Debbie does Deus Ex Machina and Other Musings -- by Debbie Bennett

I was procrastinating on social media the other day – as you do, or as I do, anyway – and got involved in a conversation where somebody posted the beginning of a book and asked if anyone would be interested in an ARC in the hope of a review on publication. The cover looked a bit home-made (and yes, it really does matter. Rightly or wrongly, people absolutely do judge a book by its cover), but the plot seemed similar to stuff I write – dark and gritty thriller – and so I said I’d give it a go. I like this sort of thing and I'm always interested in how other writers treat the same material. We can all learn from analysing other people's writing.

I don’t do this often. Really, I don’t. I’ve been burned too many times by agreeing to read unreadable books, and I don’t like to be in a position where I’m unable to leave a ‘good’ review and feel morally unable not to leave a review at all. You’d think I’d know better by now, wouldn't you?

A PDF duly arrives and I swap it for an epub so I can at least sideload onto my kindle. It’s an ARC and it’s been edited and proofread and due to go live in a month or so. And I start reading. 

It’s not a bad book. I’ve read a lot worse. And I got to the end, which says a lot. It was readable and I enjoyed it. So where is the BUT, I hear you asking? And it’s this: despite the email saying it had been edited x number of times and copy-edited and proofread etc etc, it most clearly has not been – or if it has, I’d be asking for a refund. Missing and misused words and an inability to correctly punctuate dialogue. I’m lucky in that I have an editor that covers everything in one sweep – line-editing, proofreading and the occasional bit of developmental editing where he feels it necessary. So I’m no expert in the levels of editing required as I’ve never needed to specify. 

Please let me know if you come across any errors, the email says. So, I did. Gently. At least I thought I was gentle, although I’m not known for my tact or subtlety, as my friends will testify! And radio silence. I’ve clearly touched a nerve. Which is a shame as I generally don’t comment on stuff that doesn’t at least speak to me on some level. I was even thinking of offering to proofread the whole thing as a favour – one author to another. And that's something I do even less often.

One thing struck me with the plot. Deus Ex Machina. God from the machine. Or you can’t pluck an ending out of thin air that doesn’t unfold naturally from the plot. I’d take it one stage further to say that I’m a firm believer in a character engineering their own fate and finding their own solutions. I don’t like to read a book where the resolution happens to the main character without any conscious effort on his or her part. They have to escape from the bad guys themselves (using plot devices set up previously – I have no issue with that) and not because something happens off-screen that they have no control over. That’s lazy writing in my opinion. God knows I’ve written myself into more corners than a Mueller yoghurt, but my characters are always masters of their own fate and engineer their own escapes. It's hard, but writing is hard. Nobody said it would be easy. A scene is far more powerful if you've set it up carefully, built the tension and then seen it through to its end in all its glorious, messy and dangerous detail. Keep your Gods out of your machines as humans are far more fun!

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