Criticizing the Published

[Svrtnsse]

I am not sure the two are really different things.

Is not the ability to write just the delivery tool for telling the story?

I think the ability to write just allows you to deliver the story better.

I guess this depends on how you define ability to write.

To me, in this context, being able to write means that I can express myself with clarity in writing. I can get my point across to the reader.
Defining storytelling is trickier, but lets say storytelling is describing a series of events. Based on that, we can define good storytelling as describing a series of event in such a way that the reader will keep reading until the end.

The above is how I see it.

Another way of viewing it might be that you define writing a story as the act of designing and creating the reading experience. Seen this way, writing combines the ability to write and the ability to tell a story into one.

I wouldn't say that this is wrong, but it IS different from how I view it. I'd like to think that I am for the most part pretty good at the technical aspects of writing - the wordcrafting. I tend to get my point across, usually.
I'm a lot less certain about my storytelling. Are my characters as interesting to my readers as they are to me? Is the world as fascinating, the action as exciting, the pain as real?

Can my wordcrafting make my characters as interesting as I feel they are on its own? I don't think so.
I think that in order to do that, I have to have an understanding of what makes them interesting and why so that I can choose to write about that.
Maybe storytelling is what you write, and writing is how you write it?

 

[BWFoster78]

Brian Scott Allen,

You say this:

But no one here is saying that Twilight or Eragon has no merit.

But look at Mindfire's post below. Maybe it doesn't say that Twilight has no merit, but consider how utterly dismissive it is of a work that has entertained millions of people. That's exactly the kind of comment that I'm talking about.

As I see it, we write genre fiction. The purpose of genre fiction is to entertain people. If my book entertains a reader, I have succeeded. If not, I have failed for that reader.

I highly unlikely that any of us will provide as much entertainment to as many people in our entire careers as Meyer did with Twilight. But we still see posts like Mindfire's.

Ridiculous.

 

[BWFoster78]

I am not sure the two are really different things.

Is not the ability to write just the delivery tool for telling the story?

I think the ability to write just allows you to deliver the story better.

Conversations about writing vs. storytelling are kinda meaningless without defining terms.

For me, writing is the how and story is the what.

I decide that I want to portray a character as brave. That's what. That's story.

I decide to show that character's bravery by having him rush into burning building to save a child. The words that I use to describe him running into the building is definitely writing. Is the method I used to show his bravery story or writing? Nebulous.

Still, I tend to think that writing is what keeps the reader turning pages and story is what makes them feel.

 

[Legendary Sidekick]

Ridiculous.

This is a dismissive comment as well.

This is where I was going earlier when I said those who receive fame and fortune are not gods immune to our judgment. I may be making an assumption here, but I'm pretty sure if you went to the Showcase here on this site, read something, and saw it was crap, you wouldn't hold back harsh words. You'd call an uninteresting work uninteresting, and you wouldn't sugarcoat it with "but this is just one man's opinion" or "I can see why other people might appreciate this, but…"

So why should Mindfire be held to a different standard if he honestly can't fathom how Meyers' work was famous?

I understand your point that it comes off as jealousy of success. I also understand that when you go into the Showcase and harshly critique, your intent is to show the writer what's not working so the writer can improve.

What I'm questioning is this: how can we, on a writers' forum, improve our craft if criticizing the published is deemed a faux pas?



Also, in Mindfire's defense, I trust his assessment of Twilight is not out of jealousy or jumping on a bandwagon. In the GoT threads, he was defending the showrunners from my harsh critiques of Season 5. I felt like the discussion was going somewhere because there was never a post saying, "Hey! Game of Thrones makes more per episode than you in your whole life, even if you have more lives than Pac Man. Quit yelling and jelling, hater!"

It was simply an honest discussion of why I thought D&D hurt the story and why Mindfire liked it, and there were some points of agreement regarding what changes for the screen made sense and what changes were genuinely entertaining. A no-criticizing-the-published-rule would have stifled this discussion, and then there would be no point in a discussion at all since relevant opinions are discouraged up-front.



