Unbashing bad authors

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gingerwoman

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I used to be in the camp of "reading good books is more helpful than reading bad books," until I tried and failed to get through 50 Shades of Grey. I'll try to keep it to what worked for so many people, but seeing the things that turned me off has helped me a lot. Seeing what works is still useful, though.

Two things, I think make 50 Shades successful: the internal voice of the narrator and the subject matter. Her italicized thoughts are similar to how people talk--okay, maybe not how people talk but something about them connects (for the first 20 or so of them--I thought they were overdone and not necessary most of the time). As for the subject matter, sex always sells, especially when it's a taboo subject that's actually pretty widespread--the size of the book's audience and the number of BDSM enthusiasts are correlated to be sure .
I think it's the number of people attracted to BD/SM but shying away from it as odd and freaky not people already enthusiasts and practicing BD/SM. Anna with her reluctance and her frequent reference to Christian as being a freak for being into it etc...was their guide into that world. There were already a gazillion books out there for unashamed fans of BD/SM. But I also think that Margaret Atwood is right when she answered the question of why FSOG is popular with "They go shopping" Christian sure buys Anna a lot of cool stuff.
 

guttersquid

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Perhaps books that are judged to be poorly written can still become bestsellers simply because a lot of people don't care about the writing, if they recognize good or bad writing to begin with. And sometimes it's just a matter of timing. I doubt, for example, that the Twilight series would have done as well at any other time but now. Of course, the bit about timing can be said for "great" books too.
 

Wilde_at_heart

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I asked some friends of mine why they liked books that I thought were bad.

To begin with, I suspect 50 shades was read by people who don't normally come across anything that explicit so for them it was quite wild. It's also still quite puritanical in some ways, so it's a 'dirty' book that isn't really that dirty. A lot of women's fantasies are 'take me know' even if they don't want that in real life. In addition the love interest is a young, good-looking billionaire and a lot of women also fantasize about reforming a man and basically molding him into something she does want. And to repeat, hot and filthy rich. And the duller the protagonist, the more easily anyone can place themselves in her shoes.

As for Twilight, a lot of people I've talked to again identify with the main character, who is sort of depressed and mopey all the time.

The da Vinci Code caught the zeitgeist of conspiracy theories and their increasing popularity, especially in a post 9-11 world, and with all the scandals the Vatican was being targetted for, itdeflected from a more disturbing scandal to one that people could handle more readily.

I do agree though, it's handy to see what made particular best-sellers work, and then try to reproduce that magic, only with something, hopefully, much better-written, or at least with fewer severe flaws.
 

Nissie

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I see a lot of disturbing trends being highlighted by this thread.

If the main reason Twilight is popular is because the character is such a blank slate that any girl can project themselves into her character to play out a fantasy romance with a drop-dead gorgeous fictional boy, does that imply you need to do the same thing with your own works to be popular?

Ditto with all the ridiculous misogynistic themes found not just in Twilight, but in other popular YA books. To be popular, do you need to portray your LI as a complete and utter jackass who stalks the MC, is psychologically controlling and abusive, sometimes even getting physical (A Beautiful Disaster comes to mind) and have the MC character (and everyone else around her) think it's okay or that it's sweet only because said LI is a sexy hunk? Because the possessive-bad-boy-you-think-you-can-reform is popular with girls?

I disagree with people who say E.L. James got where she was without needing Twilight to boost her sales. Even when she changed her characters' names, Twilight fans still promoted the hell out of her books because they remembered her fanfiction. Not too long ago, I read that someone got a publishing offer on the strength of her One Direction fanfic. Does this mean that to be popular, you must first write fanfiction and then market it to that genre's fans to boost word of mouth?

I'm pointing all these out mainly because trying to study the popularity of these books in the hopes of replicating the popularity with your own, may not always work if you're a writer serious about your craft. Most of the authors cited here are popular because they 'dumb down' their works to a certain extent (though 'dumbing down' is more of addressing a niche that calls for some dumbing down) to appeal to the current generation which, though with its share of sensible readers, still contains a majority who don't generally read as a hobby, and want their plot and sentence structures simple and romantic.

