When I read, I read for enjoyment and the craft of writing. In my "Reading While Writing" blog posts, I list and discuss the lessons I feel each book contained for me. Feel free to follow along and add your own lessons learned :)I never thought I'd say this...but I think I'd rather watch the movie than finish reading the book. I suffered past page 209 and I'm bored. I just can't stomach it anymore.
Writing craft lesson learned?
Too much of a 'new' thing is a bad thing.
At first, the new, interesting writing style of The Time Traveler's Wife was just that, interesting. Fresh. Something that I thought was well used for the first chapter. The jumbled dialogue being case in point. The fine, minute details running past like a stock market ticker, a second. But chapter after chapter after chapter. I just wanted it to streamline out into a more normal flow of character interaction and action.
And the minutia? Oh, dear lord. I might be the only person who feels this way, but that's okay with me. I'd rather watch the movie - which probably edits out about 60% of what's in the book - so I can just see the story and enjoy it. The book, to me, is not very enjoyable. Yes, it's a new, innovative idea. But that's about where I draw the line.
Lesson to take away?
If you want to dabble in something new - a new form of dialouge or flow or what have you - do it. Pave the way! But don't over do it. Don't fill every living page with it. Give a reader a break! Shed over to something familiar once in a while. Do it for movement, for action. Please don't do it on every page. It's not new and exciting anymore if you do it like that. It gets boring. Fast.
I'm bored. I'm done. I'm not at all interested in finishing it. How sad is that. Thankfully it's a library book.
