Criticizing the Published

[Garren Jacobsen]

I've been here for awhile and I often come across a thread, at least once a quarter, where some of us writers criticize something that is popular. Recently, The Inheritance Cycle by Paolini and Twilight by Meyer took the punishment. I also do some skimming online and I find criticisms and responses to these criticisms. Often times the responses deal with the notion that aspiring writers tearing down a book that is wildly successful is a form of envy. I see their point and agree and disagree at the same time.

I agree that it can be a form of envy. This comes about when the writer is tearing down the published novel for the sheer sake of glee. They have an animus to something that could be written so poorly and be so poorly researched that it is a wonder to them that it got published. Their animus comes from a jealousy that they have not yet been published for whatever reason. Doing such criticism, to me, is wrong and smacks of envy.

However, there is another way to go about criticizing a book, which is to study it as an athlete would study film. I am a golfer. I am not a good golfer. However, when I get the chance, I watch a golf tournament on TV to watch their swings. I observe what they do and how they do it. I often find my self criticizing a pro-golfer's (who could golf me under the table six ways til Sunday) swing. I notice when they raise their body, snap their head around to fast, when they leave their club face too open, and so on and so forth. I don't do this because I hate the golfer. I do this to see what they do well and don't do well and try to incorporate that into my game. I am studying film. I am working on my game. As writers we should work on our craft the same way. We should look at published authors and look for mistakes, as well as strengths, in order to help us avoid making those same mistakes and incorporate their strengths into our writing. Published novels are the writer's version of film. Thinking critically about the book is being in the film room. Seeking to improve our craft like this does not, cannot, stem from envy but from a sincere desire to be the best that we can be. (Even if it is a 14 over par golfer...I mean unpublished author. Stupid long irons.

Those are my thoughts. What are yours?

 

[X Equestris]

I think you pretty much hit the nail on the head. It's about finding the flaws to improve your own work, or pointing them out so that the creator can correct them in the future.

The whole "You shouldn't criticize unless you've done it yourself" defense that sometimes gets deployed in discussions about books, movies, television programs, and video games always rubs me the wrong way. There's a quote that I remember seeing someone post a while back on a different forum that highlights the issues with that argument: "I don't have to be able to cook to tell you that a cake tastes like crap."

 

[BWFoster78]

Brian,

I agree with you completely.

A discussion is very valuable when it asks what did this person do right and what did they do wrong and what can we learn from it.

I think the discussion becomes much less valuable when a successful author's work is dismissed as "that person just got lucky."

I don't disagree that luck plays a huge roll in mega-success, but I firmly believe that, for an author to reach those heights, they have to have tapped into something that the audience wanted.

 

[Incanus]

Though I can't prove it, and you can't prove me wrong, and likely won't even believe me--I envy artistic skill far, far, far more than monetary success. For that reason Twilight and Eragon (and their authors) don't provide much for me to be envious about, I'm afraid. There is always going to be mass quanities of poor art, and some of it will be 'successful'. I have little interest in duplicating poor art, or learning from it.

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

Here's what I glean from successes like the two stories you mentioned.

Tell a story that resonates with an audience & little else matters. Storytelling trumps everything.

Writing ability. Research. Voice. The amount of adverbs you use. Artistic "merit". Everything else is secondary.

That doesn't mean writers shouldn't pay any attention to craft. Rather, we need to realize where the bread is buttered.

 

[Steerpike]

Eragon is harder to explain because the writing is awful. Meyer's writing is competent, but nothing special. Both demonstrate that the ability to tell a story that connects with readers is more important than technical writing ability.

 

[Feo Takahari]

In a forum like this one, I don't see it as relevant whether a story is published or unpublished. I mean, there's practically a giant brick wall between the advice we give about how to write a "good" story and the advice someone might give about how to write a story that gets published and sells a zillion copies. (And let's face it, if your goal is to make money, writing is like buying lottery tickets.) If we can agree or at least pretend that there's a "right" way of writing, then even if we disagree on the particulars, we can still sneer at folks who got sales by "doing it wrong." Besides, I refuse to accept any paradigm under which "I'm afraid one day we will wake up with our throats slit" is held up as an example of good writing.