Copying some of these author's successes might have to mean making, for instance, your LI a bad-ass jerk with no substantial personality, but one who could still make girls (and readers) think they can change him for the better. It's like deciding to join the atrocious autotuned music bandwagon because everyone likes it, instead of focusing on the guitar you've been plying all these years. You can be awesome at what you do, like maybe The White Stripes or Shawn Amos, and you'll get the better reviews every time, but you'll never be richer than Nicki Minaj, and people will still continue to forgive Chris Brown.

I'm not saying it isn't possible to generate quality fiction with mass market appeal (earlier HP books come to mind). But I'm thinking that a bestselling formula for those are a lot harder to determine, and not something you'd find just from analyzing the other authors mentioned in this thread. Most bestselling books are pioneers in their field and can be popular simply because no one else has done it that way before. I feel that this is a better avenue to explore.
 
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cmi0616

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I will say that James Patterson stays in business by producing (or, assigning his name to, anyway) page-turners. I read The Postcard Killers a couple of years ago, and while it wasn't terribly memorable, I do remember sincerely wanting to find out how it ended.
 

Wilde_at_heart

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One reason Facebook is so popular is that it enables so much narcissism, for good or bad. People ultimately like to see themselves in what they read or watch (I'm going by what was taught in my media studies/communications classes in university) which does have the effect of reinforcing social mores rather than challenging them.

Unfortunately, yes we probably do live in a still fairly misogynistic culture, it's just more buried now. And perhaps younger women, with more pressure on them to succeed not just with family life but also in academics and in some sort of exciting career, they retreat occasionally into a fantasy realm where the man does take care of things instead of her.

I don't think you have to write things a particular way in order to be popular; if it's too calculated I don't think it would work anyway.

As for dumbing down - I doubt any of the authors mentioned did that at all, since that implies they wrote something far more intelligent and insightful and then watered it down, removed all the big words and so forth. The only thing might be that they spent far less time and effort on honing the craft of writing and more on just getting it out there. That is definitely something to learn from imho.
 

Nissie

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As for dumbing down - I doubt any of the authors mentioned did that at all, since that implies they wrote something far more intelligent and insightful and then watered it down, removed all the big words and so forth. The only thing might be that they spent far less time and effort on honing the craft of writing and more on just getting it out there.

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. I suppose it's more visible in the music industry - Britney Spears was a master in this field.
 
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I want to point out that FSoG received a lot of criticism from the BDSM community for its inaccurate portrayal of said community. At least, this has been my impression of the reaction. So I don't think the actual community was promoting the book all that much. I find it more likely that readers unfamiliar with BDSM practices found thosse aspects of the book titillating, and enjoyed the "novelty" of something being mainstream with those influences.
 

Layla Nahar

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I'm the type who says 'well, wot's everybody getting all worked up about? There must be something there...' I go to the library, at least, to find out. However, the only big book like this that I have actually read is Twilight, and I failed the first time - the way she writes is so dull, so pedestrian. But I really wanted to find out what the appeal was. So I started from the last page of chapter 1 and worked back till I found the hook - (SPOILER - just in case) where she sits down next to Edward and he reacts as if he is repulsed by her. I have to say, as a kid, I was really vulnerable to the 'he must like me - he acts as if I'm not there' thing. That hook worked on me. And actually, although it took me more than a year after rapidly reading the first three book to get round to the 4th, I really enjoyed that one. So I'd say, for me, S. Meyer's books work because she really hooks into a certain kind of young love fantasy that a lot of women had and girls have. Also, the stakes were high, and the water kept getting hotter. Good story-making.

Dan Brown is on my list. Someday. I don't turn my nose up at these people or their work. I'd be doing it if I could.
 

tko

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exactly

You can bash that NY Times best selling author that you can write rings around, or you can try to understand why he has movies rights and you have nothing. There's more to being an author than writing the perfect sentence and following all the literary rules.

Why did the Da Vinci Code succeed despite some writing flaw? He invented the perfect thriller format. A new mystery every chapter. A new clock, and a new race, every chapter. An action/reaction driven plot with the stakes rising. Tapping into our love of secret societies and ancient mysteries. He's had a lot of imitators, but no one has been as successful, because no one did it as well as he did. You can deconstruct his prose all you want, but in this genre, he did it best--and first.

My philosophy is to understand why some books succeed, and not waste time criticizing best sellers. One activity will make you better, the other will make you bitter.
 

