Went to Barnes & Noble yesterday...

[Steerpike]

Lastly . . . has anything I said remotely come across as Hipster? I'm not everyone else.

Hey Devor - be back in just a bit. My daughter is actually coming to visit tomorrow and I'm taking care of some last-minute things. But I wanted to answer this - you haven't said anything along those lines at all. I just feel like a sizable portion of the critics of Twilight fall into that camp, particularly when you look at the vehemence of some of the criticism reserved for that work and not other comparable books.

 

[Steerpike]

Well, I went to sleep and this topic started rolling.

I think there is a tendency, especially among writers, to sort of "hate" something that is popular, mostly because they haven't written something as popular (I'm not referring to anyone specificially). I think that's what Steerpike is referring to in general--people hating something just because it's popular. It's not just Twilight that suffers from this. Tons and tons of books are out there that "can't please everyone." If Twilight pleases millions of people, better for it. I don't think anyone is trying to get their doctorate by writing a dissertation on Twilight. Stephanie Meyer's success can be paralleled to the music industry when someone like Lady Gaga comes along. There is an audience out there looking for something, but no one is really capturing what it is.

I've said time and time again if you can capture what 10-15 year old girls like you can become a multi-billionaire. You may even hit other demographics along the way.

Yes, I think this is all true.

And I have to add that I know enough Twilight fans to discount most of the criticism out of hand, even though I've only read the first book. I know Twilight fans ranging from teens to women in their 40s with Ph.Ds (including in Women's Studies of all things, though I've been charged on pain of death never to reveal the identity)

If all of the criticisms of Twilight were really true, only a complete and absolute moron would like the book. Of course, the peope I know who like it are quite intelligent and thoughtful. So I know the criticism is mostly BS. It's not even that badly written, like most people say. It is pretty firmly mediocre. The funny thing is when you get Eragon fans complaining about the writing quality in Twilight, because let me tell you, Eragon is about 1000 times worse.

 

[Feo Takahari]

I once heard it argued that the current form of vampire fiction got really popular in tandem with two things--the rise of the anti-affirmative-action movement (since vampires are a race of people with beautiful white skin, who in recent stories are oppressed out of fear of their superiority), and the most recent backlash against unmarried women with careers (since in recent stories, vampires are heterosexual, monogamous, and marry for life, and the females usually become housewives.)

To be honest, I think that particular speaker was reaching, but I don't think she was entirely wrong--at the very least, vampires have become much, much more sexually conservative today than they were in Dracula's time.

 

[Steerpike]

I once heard it argued that the current form of vampire fiction got really popular in tandem with two things--the rise of the anti-affirmative-action movement (since vampires are a race of people with beautiful white skin, who in recent stories are oppressed out of fear of their superiority), and the most recent backlash against unmarried women with careers (since in recent stories, vampires are heterosexual, monogamous, and marry for life, and the females usually become housewives.)

I think "reaching" is an understatement, Feo. This is an example of someone having far too much education and far too little sense.

Also, someone who probably doesn't understand the distinction between correlation and causation (assuming even the correlation exists, which I doubt). They may be wondering why their legs don't grow if they buy longer pants.

 

[Feo Takahari]

I'm, er . . . well, kind of pissed off now. Her arguments were logical and well-thought-out, and while I don't agree with every premise she put forth, to mock her like that is intellectually dishonest and unfair to her argument. I mean, you can at least agree that recent vampire fiction celebrates traditional gender roles and monogamous heterosexuality, right?

 

[Steerpike]

I'm, er . . . well, kind of pissed off now. Her arguments were logical and well-thought-out, and while I don't agree with every premise she put forth, to mock her like that is intellectually dishonest and unfair to her argument. I mean, you can at least agree that recent vampire fiction celebrates traditional gender roles and monogamous heterosexuality, right?

Considering that I have lesbian friends who read paranormal fiction with homosexual relationships in them, I'd say 'no' to that last point (I think Twilight goes down this road; the author is religious, however; most vampire stuff I've read does not). Further 'celebrates' implies some kind of intent on the part of the writer, and I'd be surprised if any of the writers of heterosexual vampire fiction have the intent your speaker was suggesting anywhere in their minds, even if they do end up that way, Meyer notwithstanding. That's just par for romance, it seems to me.

It is easy to create a logical flow of argument once you accept a premise as a starting point. If the premise is messed up, then the logical train of though she uses to get from that premise to point B won't really matter. Is there any real evidence that the statements the speaker made reflect anything of the sort she is talking about, or are you basically left some kind of correlation? That gets very fuzzy, because you can start the clock for whatever social phenomenon you want at a self-serving place, and then start the clock for the vampire fiction to correlate with it. And in the end, even if you get to the correlation, that tells you nothing whatsoever about any causal link between the two.

