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lliira I'm pretty sure Edward Cullen leaves a trail of slime wherever he goes. Sparkly slime. No one can be this smug and condescending without producing some kind of emissions.
Bella is disappointed that the doctor orders her to take a day off school. Why? I have no clue. She's hated everything about school so far, but she hates everything about everything. It's possible that she hates school just barely less than she hates home, and I've missed it. She asks whether Edward "gets" to go to school.
"Someone has to spread the good news that we survived," Edward said smugly. (62)
I actually shuddered when I read that. I do not understand how anyone could think Edward is at all attractive. I find high levels of smugness intolerable. Is it just me? Reading about this jerk is like nails on a chalkboard. On the previous page, Edward smirked at Bella twice. On page 62, he has a "patronizing smile" and the quoted smug bit. And the font in this book is not small.
When Edward is not aggressively smugging all over Bella, he's flat-out being a jerk. On page 63, his jaw clenches when she talks to him and he says something to her "through his teeth." On page 64, he glares at her and turns his back, walks so fast Bella has a hard time keeping up, sounds annoyed, has "cold" eyes, his voice has "resentment," "his tone [is] cutting," he glares again, and he snaps at Bella.
Every time Meyer describes Edward saying or doing anything, she includes these descriptions. Edward's modes are "smug" and "nasty jerk." With no let up. So far, he's never behaved in any other way. He's a match for Bella, who, whenever she talks about anything (except Edward), it's to hate it.
One common romance plot is for the hero to be a jerk who is changed by the love of the heroine, or whose jerkiness is explained away when we know the whole story. I love Pride and Prejudice (though I love Emma and Persuasion more), so this is not a plot I have any problems with. It's all in the execution. In Pride and Prejudice, Mr. Darcy is arrogant and hyper-critical at first. But Austen gives us his perspective as well as Elizabeth's. Therefore, we know that Darcy, against his will, finds himself interested in Elizabeth because she challenges him. That is an attractive quality -- here's a man whom people have fawned over his whole life, and yet he is not so far up his own ass that he sees Elizabeth's challenge as illegitimate. He's interested in Elizabeth's personality and the fact that her face is "rendered uncommonly intelligent by the beautiful expression of her dark eyes." Further, Darcy is shown to have a sharp wit, to care about his sister, and to be polite, though stiff and proud. His friendship with Mr. Bingley shows him capable of deep feeling and loyalty.
We know Mr. Darcy's motivations as we do not know Edward's. And Austen trusts her readers enough to not pound us relentlessly over the head with either Darcy's faults or his assets. All the characters often speak without speech tags or descriptions. They also often speak more than one or two lines at a time. They have real conversations, in other words, and Austen trusts her own dialog enough to let it speak for itself.
Jane Austen was one of the greatest writers of all time. I don't expect every writer to live up to her. But I think comparing Pride and Prejudice to Twilight helps to show why Twilight fails. Unlike in Pride and Prejudice, nearly every line of dialog in Twilight has speech tags and descriptions. The descriptions have descriptions.The descriptions are repetitive, often using exactly the same words to describe something multiple times on one page! I have no idea why Edward behaves the way he does and I don't care, because while technically there's a mystery here -- why does he pretend he didn't rescue Bella* -- I don't see any layers in Edward's character. He's a hateful, smug douchebag, period. In case we forget, Meyer reminds us of this fact every time he talks, walks, smiles, frowns, or looks.
So here are our two main characters: a hateful, smug douchebag and a hating, whining twerp. We can't forget these two facts, because Meyer reminds us of them every time either one of these characters does anything. And these characters have no space, no air, no way to grow beyond Meyer's box of adverbs and speech tags. They're pretty cardboard cutouts whose only characteristics are bad ones. My mind keeps trying to project other things onto them, especially Bella, but the writing incessantly reminds me of what they truly are, making it impossible for my imagination to fill in anything else.
I remember reading an article in which the writer hypothesized that readers have three main avenues into a story: character, style, and plot. Different readers prioritize these things differently. For me, it's #1 character, #2 style, and #3 plot. Give me a well-written character study with very little action, and I'm happy. If the plot is excellent and characters are interesting, I can let style go to a certain extent. I can never let character go. And if the characters are unbearable, the style is terrible, and the plot is anemic -- well, I can only stand to read about three pages at a time.
*There's no mystery as to how Edward rescued Bella, because the back of the book tells us he's a vampire.
