I've just come back from a business trip, starting in Brussels and moving on to Sweden. Given there was quite a lot of travelling involved, I thought I'd download a nice long novel onto the Kindle. So I went for 'Game of Thrones' having neither read the books nor seen the TV series.

But I found the first 100 or so pages heavy going, stodgy in fact. It was well-written, prose-wise, but suffered from Fantasy-itis, i.e. too many, and mostly flat, characters; a world mostly too Euro-centric; po-faced dialogue and absolutely no humour (other than as 'told' by the author). It was boring, in short. However, finding myself in a B&B in a forest miles from the nearest bar and with no TV, I carried on. Then, as the book moved towards the third-way part, a strange thing happened: the characters started to grip, and some really powerful, emotional, scenes appeared. I found myself thinking, "Oh, this is very good," and enjoying that momentum you feel when a book is really clicking into gear. (Having said that, I found that the next third slowed down again - but presumably will get back into gear also.)

Now, I tend to believe that good writing means you don't bore the audience. But here I can't help feel that the boring beginning somehow makes the emotional stuff when it comes that much more effective. Yes, there's also the fact that with all those pages, he has time to build the characters, too. But the contrast between plodding along for so long, then suddenly sucker-punching the reader with powerful emotion is very effective.

So, I'm not quite sure what I'm raising as an issue here, but I think it's do with contrast. Most publishers, I'm sure, would not advocate that a writer deliberately produce lengthy, stodgy writing, just to make the exciting bits when they come even more so. Especially not at the start of a book. But maybe 'Game of Thrones' would have been less effective if it had started with a few bangs and crashes?

So, I'm not quite sure what I'm raising as an issue here, but I think it's do with contrast.

Contrast? Absolutely. In fact, for me, lack of variation, as in action action action action, can become boring even if its components aren't. So contrast between fast and slow, exciting and reflective or involved and detached is fine. But between boring and not-boring - surely never.

In this particular case, I bet you stuck with it out of the particular interest of Terry Edge the writer in what the author was doing, whereas for other readers 'heavy-going' might more likely have translated into 'stop here'.

I found the first 100 or so pages heavy going, stodgy in fact.

So many books I read, in particular women's fiction, are like this.

Recently I was advised to read a Dorothy Koomson book and, goodness, was it difficult to get going and what a prickly MC! For some reason I get the feeling that the author's traits are in that character - don't ask me why. But, 200 pages in, I found I was becoming absorbed. Saying that 400 pages in, it's still a put-down book in the sense it doesn't stay with me in the aftermath of reading a few chapters.

I've read several books like that recently, by well-known authors I was advised to read because 'they write like you'. Maybe that's a line for Gaius' thread in the lounge!

But, I'm coming to the conclusion that once authors become known, they don't feel the same sense of needing to draw the reader in from the outset.

Take an early Kate Morton and I'm hooked. Take a later one and I'm, whatever at the start. Ditto with other good women's fiction writers.

I bet you stuck with it out of the particular interest of Terry Edge the writer in what the author was doing

I do this. It's definitely the reason why I keep going for so many books.

It's a really interesting point, Terry. I think novels today are structured to open at a lick, not a slow burn.

I find some good novels take a while to heat up and then cool down too slowly at the end (Poisonwood Bible - essentially great but stodgy opening and last 1/5 is barely needed. Or A Town Like Alice which falls apart as soon as they start to build a town like Alice. If it stopped when they got there it would be red hot.

But my favourite novels grip from page one and don't stop. That has to be to do with voice, and is bound to be subjective.

I've noticed with crime writers like Sue Grafton there are always some very cosy passages. In every novel Warshawski cleans her tiny ship-styled flat and has cakes with her baker neighbour. That's effective contrast to the gun toting breaking and entering stuff that takes up the bulk of the story. But they don't last long. She is a mistress of pace.

In this particular case, I bet you stuck with it out of the particular interest of Terry Edge the writer in what the author was doing, whereas for other readers 'heavy-going' might more likely have translated into 'stop here'.

You may be right. If the prose had been bad, I would definitely have stopped. But because I could see the author had skill and the fact 'Game of Thrones' is a widely loved novel made me curious to see exactly why.

