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The Scorpio Races
Dec. 16th, 2011 10:18 amI'm reading Maggie Stiefvater's latest, The Scorpio races, and this isn't really a review, but more like a random collection of admiration from a writer's viewpoint. My reader mind wants to shut out the world and read, read, read, but my writer mind keeps stopping and saying, wait! I want to enjoy that bit just a little longer. I want to figure out how she did that.
The story, for those who just want to read a book: every fall, horses come out of the sea onto Thisby Island. People catch them and train them for a year, and then race them the next. (Or however long it takes to train such a horse.) They are extremely fast, and they are also deadly. They have a tendency to run back into the sea, thus drowning the rider, or more likely, they see people, sheep, even regular horses, as food. It's extremely dangerous. Seventeen-year-old Puck Connelly is racing so she and her orphaned brothers don't lose their house to the richest man on the island (who also owns a racing stable and whose horses participate in this yearly event). Nineteen-year-old Sean Kendrick is racing because he wants to own the killer horse he trained, he's won on, and who he loves. Except that that's the hold his employer (and technical owner of the horse) has over him. (The employer is Puck's landlord.) Both have to win--but only one can.
So, in no particular order, here are some of the things that have me in great admiration and also make me want to think about craft and writing strength and how some of these techniques might apply to a completely different book.
1. The writing. It's not flowery at all. Sometimes prose can get a little too purpley because of an excess of adjectives. But sometimes it can feel over the top because a writer substitutes noun/verb after unusual noun/verb just to take the place of all those adjectives/adverbs, to the point that it feels unnatural to read. (A good test: read the book aloud, and if it feels awkward in your mouth, maybe it's too much.) This book feels completely natural, yet the writing really stands out. I think it's because the narrators notice things nobody else does, and because they use words that are completely their own to explain them. Take this from page 334: "I wasn't prepared for it to be Sean, and so my stomach does a neat little trick that feels like either hunger or escaping." Or this: somewhere (I can't find the page now), I think it's Puck who tells her brother he "looks like homemade sin." Or here on page 320, when Puck and Finn (the brother) have no money and are inside a bakery making special cakes for the season (ie the killer waterhorse racing season): "Every shelf towers with bread and cookies, cinnamon twists and November cakes, scones and biscuits. The only wall not so anointed is the back wall behind the counter, which is lined with sacks of flour waiting to become bread. I can smell even the flour, because there's so much of it, and it's sweet and palatable all on its own. Everything is golden and white and honey and nectar in here and I think that possibly I could live in this building and sleep among the flour sacks." <-- That shows what she doesn't have more and stronger than anything the author could have come out and told us. And it's not the longing for November cakes that does it. It's the flour, an ordinary item that's full of possibility the character feels like she doesn't have. Which is further underlined later in the chapter (p. 325): "I think about George Holly's comment about food tasting better in memories. It strikes me as a strange, luxurious statement. It assumes you'll have not only that moment when you take the first bite but then enough moments in front of it for that mouthful to become a memory." I could, in fact, go on about the writing, but I think the common thread is that it's not just the word choice, but what the words are actually saying that matters.
2. The stakes. The book is told from two points of view. Two characters will take part in the November races, and only one can win. And we like both of them. And both of them have a do-or-die need to win. And gradually, they get to know (and like) each other, and realize the same thing. There are common enemies that they have. But even as they help each other, they are also opponents. Now that I think of it, Dairy Queen does the same thing (girl training the rival team's quarterback decides to go out for football herself). You can feel the tension rising from the beginning, and you know it's going to come to a head, and you have no idea how the book can solve itself because you know your heart will break if one of them loses. (And yes, I realize The Hunger Games has this same tension setup, but I happen to not sympathize with teenagers willing to kill other innocent teenagers.) So an added dimension of stakes here is not just what a character will lose if s/he loses the challenge, but what s/he will lose if s/he wins. Does that make sense?
What about you? What's made you want to pause while reading and hold the moment up to study?
The story, for those who just want to read a book: every fall, horses come out of the sea onto Thisby Island. People catch them and train them for a year, and then race them the next. (Or however long it takes to train such a horse.) They are extremely fast, and they are also deadly. They have a tendency to run back into the sea, thus drowning the rider, or more likely, they see people, sheep, even regular horses, as food. It's extremely dangerous. Seventeen-year-old Puck Connelly is racing so she and her orphaned brothers don't lose their house to the richest man on the island (who also owns a racing stable and whose horses participate in this yearly event). Nineteen-year-old Sean Kendrick is racing because he wants to own the killer horse he trained, he's won on, and who he loves. Except that that's the hold his employer (and technical owner of the horse) has over him. (The employer is Puck's landlord.) Both have to win--but only one can.
So, in no particular order, here are some of the things that have me in great admiration and also make me want to think about craft and writing strength and how some of these techniques might apply to a completely different book.
1. The writing. It's not flowery at all. Sometimes prose can get a little too purpley because of an excess of adjectives. But sometimes it can feel over the top because a writer substitutes noun/verb after unusual noun/verb just to take the place of all those adjectives/adverbs, to the point that it feels unnatural to read. (A good test: read the book aloud, and if it feels awkward in your mouth, maybe it's too much.) This book feels completely natural, yet the writing really stands out. I think it's because the narrators notice things nobody else does, and because they use words that are completely their own to explain them. Take this from page 334: "I wasn't prepared for it to be Sean, and so my stomach does a neat little trick that feels like either hunger or escaping." Or this: somewhere (I can't find the page now), I think it's Puck who tells her brother he "looks like homemade sin." Or here on page 320, when Puck and Finn (the brother) have no money and are inside a bakery making special cakes for the season (ie the killer waterhorse racing season): "Every shelf towers with bread and cookies, cinnamon twists and November cakes, scones and biscuits. The only wall not so anointed is the back wall behind the counter, which is lined with sacks of flour waiting to become bread. I can smell even the flour, because there's so much of it, and it's sweet and palatable all on its own. Everything is golden and white and honey and nectar in here and I think that possibly I could live in this building and sleep among the flour sacks." <-- That shows what she doesn't have more and stronger than anything the author could have come out and told us. And it's not the longing for November cakes that does it. It's the flour, an ordinary item that's full of possibility the character feels like she doesn't have. Which is further underlined later in the chapter (p. 325): "I think about George Holly's comment about food tasting better in memories. It strikes me as a strange, luxurious statement. It assumes you'll have not only that moment when you take the first bite but then enough moments in front of it for that mouthful to become a memory." I could, in fact, go on about the writing, but I think the common thread is that it's not just the word choice, but what the words are actually saying that matters.
2. The stakes. The book is told from two points of view. Two characters will take part in the November races, and only one can win. And we like both of them. And both of them have a do-or-die need to win. And gradually, they get to know (and like) each other, and realize the same thing. There are common enemies that they have. But even as they help each other, they are also opponents. Now that I think of it, Dairy Queen does the same thing (girl training the rival team's quarterback decides to go out for football herself). You can feel the tension rising from the beginning, and you know it's going to come to a head, and you have no idea how the book can solve itself because you know your heart will break if one of them loses. (And yes, I realize The Hunger Games has this same tension setup, but I happen to not sympathize with teenagers willing to kill other innocent teenagers.) So an added dimension of stakes here is not just what a character will lose if s/he loses the challenge, but what s/he will lose if s/he wins. Does that make sense?
What about you? What's made you want to pause while reading and hold the moment up to study?
