Now and then Phil gets offers from publishers willing to send us books for review. When he thinks they might be of interest to me, he forwards them. I like this. I like anything that provides me free books.

I got one recently, from a publisher in England. As a gesture of gratitude for their trouble and generosity in sending the book, I’m not going to review it.

Because if I did review it, I’d have to give it the lowest grade I’ve ever given a book on this blog. It is amazingly, egregiously awful and amateurish.

Instead I’m going to write, in generalized terms, about some of the author’s failures. They might be helpful to those of you who are writers, or want to write.

The first thing that struck me was that the author has no sense of how to do character descriptions.

I don’t object at all to an author describing a character on his/her first appearance on stage. Not every author does it, but I generally appreciate it. I like to run stories as movies in my head, and it’s nice to know how to cast the movie.

But this author does his descriptions on a template. The moment each character appears, he stops the action cold in order to run down a sort of checklist of physical characteristics. Height (in feet and inches), general physical build, hair color, eye color, and what sort of accent they speak in. Also what they’re wearing, in excruciating detail. As often as not he makes a judgment, too—“She looked quite pretty.” “He looked very handsome.”

What this author doesn’t seem to understand is that description, like everything else in a book, needs to serve the story. In general, you need more description in proportion to the importance of the character (but this isn’t always true—Earle Stanley Gardner, for instance, never described the continuing Perry Mason characters in more than general terms). And it’s often effective to be vague at the beginning (“Smith presented a large, somewhat intimidating figure”) and fill in the details later. And those details don’t have to come directly from you, the author. Another character can say, “You’re a big one, aren’t you? How tall are you?” Or a woman might ask, “Has anyone ever told you you have the sexiest blue eyes in the world?” Or you might work Smith’s size in as part of exposition that actually moves the story along (“Smith went to the closet for his coat. It was XXL, specially tailored to accommodate his broad shoulders and the holstered Smith & Wesson he wore under his left arm”). That doesn’t just tell you that Smith is big, it also tells you he lives a dangerous life and goes armed.

Here’s a memorable passage. The names have been blanked to protect the talentless:

C____ had ordered chicken tikka and L_______ had ordered gosth pura which is lamb seasoned with ginger and garlic.

The waiter left and they started to eat their food.

“What’s it like?” asked C_____, referring to Laura’s starter as they ate their food.

“It’s quite nice,” said L_______. “Nicely seasoned with ginger and garlic. You should try it one day.”

This short passage gives evidence of no thought at all (and probably no revision) on the part of the author. The prose jerks along, and the food (described twice, which is more than any food in a story deserves, unless there’s poison in it) interferes with the scene rather than enhancing it.

Here’s how I’d write it:

C____ had ordered chicken tikka and L______ had ordered gosth pura.

“What’s it like?” asked C_____, pointing at L______’s plate, when the waiter had left.

“It’s quite nice,” said L______. “Lamb seasoned with ginger and garlic. You should try it.”

My version dumps the redundancies, and moves faster.

But I might cut it altogether, depending on where the characters are going. I don’t actually know the answer to that, because I gave up on the book at about that point. However, since it’s been made clear that they’re likely to end up in bed together, some small talk about the pleasure of eating could be conducive to building sexual tension.

As a final note, I’ll mention that the proofreading was awful. A particular sin was that names often went uncapitalized.

Sadly, that sort of thing happens even with good books—and good publishers—far too often nowadays.