Contrast? Absolutely. In fact, for me, lack of variation, as in action action action action, can become boring even if its components aren't. So contrast between fast and slow, exciting and reflective or involved and detached is fine. But between boring and not-boring - surely never.

Well, I tend to agree. And certainly, editors seem to treat my stuff with that approach. For instance, I'm just re-writing a short story now because the magazine's editor feels there is two much info-dumping about half way through. Which I didn't disagree with but compared with some Fantasy writers' style, it's just a pin-prick. So, maybe an element here is the way you notify your intent via your style. I write very sparse, so perhaps any stodge with me is more noticeable.

But, yes, I would say 'never' and yet 'Game of Thrones' proves me wrong. Having said that, I've no doubt many of its fans didn't find the opening boring.

But, I'm coming to the conclusion that once authors become known, they don't feel the same sense of needing to draw the reader in from the outset.

Oh, yes, I think this could be a topic in itself. It's certainly true in SF/Fantasy short fiction (and probably long, too). Well known authors can start their stories anyway they like and therefore play with contrast. While less-well knowns have to play by all the 'rules', e.g. establish character-problem-setting in the first para or two.

But my favourite novels grip from page one and don't stop. That has to be to do with voice, and is bound to be subjective.

I agree, although I'm not sure that voice - great voice, at any rate - is really that subjective. But if it has no voice, a novel that starts with flat-out action and carries on that way almost always runs out of (character) steam. I seem to have stopped reading a lot of modern YA novels like this recently, e.g. 'Hush' and 'Incarceron'.

I think it's important to distinguish between "boring" and "not action-packed", because they're very, very different. Other things than action can grip - voice, as Cherys says - or a situation which is so unstable that the fact that nothing's happened YET doesn't stop us reading on furiously, because it will.

It's about tension, in other words, not action.

I think it's often a case, though, that it's just the product of the writer "writing their way in" - both going on too long with the world-building, while they're working it out, and failing to fish out the "telling" which is the first stage, the scaffolding for building the real story... Only it never gets taken down. It's a failure of editing by the writer (and subsequently any editors) in other words, rather than of the writing.

Huge apologies - feel free to skip - but I discussed this in my PhD, because A S Byatt admits that she herself was often bored by writing the modern part of Possession, and isn't surprised if readers are bored too:

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In her study of Byatt’s work, the critic Christien Franken relates that

"The interviewee Byatt agrees with critics that there is a qualitative difference between the nineteenth and twentieth-century plot in Possession[…]. The nineteenth-century story about the two poets[…] is meant to be more vivid aesthetically than the plot which contains the two scholars[…] ‘to challenge the modern view of Victorian poets as dead, boring, respectable figures’. She needed[…] Ash and LaMotte ‘to be terribly urgent, interesting and complicated’."

In other words, Byatt made a conscious choice to allow herself and the reader to be bored by Maud and Roland. Not only does she argue for the inadequacy of the idea that language only speaks ‘of itself’, she has also declared that she is also standing out ‘against the notion that it may not be possible to read the Victorians as themselves, but always and only our own idea of them’. Byatt is trying to create the reader that she needs for her aesthetic purpose to be not only understood, but experienced.

Byatt is not alone in wanting to control the way in which the reader experiences the text. In his account of writing The Name of the Rose, Umberto Eco describes how he too consciously risked the reader’s boredom to create out of actual readers someone who comes close to that literary-theoretical construct, his ‘model reader’, who is close cousin, according to the critic Elizabeth Freund, to Iser’s implied reader, Prince’s narratee, Culler’s ideal reader, and so on:

"After reading the manuscript, my friends and editors suggested that I abbreviate the first hundred pages, which they found very difficult and demanding [...]. I insisted, if somebody wanted to enter the abbey and live there for seven days, he had to accept the abbey’s own pace. If he could not, he would never manage to read the whole book. Therefore those first hundred pages are like a penance or an initiation... "

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And it didn't do the sales of either of those really very literary novels any harm to be boring in this way.

And that's before we've talked about David Foster Wallace ...

It's not the same thing exactly, but your post reminded me of being on holiday years and years ago when I'd read everything I had with me. I bought a second hand copy of Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie and for the first 30 pages, I absolutely hated it. I literally stuck with it because I had nothing else and no way of GETTING anything else.
And then something happened...I fell in love with it and it remains one of my all time favourite books.

