top writers; poor writting

veronie said:

Why can writers get away with this. Please don't say, because Danielle Steel sells umpteen million copies and can do whatever she wants. I recognize that this is true, but I'm talking about quality of writing. Shouldn't the top sellers be some of the best writers. I know that's obviously not the case (J.K. Rowling). I guess what I'd really like to know is, Danielle Steel and the sort had to write a first book. If they didn't write any better than they do now, how did they ever get a contract?

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thats the answer tho! ><
I don't know...my friends and i have read some really awful books and they end up going: "Christina...your stuff is better then this. And...since [insert name] sucks so badly, and you're so good...Why isnt it your book i'm reading".

Me: "I'm generic?"

But seriously, some people get contracts merely by 'knowing people'. I'm grateful to those that write well AND know people.
If you uncle loves you & owns a publishing company and your writing sucks, he'll still give you a contract.
Right?

Steel has an audience that will read anything she writes. That gives a writer certain liberties.
I never understood why people would read any romance...

As for J.K. Rowling, she's grown in her writing. Book 7 was way better than Book 1.

It's all about the readership. Your concepts of good-writing are lost on most readers.

Writer14 said:

But seriously, some people get contracts merely by 'knowing people'. I'm grateful to those that write well AND know people.
If you uncle loves you & owns a publishing company and your writing sucks, he'll still give you a contract.
Right?

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Wrong! He won't if he doesn't think he can make money off you.

veronie said:

Has Danielle Steel, if I can use her as an example, ever read a book on writing, or ever heard about showing vs. telling? How can you write so many books and not improve on those kinds of things?

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Perhaps, she just doesn't want to conform and has a different notion of what consists of good-writing. Those who conform just can't sell any because their writings are commonplace, prosaic if you prefer.

Then again, I'm only guessing, never read any of Steel's books.

Once an audience discovers a writer's voice and accepts it by purchasing book after book, I'd say it's suicide to attempt a change. I've glanced through one or two of her (Steel's) books and don't see anything wrong with her writing. There are plenty of published writers out there with something similar.

I've read a couple Danielle Steels. Now and Forever and The Ring come to mind. I thought the writing was decent and I loved the characters and story-lines. And I was twelve. The market is there, the readers are there, and people discover her books daily. They're sold at the airport, at the supermarket, at Walmart. People who are picking up a book at the airport, the supermarket, or Walmart are not going to care if she's headhopping or info-dumping. They're reading it in line at the checkout, or using it as cover to avoid the person sitting next to them.

This is one of my personal pet peeves, and here are my conclusions.

The majority of readers aren't writers and therefore aren't too interested in writing style. They just want to know whether or not they are going to like the story. This was pointed out to me recently by a colleague (reader, but not writer) when I was complaining about a particular popular writer. "You're judging the book as a writer," she said. "Not a reader. Readers don't care about these things that are niggling you." Perhaps this is a fair point. Perhaps writers are far more critical of a book than a non-writing reader would be.

We must also remember that publishing is about sales before it's about good writing.

Hence, a lot of books that aren't terribly well written seem to get published because the publisher thinks they will sell.

A good example is The Da Vinci Code. This is actually a very badly written book - the characters are two-dimensional, the dialogue is weak, there are a great deal of consistently errors. But the story is action packed and suspenseful, and the reader keeps turning the page because s/he wants to know what happens next.

It still bugs me that there are so many bad novels out there that are published when mine aren't being, but maybe this is just the way of the world.

Shara

Stijn Hommes said:

As for J.K. Rowling, she's grown in her writing. Book 7 was way better than Book 1.

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Matter of opinion.

"The majority of readers aren't writers and therefore aren't too interested in writing style. They just want to know whether or not they are going to like the story. This was pointed out to me recently by a colleague (reader, but not writer) when I was complaining about a particular popular writer. "You're judging the book as a writer," she said. "Not a reader. Readers don't care about these things that are niggling you." Perhaps this is a fair point. Perhaps writers are far more critical of a book than a non-writing reader would be."


Shara's right. It took me a long time to come to terms with it, but whenever I talk to friends and colleagues (and these are college-educated people), many of them LOVE these very type of writers. They like the story, period, and pay far less attention to writing style. Writing a compelling or incredibly unique story, regardless of genre, is your best bet for getting published, I think.

And try not to obsess too much about this whole issue. It'll only make you mad and take your energies away from your own writing.

veronie said:

Good writing is supposed to be showing, not telling, and other things like POV matters, limiting adverbs, good hooky intros, blah, blah, blah.

Then today I pick up one a Danielle Steel novel and the intro lacks of any strong hook, and the first page is all telling, almost no showing. It was an info dump (I've been accused of that lately, but then again, I'm learning).

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Hi

Film is 'show don't tell' but novels can get extremely introspective and still work with a lot of telling.

Did you only read the first page of the DS novel, because I don't think you'd be too happy if someone critiqued you on one page only!

You can generally pick up a writer's rhythm in a couple of chapters, but it's really best to read complete works to understand what the author was driving at and why it's good or bad.