James D. Macdonald

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If you have Story it will trump darned-near everything else. For almost all of the examples of poorly-written-but-best-selling offered, I can reply, "Yeah, but it has Story...!"




"Crap that sells by the carload" is about the hardest genre to break into, though, in case anyone was thinking of writing crap just to see if it'll sell by the carload.
 

muravyets

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Like Mr. McDonald said, above.

As a reader, I have reasons for enjoying what I enjoy. It is not always the same reason. There are types of books in which I will forgive technical failings that I would not forgive in other types of books. Also, I have a limit of how much badness or (worse) mediocrity I will tolerate. I think a lot of readers have similar scales of tolerance, on which they balance how much a book gives them what they want versus how much it annoys them with its flaws.

Frankly, all creative professionals should thank their lucky stars people have such personal scales, because none of us is perfect.

So to answer the OP, in a general way: Good and bad are both subjective and relative qualities. Anyone who declares a book bad should remember that they are only giving an opinion, not the final word. Still, I see no reason for people to be shy about expressing their opinions. We can learn by both giving our opinions and listening to other people's. So have at it, say I, but I hope people will come prepared to tell why they think whatever it is they do about whatever book is under discussion.

For example, I dislike Stephen King's books. I find most of his characters flat and stereotypical, especially his casts of sacrificial supporting characters. I also hate his conclusions and most of his Big Bads (It -- argh). I can see what he's doing with his horror set pieces, and I can also follow his intention with the specific story elements he uses, and it's all quite legitimate. But to be honest, I don't want to see it. I mean, I don't want to see it while I'm reading a book for the first time. I want the experience to be organic, even subliminal. I can see too much of King in King's writing.

However, I know that King also expresses things that mean a lot to a lot of people, though not to me. And I know that a lot of people find his books scary, though I don't. So I get that he must be doing something right. I just don't see it.

For the record, I can similarly go on and on about the flaws and failings of writers like Hemingway, Faulkner, Fenimore Cooper, and other "greats." Why, to hear me talk, you'd think they all sucked as bad as Dan Brown. ;) (Though I will admit, I have an easier time also finding good things to say about some writers than others.)

So I will adamantly declare that I cannot stand King's writing, for example, but I won't say he's a bad writer. Or I will, but I'll modify it with "in my opinion, and here are my reasons." Clearly, it is subjective, though, regardless of my reasons. By my measure, he's a bad writer, but my measure is not the definitive one.

As for jealousy, please, give me a break. I don't begrudge any successful writer one dime of their money or one minute of their fame. How does it shave any skin off my nose if someone else has success with their own work? The only writers whose success I'd resent would plagiarists, but that's not a jealous resentment. I don't measure myself against a Meyers, Brown, or King. Their work is nothing like mine, so their success has nothing to do with my career, so there's nothing to be jealous of.
 
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You can bash that NY Times best selling author that you can write rings around, or you can try to understand why he has movies rights and you have nothing. There's more to being an author than writing the perfect sentence and following all the literary rules.

Why did the Da Vinci Code succeed despite some writing flaw? He invented the perfect thriller format. A new mystery every chapter. A new clock, and a new race, every chapter. An action/reaction driven plot with the stakes rising. Tapping into our love of secret societies and ancient mysteries. He's had a lot of imitators, but no one has been as successful, because no one did it as well as he did. You can deconstruct his prose all you want, but in this genre, he did it best--and first.

My philosophy is to understand why some books succeed, and not waste time criticizing best sellers. One activity will make you better, the other will make you bitter.



But will it make you better? You suggested the reason for Dan Brown's success, and pointed out that he has lots of imitators. And yet despite apparent knowledge of his methods, no author has sold as well as he did in that genre. So, if his tactics are known, why couldn't someone with better craft write a book using his methods and do nearly as well or better?

We've been doing this writing thing for thousands of years. Modernish publishing for over a hundred. If there was some method to the madness wouldn't we have found it by now? Wouldn't authors and publishers and agents be milking it for all it was worth?

We might be able to suggest theories as to why certain authors succeed like they do, but short of some sort of literary scientific method, which will never be done, we can't know with any amount of certainty. That's why these discussion crop up so often. They can just go in circles forever, because someone will pop up with a seemingly reasonable theory, and someone else will claim blind luck. And you can't really prove it either way.

