Contributor, RPG Superstar 2008 Top 4, Legendary Games
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I was just reading an article the other day basically bagging on books 7-10 of the Wheel of Time series. I agree with some things the author said and disagreed with others, but it got me to thinking about something.
Book 7 I thought was pretty good overall. Book 8 okay but not great, with a bit of anticlimax at the end. Book 10 was dreary dreck, the worst of the series by a longshot.
Book 9, Winter's Heart, however is an interesting case. The final event in the book, centered on the chapter "With the Choedan Kal," is utterly, completely, and magnificently , the ascendance and transcendance of a bunch of the hero characters to the point where, though previously they had been fighting a losing or tenuous battle overmatched against tougher, better prepared bad guys, in this case the heroes finally put it all together and achieve a world-changing super-good event and kick some serious villain hienie. The event, including the couple of chapters leading directly up to it, also has character depth and drama, a bit of backstabbing, hero/villain points of view that are very interesting perspectives on the event that is happening - in short, it is all good.
But, honestly, I couldn't tell you any more what happened in the rest of the book. True, it's been some years now since I read it, but I have only the vaguest inklings of other events that happened in the book, aside from that final epic scene and a handful of chapters (maybe half a dozen tops) leading up to it.
So the question is this:
Is that one scene enough to make Winter's Heart a "good book"?
Discuss! :)
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I actually stopped reading WoT due to Winter's Heart.
The entire 'let's make a bonding web with all the girls, even the one that can't channel, but that's okay, because we want all of us to do it, and look all of them can feel Rand having sex with one of them' chapter was enough for me to put the book down.
So I'll say that one horrible scene can ruin a book at least ;D
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Contributor, RPG Superstar 2008 Top 4, Legendary Games
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I actually stopped reading WoT due to Winter's Heart.
The entire 'let's make a bonding web with all the girls, even the one that can't channel, but that's okay, because we want all of us to do it, and look all of them can feel Rand having sex with one of them' chapter was enough for me to put the book down.
So I'll say that one horrible scene can ruin a book at least ;D
Irony. I remember that it happened, though I didn't know that was the book where it did.
Alas that you never got to the big finish!
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Books: no. a good scene can make a book readable again, but won't make it 'good'. I might not remember what happened, but I would remember that i didn't like it, and it would get an air of avoidance. My least favorite book in the dresden files is like this: it has a marvelous fight scene, but it was the last book I bought audiobooks for, as the main story is 'eh' in my opinion
Movies:Yes. I bought the 2000 version of rollarball for the on scene where here decides to take it to the other players. There are a few other movies that I've done that too.
Actually for movies, a good score can do it. in the beforementioned rollarball scene, I wouldn't have liked it if it weren't for the begining with the music.
Books, no, for example Ender's Game
the last Dresden Files book I agree has an epic ending, but the rest is not impressive
I forget who it was that said it (I think it was Francois Truffaut) but there is a quote that roughly says a great movie is three good scenes and no bad ones. Perhaps it applies to books as well, but I doubt it.
I will agree with Zerombr that one bad scene can completely ruin something though.
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I imagine it takes quite a bit to make a book really, really good, and that all these things have to work in concert to create a memorably-good book.
Nonetheless, I've probably read hundreds of books over my life and only a very few stand the test of time (with me), meaning, chiefly, that I actually remember reading them several years after the fact!
These few books are remembered as qualitatively good, overwhelmingly good, generally good; and with a few scenes that act as the standard-bearer for the whole novel.
When I look back on those books, it's not always clear what was so special, especially about a particular scene, and I'm left with the notion that my appreciation may have been colored by now forgotten ancillary events in my life, or even the possiblity that I was simply, generally very happy in my life at the time of reading. Certainly, I know that some books have suffered simply because I was stressed, busy, otherwise overcome by events that degraded from the experience the novel afforded.
Why does the memory of Bilbo climbing a tree in Mirkwood (in an attempt to learn where they were) stand out to me? What's so special about riding the wine casks down the river that I immediately ascribe that scene to The Hobbit? Who knows.
Stranger still, though, is when I've rewritten a scene subconsciously. What do you mean they weren't escaping the elves? Thoses two scenes have hundreds of pages between them? You mean he never crash-landed the shuttle; it was that other guy and in the second novel, not the fourth?
No.
