More on Bad Fiction (Perhaps an Ongoing Series)

One feature of bad fiction is that the author is obviously trying to write a movie.

I don't mean write a screenplay or write a book that will be turned into a movie, but that they're trying to create in narrative prose the experience that they get from movies they love. This almost always results in way too much moment-to-moment description of action and too much visual detail; they're working overtime to create that movie scene in your mind's eye, but all they have is words to do it with. Scenes and plotting are built around movie timing, so everything feels rushed from action-beat to action-beat, with everything in between serving as obvious linear set-up to the next beat. Variety of scenes and characters are limited to whatever makes for easy counterpoint or quickly apprehended irony.

Most of all, words are used only for description of objects and actions, and vocabulary is just to establish tone. There's no composition in the language, which is merely instrumental (or, worse, strained to unnatural elevation). Everything is announced; little is suggested.

I'm not being down on movies. It's just that cinematic storytelling and novelistic storytelling are very different terrain, and you can't do one very well with the expectations of the other.

Here's an example.  You can blame me for this one, but I've seen worse in the wild:

It was dark in the kitchen when she entered. Fumbling for the light switch, she had the sense that it was still early, although she could not see the white, round clock in the dark. The switch flicked at her touch, and it seemed somehow too long a second before the lamps buzzed to stark life and cast shadows across the refrigerator, the toaster, the coffee maker, and other appliances. For an instant, the shadows on the coat rack looked like a man standing in the corner, watching her, and her pulse raced a beat. Of course it was nothing, just her red, hooded Lands-End parka, which was in the kitchen. Reaching across the counter, she picked up the small stainless-steel butter knife. Her right hand tightened on the handle while her left groped for the catch of the zipper on wide blue thigh-side pockets of her canvas cargo pants. She bumped against the edge of the counter, and again there was the usual metallic noise as the silverware clinked in the left-side drawer. Unzipping the pocket, she removed her car keys and house keys and placed them on the counter, next to the whole wheat bread that was already there from the night before. Unwrapping the bread from its cellophane bag, she removed a slice and laid it flat on the cutting board, which was brown and scarred by years of service. She cast her glance across the room for the strawberry jelly jar that should have been there. Where was the jelly? Oh, there, next to the sink. With her left hand she reached for it. Bread and jelly would taste good, she thought. Unscrewing the jar, she took a first dollop of jelly and spread it carefully across the bread. There were gaps where bread still showed, so she used the knife to spread another portion of jelly. She blinked.

 She blinked.