Just keep reading and post your work on the 'Share your Work' forum. Most people here are pretty constructive and they'll tell you if you're telling too much and should be showing more!

Quality writing is wasted if it isn't wrapped in a great story, but good storytelling frequently will trump technically imprecise writing. The average reader gets involved in the story, not the prose, and most technical aspects of the craft are only noticed by other authors, agents, editors, and a handful of others. Most of the bestselling authors who have been trashed for slack craftsmanship seem to be great storytellers, which should tell us all something about the importance of shoring up the storytelling side of our writing. At the same time, we should strive to develop both--quality craftsmanship and quality stories. Unfortunately, for a beginning or developing writer, the competition is so intense, a slip in craftsmanship won't allow an agent or editor to see that wonderful story. So, yes. There is a sort of double standard, but it's driven by dollars, and a solid, established readership means solid dollars for the publishers.

When an author is extremely prolific in a specific genre, the challenge is to stay fresh. This requires moving away from a boilerplate novel structure, and could involve different writing tricks and styles in their approach to a new story. Maybe a prolific author who starts a novel in a way we are told to avoid is just trying to stay away from that boilerplate.

veronie said:

Why can writers get away with this. Please don't say, because Danielle Steel sells umpteen million copies and can do whatever she wants. I recognize that this is true, but I'm talking about quality of writing. Shouldn't the top sellers be some of the best writers. I know that's obviously not the case (J.K. Rowling). I guess what I'd really like to know is, Danielle Steel and the sort had to write a first book. If they didn't write any better than they do now, how did they ever get a contract?

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I think about this quite a lot. I forced myself through a Dan Brown novel the other day and was once again amazed at the indescribable badness of his prose, characterisation and plotting.

My theory is this. Dan's audience doesn't notice this stuff.

The guard admired Susan as she began her walk down the cement causeway. He noticed that her strong hazel eyes seemed distant today, but her cheeks had a flushed freshness, and her shoulder-length, auburn hair looked newly blown dry. Trailing her was the faint scent of Johnson’s Baby Powder. His eyes fell the length of her slender torso — to her white blouse with the bra barely visible beneath, to her knee-length khaki skirt, and finally to her legs . . . Susan Fletcher’s legs.
Hard to imagine they support a 170 IQ, he mused to himself.

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Hard to imagine this supports Dan's multi-million dollar lifestyle, I muse to myself. Notwithstanding Susan's '170 IQ' - she's supposed to be a hot-shot NSA cryptographer - she takes three quarters of the book to realise that someone called 'Tankado' is also the mysterious 'NDAKOTA', an anagram that anyone more savvy than a lobotomised ostrich has figured out by chapter 3. (Sorry if I spoiled it for you, ostriches.)

It doesn't seem to matter. And actually, spotting that this kind of novel is a commercial proposition is quite a valuable skill; there are more than enough paying customers out there for whom Dan's prose is perfectly serviceable. If you're the kind of person who wants an unthreatening thriller, with nice short chapters, gobs of undigested research, a cast of Hollywood-friendly Mary Sues and a plot twist and a murder every fifty pages, then you know that the Dan Brown brand is not going to disappoint.

Perhaps, then, the qualities that Dan and Danielle share are to do with being easy to read. Don't be clever in your plotting; create the illusion of complexity. Have a character hold the reader by the hand and walk them through anything that requires more than ten functional neurons to understand. Avoid clutter; if there's a character you no longer require to advance the plot, kill them off in a bizarre way. Don't write realistic or three-dimensional characters; heroes should be stunningly attractive and brilliantly intelligent, while villains should be cartoon baddies with sinister disabilities. If someone's motivations are not obvious, hop into their POV and tell the reader what they are thinking. Research something hard - forensic science, art history, cryptography - and stir in a few steaming chunks of it whenever you want to make your audience feel like they're learning stuff. (Flattering your reader's intelligence isn't just for the Dan Browns of this world, of course - you can do this if you're Umberto Eco, too.)

I see a lot of stuff in slush piles that aspires to this level of witlessness, but it turns out to be pretty hard to pull off. Dan himself took several undistinguished novels to limber up before he wrote THE DA VINCI CODE, which then allowed him to re-release his inferior backlist. The question is, do you want to be Dan Brown or Danielle Steel? It'd be nice to have a bazillion dollars, sure, but could you live with yourself? You could? Oh. OK. Just try not to publish the same month as my new blockbuster, SEXY MEDIEVALIST VS THE CLUB-FOOTED ASSASSIN, eh?

Torgo said:

Notwithstanding Susan's '170 IQ' - she's supposed to be a hot-shot NSA cryptographer - she takes three quarters of the book to realise that someone called 'Tankado' is also the mysterious 'NDAKOTA', an anagram that anyone more savvy than a lobotomised ostrich has figured out by chapter 3. (Sorry if I spoiled it for you, ostriches.)

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Nooooooooooooo. You've ruined it for me now.

"Show, don't tell," has to be one of the stupidest writer rules I've ever heard.

Which isn't endorsing massive infodumps or anything, but everytime somebody says something like that I cringe. "Show, don't tell" is something writer teachers preach because they don't know anything about writing. There's plenty of times when telling is much more superior to showing.

