Book analysis: The Forest of Hands and Teeth

My analysis of The Forest of Hands and Teeth
by Carrie Ryan.

Carrie, if you read this: it’s a good first try, and I wish you luck with the next one.

TFHT is a novel set long after a zombie apocalypse, when the world has reverted to a rural substance society, isolated by zombie fences and vast forest plagued by the undead. The story is told 1st person, present tense (a poor choice which I found distracting). The world building is interesting, though inconsistent, and the writing is compelling enough to draw a reader along despite a terribly annoying protagonist.

The story centers on a young girl who spends most of the book uselessly emoting, whining about things that are easy to fix, and doing stupid things that get her friends and family killed. As you may have guessed, I did not connect with the protagonist.

The good things:

It has a very strong 1st chapter. Chapter one starts with some beautiful imagery, then in just 9 well written pages, it sets up nearly every conflict and relationship in the book. This is the right way to start the book (and the main reason I bought it).

By using short paragraphs (few more than three sentences long) and very short chapters (averaging 7 pages), the author keeps up a brisk pace.

Most chapters end with a hook: a cliffhanger or unanswered question.

Most chapters begin with a hook: a twist or new, surprising information.

It has some good world building. TFHT presents a reasonable scenario for a post-zombie apocalypse world where we basically lost, but a few pockets of people survived. There is a well-developed society that appears to have survived for generations in a zombie-infested forest. An interesting, though inconsistent, zombie mythos is presented. Its most original facet is the concept that zombies hibernate when no living are nearby, allowing them to survive for decades in a dormant state.

The social extrapolation with fences, dedicated defenders, drills and escape platforms is good. However, the obvious way to deal with these zombies over a period of decades is to actively kill a few dozen each day so that over time, there are none left. Another way to dispatch them is to use passive defenses that entangle and dismember them as they mindlessly attack. Either way, survivors would take action to thin the zombie ranks rather than idly waiting for them to break through the fence (as presented in this book). Ah well, something future zombie novels can improve upon.

The bad:

Writing drops off after first chapter. Very little imagery is used, and what little there is relies overmuch on simile. The descriptions tend to be simple, generic, and often confusing. There is also a lot of repeated description. The worst one: “tears burning my throat.” This shows up at least twenty times. The overall writing is so different from the brilliant first chapter that it feels there were two different authors at work here.

A deeply unsatisfying ending. Spoiler alert! In the last three chapters, everyone but the undeserving protagonist die. This wraps up all the dangling plot points, but ruins the book.

Poorly developed characters. None of the characters, even the protagonist, are well developed. The boys are one dimensional -- generic, faceless automatons devoid of any personality who are strangely devoted to the protagonist who mistreats them and gets them all killed. The best friend is only described as “sunshine” and displays no personality at all (less than one-dimensional).

Inconsistent world. The zombies change throughout the book. At first, they are weak, harmless things easily held back by a dilapidated fence. Later, they can smash through doors and floors in seconds. And their numbers vary from twos and threes, to countless hundreds depending more on the author’s whim than any logic.

Unsympathetic protagonist. The protagonist is sympathetic at first, a dreamer and an outcast. The problem is, when several other characters rally around her, she remains 100% selfish and I think most readers will quickly come to hate her. She rarely takes direct action, waiting instead for a dues-ex-machina to appear and force the plot one way or another. She gets tripped up by simple problems that could be solved with two lines of dialogue or five seconds of direct action. She gets her friends and family killed one at a time, feeling bad for a few pages after each death before doing the same thing to the next person, whittling them away one-by-one until she is the sole survivor. Never does she see her own mistakes, never does she learn, and never does she try to do better. So the set up is good—it generates reader empathy. But she does not maintain that through the rest of the book.

