Unbashing bad authors

M. H. Lee said:

Personally, when I read them I thought part of the appeal is that they didn't jump straight to sex. That there was touching and intimacy and attraction without it immediately being about sex.

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Well, I only read the first book, but it's ALL about sex.

ArachnePhobia said:

All this interesting discussion, and all I can think to add is, "I don't think Stephanie Meyer has an s on the end of her name." /unhelpful

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Or an "a" in her first name. Poor SM. She's one of the most misspelled writers of our era.

Phaeal said:

Or an "a" in her first name. Poor SM. She's one of the most misspelled writers of our era.

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It's curious how being famous doesn't seem to involve having your name spelt correctly....

Somewhere there's a thread on critical versus commercial success, and I think they mostly go hand in hand, but if a book achieves the latter without the former, what does that mean? Was Abie's Irish Rose good or terrible?

Play, but same principle. Moreso, in fact, because Broadway/West End/etc. plays are reviewed more or less as a matter of course, whereas entire genres of books are routinely ignored by critics except in that particular genre.

Phaeal said:

Or an "a" in her first name. Poor SM. She's one of the most misspelled writers of our era.

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I was going to point this out, but then I try to limit the opportunities in which I reveal that I don't have to double-check to be certain I've spelled "Stephenie Meyer" correctly.

Phaeal said:

Or an "a" in her first name. Poor SM. She's one of the most misspelled writers of our era.

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*facepalm* Sorry.

M. H. Lee said:

I've seen a lot of comments above about how Twilight appealed to teenage girls, but that fails to acknowledge all the grown women who liked those books. I first heard about the books from a 30-something married woman with an ivy league education who told me she'd read the whole series in the space of three days and then started rereading it. And when I recommended it to my sixty-something housewife mother she too loved the books and couldn't put them down and insisted on seeing each movie and rereading the books before she did.

Personally, when I read them I thought part of the appeal is that they didn't jump straight to sex. That there was touching and intimacy and attraction without it immediately being about sex.

And I think Twilight, Hunger Games, and 50 Shades of Grey were also all easy to read. Not quite what I call bubble gum books, but close enough.

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That's one way to put it, I suppose. XD

bearilou said:

Which would, I think, render the whole 'if you want to be a better writer, read good books' advice completely useless as well. Someone tell me what a good book is. What is the criteria? If we manage to hit on that magical handful of books that are considered, by all, good, what then? What should we be looking for? Because to try to reconstruct that magical something would be met with just as much success? And would it?



Yep.

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Well, reading bad books to get better seems to be a thing now, too. So I think if we amend the advice to "read a lot of books", that's as close as we're going to get.

Buffysquirrel said:

It's curious how being famous doesn't seem to involve having your name spelt correctly....

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If I were ever well known enough to have people spelling my name, I can only imagine how many of them would spell it wrong. Not too many people, apart from Indians, seem to know Sanskrit. I’ve already been sent a health card that had it spelled wrong. They put a v where the y should have been. But that was actually funny. I was Java for an entire year according to my health card.

There are other times when I wonder if I should go by my middle name instead, just to cut down on the horrible pronunciation when someone who doesn't know me reads my name out loud. [FONT=&quot][/FONT]

For me, there are several different things that count as "learning."

If I want to pick apart what someone is doing wrong, the most useful story is one that's almost good. A really bad book is just fish in a barrel. There's too much blame to go around. A really good one has a smooth surface that I can't usually find my way into.

But those really good books promote a kind of learning that's not analytical. They stimulate my writer brain and I get all kinds of ideas for making my own story better, ideas that aren't copied from the good book, but inspired by it. I love that feeling.

The kind of book that's worst for my writing is a bad audio book. Those sounds seem to get into my head and come out on my page.

ETA: My last name is frequently misspelled. People "correct" it.

well, one poster already said it

Identify what made it successful, and fix the part that doesn't work. That's your path forward.

I mean, "Girl with the Dragon . . " had a huge number of faults, but why waste time worry about them? They're painfully obvious to even a beginning writer.

The more interesting question is why an obscure foreign language novel made it to the top despite all these flaws. What did it tap into for the readers?

Identify that, and use it in your own novel and you're ahead of the game.

tko said:

Identify what made it successful, and fix the part that doesn't work. That's your path forward.

I mean, "Girl with the Dragon . . " had a huge number of faults, but why waste time worry about them? They're painfully obvious to even a beginning writer.

The more interesting question is why an obscure foreign language novel made it to the top despite all these flaws. What did it tap into for the readers?

Identify that, and use it in your own novel and you're ahead of the game.

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Oh, I can help you with this one.