On another note, I do agree that criticizing the published can be a career-killer for a newbie writer. I wouldn't expect to get far as a writer if I were to make weekly blog posts reviewing Salvatore, Martin, King, Rowling, Meyers… and giving them harsh, negative reviews. Even if they were my honest opinions, my only hope for fame would be to be known as the guy who gets thrashed by Twitter posts from famous authors. I don't wanna be that guy.

 

[Steerpike]

When it comes to famous work, a lot of critique comes from people who haven't even read the work, which does strike as a bit ridiculous

 

[BWFoster78]

This is where I was going earlier when I said those who receive fame and fortune are not gods immune to our judgment. I may be making an assumption here, but I'm pretty sure if you went to the Showcase here on this site, read something, and saw it was crap, you wouldn't hold back harsh words. You'd call an uninteresting work uninteresting, and you wouldn't sugarcoat it with "but this is just one man's opinion" or "I can see why other people might appreciate this, but…"

So why should Mindfire be held to a different standard if he honestly can't fathom how Meyers' work was famous?

The difference between Meyers and the Showcase is that a lot of people have demonstrated that they absolutely love Meyer's work.

There's a huge difference between saying, "What can we learn from her success?"

And:

"I simply can't believe that anyone would like her work."

That's not criticism or useful. That's simply someone who is expressing the opinion that "I don't like something. Therefore, it's unbelievable that anyone else would either."

 

[Mindfire]

I am not sure the two are really different things.

Is not the ability to write just the delivery tool for telling the story?

I think the ability to write just allows you to deliver the story better.

I think I see where BWFoster is coming from, actually. Not everyone can or should write novels with complex themes, dictionary words, expansive descriptions, and what some might judge to be "literary merit". Sometimes all you want is to write- or read- a story that makes you feel awesome. And if that goal is accomplished then in some sense you've succeeded, regardless of how others might judge the quality of the writing itself. So, in a sense, the only measure of your writing that matters is how well it manages to stay out of the reader's way and let them connect to the story you're telling.

To give a concrete example: If you sit me down with a game console and give me a choice between Dragon Age: Inquisition, a game I love, (or Assassin's Creed, which could also serve for this example)* and Dark Souls, which is by all accounts a game design masterpiece, I will choose Dragon Age (or Assassin's Creed) every single time. Because even though Dark Souls might be considered the "better designed" game: very challenging, devoid of all hand-holding, made with "real gamers" in mind, Dragon Age and Assassin's Creed are super fun and make me feel like a badass, which is all that really matters to me. I don't care that they mark quests on my map for me instead of making me figure it out, or that Assassin's Creed tries to make free-running and combat easier. People who like Dark Souls scoff at such things, but I actually find them helpful because I don't play for challenge. I play to feel awesome.


What I don't understand is how anyone can derive an analogous awesome feeling from Twilight. Seriously. How?



*Not taking anything away from Bioware and Ubisoft here, or belittling their hard work on DA and AC. Just making an illustration.

 

[Mindfire]

I highly unlikely that any of us will provide as much entertainment to as many people in our entire careers as Meyer did with Twilight. But we still see posts like Mindfire's.

Ridiculous.

Ridiculous? Hardly. Have you never seen a bunch of people like something and you just can't fathom why? As in, it makes absolutely no sense to you whatsoever? If you have never experienced this feeling, you are either an absurdly tolerant individual or you have extremely broad and eclectic tastes.

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

Have you never seen a bunch of people like something and you just can't fathom why? As in, it makes absolutely no sense whatsoever? If you have never experienced this feeling, you are either an absurdly tolerant individual or you have extremely broad and eclectic tastes.

This is the way I feel about egg nog.

There has never been a good reason to make a drink from eggs. A horrid creation that potentially ruins perfectly good whiskey.