Unrealistic / unbelievable action. This problem is inconsistent, there are some good action sequences, exciting fun, compelling. But there are a number of gaffes in the action sequences are so bad they unintentionally prove to be the most entertaining element of the book. The first: A puppy proves more effective than a sword (and is used as the dues-ex-machina twice to save the protag from certain death). The second: the helpless protagonist proves more effective in battle than trained, seasoned zombie fighters. It’s not just the juxtaposition of roles, it’s that she displays this kind of emo-rage that gives her super-human zombie fighting powers but only when she is emotionally overwrought. While in an emo-rage, she is able to kill zombies left and right, lopping multiple heads with a single swing of her mighty axe, able to fight on through hundreds of zombies...while just 1 or 2 prove a match for the trained zombie-fighters traveling with her. Weird. Unintentional. Laugh-out-loud funny.

Terrible dialogue. This is by far the worst part of the book. A typical dialogue in the book is: cardboard boy says one word. Protagonist emotes about the implications of that word for a page or more and often doesn’t even reply. Boy follows up with an incomplete sentence. Protag emotes for another page. Boy storms off. Protag emotes some more, repeating much of what she has already emoted about in previous pages. Some chapters consist entirely of this. It is painful to read and bears no resemblance to real human interaction or even to literary dialogue. It is so bad that several times I had to put the book down. Carrie, if you read this please study up on the dialogue before you turn in the next book.

So, that’s the writing analysis. Mimic pace. Improve on the world building, avoid TFHT-esque dialogue and useless, long-winded emoting. And while this is not a book-review, the book is entertaining in that quick-read-by-the-pool way, but it missed some really good opportunities for exploring the world and the characters and parts are downright hard to sit through. I’d give it three stars.

Progress report April 17, 2009

Hurray, a sale. Fusion Fragment just accepted a flash fiction piece, “’56”. It should come out in May.

Getting a fair amount of revision done during the vacation. A lot of activities and family stuff, but I’ve managed to write about 3 hours per day. Just finished the first major block of re-writes, gutting a slow section and replacing 3 chapters entirely.

The section I just started is a stitch together of about 50% new material and 50% old material, but it amps up the pace of the middle of the book (which sagged a bit in the 1st draft).

I am also doing a careful, chapter-by-chapter analysis of “The Forest of Hands and Teeth” (TFHT). I chose this book because of the zombie novels on the market, this is the closet I could find to my own (though they are VERY different). This book appears to have been well publicized (implying the publisher believed in it) and it appears to be doing well. I thought I might learn a thing or two if I closely examined it, picking up some tricks and tecniques that might make my book better. Sadly, the book has been a disappointment, the most interesting parts are skipped, the whole plot driven by dues-ex-machina and the protagonist turning out to be very, very, very annoying. Still, I have noticed a few patterns I may adopt (the good parts) and noted many things that weaken the book (which I will stay away from) and overall the book is entertaining in that quick-read-by-the-pool way.

The missed day

Damn. Missed a day of writing. The first day I have missed in 228 days. The first since August 27th 2008.

How did this disaster happen? First, I stayed up late to get a story out before leaving the country for a while. Then, my dear sweet infant woke up screaming at 3am (teething). At 4am, the whole Fam has to get up to prep for a flight to Mexico. Me with just two hours of real sleep, and another two of restless, interrupted sleep. Many hours later we arrive in Cozumel, spend another two hours in immigration (no AC in the line, packed in a room with three hundred other lucky Americans). We finally reach our destination after 12 hours of travel. The kids are strung out, I’m about falling over from heat exhaustion. Unpack. Shower. Dinner. Kids to bed. And while putting the oldest to bed, I passed out. A few times after that I woke up and thought “I should get up and write for a few minutes,” but I never did.

Well, the good news is that I managed to write 228 days in a row. Some days were not very productive, but I kept at it. Now I have a record to beat.

Status -- April 1, 2009

Ah, such a regular blogging schedule.

Just took this test, the results surprised me, mainly because I was typed as an author I have never heard of or read. How sad. Guess I will be looking up Mr. Clement’s work:

I am: Hal Clement (Harry C. Stubbs) A quiet and underrated master of "hard science" fiction who, among other things, foresaw integrated circuits back in the 1940s.

