Bestselling authors, not talented? Isn't that ironic?

Some authors do seem to write to the lowest common denominator, but that is their choice. They are writing to enhance sales and assure an income rather than writing for any "lofty" ideal that we would want to assign. I see it as a choice and don't have a huge problem with it though I sadly think of this when someone here asks about becoming a best-selling author.

Some bands go the same route. They give up on being creative and pushing boundries and instead settle in to mine a particular segment of music fans.

The phrase "sell-out" comes to mind in both situations, but that's not to say that you don't need plenty of talent to accomplish either of these tasks.

BlueLucario said:

What did those readers see in them?

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Most people read to be entertained and found their stories entertaining. Talent is very subjective. A writer I might think has a huge talent, you might think sucks pond water. That's just the way it is. When enough people agree with you, the writer becomes a bestseller.
Linnea

ishtar'sgate said:

Most people read to be entertained and found their stories entertaining. Talent is very subjective. A writer I might think has a huge talent, you might think sucks pond water. That's just the way it is. When enough people agree with you, the writer becomes a bestseller.
Linnea

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Oh, I like that so much I'm going to try and incorporate it into my daily conversations.

Boss: Did you submit your TPS form?

Me: TPS forms suck pond water.

Talent and entertainment are subjective. Personally, I'm a big fan of Rowling. Does she write the best prose in the world? Probably not. But her stories are engaging, thought provoking, and just plain fun. Her level of detail and planning is exceptional. We all have our weak points, and maybe writing style is hers. Doesn't mean she's not talented in other ways.

I'd love to be able to develop my story lines to the same depths that she has, and does.

Sometimes it's about selling something "popular" because it's entertaining and people want to pass time with something a bit mindless and derivative. Who needs profound? Just because something is popular doesn't mean they're necessarily good. Just look at your local grocers and see how much crap they sell there -- and people actually put those things in their bodies because they don't know any better.

I mean Dan Brown tells an interesting story, but he does pander to the lower common denominator. I mean a world-class cryptologist is using Fibonacci numbers as a cypher? And mirrored writing? Please! Even a 3rd grader can crack that code. That's when he loses credibility to me, but to many people -- who cares? It's entertaining.

BlueLucario said:

I was surfing this board, and came across like most best-selling authors are not talented authors at all, like Dan Brown, Rowling, Paolini. If they are that bad, how did they make it big?(I already know the answer about J.K Rowling and I wasn't looking for it.) I still find this ironic, don't you? What did those readers see in them?

Are they talented authors? Or is it just the ranting authors coveting their success?

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It's called "sour grapes."

I agree that talent is subjective. And some writers might not be very good writers, but there is something about their books that keep people reading. I can think of two well known writers I will not name who are probably not very good writers, but still have something about their work that makes them popular. I read a book recently that was generally pretty over the top. And yet I kept thinking about the more interesting aspects of the story for days.

Well, I'm the sort who reads these kinds of novels once they've hit the used bookstores, in order to have cultural reference points, and:

I'd say Rowling is actually pretty good, in my estimation: her plotting was cringeable in the first book, and went up by leaps and bounds of intricacy in every one from the third onward (until the last, which kind of went off the stride, IMO.) The world is total fluff and does not pass my "truth" test, but that's just me, and I know others who've gotten a lot from it, so I am apparently not the sole judge of quality.

I do think she would be better if she'd had to work harder. I would have liked to see the Rowling who learned to be concise and how not to make plot promises she wasn't planning to fulfill, for instance. The said-book-isms are a bit of a distraction, but if I had a choice between "eliminate the said-book-isms" and "reduce the book to its significant content," with her later stuff, I'd choose the latter.

Dan Brown writes one thing well, if Da Vinci Code is any indication: chase scene. That whole book is one big goofy chase scene. It's like a cat toy made of words. People like cat toys. Swing a string back and forth, and I will follow it with my eyes and try to grab it. That urge is why I plowed through that book at a hectic pace, despite the laughable research and flat characterization. Ooh! Look at that mouse go!

I keep trying to read Laurel K. Hamilton and ... ugh. I just can't see what's redeemable there, unless it's the sex. I've heard her recent ones are notorious for editor-firing and run-on sentences, but the early ones just read like run-ons were chopped into mini-sentences without regard to syntax, and small, embarrassing inconsistencies crop up regularly in the prose.

One of the drawbacks of being a writer is we tend to review when we read other people's works instead of just "reading". Many times, we're so in tune with our writing (and our writing styles) that we dissect the books we read.

