What makes a good novel?

I just thought I would casually tackle that very scary question this week.

Me and my sister discussed this a while ago with a post on the Nano forums, and with April Camp-Nano coming up, we've been discussing it again. Sadly, I can't find the thread where the question was posed to a wider audience (although it was specifically regarding teen fiction), so I assume it was before the last forum wipe. Anyhow, the three points which keep cropping up weren't what I expected when we started asking people this question, so I thought they would be good to share.

Good communication
There's a certain historical romance author, who I shan't name, whose books all follow a formula something like this:

• Character A meets Character B
• They fall in love
• A develops some misconception about B that leads to A thinking they can't be together
• Tension and awkwardness escalates in their interactions until a confrontation, where they break up
• A has a revelation that they were wrong all along
• A and B talk things over, and get back together

 I have a terrible feeling that this could be representative of the romance genre in general. But I digress. The problem with this type of novel is that either the reader is often privy to both sides of the situation, or as an outside observer, has enough knowledge to work out exactly what's wrong. And then to flail at the book and go "Why don't they just TALK to each other?"
Conflict caused solely by miscommunication is incredibly frustrating because it is so easily solved. Either the reader knows exactly how to fix it, or as soon as the solution becomes apparent, the reader starts asking why the characters didn't just talk it over as soon as the conflict began.
In the interesting of not making your readers frustrated with your novel - and also possibly hate your characters in the process - I would avoid this type of conflict at all costs.

Rational decision making
A very surprising consensus in this discussion is, "I don't want to read about teenagers who go out and get trashed and sleep with a guy and then regret it later, or about teenagers who don't tell their parents that their boyfriend is a werewolf, or teenagers who decide to go and fight demons with little to no martial arts experience, or teenagers who let them. I want to read about teenagers who go to a party and have a great time with their friends, who confide in their parents as soon as something bad happens, who don't go into situations without being prepared."
Basically, the reader becomes frustrated when problems arise from decisions that that know are poor as even as they're being made. If you're yelling at the character, "Don't do it!" and the character does it anyway, you lose a little bit of the connection to the character - they become less realistic, and less relatable.
It could also be a sign of poor plotting if your characters have to make these bad decisions to further your plot. The challenge is to make a good plot which still has enough conflict to keep people interested and then keeping your characters in that conflict while at the same time, making rational, sensible decisions.

 Well-executed romance
There's a lot of complaint out there about love triangles. The problem - at least as I understand it - is that they very often centre around a girl who has to choose between two guys: one who is often a long-time friend or even boyfriend, who is sweet, kind, and has a lot in common with the girl; the other, who is dark, brooding and mysterious, with unpredictable mood swings, some sort of 'dangerous' backstory, and a lot of chemistry. And of course, the girl chooses the second option.
While no-one is going to argue that people in love always make rational decisions, this comes back to the previous point. There is very rarely a love triangle where the central character makes a genuine decision - nine times out of ten, the reader is sure that they will choose angsty-and-brooding over sweet-and-friendly. And when you know that angsty-and-brooding is so much worse, and is just going to screw up the character's life for the next however-many books, this is a problem.

Having written these out, I realise that basically, what makes a good novel comes done to this: relatable characters who make decisions which make sense, and strong plot which doesn't require contrived action to propel it.

On Subtext

Today it is time for a rant about something in fiction that really annoy me. High up on this list is homosexual subtext, something that appears to mostly plague TV shows and movies. Once, it appealed, and I thought ‘Isn’t the writer kindly setting up potential slash-fic for so many fanfiction authors out there? Aren’t they being open-minded and accepting?’ and other such positive thoughts. But then I thought: If the writer were being open-minded an accepting, wouldn’t they have actually made the characters an out-in-the-open homosexual couple?

I read an an article a while ago about the BBC series Sherlock. Among other things, they interviewed Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman about Holmes/Watson slash. It was kind of hilarious. Especially when you imagine Benedict Cumberbatch, talking about fanfiction. In his voice. He is even describe at one point as ‘nervously giggling’. But I digress. I also think I just broke my internet by googling Benedict Cumberbatch too much. Anyhow, the point is, a comment was made in this article by Gatiss that they had “had a lot of fun” with the idea that Holmes and Watson might be a couple, or might be mistaken for one. This scene sums up the way the show treats a potential relationship between Holmes and Watson. On the other hand, Cumberbatch also very explicitly says that there is no actual romantic relationship between Holmes and Watson in the show.

What annoys me, then, is that while the writers are unwilling, for whatever reason, to actually explore the concept of Holmes and Watson being in a homosexual relationship, they are perfectly happy to use the idea of such a relationship as a source of ‘fun’ and a joke for their viewers. Homosexuality is not just there in fiction for that awkward ‘people thought we were a couple but we’re actually not’ joke. That joke is so, so overused. To stop bashing Sherlock (because I am actually a huge fan of the show) and move onto something else – the Doctor Who episode “Closing Time” exhibits all the same issues. Half the episode runs solely on the joke that the Doctor and Craig appear to be a couple, and everyone assumes as much, even though they’re not. If a show is so willing to mention and address homosexuality, surely they should be willing to actually show it on screen.

I realise that Doctor Who – and perhaps Sherlock, although I can’t remember off the top of my head – does have same-sex couples on screen and various times. I am especially a fan of Madame Vastra and Jenny from “A Good Man Goes to War”. And Doctor Who did use a very similar joke to the one with the Doctor and Craig, but with the Doctor and Donna. However, I don’t think they ever felt the need to base an entire episode upon it, simply because one wouldn’t think you can derive so much humour from two people not being a couple. Unless of course they’re gay, and you’re showing how accepting you are of the fact that they could be. If you want to be accepting, cut the subtext, and put it in the actual text. That is all.