What Makes A Story “Stick” With You?

What Makes A Story “Stick” With You?

 

I read a lot, and I have an excellent memory.  The books I tend to remember best are the ones I enjoy.  Yet there are a lot of mediocre books out there, and in some ways, there are some books that fail in a different way from the truly awful.  The worst books haunt my memory with how terrible they are.  The truly forgettable books are utter nonentities in my mind.

 

How bland does a book have to be to fade from your mind moments after reading it?  Some books are so vapid I have to keep doubling back and rereading the last five pages because even though I read closely, I can’t recall what happened.  It’s like some authors have an amnesia curse placed upon their prose– they’re so forgettable.

 

There are a bunch of reasons for this.  Cookie-cutter plots.  Generic characters.  One cliché after another.  Meandering plots.  Often, a major problem is the prose style– some writers are utterly flat, others are trying to be artistic and have merely puréed their words into pap.  No humor.  No suspense.  Nobody who’s likeable or hateable.  Dialogue that neither resonates nor entertains.  In any event, these books aren’t really bad, just… zeroes.

 

It’s frustrating to finish a book and realize it had no impact on me whatsoever.  And it happens way more often than I’d like when I try a book from an author with whom I’m not previously familiar.  Has this happened to you?

 

 

 

–Chris Chan

 

 

Chris Chan’s first novel, Sherlock’s Secretary, was released on November 3^rd.  His book Murder Most Grotesque: The Comedic Crime Fiction of Joyce Porter was published by Level Best Books on September 7^th.  His first non-fiction book, Sherlock & Irene: The Secret Truth Behind “A Scandal in Bohemia” is available for sale at Amazon.com and the MX Publishing website, as well as at Book Depository (with free worldwide shipping there).  It is also available in a Kindle edition.