LIKE a lot of writers, I read a lot of books. If you’re a writer who doesn’t read a lot — and read widely — reconsider your life choices, because I can tell writers who don’t read, or who only read narrowly. The former write like they’re describing a movie, and the latter write in a specific, usually quite stilted style (I have one writer acquaintance who thinks everything written after 1950 or so is trash, and their work reads like a gentleman of leisure in 1870 decided to try his hand at popular fiction).
Reading widely can be a burden, of course. In my professional life I review books, which means I sometimes encounter truly terrible novels written by people with more ambition and discipline than talent. I admire anyone who writes a novel — truly — but the desire to write isn’t always enough to produce something great.
But reading these bad novels gives me plenty of insight into what people get wrong. An example that’s come up a few times in recent books I’ve read is the Vanishing Character. It goes like this: The story begins with Character A, an spends a goodly amount of time with them — sometimes dozens of pages, multiple chapters worth of story. Then Character A vanishes for a long, long time. Like, completely, totally, entirely vanishes.
John Travolta in Pulp Fiction Looking Around in Confusion
There’s nothing wrong with vanishing a character, even for a very long time. But you have to consider how your reader will react, and you have to have a very clear purpose. If your character is vanishing because you ran out of story to tell about them, you need to rethink your story and its structure. If you have a plan for that character that involves making the reader forget about them so you can surprise them later, you need to think objectively about whether you’re pulling that off — about whether your readers will be fooled, or if they’ll spend the middle section of your story wondering why the character disappeared.
Because the real risk is that your story will feel like two separate books, pasted together — especially if your vanished character never turns up again, their purpose served. If the character’s purpose is purely back story or set up, think about how much time you’re spending on them. Readers can more readily accept a vanished character in what’s clearly a prologue or short back story chapter as opposed to half the novel.
Finally, consider tone and genre. I recently read a book with a vanished character where the beginning of the story is soaked in magic and occult happenings. Then the character vanishes, and the middle section of the book reads like a completely different story, with exactly zero of those things. You can get away with one of those things, but rarely both.
Some people ask me if reading bad novels can rub off on you and make your own writing worse just as great novels can make your writing better. The answer is, gobs, I hope not <uncorks bottle and drinks directly from it for several seconds>.