Mo reads Storm Front by Jim Butcher

Lots of months ago, I asked for suggestions for good sci-fi/fantasy books. Bradley, docmagik and PhotoNinja gave me some GREAT suggestions and I’ve been trying to make a dent in that list ever since. In those suggestions was Jim Butcher’s Storm Front… but not because I would like it. In docmagik’s words, “it’s sort of what every gritty contemporary magical urban fantasy is being compared to right now.” What I’m writing is not very much like Storm Front, but it’s close enough genre-wise that I should know at least a little something about it.

So, full disclosure: This is not a book review. This is a book deconstruction. I didn’t ask for suggestions for entertainment’s sake (though, in some cases, that was a happy side benefit) – I wanted to learn from them. What makes a sci-fi book work? What makes it fail? What pitfalls am I in danger of tumbling into and how can I avoid them? So, what follows is what I learned from reading this particular book and how I can apply those lessons to my own writing.

I have to say that this is probably one of the best “lesson” books I’ve ever read, which is not to say that I liked it. I actually didn’t like it much at all, but I saw potential. There were things I liked. There were elements that were spot on. The “lesson” came from seeing the problems Jim Butcher had telling this story (which are actually problems that I’ve had in my own writing) and seeing how he could have fixed them if he wasn’t so emotionally invested.

In this book we meet Harry Dresden, who happens to be a professional Wizard. He has all of the potential to be a truly compelling, interesting and sympathetic enough character to draw a reader in and keep them wanting to know more. He’s a good guy, but not perfect. He’s done bad things, made mistakes and has resigned himself to being down on his luck for all the right reasons. It’s obvious that Dresden had spent many years rolling around in Jim Butcher’s head. Every aspect of the character had been considered, pondered, and contemplated.

The story itself – a “magical” murder mystery¹ – is also interesting. It, too, has the potential to draw a reader in and make them want Harry to succeed in solving the crime. I didn’t find any glaring plot holes or areas where the story dragged so much that I felt the need to skip pages to get to the good stuff, which is a major bonus because I tend to do that often – even in books I love.

The ingredients for a successful novel² were there… So, it surprised me to find that it completely failed.³ I don’t know why I was surprised, though. I hadn’t even finished reading page 1 and I was already looking for my red pen. For the record, I don’t think Jim Butcher is a “bad” writer. Yes, he made mistakes in this book, but he knows enough about storytelling that he can create a compelling main character and navigate the character through an interesting plot at a good pace. There’s genuine talent there, it’s just not being fully utilized. Take the opening scene, for example. Dresden hears the mailman walking to his door and uses his acute perception skills to determine information about the mailman just from the footsteps:

He didn’t sound right. His footsteps fell heavily, jauntily and he whistled. A new guy. He whistled his way to my office door, then fell silent a moment. Then he laughed.

Then he knocked.

Now, first and foremost, I don’t know how footsteps could be heavy and jaunty at the same time. That sentenced bugged the crap out of me the first time I read it, and it still bugs me now. Moving on, we are told twice within 7 words that the mailman was whistling, which seemed unnecessary (at best). Also, a little peeve of mine (because it was drummed into my head by a hyper-critical English professor): Whistling is not a mode of transportation.

I could go on about how the reader is informed that the mailman is delivering registered mail, and how Mr. Dresden only gets a “limited selection” of registered mail (which is odd, because I don’t know about you all, but I get registered mail every single day… even on Sundays).⁴ In fact, the mailman scene lasts for almost two whole pages and, in the end, the foreboding and worryingly REGISTERED mail turns out to be unimportant.

The whole scene is nothing but an inorganic construct to show the reader how much the non magic practicing world scoffs at Dresden’s work, which is not generating much money at the moment. It wouldn’t be so bad if it was written well, but there’s a deeper reason for why this scene (and many others like it) fundamentally don’t work. In fact, after re-reading this and a few of the other glaring scenes, I narrowed it down to basically two main problems and they both are tied to Butcher’s emotional attachment to his story.

The first reason is Butcher’s inability to keep the story rooted in the medium he was using to tell it. Jim Butcher is using a novel to tell this story, but there were times that it seemed like he forgot that fact. Take the mailman scene above. Our encounter with the mailman ends with Harry saying “typical” to himself as the mailman walks away. It’s a simple enough ending to a scene at first glance – we’ve all seen it before. A minor antagonist walks off after insipidly taunting the hero and the world weary hero shrugs it off as yet more evidence that his service to humanity is misunderstood and unappreciated. If this were a comic book, a movie or even a third person narrative, having the main character audibly mutter his internal dialog would make sense because the reader/audience can’t read minds.