It may be the difference between a good book and great book, but considering many people (publishers included) stop reading at page 40 or 50 if not interested, that 'one great scene' might never even be seen. No matter how great the scene is, I have to be gripped enough by the 'good' book to even reach it.
If the good scene is the first scene it can develop a lot of momentum that might get me through the not so good stuff, but the climax better be more interesting than the opening :)
Imagine Peroit (or monk, psych, scooby) doing the reveal scene. Yes it is a good scene, but what makes it a good scene are all the clues we see through the rest of the story without realizing it. Without them the reveal would be lame.
Another example. If I am watching a sitcom and I laugh only once through the entire half-hour, it is not funny.
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I would rather have a good scene near the end of a book, than the beginning. I have read a fair number of books that started out with a bang, and kinda floundered midway through and then died a pathetic death by the end.
Still, I sometimes feel like a scene that is too much better than the rest of the book/movie/whatever can leave whatever comes after it feeling a bit weak, by comparison, as if I used up all my enthusiasm on that power-scene, and feel a bit drained afterwards. I often hate extended post-climax scenes (the end of that last Star Wars movie? All the build-up to the original movies, with the senator adopting baby Leia and whatever? Bored the crap out of me. It was like a needle draining any energy left from the climax right out of me. And wow, did that metaphor end up sounding naughty...). :)
Raymond Feist's Magician has some really good scenes that stick with me, after years, such as
I can have Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings playing in the background, and I have to stop and watch Cate Blanchett in her 'Treacherous as the sea, stronger than the foundations of the earth, all shall love me and despair!' scene, because it's, IMO, the most powerful scene in the movie (or, more accurately, the only one that never fails to send a shiver down my spine). I can, more or less, ignore the rest of the movie, despite thinking that it's an awesome take on the material and a great movie and all that.
I haven't read the Wheel of Time stuff so far basically because of the fanbois on the usenet in the late 90s. However, good writing can make a book. When I read Herbert's Dune, I still remember one scene which was reproduced in the Dino De Laurentis version.
The scene I remember so clearly [[spoilers?]] was when Paul and his mother crashed in the southern part of the planet and were trying to get from the small piece of rock where they crashed to where they eventually met Chani and Stilgar.
I still (over 2 decades later) remember reading that section while Paul attempts to move from the crash to the safe area with his mother in tow and trying to not attract the worm.
The scene was OK in the movie, but could NEVER have lived up to the scene I read. Without that scene the book would still have been good for me. But that scene took it up a notch.
I think it can. The first incident that springs to mind was the time a friend and I were watching Contact on DVD. I had seen it years before in the theater. I had liked it enough, I suppose. I had thought the two best scenes were the opening (with the Universe in the girl's eye), and the part at the end where Jodie Foster gives her speech about having something to share with everybody from her experience. I remember thinking at the time, though, that the movie dragged at times, and that those scenes had made it more worth it than it would otherwise have been.
Well, flash forward, and my friend continues to be unimpressed with the movie, until that very same scene at the end with Foster. Suddenly, he shut up and became riveted. Later, he said he thought the movie rather routine until that scene, but that it had elevated it, in his opinion, to a good movie.
There's been several books that I have had to make several attempts to get through the first part of the book that was rather slow or unimpressive to get to the best part of the book. Once I finally completed the book, I was always glad that I just didn't give up on it.
On the flip-side there has only been one book that has captured me from first line to final line in that I could put it down until I had completed it. The book was There have been others that have come close, but none that have enthralled me as much as that one book did.
I also agree a lot with what Andrew Turner said above. That how I feel about a book at the time that I am reading it is affected by many external forces that are shaping my physical/emotional state at the time that I am reading the book.
One good scene can definitely make for a great short-film. ;)
Less sure about a whole novel. (And on a tangent, while I found books 7-10 of WoT a bit drawn out on my first reading of them, reading them again, in sequence, and knowing all the things that's being set up in them, they're so much better all of a sudden.)
I would rather have a good scene near the end of a book, than the beginning. I have read a fair number of books that started out with a bang, and kinda floundered midway through and then died a pathetic death by the end.
Yeah, I would totally agree with that. That's why The Etched City by K.J. Bishop was just about the most disappointing read I've ever had. It started out great, so great that 100 pages in I thought it would be one of my favorite books, but about a third of the way through it just lost all momentum and died. Serious shame too, it had a very powerful opening.