I get to read for pleasure so seldom now that I do everything I can to turn off the internal editor and just relax and enjoy the experience.

(Plus, there's a lot of "if it's popular, it can't be any good" sentiment that tends to run in literary circles. Personally, I'm not writing for other writers. I'm writing for readers. If they like it, I couldn't care less what another writer thinks of it . . . unless they bought a copy and then I thank them for their contribution. *wink*)

It all varies from writer to writer.

J.K. Rowling? She's not too bad. But she's definitely not great, as a writer. But she came up with a great story with lovable characters. The world she created is appealing and good. And from those characters and world stem good plots and stories. For the original intended audience (children) the writing is more than enough. But the world and characters proved enough for even many adults to like her.

Dan Brown? Terrible writer. But he's an amazing storyteller with a strong sense of suspense. At a sentence level, he's very bad. At characters, he's bad. But suspense is his strong point, and that's great for a beach or airplane read. That plus the controversial material made him a bestseller.

Paolini? Hype. He was young. Is that really all? Really. That's all. His parents published him, got him great publicity, and the rest is....awfully pathetic, really.

There you go.

I've read lots of books, the sheer badness of which make me wonder how on God's green cubosphere they were ever published. Ever read a book so bad you stopped after the first chapter, despite having paid full price for it?

There are also some commercial authors, such as Danielle Steele, whose lack of talent ASTOUNDS me. I guess it's all subjective.

It seems to me that writing like Dan Brown (pandering to the lower common denominator) is the way to get the most (volume) amount of sales of books, or anything for that matter.
After all, look at how many people watch shows like Baywatch. There are more 'common' people out there than others.
That's not saying his writing is bad, per se, it is what it is.

I see it as a demographics type of thing. Plus, once a certain segment of the population is 'told' that something is good, they tend to buy it because they want to see what all the fuss is about.

just my opinion. I may be wrong.

I think in fact that it may be the opposite of ironic. It's the reason we seem to have two categories: "critically acclaimed" and "best-selling." I like to think of the talent/success continuum in terms of a vin diagram, where sometimes those two circles overlap, but not on a regular basis.

Many people also like haggis... doesn't mean it's any good.

maestrowork said:

Many people also like haggis... doesn't mean it's any good.

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I'm telling Haggis!

I really get tired of this conversation. Just because you don't like a particular book or author does not mean that the people who do are stupid. My mother did not belong to the "lowest common denominator" because she enjoyed Dan Brown's books. She wanted a fast paced story with a lot of suspense and that's what he provided. Different people like different things. I hate Survivor type television shows but I would never think of telling my sister who does that she shouldn't be allowed to do so. It would be arrogant of me to assume that I was some god of good taste and that anyone who didn't agree with me was wrong. People read for different reasons. They want different things out of the stories they read and they're attracted to different styles, themes, subjects, etc. I'd also argue that there are as many literary authors that I have problems with as there are commercial authors. To me literary authors sometimes obscure their stories and messages in experimental prose and that, to me, is bad writing (I loved Beloved until a spot near the end when, if I remember correctly, the author seemed to throw punctuation out the window and start telling the story in stream of consciousness from a non identified narrator). Yet I never see anyone complaining about them. Why is that? I mean I understand saying that you didn't like this book or that you're not attracted to this writer, and that you think they do specific things badly, but to take a huge group of authors (bestsellers) and to decide that most of them are bad because they appeal to a wide group is ridiculous. Some writers want to write stories that can entertain a lot of people. Others want to write stories that will spread a particular message. Others want to experiment with form and prose. Why do some people think that the first of these aims is selling out?

BLUE! YIKES! HOW MANY TIMES HAVE WE HAD THIS CONVERSATION?

Saying that writers have areas in which their craft leaves something (or a great deal) to be desired is not the same as saying they're "untalented".

I can't think of a writer whose craft is perfect in every dimension except maybe Flaubert or Dostoevsky.

Shadow_Ferret said:

It's called "sour grapes."

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That's silly, Ferret. I think people can, and do, critique published writing (like all works of art) without being a whit jealous.

Dan Brown is a clumsy prose stylist with no gift for characterization, and his research is shoddy. On the other hand, he clearly has a gift for crafting page-turning plots that appeal to millions of people.

J. K. Rowling has the page-turning plot gift, a gift for creating memorable characters, and a gift for description. On the other hand, her prose can be extremely clunky and overladen with adjectives at times.

Christopher Paolini did a great job with pulling together a bunch of different dragon- and quest-related mythic elements in a way that young readers responded to. Aside from his protagonist, his characters seem flat to me, though, and his prose is often awkward. And he does benefit from the "child prodigy" element when people critique his work.