All you have to do is die, and have your manuscripts published posthumously.


(Okay, yes, it's slightly more complicated.)

Liosse de Velishaf said:

Oh, I can help you with this one.

All you have to do is die, and have your manuscripts published posthumously.


(Okay, yes, it's slightly more complicated.)

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Yeah, you have to write a good story too.

The only people I've ever heard criticise the way The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is written are writers. It's worth doing as tko suggests and trying to view things as a reader without focusing on technical knowledge getting in the way.

Shika Senbei said:

Don't they all.

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The world would be a better place if they did.

This is a forum geared towards writers, not readers, and I think that makes all the difference. Of course most of us read a whole bunch too, but I hope I'm not the only one who sees the mechanics of writing automatically. I can read an excellent book, one I greatly enjoy, and still have a part of my mind pointing out awkward phrasing or sentence structure. And there's nothing a writer likes better than chattering on about writing, their own or others.

For the record, I also hate Twilight because of the general misogyny, rape culture, and insulting weak blandness of the main character. Don't even get me started on 50 Shades.

onesecondglance said:

Yeah, you have to write a good story too.

The only people I've ever heard criticise the way The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo is written are writers. It's worth doing as tko suggests and trying to view things as a reader without focusing on technical knowledge getting in the way.

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I have friends who read a lot of books and found some of the writing not up to snuff. However, they are prolific readers with a broad knowledge base of books, as opposed to people who jump on the bestseller bandwagon. So they probably have a similar sense of taste to writers than casual readers.

http://vimeo.com/24715531

If you watch that video, I think it explains part of the issue. Merely by being people invested enough in story-telling to become writers, we're not going to be able to function like a casual reader would. Even if you argue the merits of our "taste", it's likely to be somewhat stronger of an opinion than a casual reader has, if nothing else.

Sochitelya said:

This is a forum geared towards writers, not readers, and I think that makes all the difference. Of course most of us read a whole bunch too, but I hope I'm not the only one who sees the mechanics of writing automatically. I can read an excellent book, one I greatly enjoy, and still have a part of my mind pointing out awkward phrasing or sentence structure. And there's nothing a writer likes better than chattering on about writing, their own or others.

For the record, I also hate Twilight because of the general misogyny, rape culture, and insulting weak blandness of the main character. Don't even get me started on 50 Shades.

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As Soch, says, this is a forum for writers, not readers. I can read a book that I recognize problems with as a writer, and still enjoy that book. Honestly, it's been a long time since I've read anything without noticing at least a few issues with it, whether it's craft, or story-telling, or world-building, or social issues like rape culture, cultural appropriation, etc. And yet I read plenty of books every year that I enjoy. I read a few hundred short stories a year that I enjoy, too.

There's no such thing as a perfect book. Many books that are published are not that great. They're commercial, obviously. So I don't see the issue with critiquing them. It's not sour grapes, or envy. It's just what people do: they have opinions and they like to discuss them.

tko said:

Identify what made it successful, and fix the part that doesn't work. That's your path forward.

I mean, "Girl with the Dragon . . " had a huge number of faults, but why waste time worry about them? They're painfully obvious to even a beginning writer.

The more interesting question is why an obscure foreign language novel made it to the top despite all these flaws. What did it tap into for the readers?

Identify that, and use it in your own novel and you're ahead of the game.

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Well, I really enjoyed it. I enjoyed the journalistic flavour of it - I note that great thrillers are often written by journalists - and the op-ed way it looked into Swedish society. That the novel had a political argument to it helped engage the interest of socially-liberal people like me.

I really liked the relative authenticity of the hacker character, one of the few times a popular thriller has done that (usually we get "I'm losing the firewall!! ALL OUR INTERNETS ARE BEING HAXX0RED!" taptaptappitytap stuff.) Hanging that factual stuff on a (slightly flubbed but still mildly interesting) serial-killer mystery obviously helped leaven it.

(The mystery doesn't survive repetition - by the time the Daniel Craig movie came around I was really bored by the whole thing, having read the book and seen the (superior) Swedish version.)

It's full of wish-fulfillment fantasies, too. Wennerstrom is as much an author-insert as Dan Brown's Robert Langdon; Salander is a walking revenge fantasy machine. The good guys essentially punish and avenge both in the individual and the particular. It's satisfying.

I mean, "Girl with the Dragon . . " had a huge number of faults, but why waste time worry about them? They're painfully obvious to even a beginning writer.

