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The failure to engage with its own premise is one of my most frequent frustrations with stories. If you read this DW, you have encounter innumerable posts in which I complain that the book about about the flying horse only has the horse fly once and off-page, or that the book about tiny people mostly keeps them in a tiny house without forcing them to deal with the larger world or detailing what it's like to live in a tiny house, or that the memoir about a woman who cooks every recipe in Julia Child's cookbook is 20% cooking and 80% her boring, ordinary home life.
I'm not talking so much about failure to worldbuild or failure to fill the book with well-researched details, though depending on what the premise is, that can be a part of it. I mean shying away from the most central and resonant parts of whatever the story is.
For instance, Dorothy Gilman's Mrs. Pollifax Pursued has Mrs. Pollifax, the unlikely spy, forced to take refuge in a carnival, where she must uncover a murderous mole. It has lots of well-researched carnival details, so that's not a problem. But it still struck me as failing to fully engage with its own premise.
Almost immediately upon arriving at the carnival, its owner, who knows her secret identity, suggests that she pose as a fortune-teller. I was very excited by this idea, as it would force Mrs. Pollifax to be a part of the carnival, raise the stakes, provide a ton of suspense, offer chances for both drama and humor, be emotionally revealing for both her and the people whose fortunes she tells, and make her grapple with ethical issues.
Mrs. Pollifax-- who in earlier books has done things like fly a helicopter by guesswork-- says this will be too difficult. Instead, she poses as a reporter doing a story on the carnival. Of all the ways to engage with the premise of "elderly spy infiltrates carnival," that is the most premise-eliding way to do it. She's an outsider posing as... a different kind of outsider. She's never forced to step into the shoes of the carnival people. As a result, the book has carnival details, but not the carnival soul the premise promised.
Sholio and I have been talking about this for a while, and she put up a post on it.
As an experiment, I looked at the first page of my DW filtered by book review, to see how often engaging or not engaging with a premise came up in my reviews of the books I read. Turns out, a lot:
Dead and Buried, by Barbara Hambly. The book that is ostensibly about Hannibal's past coming back to haunt him has less Hannibal than multiple other books in the series.
Danny Dunn and the Automatic House, by Jay Williams. Not enough automatic house - it's really only in the last quarter or so.
And, by the same method, it's so damn satisfying when books DO lean into their premise:
Bones of the Earth, by Michael Swanwick. Promises dinosaurs and time traveling paleontologists, provides exactly that and also a very emotionally resonant look at the pursuit of knowledge in the face of impermanence, which is central to paleontology.
Money Shot, by Christa Faust. Noir suspense about a porn actress on the run is centrally about the porn industry and the heroine's understanding of the intersections of money, sex, and power.
Witch in the House, by Ruth Chew. It is in fact about having an upside-down witch in the house.
Danny Dunn and the Smallifying Machine. Immensely satisfying book that is all about being smallified.
I'm not talking so much about failure to worldbuild or failure to fill the book with well-researched details, though depending on what the premise is, that can be a part of it. I mean shying away from the most central and resonant parts of whatever the story is.
For instance, Dorothy Gilman's Mrs. Pollifax Pursued has Mrs. Pollifax, the unlikely spy, forced to take refuge in a carnival, where she must uncover a murderous mole. It has lots of well-researched carnival details, so that's not a problem. But it still struck me as failing to fully engage with its own premise.
Almost immediately upon arriving at the carnival, its owner, who knows her secret identity, suggests that she pose as a fortune-teller. I was very excited by this idea, as it would force Mrs. Pollifax to be a part of the carnival, raise the stakes, provide a ton of suspense, offer chances for both drama and humor, be emotionally revealing for both her and the people whose fortunes she tells, and make her grapple with ethical issues.
Mrs. Pollifax-- who in earlier books has done things like fly a helicopter by guesswork-- says this will be too difficult. Instead, she poses as a reporter doing a story on the carnival. Of all the ways to engage with the premise of "elderly spy infiltrates carnival," that is the most premise-eliding way to do it. She's an outsider posing as... a different kind of outsider. She's never forced to step into the shoes of the carnival people. As a result, the book has carnival details, but not the carnival soul the premise promised.
Sholio and I have been talking about this for a while, and she put up a post on it.
As an experiment, I looked at the first page of my DW filtered by book review, to see how often engaging or not engaging with a premise came up in my reviews of the books I read. Turns out, a lot:
Dead and Buried, by Barbara Hambly. The book that is ostensibly about Hannibal's past coming back to haunt him has less Hannibal than multiple other books in the series.
Danny Dunn and the Automatic House, by Jay Williams. Not enough automatic house - it's really only in the last quarter or so.
And, by the same method, it's so damn satisfying when books DO lean into their premise:
Bones of the Earth, by Michael Swanwick. Promises dinosaurs and time traveling paleontologists, provides exactly that and also a very emotionally resonant look at the pursuit of knowledge in the face of impermanence, which is central to paleontology.
Money Shot, by Christa Faust. Noir suspense about a porn actress on the run is centrally about the porn industry and the heroine's understanding of the intersections of money, sex, and power.
Witch in the House, by Ruth Chew. It is in fact about having an upside-down witch in the house.
Danny Dunn and the Smallifying Machine. Immensely satisfying book that is all about being smallified.
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