Bella is disappointed that the doctor orders her to take a day off school. Why? I have no clue. She's hated everything about school so far, but she hates everything about everything. It's possible that she hates school just barely less than she hates home, and I've missed it. She asks whether Edward "gets" to go to school.
"Someone has to spread the good news that we survived," Edward said smugly. (62)
I actually shuddered when I read that. I do not understand how anyone could think Edward is at all attractive. I find high levels of smugness intolerable. Is it just me? Reading about this jerk is like nails on a chalkboard. On the previous page, Edward smirked at Bella twice. On page 62, he has a "patronizing smile" and the quoted smug bit. And the font in this book is not small.
When Edward is not aggressively smugging all over Bella, he's flat-out being a jerk. On page 63, his jaw clenches when she talks to him and he says something to her "through his teeth." On page 64, he glares at her and turns his back, walks so fast Bella has a hard time keeping up, sounds annoyed, has "cold" eyes, his voice has "resentment," "his tone [is] cutting," he glares again, and he snaps at Bella.
Every time Meyer describes Edward saying or doing anything, she includes these descriptions. Edward's modes are "smug" and "nasty jerk." With no let up. So far, he's never behaved in any other way. He's a match for Bella, who, whenever she talks about anything (except Edward), it's to hate it.
One common romance plot is for the hero to be a jerk who is changed by the love of the heroine, or whose jerkiness is explained away when we know the whole story. I love Pride and Prejudice (though I love Emma and Persuasion more), so this is not a plot I have any problems with. It's all in the execution. In Pride and Prejudice, Mr. Darcy is arrogant and hyper-critical at first. But Austen gives us his perspective as well as Elizabeth's. Therefore, we know that Darcy, against his will, finds himself interested in Elizabeth because she challenges him. That is an attractive quality -- here's a man whom people have fawned over his whole life, and yet he is not so far up his own ass that he sees Elizabeth's challenge as illegitimate. He's interested in Elizabeth's personality and the fact that her face is "rendered uncommonly intelligent by the beautiful expression of her dark eyes." Further, Darcy is shown to have a sharp wit, to care about his sister, and to be polite, though stiff and proud. His friendship with Mr. Bingley shows him capable of deep feeling and loyalty.
We know Mr. Darcy's motivations as we do not know Edward's. And Austen trusts her readers enough to not pound us relentlessly over the head with either Darcy's faults or his assets. All the characters often speak without speech tags or descriptions. They also often speak more than one or two lines at a time. They have real conversations, in other words, and Austen trusts her own dialog enough to let it speak for itself.
Jane Austen was one of the greatest writers of all time. I don't expect every writer to live up to her. But I think comparing Pride and Prejudice to Twilight helps to show why Twilight fails. Unlike in Pride and Prejudice, nearly every line of dialog in Twilight has speech tags and descriptions. The descriptions have descriptions.The descriptions are repetitive, often using exactly the same words to describe something multiple times on one page! I have no idea why Edward behaves the way he does and I don't care, because while technically there's a mystery here -- why does he pretend he didn't rescue Bella* -- I don't see any layers in Edward's character. He's a hateful, smug douchebag, period. In case we forget, Meyer reminds us of this fact every time he talks, walks, smiles, frowns, or looks.
So here are our two main characters: a hateful, smug douchebag and a hating, whining twerp. We can't forget these two facts, because Meyer reminds us of them every time either one of these characters does anything. And these characters have no space, no air, no way to grow beyond Meyer's box of adverbs and speech tags. They're pretty cardboard cutouts whose only characteristics are bad ones. My mind keeps trying to project other things onto them, especially Bella, but the writing incessantly reminds me of what they truly are, making it impossible for my imagination to fill in anything else.
I remember reading an article in which the writer hypothesized that readers have three main avenues into a story: character, style, and plot. Different readers prioritize these things differently. For me, it's #1 character, #2 style, and #3 plot. Give me a well-written character study with very little action, and I'm happy. If the plot is excellent and characters are interesting, I can let style go to a certain extent. I can never let character go. And if the characters are unbearable, the style is terrible, and the plot is anemic -- well, I can only stand to read about three pages at a time.
*There's no mystery as to how Edward rescued Bella, because the back of the book tells us he's a vampire.
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Date: 2012-06-01 01:51 am (UTC)I think I'm character, plot, style. I prefer a writing style that I don't consciously notice, and I'm big on Idfic.