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It is a hugely flawed series of books, but for me the one major saving grace was Lisbeth Salander. A flawed, difficult character who, to me, was legitimately interesting. I found myself rooting for her almost from the start. That's what the Millenium trilogy does well, I think; even with all the infodumping and plot holes and transparent wish-fulfillment stuff, I still wanted to know what was going to happen to Lisbeth, and I wanted her to succeed. That kept me reading.

Kitty Pryde said:

I think Hunger Games stinks on ice, utterly devoid of character development, protagonist action, or worldbuilding coherence or sense. I also found it more predictable than a Tom and Jerry cartoon. But I do have to say that the author ended every damn paragraph in a cliff-hanger. You can't stop reading even if you want to (and believe me, I wanted to). So that's what I took away from that book. Keep the reader desperate for more.

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where were you some months ago...


but yeah, the page turner thingy is pretty powerful, no matter how atrocious the writing.

Torgo said:

That the novel had a political argument to it helped engage the interest of socially-liberal people like me.

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Maybe I should give it another shot. If I can get past the beginning that is. I was given the first two books a couple years ago. At the time, everyone seemed to be raving about the franchise. I didn't make it past the first 10 or 20 pages, and those seemed to drag on forever, about characters I didn't know and could care less about. Maybe it was just where I was at when I was trying to get into the book, but I gave up pretty fast.

Buffysquirrel said:

When Nancy Friday was compiling her books of women's sexual fantasies, one comment she made was how few of the ones she received were of that type.

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I'm not familiar with what book or study you're referring to, I'm going by what friends of mine who liked the books and are also Romance novel readers have told me... And comments on various other forums... That indeed one of things they liked about the Christian Grey character was that he wasn't 'wishy washy' they said.

Without knowing her methodology I can't comment about the rest, but given it was done back in the 70s (just looking it up now), it could very well be dated too... The culture for women and dating has changed a lot since then, and yes I was alive then and my older siblings were in their teens/twenties then.

Nissie said:

But isn't that, sort-of-psuedo objectively speaking, what 'dumbing down' means? (I don't mean the authors themselves think it's dumbing down, or they wouldn't have written it. Like I said, it's more about addressing a niche that requires simplifying/dumbing down to garner the most market appeal)

And I disagree and think a certain level of calculation does work when writing books - that's what I get from Dan Brown's works, anyway.

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Without knowing the author personally, it's hard to say. I think some people are just more tuned into 'the Zeitgeist' than others. Honestly I think the authors just wrote what they liked, and spent less time worrying about the opinions of others and more about what they probably wanted to see in a book.

Maybe it's calculated, or maybe the author just internalized certain things and it came naturally to them.

DanielaTorre said:

And you know what, I agree. Perhaps that is one reason Twilight is successful despite its many flaws. As dawnisor mentioned, her ability to capture the teenage mind is in fact, good writing. The fact that she can have teenage readers gossip about it to other readers and spread the word about the book is even more commendable because it shows she knows her market.

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I haven't read the Twilight series, but I do know most the people I saw carrying the books around, and talking about them endlessly were older folks, ages 30 and above. Many were obsessed by them; a few read pages aloud during lunch so they could share their excitement with those not yet smitten.

(btw the women I am talking about were all teachers.)

The ability to mesmerize some - if not all readers - was and is Meyer's special talent. I remember one well-educated teacher saying, 'It's not just about vampires. It's about emotions. It's about romance.'

Anyhow, didn't think I'd post in this thread. I'm not comfortable with writers bashing other writers, no matter how politely done.

Just wanted to point out that many of Meyer's fans are well over the age of 19.

Phaeal said:

Or an "a" in her first name. Poor SM. She's one of the most misspelled writers of our era.

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Buffysquirrel said:

It's curious how being famous doesn't seem to involve having your name spelt correctly....

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As one of the offenders, I offer my apologies to Ms. Meyer. In my defense I can only say that, since I loathe her books, I'm probably not very motivated to learn her name.

My own name is plain, simple, and not all that unusual, yet I find it is misspelled and mispronounced on daily basis. I assume that if I ever achieve the kind of fame Stephenie Meyer has, my name will continue to be just as mangled as hers is. So I anticipate that we're even.

While I may shy away from calling it 'bashing' I can certainly agree with what I feel the intent was of this thread.

Books that are sucessful - commercially speaking this time - I feel should be studied. Most of the time that I see someone doing a 'study' of things like Twilight (personally I couldn't make it through...but it's not my kind of book. I *hate* vampires!) usually it's taking apart what is wrong with the book. Rarely outside of a few posts in this thread so I see someone pointing out what's positive about the book.

As writers of fiction we attempt to entertain. Twilight and many others have done it sucessfully. I for one would like to draw lessons from that sucess.