Which science fiction writer are you?

In other news... logged 75 hours in March, a good rebound. But it did not feel very productive. I sketched (flash-length outline) three short stories, two about Grognak the Giant because I am sick and f’ing tired of endless elf stories in EVERY SINGLE FANTASY PUBLICATION ON THE PLANET and I really do not like elf stories. The third was about a unique predator prey relationship, and this one I might finish in April because both characters have great voices and it should be very short (1-2,000 words).

The remainder of the time was on the book, but mostly capturing read-through notes and brainstorming changes for the next draft. I did start the next draft, but in two weeks I have only updated one chapter...I was hoping to get through it faster.

Quick status -- March 19, 2009

Have momentum again. Day job is still consuming a lot of time and brain cells, but I am back on a more regular writing schedule. Daylight saving time threw me off...so my block is in the evening now instead of the morning, but the most important thing is that it’s there.

I have compiled my notes on the 1st draft and have concluded that there are three main problems:

1) Protagonist does not have enough attitude--she needs more attitude to be memorable.
2) Plot has holes (Dad’s story arc, scav’s vs. Taft, and a full reveal of Taft’s plan).
3) There are some boring, confusing and redundant parts.

So, nothing earth shattering. I am estimating about a 30% rewrite, but writing the ~30K new words will be relatively quick as I know the characters and world, and some of the key ‘facts’ the new scenes need are worked out in the parts they will replace.

The rewrite will address problems 2 and 3.

Problem #1 is harder to solve. It could permutate the voice of the book, it could require significant changes to dialogue and it could invalidate some plot points. The plan now is to think about it, but not work it hard until draft #3.

In brainstorming sessions this week, I have worked out about 50% of the outline for the rewritten sections, enough to enable me to start writing them next week.

Hopefully, this momentum will keep up.

The Hump

The hump is a terrible problem I face every day. In order to be productive, in order to write well or to make real forward progress, I have to work long enough to get over the hump. This usually takes me about an hour. After that, I’m into it. My mind is churning away and some wonderful stuff comes out...but that first hour is pretty much wasted.

This kills me when the only available time is less than an hour. It very hard for me to generate anything worth keeping in these short sessions. Sometimes I can do it. Sometimes I can crank out 500 beautiful, clean, in character, in voice words in 15 minutes. But not usually. More often the first fifteen minutes is figuring out where I was. The next half an hour is the mental and emotional struggle to get over the hump. In the last fifteen minutes I usually see the first copy worth keeping start to flow.

My solution is to shoot for 2-hour blocks (or longer), or to psyche myself up and focus on one thing before sitting down. With the right focus, the sprints usually work, however I am most productive when I can work without interruption for 5-6 hours. Past about 6 hours I run out of steam. If I am interrupted for more than a couple minutes, my mind will slip out of gear and find myself back at the bottom of that hill, having to climb up over the hump again.

Writing on life support

Well, day-job is close to killing me. 60-70 hour weeks and triple helpings of stress. My writing is on life support--some days as little as 15 minutes. I have still managed to write a little every single day, but have not done any meaningful work. I’m mostly done reading the 1st draft, a process that should have taken only 1 or 2 days, which has stretched into weeks.

The good news is that most of the book is solid, there are just a few holes to fill in and some character work to bring them out a bit more. The sad thing is that this work will take months...I am estimating about 3 months.

Did manage to write a flash-fiction story for the Writer’s Block and I think it came out well. That will be critiqued this coming week. We do this every few months... the whole group uses a writing prompt to write stories of less than 1000 words, and we critique them together, anonymously, trying to guess who wrote what. One of these flash pieces was the only the only thing I had published last year (Panel Discussion).

Anyway, I should be on to the 2nd draft next week--March 8th-- crap, I thought I’d be querying agents by March.