Dick Francis

The other night as I was falling asleep, I was thinking about dick Francis. Not To the Hilt, the one I finished before that. Or before *that* one. Yeah. Enquiry. Which is one of his skinny little old ones, and has the basic plot of a jockey who gets warned off for problems with a race, and how he finds out why he was, and reverses it.

Now, all of the DF novels have these ridiculously common elements in them. The main character is a man, 25-35, attractive but not like, gorgeous. There's a woman in the story who he is interested in (they may have sex, they may be in a relationship, or he may just think about a trainer's daughter, "she's going to be a hottie when she's legal"). He will have a connection to horse racing (at the least this means he gets involved with betting schemes. He may be a jockey or a trainer or his family may have taken him to the races when he was young, or he runs van lines--there will always be horses in his books somewhere). He will be beaten up, very badly, at least once (People will be amazed he's not in the hospital. There's often a friendly doctor type person in the picture as well, which helps keep him from going to the hospital).

I love his books. I think I've read every one of them at least once, though it's hard to be sure as I have a horrible time remembering the titles (and sometimes even the blurbs). I remember them as "The one with the jewels" (Straight). "The one with the kidnapping (The Danger.) The cat mutilations and Canadian train (the Edge) The newer ones usually have more of a joke in the title, so I remember them better, but I'm still trying to remember the names of the one with the toys in it, the Aloysha one, and the one with the cell phone, the one with the intravenous alcohol (and two of those books I've read in the past year, and I still don't remember their names).

In a lot of ways, this makes his books interchangeable. And in some other ways, it means that I get to pay attention to things other than plots and characters and such. I suppose it's like fan fiction, almost. I end up remember lines from the books for ages--there's a line in one that goes, "I never had a relationship with god. When I was young, I thought god was the man who'd run off with my mother. 'God took your mother, dear, because he needed her more than you.'" The one I just finished in the bath a few minutes ago had the line I loved so much, "It wasn't the bat I wouldn't give him. It was the satisfaction."

I remember the telling details in the stories, not the stories themselves. I have a whole post waiting to be written that has to do with the conflict and villains in his stuff, but it's still brewing. Something about the common elements, which help let the stories blur together in my head, but which will also make it easier to break them down into whys and hows. BUt that will take some thought and patience and all that, which I don't have right now. For now, I need to post this, so I can summarize my writing comparison thing we're taking about in the chat room. :)

smoke and mirrors

Writing is all about the con games. But ultimately, I think the real trick is making people not care it's a trick.

I love watching magic tricks, even the ones I know how they work. And I'm a fabulous audience because I don't care how you're doing the trick unless you're doing a bad job of it. You can say, "It's magic" and I'll nod and agree with you because unless I know what you're doing it might as well truly be magic. And if you show me the same trick over and over again I will eventually want to know how you did it. And even once you've shown me how you do it, I'll still watch in awe because it's not the trick, it's how the magician does it. I walked around with a magician once, doing a teaser for a show. and I saw him do the same tricks over and over again, and I still loved it. because just because he took the girl's watch off while we were watching her other hand, didn't mean that I wasn't still amazed that he could do it every time.

even once you see the strings, there's still that whole bit where you can watch everything they do, and still be surprised at how well they pull it off, or how no one else noticed. well, and sometimes when you're watching the hand that you know is going to undo the watch, they steal a ring instead. and you are so firmly convinced that you know exactly what they're going to do that you don't even bother noticing anything else, and they blindside you.

This is actually pretty much exactly what I was thinking with dick Francis. or actually with re-reading any good book, particularly of the mystery type. Connie WIllis is amazing at doing it. Once you know what the trick is, some books aren't worth rereading. A lot of romances, for example. but Connie's books, I re-read them to see where she tricked me, and how she did it, and how far back the 'surprise' was set up. Bellwether I read over and over and over again. because everything in that book follows this very careful pattern, but you can't see it until it's a reread. or a re-re-read. and suddenly you go 'oh! that's it! that's the catalyst." Because even though she's been talking about catalysts all along, you didn't know you were supposed to be looking for one. likewise "To Say Nothing of the Dog", where all these 'coincidences' and plot holes turn out to be carefully planned and carefully used.

And I think part of my problem with learning how to do things by reading them is that books like COnnie's are too fancy for me to really take apart and learn from. My brain gets distracted by the pretties, and I can't pay attention to the important things until I'm rereading it for the 47th time, but Dick Francis, who does the same in some of his books, is just...fanfiction...enough that I can concentrate instead on the differences. (likewise romances, though they often do them wrong, which can be just as effective a writing tool, of course). But I know the world, and I don't care who the characters are, and all that matters is how the plot gets set up, and how it gets resolved, and what people did right, and what they did wrong, and how I would do it in that case.

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My mother is insane. And not the funny type of insane either, where I can just laugh at her. No, she's the sort of insane that wakes me up at 9 in the morning and then argues with me over whether or not Rufus sounds like "the guy from They Might Be Giants." urgh. other people have normal moms, why not me?

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Oh, and along with the general insanity, she woke me up at nine, but she insisted it was 10:30 until I sat up and looked at my clock. And then she claimed it was a time change thing. And continued with the claim all day.

And we bought a really fabulous tabletop grill for my grandfather for his birthday, and he's just *so* happy with it.

And now I'm off to take a bath so my fingers thaw, and my toes as well, and then I may go to bd early, or I may come back here and shiver more. I still need to fidget with Red Sky which is actually printed out, and Requiem, which isn't. *fidgets*