 

[Legendary Sidekick]

True, when I think of a meaningful discussion, I don't consider "this sucks" to be a valid criticism. But "it made a ton of money; therefore, it doesn't suck" is a weak defense. Phantom Menace made a ton of money. A magazine whose sole purpose is the exploitation of women's body parts made Heffner obscenely wealthy. There's enough crap out there being sold to the masses that I can't accept the notion "it's not crap because the masses bought it."

I agree people who criticize the published should have valid reasons, which only a person who actually read the work could articulate and elaborate on.

Likewise, if you love a story, book sales are not what made you love it. So why not say what you loved about the book?

 

[Mindfire]

When it comes to famous work, a lot of critique comes from people who haven't even read the work, which does strike as a bit ridiculous

I'll admit, when I first got a summary of the story ("Girl falls in love with vampire. The vampire has no traditional vampire weaknesses. And sparkles.") I was predisposed to hate it. I'm not a romance fan and I think the sparkling and lack of weaknesses is stupid and defeats the point of having them be vampires in the first place. Then I saw trailers for the movies. The sole job of a trailer is to make the movie look interesting. I was not impressed. I found a copy of the book online. I couldn't make it past the first page. It was so... boring. But I was a freshman in high school then and had very little patience for anything. Unable to stomach the book itself but determined to know what all the commotion was about, I sought out and read summaries of it. That was when I started to truly hate the book. It's not even Twilight's writing that irritates me if I'm honest. I mean, I made it through Eragon. It's just that Twilight tells a story that I have no interest in and find so off-putting that I can't understand why anyone would have interest in it.

Tell you what. In the interest of justice, and because I'm such a nice guy, the book shall be given a trial. I will try to read the first Twilight again. But, whenever I read something that makes me roll my eyes, facepalm, or want to throw the book at the wall, it gets a strike. I'll be generous and allow it ten. After ten strikes I deliver my verdict. Maybe I'll track storytelling failures separate from writing failures. Fair? Not sure if I'll do this before or after my Inheritance Inquisition.

 

[Mindfire]

True, when I think of a meaningful discussion, I don't consider "this sucks" to be a valid criticism. But "it made a ton of money; therefore, it doesn't suck" is a weak defense. Phantom Menace made a ton of money.

Hey! I actually liked The Phantom Menace and I think it has some redeeming qualities. A better example would be Transformers 2. Somehow that movie gets worse every time I watch it.

 

[Legendary Sidekick]

Just judge the want to throw based on your reason for wanting to throw it.

Spoiler: possible spoiler for ASoIaF books 4 & 5, but maybe not a real spoiler if you watch GoT

I wanted to throw GRRM's Feast of Crows because I couldn't tell if Brienne lived or died. I found a wiki that confirmed she was seen alive in the next book, then continued reading. I considered the timing of the cut a cheap author trick, but had to give Martin credit for making me care enough about his character that I couldn't continue reading until I was sure of her fate. (Not sure if my critique would have been as generous if I had to wait for book 6 to find out if she lived through that scene.)

 

[BWFoster78]

True, when I think of a meaningful discussion, I don't consider "this sucks" to be a valid criticism. But "it made a ton of money; therefore, it doesn't suck" is a weak defense. Phantom Menace made a ton of money. A magazine whose sole purpose is the exploitation of women's body parts made Heffner obscenely wealthy. There's enough crap out there being sold to the masses that I can't accept the notion "it's not crap because the masses bought it."

I'm not saying that you should accept "it's not crap because the masses bought it" as a valid reason. The point I feel like I've made a thousand times in this thread, once again, is:

Since, presumably, our goal as fiction writers is to have people buy our books and be entertained by our books, we should not be dismissive of books and authors that have achieved that goal.

Likewise, if you love a story, book sales are not what made you love it. So why not say what you loved about the book?

If this were a thread on the positives and negatives of Twilight, I'd do just that. I'm trying to stay on topic.

 

[Legendary Sidekick]

Hey! I actually liked The Phantom Menace and I think it has some redeeming qualities.

Meesa agrees.