Personally, I think best-sellers on the order of Meyer or Brown are mostly down to blind luck. These writers wrote something of at least minimally publishable quality that happened to come out at the right time and took off. Even if you figure out the reasons why the books were so popular, you can't reproduce the process of their success because you still can't predict what topic among what audience at what time is going to tick the boxes of the runaway bestseller.


Uncle Jim kind of illustrates the point. He can absolutely say they have "Story", and whether we agree with him or not, what we can't do is argue, because the word is so broad. His answer might be correct, but for the most part, it is meaningless.
 

rwm4768

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Ultimately, I think it comes to understand people and what they want. It's great if you write literary masterpieces, but if no one really wants to read that type of story, it won't sell. On the other hand, something of lesser literary quality can be much more successful because the author understands his or her audience.

I think a lot of writers have had it drilled into their heads that there's a way they're supposed to write, and anything that doesn't fit that definition must be bad.

When I read, I appreciate a story both for the quality of the prose and for the story, more so for the story. If the author has me turning page after page, I don't care so much if it isn't the most amazing thing ever written. Ultimately, the best writers are the ones that combine great storytelling with great writing. All things equal, I think better writing will improve your chances.
 

lolchemist

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I'll give a personal example since two people on page 1 said they didn't like The Hunger Games and I did. I'm a huge fan of Survivor and I liked Battle Royale so this book was right up my alley. I really enjoyed reading about Katniss rushing around and trying to survive on every page and also liked hearing about the cameras and the audience and the other competitors. I also wanted to know what would happen to Peeta. Like I assumed the author would figure out a way to save him and not let him die, but I wasn't sure HOW she would do it, so it kept me reading and I had fun so I gave it a great review. Book 2 was basically the same thing as book 1 so I also enjoyed it. However, book 3 was a war book and I HATE war books so I was just like....Ugh!

Also, a bit OT but it really disgusted me that their marketing strategy was to regurgitate the 'Team Edward vs. Team Jacob' thing with Gale and Peeta. I'm glad the fans never really embraced it. I hate when companies try to artificially induce this sort of thing. Let the readers DECIDE why they like a book, don't try to TELL them why they should like the book!
 

Becky Black

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I haven't read Twilight, so can't say anything about that except that it doesn't really appeal to me.

I did read and enjoy The DaVinci Code. Not because it was any kind of literary masterpiece, but because it very effectively made me keep on reading, even while thinking "this is outrageously silly." It uses short scenes and chapters, so it's very easy to say "I'll just read one more...and one more...and one more - oh, it's 2am."

And I usually wanted to read one more because most of the scenes or chapters end on, if not an actual cliffhanger, leaving you needing to know something. Then the next scene goes to another plot thread and leaves that hanging, before resolving the other one. It's very effective if you are someone like me who really needs to know how a story turns out once I start it.

So it is very effective at getting itself read to the end, if you can suspend your disbelief and enjoy the ridiculous roller coaster ride. On the other hand, it's not a book I'd want to read again. Once the mystery was solved and the questions were answered, I was done with it. I donated it to the charity shop. And I think that's because of the characters. When I reread a book or re-watch a movie or TV show it's because I love the characters and want to see them doing their cool stuff again. In The DaVinci Code the characters are really just ciphers. Thriller characters in general aren't that deep, that's not what people read a thriller for. But these people are shallow as a puddle.

I did give Demons and Angels a go and spent most of the last third of it laughing my ass off. It's not meant to be a comedy, but it's better at being a comedy than it is at anything else. If you think The DaVinci Code is a bit outrageous, D&A makes it look tame by comparison in believability terms.
 

Cramp

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Looking for some kind of 'success factor' in a book falls prey to confirmation bias. Of course the author in question does some factor (writes characters readers can slot themselves into, writes cliffhangers that drag the reader along etc. etc.) the 'best' because the measure of 'bestness' is the success they have already achieved.

The problem is of course that there are an innumerable quantity of books that do all those things equally well but have not been successful in the same way, or at all. People writing with the Dan Brown formula rarely get their LACK of success publicised - so the evidence is invisible.