I think this is way more than a stretch. Makes for great papers in academic, probably, but I suspect the relationship to any real phenomenon is tenuous at best.

 

[Ireth]

I mean, you can at least agree that recent vampire fiction celebrates traditional gender roles and monogamous heterosexuality, right?

*glances at her vampire novel WIP, which has both homoromantic and polyamorous relationships featuring prominently among the vampire community, as well as at least one vampire who is asexual* Er... well, maybe most of the time.

 

[Steerpike]

*glances at her vampire novel WIP, which has both homoromantic and polyamorous relationships featuring prominently among the vampire community, as well as at least one vampire who is asexual* Er... well, maybe most of the time.

Actually, I think the diversity in the genre is there, at least based on what I've see. It is even true in the Romance genre, where traditionally you've got the single heterosexual relationship to focus on. In the vampire fiction where romance isn't the major plot, it's all over the board. And of course they're not all white either, though most are as in most genres.

 

[Jabrosky]

I wonder what kind of monsters are being romanticized in YA paranormal romance these days. I remember hearing about a YAPR book which had a dragon as the woman's love interest, and this was a couple of years ago.

That said, people can read whatever they like, and I wouldn't go so far as to dismiss the whole YAPR genre as crap simply because of Twilight. None of the stuff is my personal cup of tea, and I found vampires revolting long before their current popularity, but I don't suffer if other people like the stuff.

EDIT: I've thought about this some more and I have to say that even if there's nothing inherently wrong with the basic premise behind YAPR, the bookstores with whole shelves of YAPR that was all written recently make me wonder whether a lot of those authors are simply trying to cash in on Twilight's success. Again, I would not dismiss a whole genre for this reason alone, but it does seem like YAPR is the latest target for hacks.

 

[Benjamin Clayborne]

Nothing like that at all. The criticisms of Twilight along the "bad message" angle have been overblown to say the least. They seem mostly like afterthoughts, to me. I read it before my daughter, when she was 13 and excited and wanted to read it and be able to talk to me about it. There was nothing worrying in it as far as I'm concerned. As my daughter was reading it, she looked at me at one point and said "man, Bella is an idiot." But she loved the books, and I'm glad she did. She's read other works since then.

I agree that writers cannot and should not try to make their work safe for the most impressionable or troubled.

My problem with Twilight isn't that it's a bad message (although Edward and Bella's relationship is pretty clearly abusive in a lot of ways, which is not really a great message you want to send to teenage girls who might be absent examples of healthy relationships), it's that it's bad writing.

 

[Benjamin Clayborne]

Hey Devor - be back in just a bit. My daughter is actually coming to visit tomorrow and I'm taking care of some last-minute things. But I wanted to answer this - you haven't said anything along those lines at all. I just feel like a sizable portion of the critics of Twilight fall into that camp, particularly when you look at the vehemence of some of the criticism reserved for that work and not other comparable books.

Since it was my comment that garnered your initial accusation of hipsterism on this thread, I feel compelled to respond here

I don't disdain Twilight just because it's popular and bad; I disdain it because I know enough about it to render an opinion. I'm sure there's plenty of other works out there that I would hate just as much as I hate Twilight, if I knew enough about them, but I don't know enough about them, so I don't say anything about them. The reason I know so much more about Twilight is because it's come up a lot. I read Entertainment Weekly and they've had a lot of Twilight coverage; Twilight comes up all the time on MS, whereas I can't recall having heard about any other similarly bad YAPR works here; I'm sure some have been mentioned but they probably went in one ear and out the other, never having made a foothold on my brain.

So I've had a lot more exposure to it. I don't like what I've seen of it, and so when it comes up, I say so.

 

[Benjamin Clayborne]

I wonder what kind of monsters are being romanticized in YA paranormal romance these days. I remember hearing about a YAPR book which had a dragon as the woman's love interest, and this was a couple of years ago.

I predicted that minotaurs would be the next big thing, and literally the next day this article came out.

 

[Steerpike]

So I've had a lot more exposure to it. I don't like what I've seen of it, and so when it comes up, I say so.

So...you haven't read it either?

Another thing that seems somewhat peculiar to this book is so many people with opinions who haven't read it

 

[Jabrosky]

I predicted that minotaurs would be the next big thing, and literally the next day this article came out.

Pure comedic genius.

 

[Benjamin Clayborne]

So...you haven't read it either?

Another thing that seems somewhat peculiar to this book is so many people with opinions who haven't read it

I've read excerpts, and I've read the plot summaries. I didn't enjoy any of that, and nothing I've seen or read makes me want to see or read any more. I've had people whose opinion I trust, and who have read it, tell me that it's awful in all the ways I expected it would be from what I did read of it.

