Kindle "find" function unearths poor editing
By Paul Biba
This is a great post from Mark Hurst’s Good Experience blog:
I recently read the novel “The Pillars of the Earth” and discovered a new trick - on the Kindle, Amazon’s digital book reader.
It’s something entirely basic and simple in the digital world, but readers have had no easy way to do this, to date, with print-based works. Any e-book reader worth its salt should be able to do it.
“Pillars,” if you don’t know it, is a huge bestseller from Ken Follett, who otherwise is known for adventure novels - “Code Zero” and that sort of thing. This book is set in 12th century England and involves the building of a Gothic cathedral. The paperback was making the rounds in my office, and I had just bought the Kindle and thought I’d try it out.
And the book - well, I’ll say it’s a fun story, and the characters are vividly drawn. Fine literature it is not, but that’s not what Follett is promising, so fair enough.
On the other hand, with all respect to Mr. Follett, where was the editor who smooths out the text? I empathize with Follett, filling up 400,000 words - you’re bound to tap out a cliche or a bad metaphor here or there - and that’s why one needs an editor. I couldn’t detect one in this book.
The phrase that got me was like a stone in my shoe - noticeable at first, then irritating, then prompting outbursts.
It was “his heart in his mouth.”
This is how Follett described a character who was nervous or anxious or frightened. It’s not the most refined metaphor to begin with, but there it was - and then a few pages later, someone else’s heart was in his mouth - and then, next chapter, another heart in another mouth - and again - more hearts, more mouths - until I finally finished the book and thought, just how many times did Follett use that ONE metaphor in a single book?
Which brings me back to the Kindle.
Digital technology changes the experience of reading books. What might otherwise have taken hours, to scour the text for an irritating phrase, now takes just a few seconds.
And the answer is: 13. Actually 17, if you count the four instances of “her heart in her mouth.” (It seems that men are, on the whole, a lot hungrier for coronary snacks.)
…
I don’t mean to pick on Ken Follett - he wrote a fun book that’s obviously very popular. My point is that the Kindle makes it harder for authors to get away with using a crutch.
And Follett is far from the only author guilty of the practice. A few years ago, before the Kindle, I read a Pulitzer-prize-winning book that had a cliche - the SAME cliche - on almost every other page. I’d reveal it, but I can’t yet do the trick to prove my point; it’s not digitized for the Kindle. (Yet.)
The question is, will these digital advances force novelists to change their writing style? I can’t wait to see. My heart is in… well, you know.
There’s an interesting screen shot over on Mark’s site that shows just how the “find” function of the Kindle returns an answer.
January 15th, 2009 at 2:24 am
Well, you certainly miss the point that it simply does not matter. This is nerd crap. What’s important is that you enjoyed the book. And that’s the end of that.
January 15th, 2009 at 9:11 am
it’s a vivid phrase, and when used sparingly would have better effect, which i think is the point: there are other ways to say this, too, and even using two or three different ways, alternating, wouldn’t stick out so badly.
January 15th, 2009 at 9:21 am
Yeah. And to note, the only thing that the Kindle’s find function does is make it easy to count the number of times the phrase was used. You could certainly notice that the phrase was used a lot, and flip back and forth among the pages to see a number of uses, in a print book.
January 15th, 2009 at 9:33 am
On behalf of editors: The repetition doesn’t necessarily indicate no or bad editing; it just as readily indicates that the author likes this turn of words and demanded that the phrase remain. I can’t tell you how many times over my years as an editor I have suggested changes and was told by the author to leave the author’s words as they were (and the publisher saying do as the author wants). This is especially problematic with a highly successful author, whose writing will bring in big dollars even if it is dribble.
In the scheme of things, most editors are quite low on the influence pole and are often unfairly blamed for errors insisted on by authors or publishers or introduced by others after the manuscript has left the editor’s realm.
January 15th, 2009 at 12:54 pm
I wouldn’t call it poor editing, either, and 17 instances in a book of that size isn’t extreme. The phrase wasn’t a blip on my radar when I read it, but I used to read a lot of 19th century literature when such phrases were more common. (The earliest instance I could with a quick search was from an 1890 book.) When you consider that Pillars is meant to be historical and full of out-dated terminology.