I am in the minority who doesn't like the tv version of GOT. I know..I know...it's 'brilliant'. But it's too violent for me and I don;t like the way women are depicted. I just couldn;t stomach it and gave up. (if anyone wants to buy the box set for a knock down price, let me know!)

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Agree with Cherys about the last part of Poisonwood Bible but I did love the start.

I bought a second hand copy of Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie and for the first 30 pages, I absolutely hated it. I literally stuck with it because I had nothing else and no way of GETTING anything else. And then something happened...I fell in love with it and it remains one of my all time favourite books.

I never did get past the famously off-putting first chapter of Captain Corelli's Mandolin, even though I was given it by my sister with the words, "Don't let the first chapter put you off..."

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Yes, I loved Poisonwood Bible right from the off - and agree about the last 5th or so. The balance was wrong, somehow.

If it was meant to be Lord of the Flies (and I mean that in a GOOD way) it should have finished when they left the jungle.

If it was meant to be something more political and less elemental then the jungle part should have been less and the post-jungle part more.

Good point because I also felt that way about CCM!! And I did love it when I got into it.

The trouble is, I have way more demands on my time than in the past. I can't be bothered to continue with books I'm not enjoying anymore. I recently stopped reading Wolf Hall with a heavy heart...have really liked all her other books. But I just wasn't enjoying the story enough to keep going.

Good point because I also felt that way about CCM!! And I did love it when I got into it.

Yes, I really should give it another go.

Mind you, TMOL was promoted as "You've read Birdsong, you've read Captain Corelli, now there's The Mathematics of Love", so it was good in a way that I hadn't read CCM, because when I was asked if I was influenced (and very often a subtext of "imitating/copying/selling on their coattails") by either, I could honestly say that I hadn't read them...

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Caroline, I can see why you ran out of steam with Wolf Hall. I absolutely adored every last scrumptious minute of it, but then I have some knowledge and endless patience for Tudor power-politics...

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Plus half the cast of Wolf Hall are the grandchildren of my beloved Woodvilles from ASA...

Maybe that's right because I'm very much a dipper in of the toe with historical fiction. Loved Crimson Petal and the White and Sacred Hunger and a few others but think I'm not generally so drawn to them. I prefer them when they have a real thriller Sarah Waters vibe.

I think it's often a case, though, that it's just the product of the writer "writing their way in" - both going on too long with the world-building, while they're working it out, and failing to fish out the "telling" which is the first stage, the scaffolding for building the real story... Only it never gets taken down. It's a failure of editing by the writer (and subsequently any editors) in other words, rather than of the writing.

Good point, and it may be true for Game of Thrones. While he provides a lot of information in those first 100+ pages, I think much of it could have been weaved in with the story movement. Also, I'm not sure that he intended to introduce so many viewpoint characters so early on (each chapter is headed by the name of the particular POV character), which for me had the effect of making me forgot who they were; so when we get 'Bran' again for example, I just couldn't picture him. Then again, I'm not a great fan of 'traditional' Fantasy and probably don't have the mental patience to pay attention to a load of detail that isn't moving the story forward.

I am in the minority who doesn't like the tv version of GOT. I know..I know...it's 'brilliant'. But it's too violent for me and I don;t like the way women are depicted. I just couldn;t stomach it and gave up.

As said, I haven't seen the TV version yet but I've heard there's lot of sex and violence. Which is slightly odd in that there hasn't been a awful lot of same in the half of book 1 I've read so far.

On a slightly different point, another reason I've struggled with the book is it's old-fashioned (both in historical and Fantasy fiction terms) emphasis on the importance of royalty, and it's depiction of women. So, with the former, non-royals are almost always stupid, dirty, scheming, etc (except where the lowly blacksmith's apprentice who's intelligent, perceptive, etc, turns out to be the king's bastard). And it's difficult to see what Martin means by this - whether or not he's showing an unconscious class prejudice or has just slipped into the easiest story-telling course. Where women are concerned, I suppose one could argue that in a medieval-ish world, they would have been treated like possessions for the most part. But a) I wonder if that actually was entirely true of medieval times (maybe Emma knows), and b) even if it was, there's nothing to stop the writer building it differently into his particular world.