And the Transformers movies? Yeah. The battles were basically unrecognizable mountains of metal zipping all over the screen. I didn't bother watching the second one.

 

[Mindfire]

Meesa agrees.

And the Transformers movies? Yeah. The battles were basically unrecognizable mountains of metal zipping all over the screen. I didn't bother watching the second one.

I actually liked the first one. It felt more Spielberg than Bay for the most part. You could feel his influence on it. And while It had its share of dumb (really dumb), it also told a cohesive story, had some touching moments as well as awesome ones, and there were some nods to the cartoon that I appreciated. Plus it still stands up on repeat viewings. Far from a perfect film and there was a lot I would have changed, but good for what it was. The second movie was a fever dream. As I said, it felt dumber and dumber with each repeat viewing. As far as redeeming qualities goes, there's Optimus's scenes... and that's about it. I still haven't seen the third and fourth ones. I was going to watch the third but never got around to it. The fourth one almost pulled me back by dangling the carrot of a sword-wielding Optimus Prime riding on the back of a fire-breathing Grimlock. But then I found out the dinobots are barely in the film so I didn't bother.

 

[Mindfire]

Just judge the want to throw based on your reason for wanting to throw it.

Spoiler: possible spoiler for ASoIaF books 4 & 5, but maybe not a real spoiler if you watch GoT

I wanted to throw GRRM's Feast of Crows because I couldn't tell if Brienne lived or died. I found a wiki that confirmed she was seen alive in the next book, then continued reading. I considered the timing of the cut a cheap author trick, but had to give Martin credit for making me care enough about his character that I couldn't continue reading until I was sure of her fate. (Not sure if my critique would have been as generous if I had to wait for book 6 to find out if she lived through that scene.)

The Inquisition will take this under advisement.

 

[Legendary Sidekick]

I'm trying to stay on topic.

You're not implying I am not, are you?

The OP points out that criticisms of the published are dismissed as envy, and he goes on to say we should look at the author's mistakes as well as strengths.

Spoiler: original post

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?

Criticizing a successful author is not being dismissive, unless you're just jumping on the This-Sucks bandwagon. I think we're in complete agreement with that piece.

The only part of your message I take issue with (unless I've misunderstood it) is that your focus is Published Author achieved the goal that I want to achieve, so what can we learn from Author?

I'm saying Published Author wrote a story I respect (whether that author is George Martin or Phil Overby). What did Published Author do that made me put the book down? What did Published Author do that made me keep turning the pages? What can I do to step up my game based on this information?

What if I find George Martin has more weaknesses than Phil Overby? Do I overlook them because Martin is considerably more successful? What about Michael J. Sullivan, who became an active member here while his books were published by Mrs. Sullivan? His books were just discovered by a big publisher when he joined MS. Now his works are well stocked at B&N. It's the same series as it was before Sullivan made it big. If he never sought a bigger publisher, he'd be less successful. I agree you can learn a lot from him–how did he go from a small publisher to a big one?

But what the OP seems to be talking about–and what I am talking about–is that if I want to up my game in terms of writing/storytelling, I need to look at the strengths and weaknesses of the story/novel/series itself. Book sales are not part of the equation. If they were, Sullivan's little-known debut novel through a small publisher would be seen differently than that same debut novel, which is now well-known through a big publisher.

 

[Garren Jacobsen]

The Inquisition will take this under advisement.

The Inquisition? That was unexpected.

Since, presumably, our goal as fiction writers is to have people buy our books and be entertained by our books, we should not be dismissive of books and authors that have achieved that goal.

BWFoster, this shouldn't necessarily be the goal. If this is the goal then we set ourselves up for failure because this goal is dependent entirely upon the actions of others--people buying your books. To me the goal of the writer shouldn't be to sell as much as possible but to make an entertaining book (your second goal) and to write the best book we can at that time.

 

[Mindfire]

The Inquisition? That was unexpected.

Must... not...

NO ONE EXPECTS THE MINDFIRE INQUISITION!!!


I was too weak. I could not resist.