I mean, I get the basic idea the "rule" is trying to get across. But it's stupid.

There are no rules to writing, except that you're coherant. And even that is occasionally negotiable.

Is it Steele or Evanovich who writes a thousand six word sentences?

"Rachel grabbed a cup. She filled it with water. Put it to her lips. Sipped it slowly. Looked through the glass. There was Jake. Staring back at her. Through the glass."

And on and on for 400 pages.

I've seen "three little pigs" written better than this best-selling garbage!

But, you know what? The office cows pass those books around like currency! They love them!

So readership IS what makes a best-selling author, not the prose. Or sensible story-telling. Or intelligence.

J!

Shane Fitzsimmons said:

"Show, don't tell," has to be one of the stupidest writer rules I've ever heard.

Which isn't endorsing massive infodumps or anything, but everytime somebody says something like that I cringe. "Show, don't tell" is something writer teachers preach because they don't know anything about writing. There's plenty of times when telling is much more superior to showing.

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I agree. It's not set in stone. There's a lot of talk about 'rules' for writing, much of which is unhelpful.

Torgo said:

The question is, do you want to be Dan Brown or Danielle Steel?

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Yes please. The purpose of this thing is to be read.

Flawless prose, innovative tropes, exactly rendered emotions -- none of that is worth a damn if nobody is reading what you've written.

It's an age-old activity for writers to begrudge the success of other authors. I think it's a colossal waste of time, especially if you're unpublished. It's like the schoolboys who spend most of their days tearing down Eddie Jones because Eddie gets to drive his father's Porsche to school. They rip Eddie for his harelip, for his bad fashion, his cowlick -- but still the fact of that Porsche remains.

jurched said:

Is it Steele or Evanovich who writes a thousand six word sentences?

"Rachel grabbed a cup. She filled it with water. Put it to her lips. Sipped it slowly. Looked through the glass. There was Jake. Staring back at her. Through the glass."

And on and on for 400 pages.

I've seen "three little pigs" written better than this best-selling garbage!

But, you know what? The office cows pass those books around like currency! They love them!

So readership IS what makes a best-selling author, not the prose. Or sensible story-telling. Or intelligence.

J!

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Evanovich, at least, is witty and charming. I'm not too proud to admit I followed Ms.
Plum up to no. 9 in the series.

Will Lavender said:

Yes please. The purpose of this thing is to be read.

Flawless prose, innovative tropes, exactly rendered emotions -- none of that is worth a damn if nobody is reading what you've written.

It's an age-old activity for writers to begrudge the success of other authors. I think it's a colossal waste of time, especially if you're unpublished. It's like the schoolboys who spend most of their days tearing down Eddie Jones because Eddie gets to drive his father's Porsche to school. They rip Eddie for his harelip, for his bad fashion, his cowlick -- but still the fact of that Porsche remains.

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Uh-uh. The purpose of this thing - for me at least - is to be read and to be able to live with myself as I work towards that goal.

arkady said:

Matter of opinion.

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Seconded. Personally I felt like throwing the book against the wall with all the meandering in the woods...not to mention the few pages that were practically ripped straight from Lord of the Rings. I was expecting them to start calling each other Master Frodo and Dear Sam for a bit. I would have been very happy if the book had been 300 pages shorter.

Anyway, enough about that.

On with the question and answer! The truth of this is 1) they are now well known and can do what they want and 2) Writing styles that work can be totally different depending on genre.

Romance (Danielle Steele, for instance) can be long and info-dumpy. Readers of romance want to be reminded every 15 words that the guy they're reading about is a hunk among hunks, and the girl he's destined to fall for began as an average woman and eventually would become a steamy temptress in his beautiful, passionate royal blue eyes. Not to mention the pouty lower lip and those rock hard abs. Oh, and all the trimmings of their romantic, steamy surroundings are important too.

In other genres, not so much. I would say a broad exception to that is fantasy/sci-fi. Fantasy needs a lot of world building, but if done well, it should be woven into the story, and not info dumped. That's my opinion, though God knows there are a crapload of info dumps in most fantasy novels. And with sci-fi it is important to describe certain aspects of technology. Again, imo this should flow in context with the story and not be thrown out for all to see in a boring paragraph. I don't read boring paragraphs of description unless I am otherwise engaged with what is happening.

Did I mention I skim a lot when I read? It's not that I like skimming, but some authors just beg for it.

Will Lavender said:

Yes please. The purpose of this thing is to be read.

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I'd like the money, please. But why is having people read what you've written an end in itself?

Perhaps I should clarify, though - Dan Brown is a crappy writer, but I don't begrudge him his success. The original poster, though, is interested in how you can be simultaneously a crappy writer and extremely successful. And the answer is - because literary merit is only one of a number of factors that can contribute to selling a lot of books.

Danielle Steel sells books and her fans are happy. That's all that matters to her, her fans, and her publishers. She's not trying to win the Pulitzer. She's not vying for the "best writer in the world" award -- she delivers what her fans want. Her writing may not be my personal cup of tea, but I'm not her target audience anyway.