No spoilers, please
New York Times best-selling novelist Elizabeth Boyle is no fan of spoilers:
If I am looking forward to something (a book, a TV show, a movie) I make it a studious practice of avoiding anything that might hint at the plot, the twists or even if there is a surprise. I’ll read a review for about two lines to get the sense of whether the reviewer liked it or didn’t and then stop, for fear the reviewer has forgotten his job and gone and spoiled the premise for his readers.
Because, ladies and gentleman, IMHO the job of a reviewer is NOT to give away the plot. They can give a broad overview of the story, but when they lay out each and every surprise, twist or character Ta-Da the author, playwright or screenwriter has carefully and meticulously labored over to layer into the story just so, then they might as well have just slammed the oven door on the souffle.
On the reviews of one of her own novels:
And when I see that someone has reviewed my book, especially this one, I am at first thankful for the time they’ve spent to give my book a review, but there is also that momentary cringe. Dear God, don’t let them give away the farm, I mutter as I click the mail open. Most of the reviews have been good at realizing that the reader is going to have more fun with this story if they don’t know every detail of the plot. They understand that the reading experience is about being surprised about who the characters are after you’ve peeled through the requisite chapters like layers of a onion.
It helps, of course, if the author herself doesn’t telegraph the entire story in the first chapter or two. And apart from the fact that this particular book is a romance and therefore can be reasonably expected to end with the couple living happily ever after, I admit that during the reading I came up with half a dozen different outlines for just how Point B would be reached, and every last one of them was wrong.
(Yes, it’s a romance. I don’t deny it. I consider it, however, necessary research.)
zigzag »
24 November 2008 · 11:44 am
(do not open until 25th November)
Happy Birthday to you !
Happy Birthday to you !
Dearest Charles, happy birthday to you !
Thanks for welcoming me to the internet. You’re the best.
CGHill »
24 November 2008 · 1:12 pm
But … but that’s a spoiler!
Brian J. »
25 November 2008 · 6:20 am
Every review I read of Eagle Eye revealed the secret twist.
Which, ultimately, saved me from seeing it and being disappointed with the twist.