I'd also like to point out that "You're just jealous" and "Let's see you do better" are the second and third parts of the Bad Writer Trinity, the three things bad writers say when you critique them. (The first is "If you don't like it, don't read it.")

 

[BWFoster78]

Though I can't prove it, and you can't prove me wrong, and likely won't even believe me--I envy artistic skill far, far, far more than monetary success. For that reason Twilight and Eragon (and their authors) don't provide much for me to be envious about, I'm afraid. There is always going to be mass quanities of poor art, and some of it will be 'successful'. I have little interest in duplicating poor art, or learning from it.

I don't think that I desire monetary success (though I wouldn't reject it if you were to hand it to me!) as much as I want people to like my stories. I think that monetary success is certainly an objective measure of people liking stories, especially when combined with all the people who outright state that they liked those stories.

I find it hard to relate to a writer who claims that they don't want their stories to be liked.

 

[BWFoster78]

If we can agree or at least pretend that there's a "right" way of writing, then even if we disagree on the particulars, we can still sneer at folks who got sales by "doing it wrong."

To me, when those who haven't proved themselves to have the ability to do something express extreme derision at those who have achieved success, it can come across as sour grapes.

 

[Incanus]

I find it hard to relate to a writer who claims that they don't want their stories to be liked.

Was there someone who claimed this?

 

[BWFoster78]

Was there someone who claimed this?

Uhh...

If you don't desire monetary success and monetary success is a measure of people liking your story, isn't that claiming that you don't desire for people to like your story?

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

If you don't desire monetary success and monetary success is a measure of people liking your story, isn't that claiming that you don't desire for people to like your story?

What he said was that he envies artistic ability more than monetary success.

Incanus never said he wouldn't like monetary success, or that monetary success is his measure of success.

 

[Russ]

"I'm afraid one day we will wake up with our throats slit"

Come on...that is pure comic gold!

Critiquing of any writing is tricky, because like it or not, writing is a very personal thing to do, and it is a risk to put your work out there for the published and unpublished a like. It evokes emotions on both sides of the equation.

I think if you want to talk about craft you have to take as much of the emotion out of it and be clinical and detached. I think there is a huge value in learning about why things succeed, but that is a different question than determining if something is classically, or structurally "well written." Personally I want to learn and understand both subjects as well as I can. But they are two different subjects. So I can read...Dan Brown, for instance, and to my mind see some very bad craft, but I can also study him to try to determine why he is (or was) successful.

I think the critiquing of successfully published authors should be done respectfully, because they have accomplished something most of us have not. I also think that helps keep out the kind of comments that show real bitterness or envy. There are plenty of petty, bitter people out there and they sure like to express themselves on the internet. I don't think that does anything any good. It is the Monday Morning Quarterback phenomena or how journalists were once described as watching a battle from a safe hill and then descending to kill the reputation of the survivors. There are things you don't know about writing or anything else until you have been "in the arena." I have a lot of respect for people who have made their way in the arena and gotten some success there. Until your "theory" has been tested in the hot fire, it remains just that, an untested theory.

I thought the golf analogy was a great one. But as I have pointed out elsewhere highly talented and successful authors can get away with some things the unbranded cannot, so you have to be careful how you approach analyzing work that is on a different level than yours. It is not all "just writing." The golf swing reminded me of Johnny Mac's tennis service motion. IT worked for him, but it would put me in a wheelchair in no time flat.

 

[Steerpike]

There are a lot of factors that go into what you write and how you approach your writing apart from simply getting the greatest number of people to like the work and thereby make the most money. If you're writing literary fiction, you're not worrying about whether a large swatch of readers of mainstream commercial fiction are going to like your book. If you're writing in a niche that 1% of readers are into, you're not going to be worrying about pleasing the other 99% because they're not relevant to your work.

