SBD: author intrusion

[jmc_bks]

Tis Monday, so it must be time to bitch!

My topic today: authorial intrusion into the fictional world of the characters. And I have two examples to share. The first was intentional, the second probably not so much.

First, JR Ward and her BDB "interviews". Check out this "interview" (courtesy of KatMayo and Romance Buy the Book). My first thought was that if Ward had to tell readers that V and Jane got an HEA, then she didn't do a good enough job the first time around. Second thought, jeeze, more of the "stillies", "beat feet", etc., vocabulary. Eh. But after I was finished, the POV started to bother me. The author was basically inserting herself into the storyline of the characters. Which is just strange to me. Not (just) because of the whole reality/fiction separation, but because it seems intrusive to me. It changes the focus from the characters to the author, which seems distracting and wrong. Isn't the focus supposed to be on the chracters?

Second, Blair Underwood and Tennyson Hardwick. Blair is gorgeous. He would make an excellent Wrath, IMO. (That idea sprang not from me, though. I think Roslyn Hardy or Monica Jackson or Angela Sharon Cullars cast the BDB as black, and he just works.) As I read Casanegra, I had to work to keep from imagining Underwood as Ten Hardwick, especially when he talked about The Face and the sex appeal. When I got to the afterword and learned that the idea for the book came from an aborted project, Ten became Blair in my head. Intentional? No, but the image is there now. Assuming that there are more Tennyson Hardwick novels coming, Underwood is cast as the main character in my head now. Right? Wrong? I don't know. But it is unusual for me, because I don't generally imagine real people or actors in the roles of book characters as I read.

Do other authors do this? Intentionally? Unintentionally? I'm curious to know what other readers think.

Comments

[sarahf.livejournal.com]

I agree with your comment about having to explain the ending, but as for your other comment, she's always constructed this world with herself as part of it. She is their challa, their story-teller, and always has been, from her first Slice of Life on her website. She also "interacts" with them on the message board and as far as I can tell, always has. So it's not that weird to me. But maybe I follow the online interactions a little more closely.

[jmc-bks.livejournal.com]

I haven't paid that much attention to Ward's website, so I didn't realize that she interacts with the BDB on her message board.

The more I think about it, the more I realize that it isn't the "interview" that bothers me -- I've read other author-character interviews before. As Kat mentions below, the intrusive factor came in with the details about Ward's handbag, car, cellphone, etc. It felt like the line between fantasy and reality was blurred in the author's mind, and was creeping a little too close to the LKH gift shopping for a character episode (IMO).

[menage-a-kat.livejournal.com]

*lol* The LKH thing crossed my mind, too!

[sarahf.livejournal.com]

I guess I just focused on the purse as an extended metaphor of what she was trying to say about the ending. I think she's got the potential to pull a LKH, but I'm hoping she manages to keep a grip.

[menage-a-kat.livejournal.com]

It didn't use to bother me, but this latest SoL did. A lot. I think it's not so much the intrusion (although that's part of it--she seemed to insert more of her in this one than she has in the past), but the fact that she keeps emphasising how she doesn't understand V. So I read that and think, Well, why did you write an entire book about him then? The SoL didn't make me feel better about V's book. If anything, it made me feel worse because it sounds like he got shafted in favour of JM and Phury who were easier for JRW to write about.

Also, including details about where the author is and her handbag and whatnot in the SoL was somewhat...creepy. Having her there wasn't the problem--a character "interview" would have been totally fine with me--but the fact that she's written it as though she were part of and interacting in the BDB world just seemed to cross the line from fun fiction to silly.

[jmc-bks.livejournal.com]

The details about the author were what threw me off. I've read author-character "interviews" before, but reading about her handbag and her car and her phone calls just felt wrong and forced to me.

And I wondered -- how can an author write a book about a character without understanding that character? Not being a writer, I don't get that. Don't you need to have some understanding in order to get to his/her motivation? To draw him/her consistently?