a third enters, and the writer actually writes, "Person A then brought person B up to speed on everything that had happened".
One of the most fundamental rules of writing is, Show, don’t tell. How much worse is it to tell about telling? If it’s not important enough to write it, don’t write about it either.
For a convenient overview of all of these at once, read this plot summary:
http://memory-beta.wikia.com/wiki/Indistinguishable_From_Magic
5. The Awkward Recap
This isn’t necessarily the writer’s fault, but it makes the list regardless. In any serialized piece of genre fiction the first 2-3 chapters will be shot through with summaries and recaps of the previous novel, which of course you just finished. Whenever a character reflects about that time that they arrived on the starship and all the things that happened, start skipping pages. If they handle this exposition by telling someone else about it, even though they both already know about it, find something else to read.
The Awkward Recap is like taking off a wetsuit; there’s no elegant way to do it, and it probably has to happen, but that's no reason not to get it out of the way as quickly as possible so we can all start drinking.
6. Show Don’t Tell Squared
Yet another key element of hack fiction everywhere. Two characters are talking and a third enters, and the writer actually writes, "Person A then brought person B up to speed on everything that had happened".
One of the most fundamental rules of writing is, Show, don’t tell. How much worse is it to tell about telling? If it’s not important enough to write it, don’t write about it either.
For a convenient overview of all of these at once, read this plot summary:
http://memory-beta.wikia.com/wiki/Indistinguishable_From_Magic
I mean Jesus.
On the other hand, Star Trek: Vanguard is really good. The ones by David Mack in particular. He breaks rule # 5 but I doubt he had any option there, and the writing is clever and engaging. Recommended.
1 comment:
Well I guess I'll have to give up on my great idea to write a novel that explains the creation of the Omega Particle *and* the rift that brings the Enterprise-C into the Enterprise-D's timeline in one.
Geez, and it was going to have an Admiral Paris when he was an Ensign.
And, of course, I'm kidding... since I'm sure that novel already exists.
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