Even choice of genre affects the calculus. If you really want to write books that are going to be read and liked by the greatest number of people, and make you the most money, you should be writing romance or crime/mystery. You get the occasional writers like Rowling or GRRM in Fantasy, or King in Horror, but on sheer odds you stand to be a lot more successful monetarily as a good writer in Romance or Crime/Mystery than in Fantasy.

 

[Garren Jacobsen]

I thought the golf analogy was a great one. But as I have pointed out elsewhere highly talented and successful authors can get away with some things the unbranded cannot, so you have to be careful how you approach analyzing work that is on a different level than yours. It is not all "just writing." The golf swing reminded me of Johnny Mac's tennis service motion. IT worked for him, but it would put me in a wheelchair in no time flat.

This right here is a good point of reminder. I saw a pro-golfer hit a tree twice and still make par. Me? Bah, that would make me a +3 if I was lucky. They can get away with those mistakes because they are that good. We aren't. (Meaning we can't sell based on past success and name value) Which means we have to be at the top of our game to get published.

 

[Steerpike]

(Meaning we can't sell based on past success and name value) Which means we have to be at the top of our game to get published.

Which argues that Meyer really did something right with Twilight, getting publishers into a bidding war for a first novel from an unknown writer and ending up with a $750,000.00 advance.

 

[Feo Takahari]

I think if you want to talk about craft you have to take as much of the emotion out of it and be clinical and detached. I think there is a huge value in learning about why things succeed, but that is a different question than determining if something is classically, or structurally "well written." Personally I want to learn and understand both subjects as well as I can. But they are two different subjects. So I can read...Dan Brown, for instance, and to my mind see some very bad craft, but I can also study him to try to determine why he is (or was) successful.

As a side note, I've read Digital Fortress, and Dan Brown is amazingly good at building tension. Chapter by chapter, paragraph by paragraph, and even through the placement of individual words in a sentence, he opens questions and invites speculation, providing just enough information to get readers wondering what will happen next. It's an invaluable skill for a thriller novelist, though it can impact his writing in other ways. (For instance, characters talk obliquely even when they have reasons to get straight to the point, so the dialogue can feel stilted.)

 

[Steerpike]

I read part of the Da Vinci Code and though it pretty much sucked. I didn't even get halfway through it. But Brown has certainly hit on a winning formula, so you have to give him credit for that.

 

[Russ]

Even choice of genre affects the calculus. If you really want to write books that are going to be read and liked by the greatest number of people, and make you the most money, you should be writing romance or crime/mystery. You get the occasional writers like Rowling or GRRM in Fantasy, or King in Horror, but on sheer odds you stand to be a lot more successful monetarily as a good writer in Romance or Crime/Mystery than in Fantasy.

Very true about the genre. But I think the modern name of Crime/Mystery that is making all the money is the Thriller genre. I walked into a bookstore today and the best sellers area was chock full of ITW (International Thriller Writers –) authors. Same at airports, drug stores etc.

 

[Incanus]

There are a lot of factors that go into what you write and how you approach your writing apart from simply getting the greatest number of people to like the work and thereby make the most money. If you're writing literary fiction, you're not worrying about whether a large swatch of readers of mainstream commercial fiction are going to like your book. If you're writing in a niche that 1% of readers are into, you're not going to be worrying about pleasing the other 99% because they're not relevant to your work.

Well said. This is me. While I think the world (of books) would be a slightly better place if folks appreciated the hard work that goes into craft and technique, I have no illusions about thinking that most folks respond to such things the way I do. I like to think I'm fairly realistic about this--most folks aren't going to like my writing. Period. Still, there just may be some who do. I write for them, and for myself.

(And thanks TAS! With that answer, I didn't feel a need to respond. You got it. Missed a letter in my screen name though. I think the name may be related to the word incantation. Not sure if Tolkien had that in mind or not.)