It always amuses me that on the tailcoats of publishing phenomenons, I can go into the bookstore and see the appearance of all these other books, in covers that emulate the bestseller - and lo! Many of them are reprints of something published years ago. The bestseller is rarely doing anything first, and oftentimes, in regards to the objective standards of literature, better.

The sad fact of our industry (and many others) is that you can do everything "right" and not meet with a hint of success.
 

kkbe

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. . .for those of you who have read a commercially successful writer you consider “bad,” I challenge you to find something about their writing ability which is good or outstanding . . .what, in your opinion, have these folks done well? And I am not looking for sweeping generalizations . . .

"Good writing" and "bad writing" are subjective concepts and therefore, inconsequential.

There's no magic bullet. I think it's often a matter of "right place, right time." Something clicks with a bunch of people, and sales go through the roof. Successful writers write books a shit-load of people want to read.
 
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bearilou

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But will it make you better? You suggested the reason for Dan Brown's success, and pointed out that he has lots of imitators. And yet despite apparent knowledge of his methods, no author has sold as well as he did in that genre. So, if his tactics are known, why couldn't someone with better craft write a book using his methods and do nearly as well or better?

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?

Uncle Jim kind of illustrates the point. He can absolutely say they have "Story", and whether we agree with him or not, what we can't do is argue, because the word is so broad. His answer might be correct, but for the most part, it is meaningless.

Yep.
 

buz

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"Crap that sells by the carload" is about the hardest genre to break into, though, in case anyone was thinking of writing crap just to see if it'll sell by the carload.

I...oh. Writing crap?

*stares at carload full of poo*

What if I call it "artisanal biofuel"?
 

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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

OTOH, what muravyets said. It is possible for a story to contain objective mistakes like poor grammar or punctuation, or impact-weakening choices like filtering or passive-for-no-reason voice, but there does come a point where it's just taste. There are "bad" authors I like and classics I don't. And I've never been fond of the "criticizing something popular = you're just jealous!" line (or its frequent companion, "Yeah, well, I'd like to see you do better!"), which I've even seen rear its ugly head in an otherwise-useful writing technique book. I don't like being told I have no right to dislike something or even think "it was good but could have done X better" just 'cause it's popular.
 

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A lot of women's fantasies are 'take me know' even if they don't want that in real life.

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.
 

M. H. Lee

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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.
 

poeticcaresses

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As to when people talk about 'entertainment' versus 'serious' writing, I think it's a bit like the discussions about literary versus genre. There's nothing wrong with writers who write 'entertaining' stories; there's nothing wrong with readers who read them. But I think writers tend to look at all writing from their own standards - they write a certain type or style of book and compare other books/authors to that. And that just naturally means objectivity goes out the window.

I think in large part this is true. I see both sides of what this discussion has meandered into, because my writing serves more than one purpose. I write to entertain and to inform; and not always at the same time.

But I think there is something a lot of us are missing here. Many of the books in question appeal to a very specific market. (minus a just a few) It seems to me the worst 'offenders', so to speak, under discussion are all written for teens and young adults. So here are a few questions I think you should consider before judging these books.

1) Do you have kids that read them? or
a. Do you know kids that read them?

2) Do those kids read great litterary works as well?

3) Have you discussed with your kids what in these books appeals to them and why?

4) Have you discussed with them what appeals to them in the 'masterpieces'?

I think that many of you will find, if you are able to complete an exercise like this, that you will view both sides of the argument differently. You see, I have teenage daughters. My youngest daughter, age 15, has a genius level IQ. She reads everything she can get her hands on. She loves the Twilight Series, Hunger Games, and all those others that are just like them. She also reads Heinlein and Poe just to name a couple of the contrasting greats. She frequently shares critiques of the books she reads with me. She notices the grammatical errors. In fact, her grammar is much better than mine! She points out plot points that don't work. But, still, she loves these stories. Why? Because they are an escape from the trials and difficulties that are adolescence. They pull her in and don't let her go until the story is complete. They leave her wanting more. They make her forget her own pain and struggles and root for someone else. These are the positive things that are selling these books. It doesn't mean that the readers don't notice the flaws. It sometimes means that the flaws, like the flaws in people, are worth overlooking because the overall package offers us something we need. ;)

Just food for thought.
 
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