One does not have to stab a fork into one's eye to know that it would be an unpleasant experience.

 

[Philip Overby]

I've seen the movie. I didn't like it. But I can see why others would. It is true that "you don't have to stab yourself to know it hurts" but maybe some people like stabbing themselves?

 

[Caged Maiden]

I think there is a certain amount of tolerance for poor writing if its about a subject people want to read about. For me, however, I saw one twilight movie and had seen enough.

I see some issues with some VERY popular books, and while I am struggling to find my true voice and a style that will be marketable, I wonder how people would hack a chapter part if I simply transposed my own names into one of these very popular works. In fact, I KNOW they'd rip me a new one. So that just goes to show that anything has the chance of getting published and marketing is the secret more than mind-blowingly awesome writing. As with all things in this world, it's not what you know, it's who you know... or something similar in theme.

I was getting pretty discouraged about a month ago when it seemed my work was meeting with only negative criticism. When I began reading Game of Thrones, I was blown away by the fact that it looked very similar to the "mistakes" I was making. Loads of info, changing POVs... I can only assume there's something about my style of writing which is preventing a reader from becoming engrossed as they have been with GoT, but it's still beyond me what it is.

I don't agree that it's pure jealousy which causes writers to "hate" a very popular work, but it is certainly frustrating when you just don't seem to be good enough, and then you read something which ought to be seen as on equally shaky ground flourish. I began reading a novel the other day, touted for its strong opening, and other than the opening line (which was moderately interesting) the following two chapters were dull and info-dumpy. How on earth is it praised so highly, I wondered. I just don't get it.

 

[Philip Overby]

I've said this before, but I'm not one of the people that loves Game of Thrones for its loads of description. Martin does it well, but he also overdoes it. Which gets old eventually. Even if you do something the same as another writer doesn't necessarily mean it's OK to do.

Which I think is one reason there are lots of Twilight clones. You can probably find them on Amazon just by typing in "vampire." They try to emulate what Twilight did, but for whatever reason, the way they're doing it just doesn't click the same. I think Meyer connected with an audience and captured what they wanted to read. It doesn't matter if it's good writing or not. In fact, that doesn't really matter most of the time. If you're good at telling a story, then people won't notice if the writing's bad. And like her or not, Meyer can tell a story that is compelling. Millions of people can't all be wrong.

 

[Kelise]

Some people don't read for its depth or various qualities they can take away from it - they read to escape.

To us, it may be poor writing. To some, who don't read much and know what's out there, it may be all they need in order to escape from the real world for a few hundred pages. It's as simple as that, sometimes.

 

[Benjamin Clayborne]

I see some issues with some VERY popular books, and while I am struggling to find my true voice and a style that will be marketable, I wonder how people would hack a chapter part if I simply transposed my own names into one of these very popular works. In fact, I KNOW they'd rip me a new one. So that just goes to show that anything has the chance of getting published and marketing is the secret more than mind-blowingly awesome writing. As with all things in this world, it's not what you know, it's who you know... or something similar in theme.

I'm certain this is true to a degree; how people will treat a work can vary widely based on whose name is on the cover. But I also don't think it's reasonable to say that the name is the only difference; I've read books by famous authors that I ended up not liking very much, even (in some cases) authors who I already liked. I thought Neil Gaiman's American Gods was fantastic; but then a couple of years later I read his book InterWorld and I thought it was simplistic and boring. Conversely, there have been times when I read stuff by authors I'd never heard of (like the first time I read a John Scalzi book) and ended up loving it. (In fact I love everything I've read by Scalzi.)

To publishers, name recognition is huge, because they know that people will buy books by authors they already know, and ignore the reviews. Because of the ebook market explosion (and the subsequent margin collapse), big publishers these days are pretty much only interested in sure things. This is the main reason why I'm self-publishing my novel; one, I don't want to wait several years trying to get one of the big guys to take an interest in it, and two, I want control over what happens with it. (Three, I'm lucky in that I can afford to do this in my spare time.)

I was getting pretty discouraged about a month ago when it seemed my work was meeting with only negative criticism. When I began reading Game of Thrones, I was blown away by the fact that it looked very similar to the "mistakes" I was making. Loads of info, changing POVs... I can only assume there's something about my style of writing which is preventing a reader from becoming engrossed as they have been with GoT, but it's still beyond me what it is.

If you want, shoot me over a couple chapters of your stuff and I'd be happy to take a look. I've read AGoT a couple of times, so I might be able to tell what the difference is. I PM'd you my email.