I'm in the middle of a Terry Pratchett where he (very self-consciously, IMHO) makes a point of having an exclamation mark after every piece of speech made by a particular character.

There's another one where he puts an apostrophe before every single 's' that a particular character speaks. The character in question is a grocer, and it's a parody of the old "grocer's apostrophe" typo that many people make.

Alex

Does that make me a narrow-minded misanthrope for just assuming he, and all his editors, were illiterate savages?

I think you need to judge him on the basis of more than one of his novels. They all have quirks in them, and those quirks always seem to me to be deliberate and in keeping with the story that he is telling at the time.

I think the one you are referring to is "Maskerade",and the character in question is Christine. I found that the way in which Pratchett did her dialogue gave me a very clear picture in my head of the kind of person she was, so I would say that the unusual punctuation achieved a very clear 'show not tell' effect. The book is also about the 18th Discworld novel, so his editor and publisher must have been pleased enough with the way his work was being received.

Alex

I think you need to judge him on the basis of more than one of his novels. They all have quirks in them, and those quirks always seem to me to be deliberate and in keeping with the story that he is telling at the time.

I think I've probably read most, if not all, of the Discworld novels... also the collaboration with Neil Gaiman and the truckers trilogy.

So... I guess I have to accept his writing has something worthwhile. And, yes, it is Christine in Maskerade.

However, although I don't mind reading Pratchett to pass the time, a lot of the quirks simply come across as a bit shoddy and, to be honest, a number of his novels felt not only formulaic but rushed and poorly thought out. I can't remember which one caught me out the most, but I remember one of the Sam Vimes books where a series of chapters at the end were simply the not very interesting thoughts of a series of characters acting as a series of info-dumps to bring me up to speed for the sub-par conclusion.

I think I see the punctuation for Christine in the same way - he has told me how to interpret the punctuation and then put in an exclamation mark rather than bothering to think about any of the other stuff around her character that would make her interesting.

Obviously, with a story world in which everyone is a charicature anyway, the characters are destined to be a little two-dimensional, but this just grates. Then grates more when he goes into the measurement of insanity by the number of ! ending each sentence in the same book...

That said, I know I've used something similar with one of my characters (an ellipsis to show hesitancy) in the MSS, but I have also developed other parts of her and the speech (I think) will sound hesitant even without the ellipsis. But Christine without the self-conscious ! placement is just Terry Pratchett talking... much like all the other characters.

Equally, to show that the jury is still out for me on this one, I loved and continue to love the all caps, no quotes speech of Death. And let us not forget the Death of Rats.

SQUEAK!

rather than bothering to think about any of the other stuff around her character that would make her interesting.

Such as having her faint pretentiously, then come around theatrically with the words, 'What happened?' And having her behave as if the whole world revolved around her, and she was the most interesting person in it?

I think her character is pretty clearly drawn, in more ways than that simple speech device. She's always seen through Perdita's/Agnes' eyes, but it's a pretty consistent and well done 'show'.

Alex

Well... consistent, yes, but...

having her faint pretentiously, then come around theatrically with the words, 'What happened?'

She was hardly alone in that.

Before she got "big" in the show, her predecessor (and a number of others) did exactly the same thing. (One of them, several times in succession, I think.) It felt very much to me that he had read the stereotype of a prima donna and said "I'll have one (or maybe a handful) of those".

it's a pretty consistent and well done 'show'

It was enjoyable, but I wholeheartedly disagree about both "well done" and "show".

Rather than have her simply faint in a way I might interpret as pretentious, he hammered the point home by then having Perdita thinking something along the lines of "there she goes again, fainting pretentiously".

Almost the whole way through the novel, he started something (like the fainting) that could have been witty and then over-explained it with why I should find it so... Which is the reading equivalent of driving in Slough where there are so many traffic lights and signals that you not only do not need to think about anything but it is almost a disadvantage to do so.

And, to me, the punctuation is just a symptom of that.

G

I agree, Gaius, that Pratchett over uses repetition to hammer the point home. Another is Jim Butcher in his series The Dresden Files, where the mc constantly stops to ruminate over the case so far. You just have to accept that that's part of their writing style, and it wouldn't work for everyone.

Part of Terry Pratchett's repetition, I think, is down to using multiple viewpoints. In order to build one character, he gives you their perspective on something. The Agnes/Christine thing is part of that, in Maskerade. Not only is he showing Christine to be an empty-headed, star-struck showoff, he is also showing Agnes to have the qualities of observation and clear thought that go with being a witch (something which she is trying desperately not to be). So in the context of that story, a lot of what you call repetition is just the use of one character to show the qualities of two characters.

And if I could sell as many stories as he does, I wouldn't really care what critics said about the literary merits of the stories.

Alex

To be clear, I've read loads of Pratchett and enjoyed a good deal of it.

That said, like the way alcohol would never get through modern-day approval for use without a prescription if it was discovered today, I don't think that should stop me being able to notice and comment on shortfalls...

Which brings me to:

down to using multiple viewpoints

Maskerade in particular gave me a really dizzying sense of head-hopping. Particularly early on, there were paragraphs that I had to read three times to make sure I had the correct person saying the correct thing. Something like:

Bob thought about Janine as he picked up the carrot. It really was a big carrot, too, Ernest thought. Frank watched the pair of them, warily anticipating what they would do to him with the Sacred Carrot of Pain. He was no stranger to root-crop related torture and, as he couldn't even guess at what they wanted to know, he certainly couldn't make up anything to satisfy them. It really was a big carrot. Ernest wasn't really interested in the size though, much more interested in the tell-tale markings along the bulbous orange root.

So, while I can applaud and envy his commercial success, I still think somebody in the editorial department should either have been given a bigger stick to wield or have been beaten with a bigger stick.

G