Making a detailed assessment of different writers' strengths and weaknesses is neither "sour grapes" nor is it "saying they're untalented."

virtue_summer said:

To me literary authors sometimes obscure their stories and messages in experimental prose and that, to me, is bad writing (I loved Beloved until a spot near the end when, if I remember correctly, the author seemed to throw punctuation out the window and start telling the story in stream of consciousness from a non identified narrator). Yet I never see anyone complaining about them.

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People complain about Toni Morrison all the time. On these boards, too.

I complain a lot about Cormac McCarthy, whose work I don't enjoy. I would never call him "untalented" but I find the gimmickry and self-conscious "grittiness" off-putting. On the other hand, I recognize that he comes up with fascinating, complex characters and plots many people respond to.


I think that literary taste and preference is a very nuanced area. Reducing it to "THIS PERSON IS GREAT!" and "THIS PERSON IS CRAP!" is a total waste of time.



I confess that I can't get the point of Danielle Steel, though. I find her work lacking in pretty much every quality I like in blockbuster fiction: I don't see vivid characterization, tight pacing, or engaging description. Compared to writers like Jayne Ann Krentz or Nora Roberts or the late, great Jacqueline Susann, who deliver all three, I just can't see how Steel has been such a best-seller mainstay.

I think it comes down to writing something that captures the public's imagination.

In Dan Brown's case, he tapped into people's desire to question "orthodox" (no pun intended) teaching about Christ's life whilst bringing in elements of conspiracy theory and an old-fashioned mystery. His writing might not be brilliant (my favourite line from DVC remains "'Oui,' he said in French") but he leaves every chapter on a cliff-hanger, which makes people want to read on plus his writing is uncomplicated, which made it accessible to people who don't usually read a great deal (that's not intended to sound patronising by the way).

Rowling wrote an old-fashioned story about good versus evil, incorporated enough 'grown-up' elements for adults (including politics and nostalgia) to enjoy and by doing so, meant that her books were effectively something that adults and their children could enjoy together. Her prose is adjective and adverb heavy, but it was again easy enough to follow and unintimidating enough to mean that people who don't normally read (again, I don't say that to sound patronising) were happy to wade through 500+ pages in a way that they perhaps wouldn't with wordsmiths like Salman Rushdie.

Paolini ... well, people really like dragons. Okay, that's not fair. I think in Paolini's case it was the fact that he tapped into things that had already worked before that meant there was enough familiarity for adults and kids alike. Plus, his book went on mass-release at a time when there wasn't a huge amount of epic-style fantasy out there for kids, so there was a gap in the market and there's also the curiosity value in the fact that he was so young when the first book came out.

Some of publishing's success stories have been down to luck (being out on the market at the right time), most of it's down to talent and ability and sometimes it's just one of those inexpicable things. I think it's always worth while reading the commercial successes, just to see how they've done it and see if there's anything you can learn from it, but mostly you've just got to concentrate on your own thing and not worry about how others are doing.

Maestrowork - haggis is delicious once you get past the squick factor, as is blood sausage (or black pudding, as it's called in Blighty).

MM

All bestsellers have managed to capture a big audience. Did some army hold guns to the bookbuyers' heads, to make them choose these books? Don't think so. Therefore, whatever I may think about a bestseller, I must accept that it did something right.

However, right for a certain big audience doesn't necessarily mean right for me, and I therefore reserve the right to say that a particular bestseller sucks not only pond water, but pond water with putrid green slime floating on it and rat corpses mulmifying in its noisome depths.

But hey, that's just me.

For those who are keeping score, JKR is a great storyteller in need of better editing, Paolini is a talented beginner who should have been left to develop his craft, and Dan Brown, well, he at least sucks freshly chlorinated pool water.

PS: All the above only applies to fiction. I have much harsher standards for nonfiction. Like, one, it should be nonfiction; two, it shouldn't shamelessly pander to the human impulse toward wishful thinking. But enough, my soapbox is out for repairs.

I've only read a handful of bestsellers in my life.
Though I hate to admit it, they were really enjoyable.
They were also (plz refrain from chuckles) thought provoking to a degree.
Clan of the Cave Bear really got me pondering about the early history of humans,
and Carlos Casteneda's books transformed my conceptions about reality.

ps Phaeal and I have just about the same # of post counts.
Time for me to up the pace and take the lead!

I didn't say that. I'm just wondering if these bestselling authors were considered 'bad', how did they become bestseller?

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The operative word is bolded.