I also felt uneasy about the sex scenes with the 13-year old princess. Another topic perhaps, but you wonder where the line actually is with this sort of thing, between genuine story need and something possibly questionable on the author's part.


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Tut tut - two 'it's' that should have been 'its'.

Where women are concerned, I suppose one could argue that in a medieval-ish world, they would have been treated like possessions for the most part. But a) I wonder if that actually was entirely true of medieval times (maybe Emma knows), and b) even if it was, there's nothing to stop the writer building it differently into his particular world.

As ever, the reality is far more mixed than the broad-brush historians are able to go into, and you have to get into the nitty-gritty of the records to work out how things actually were, and interpret it. The Wife of Bath, for example...

Sons were legally speaking possessions as much as daughters were, IYSWIM, (much less in England than other countries, though), though socially more autonomoous perhaps. And in a world without divorce, "selling" a wife to another man could be a perfectly sensible, agreed way of all parties feeling that, essentially, a divorce and re-marriage had been made.

I also felt uneasy about the sex scenes with the 13-year old princess. Another topic perhaps, but you wonder where the line actually is with this sort of thing, between genuine story need and something possibly questionable on the author's part.

Well, it is authentic, but only for royals and the elite. You only get these horribly young marriages when what the wife brings to the marriage is land or inheritance, and so the girls are political capital. In all other classes it's both partners' working capacity and reproductive capacity which matters, so the average age of marriage for many centures is around 25 for women, 28 for men.

Generally speaking, in elite marriages they might be betrothed as tots, but it would be agreed between the two sets of parents what age the children who were married to each other would be allowed to actually consummate the marriage. 14 or 15 would have been quite usual for both - and of course the boy had to be capable, as well as the girl old enough for a pregnacy to be possible and safe - on the other hand until a marriage was consummated it could be dissolved if allegiances changed (sometimes a good, sometimes a bad thing).

It was considered really deplorable of Edmund Tudor to have bedded Margaret Beaufort when she was 12 - she was 9 when they were married, he was killed when she was 13, and their son was born two months later - he later became Henry VII. She married three more times but never had another child.

But it's a good example of how as a writer Now you need to finesse things a tad about how things were Then, and it sounds as if there's something a bit creepy about this in GOT. I'd be pretty careful about how I wrote a marriage-bed scene in those circumstances, even though I'd probably get cut a bit more slack by readers, because I'm female myself.

Emma, that's fascinating; thanks for posting. The past really is another land (at least to modern eyes).

But it's a good example of how as a writer Now you need to finesse things a tad about how things were Then, and it sounds as if there's something a bit creepy about this in GOT. I'd be pretty careful about how I wrote a marriage-bed scene in those circumstances, even though I'd probably get cut a bit more slack by readers, because I'm female myself.

I think you're right about adapting how things were then (to now), particularly in Fantasy where it isn't even our 'then', it's more the author's. I'm not sure how careful Martin was when he wrote the consummation scene in this instance. The marriage is between the leader of a war-like people and our princess (of another people). In the build-up we see his people fighting, killing and f*cking for fun, so we assume the worst for the marriage night. Martin subverts this quite cleverly (although not entirely logically) by having the king/leader (who I think is in his late 20s), treat the princess surprisingly tenderly, at least with his foreplay. However, the scene is still erotic and shows her at the end breathlessly keen for him to finally, um, well you know . . . And while I guess it must be possible for a 13-year old to have such strong sexual desires, there's still something unsettling (to me anyway) about how she's led to them by an older man without, in this case, too much if any psychological and physical pain. It's complex because Martin later has her use sex - while still enjoying it - to demonstrate to her husband that she is a strong woman who will support him positively rather than passively.

I suppose what I'm hedging around saying is that I can't help feeling that while the author succeeds in showing us a strong young woman forging her own destiny in a difficult circumstance, he's also allowed a dodgy kind of fantasy some men have about young girls to slip in to the story.

It sounds as if he's working within some fairly un-reconstructed and un-examined prejudices about class and sex. We all have our defaults which we forget to keep an eye on.

On the other hand, it can distort your story just as much if you're utterly determined never to serve your reader up with a gay hairdresser or a mean scotsman or a brainless blonde or a heroic/effete aristocrat.