Some characters have a lot of sex

This is pretty incontrovertible, but I'm thinking specifically of fiction here. The thought is prompted by Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy, which I recently finished. Before he became bestselling novelist, Larsson was also a crusading journalist. His protagonist, Blomqvist, is also a crusading journalist. Blomqvist is a rumpled middle-aged man, beginning to run to seed (hey, aren't we all?). This doesn't stop every bloody woman in the trilogy finding him devastatingly attractive: most of them end up sleeping with him. The age range of his conquests runs the gamut of early twenties to early sixties, and he even gets a complaisant cuckold to give a nod of approval to his relationship with a long-term mistress. There's clearly a strong element of wish-fulfilment here (or, less plausibly, autobiography). Larsson no doubt had a lot of fun in this aspect of the trilogy but as a reader I found it somewhat irritating. Might the series not have read better if somewhere in Scandinavia there was a woman who found Blomqvist a seedy lecher? I enjoyed the series (although I found each book progressively less interesting) but this rather crass insertion of the author* did jar.

It's something we all as writers need to be aware of; it's very easy to put a "Mary-Sue" in your novel. One of my readers noted that all the women in The Last Free City are implausibly beautiful (although even my protagonist, a notorious womaniser, doesn't sleep with all of them). There's a balancing act between creating an attractive fiction, the expectations of your genre and what you can pull off in the way of rounded characterisation. The writer needs to have a degree of empathy, of identification, with all his characters; there is a real risk of becoming too close to the protagonist. There are several amusing online tests to determine of your main character is a Mary-Sue, but if you're a heterosexual male the only questions you need to ask are: "Are woman attracted to your protagonist as a matter of course?" and "Does he sleep with most of his female acquaintance over the course of the novel?". If the answer to both is "yes", you probably have a Mary-Sue on your hands.

The Millennium Trilogy, of course, is one of the publishing success stories of the decade, but what makes the books quirky and distinctive is Blomqvist's co-protagonist, Lisbeth Salander, the emotionally-damaged computer hacker. Salander is as implausible (in a different direction) as Blomqvist, but she is such great fun that the reader embraces the implausibility.

My piece of advice for today is this; if you're going to put yourself in your novel (not necessarily a disaster), try to make sure you don't sleep with too many more people than you might in real life.

* "Mary-Sue" is the term often used

Originality

There comes a time when you've read so much fiction that every new book you pick up reminds you of something else. (If it's a Patricia Cornwell book, that "something" is usually her previous book). It's not necessarily a bad thing: there are only so many things to write about, and only so many ways of telling the story. Attempts to disguise this with innovative narrative stances often end badly. ("Hey, let's tell the story in second person plural!"*).

A couple of weeks ago I noted the similarities between Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and Barbara Vine's Asta's Book. I had a similar experience reading AS Byatt's The Children's Book, a thoroughly researched, beautifully written study of middle-class family life in the late Victorian and Edwardian period. It reminded me of Howard Spring, a writer who is all but forgotten today, although a best-seller in his time (the 1930s through to the mid-60s). In terms of period, evocative setting, ensemble cast, the melancholy unfolding of the generations and the exploration of the damage artists can inflict on their families, a synopsis of The Children's Book would be all but indistinguishable from There Is No Armour or These Lovers Fled Away. Byatt is more detached in her voice, where Spring has more narrative drive. As a story-teller, I prefer Spring; Byatt I find easier to admire than love. Spring was born in 1885, and so writes of a period he remembers, while Byatt comes from a later generation. With sometimes lengthy , if usually absorbing, disgressions on women's suffrage, public museums and anarchy, The Children's Book sometimes has something of the lamp, but Byatt rises to the arbitrary horror of the First World War.

A quick trawl around Amazon suggests that all Spring's work is out of print now, but if you haven't read him I'd recommend picking up a second-hand edition of just about any of his books: These Lovers Fled Away, Fame is the Spur and My Son, My Son! are all good places to start. Spring writes old-fashioned stories, unobtrusively plotted with vivid characterisation.

Sometimes it's good to be reminded of things you haven't read for years.

*I know Jeffrey Eugenides pulled this off in The Virgin Suicides, but even here I'm not sure it's because of or in spite of the narrative choice).

Writers' Tics

We all, as writers, have phrases or pieces of stage business which unconciously we use to excess. (After an early draft of Dragonchaser I was grateful to a reader who observed that I used the phrase "by no means" with irksome regularity). Writers are generally the worst at spotting their own comfort blankets. Used sparingly, they can be regarded as motifs, but they can become insidious habits with ease.

One of the oddest I've come across is in Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy. I've now read the first two books (the second good, but not exceptional) and, punctuating seemingly almost every break in the action, the character will pause and make coffee (invariably a thermos*) and a sandwich. It may be a bout of strenuous sex, a boardroom confrontation or a fist-fight with the villain; a spot of computer hacking maybe. Once it's over, on goes the coffee maker and out come the sandwiches. (The editor is as much, maybe more, to blame as the writer for letting this get into print). Thinking is difficult to dramatise, but in detective novels in particular, characters need time to reflect as they ponder clues and revelations; the writer needs to give the character something to do (mine, I suspect, sip from a goblet rather too often) while all the processing is taking place.

Editors have an important role in ensuring variety here; they're much more likely to notice the jar. The version of The Dog of the North submitted to Macmillan had two necessary eavesdropping scenes in relatively close proximity. I didn't help the reader by setting them both in the same place. Will, my editor, noted that this didn't work, and I moved the location of the second one.

What other writerly tics have the rest of you noticed?


*is this a translation issue? Or do Swedes really make a flask of coffee even when it's for immediate consumption?