You know that moment when you are reading the latest novel by a favorite author, and you get this nagging feeling you have read this before? Light bulbs start exploding above your head as you think back on the series. This is just like the previous book. And wait, so was the novel, two books before that! Sometimes the book is not even part of a series! The novels have no relation to each other, other than the author, yet they are almost identical.
I recently had that moment, which is what inspired my rant this month. This isn’t the first time I’ve ran across this phenomena, and I know it’s not the last. It’s everywhere, in every genre I’ve read so far! You know what else? It’s freaking annoying!
For instance, if, in say book #2, the clever and independent girl somehow saves the big, tough guy from a disaster/accident and she nurses him back to health in her home. They fall madly in love; they have relationship issues but soldier through anyway. Kisses, hugs, happily ever after, the end.
To me, dear author, this story is done; there is no need to rewrite it in another book. – If you ask me, this set up is so overdone its extra crispy, as tons of authors have at least one book that fits this description. – I get that it’s hard to create new characters, situations and history for each novel. But there are so many ways people can meet and fall in love that there shouldn’t be a need for repeating! Changing the characters, what kind of accident and the state they live in, or if they are human or not, does not make this a new story. It’s the same story, in a different costume!
I don’t know if the author doesn’t realize they are repeating themselves as they write. Like, each character/book is an individual entity to them and they cannot see the pattern. I’m sure the editor can’t tell as they have multiple authors to work with. But as the reader, we can, because we don’t ‘see’ the novel in the same way. I would think that the author would be aware of it though. Especially if it’s a series, they have to keep track of details of all characters and all the threads connecting them. That should be one of the details they keep track of, in my opinion. Then again, maybe it’s a lazy thing. Maybe they had new characters in their head, but couldn’t come up with a new idea, so they just reused an old plot. Or, maybe they just like this set up and because it was successful before, they continue to recycle it.
Whatever their individual reasons for doing this, I wish they’d stop. Two books being the same, ok, fine we can forgive it the first time, but anything past that, becomes ridiculous. If one can’t come up with new material, then maybe walk away from writing for a while or try a new genre. That is so much better than repeating the set up multiple times. Besides that, in the long run they will lose money for it. Readers will get bored and realize they don’t have to buy the next book, whether in a series or not, because they already know what is going to happen. Why would they risk that? I just don’t know.
My questions to you, fellow readers: What do you think? Do you stop reading a series or author if there’s a repeat? Or do you accept that repetition in books is inevitable? What about more than one plot line being reused consistently? Can their particular style, characters or anything else special about their world save them time after time, in your eyes? And, should we send out masses of emails begging these authors to stop or else we’ll rally their next book signing?
Ok, I kid on that last one…maybe.
Yeah, that has happened to me quite a bit, but that didn’t stop me from continuing reading from an author. xP I’m stubborn like that.
One example was Iris Johansen. All the books I’ve ever read from her has the same elements: hot guy; vulnerable, strong and motherly woman; wingman who doesn’t pose as romantic competition for the hot guy; and a dangerous situation that forces the woman to seek out the hot guy to help/protect her, even though she dated/knew/knew of him before and things ended badly, but she still trusts him…
It does make me think that that’s lazy writing. I think an author knows when he/she has written something before, because you don’t forget the characters and the stories you’ve put so much time and effort into. You can’t.
It can really depend. On one hand, some of the repetition might be exactly what I’m looking for, with an old-but-new setting and feel. And that’s fine sometimes. Sometimes also a little bit of repetition is warranted, like explaining some backstory to a new character, because even though the reader may know it all, there’s a valid plot-related reason for it to get said yet again.
However (and isn’t there always a ‘however’), it strikes me more often than not that the authors who do this a lot are often one-trick ponies. They write a certain thing pretty well, and they hesitate to stray from that path because they know that it works for me. It can make for some refined writing. But it can also make for readers going elsewhere when it becomes obvious that they’re reading the same book they read last year, just with different character names and a different setting.