The reason it was a mistake in this book is because it’s written in the first person. We’re getting a peek directly into Harry Dresden’s mind. He’s telling us the story of his life from his very own perspective, and when you’re narrating your own life, you don’t use sentences like “‘Typical,” I muttered and closed the door.”

This is just one example, of course. There are several instances that read more like a bad movie novelization than an actual novel. I’ve personally had this problem before and alluded to it briefly here. Believe me, I understand how difficult it can be to overcome this problem when the story is stuck in your head. Butcher is a step ahead of me – he at least got the story out of his head. Me? I got so stuck on the fact that I couldn’t make myself stop writing sections of my story as if it were bad novelizations, that I stepped away from the story completely. Seeing the same issue in a story that I have no emotional investment in, it’s easy to see how to fix it with a few clever rewrites.

Lesson learned: get the story out (regardless of how awkwardly the story gets out) and worry about solving the problems later.

The second problem is harder to explain, but boils down to this: Jim Butcher is so in love with his character that Dresden comes out as an essentially unsympathetic character who’s fate I don’t really care about enough to hope he survives. Mind you, I’m not saying that Dresden is not a well-rounded character. He’s actually very well developed. He has flaws. He has problems. He makes mistakes. He’s thrown into dangerous and deadly situations where his survivability is in question. The problem comes from the way we are told about Dresden’s flaws. Instead of down and dirty, fully disclosed flaws, we’re given “cutesy” flaws. They are just candy coated glimpses of “sort of” flaws that don’t really show us the bare boned ugly truth about Harry Dresden.

Again, this is an issue that I’ve had in the past and one I will have to work on overcoming in the future. Not just in my writing, but in my real life. We’ve all candy coated flaws before. Not just for ourselves, but for our friends. No one wants to paint themselves or their friends in an unflattering light, right? Perhaps, but by candy coating key pieces of information, I’m withholding information you need to make your own opinion. Instead, all I’ve done is give you the opinion I want you to have. Worse, I’ve done a disservice to myself or my friend by keeping you from seeing the full character arc. If the flaws get worse, you miss the full scale tragedy of seeing someone become engulfed by their flaws. If the flaws get better, you miss the triumph of a person conquering their demons. Either way makes an inherently better story than a milquetoast soul with cutesy non-flaws.

Think about it – what expectations would you have about going out to dinner with me and my hypothetical friend Tina if I said to you “Tina’s great but can sometimes be a little too friendly”? You might think that she’ll be a “huggy” person. Maybe do that euro-kiss thing. You might anticipate an argument from her about who pays for dinner.

What you won’t expect is for Tina to aggressively come on to every male she encounters, whether she’s attracted to him or not. You won’t expect to see me not only blindly accepting her behavior, but insisting on sticking loyally by Tina’s side the entire night. It would be disconcerting. By the end of the night, you would have a horrible impression of Tina and a huge question about what would make me so blind to her flaws.

What if, instead, I told you that Tina just got dumped yesterday, has a bad habit of hitting on men as a way to bolster her self-esteem, and I feel particularly bad because I’m the one who fixed her up with the guy that dumped her? Your impression of the exact same night might be very different. You might be able to look past her reckless actions to see the pain in Tina’s eyes. You might be able to see that my tolerance of her behavior is not just blind acceptance, but a strange penance ritual that allows a friend to work through some pain while trying to keep her from getting into any real trouble. The night would probably not be any more enjoyable to you in this version, but it would at least allow you to understand the deeper layers of what was going on.

Lesson learned: Candy coating is only really good for M&Ms. Show the characters, warts and all, and let the reader grow to like or dislike them on their own.

In the comment left by docmagik, he mentions that he heard the later books get better. If this is true, I’m would not be at all surprised. As I said, Butcher is not a bad writer – he just made some very easy to avoid mistakes, once you know what you’re looking for. I have a feeling that as the series progresses, Butcher gets more comfortable with showing the nitty-gritty of Harry Dresden, which is really the ingredient that was missing from this first book. And, if it’s not clear to anyone here, let me say this: I am eagerly looking forward to making all of these mistakes myself – I am more than sure I will.

Related posts:

1. Should I bite the bullet?
2. Mo reads Enchantment by Orson Scott Card
3. The trouble with writing out of your element
4. Kick-Start
5. I can read!

Tags: book, fantasy, literature, novel, Reading, sci-fi