Say Something Positive About Your Least Favorite Author

[Nebuchadnezzar]

JK Rowling popularized a concept (boarding school story with wizards) that in hindsight seems so obvious it's amazing no one managed to popularize it before. She captured the imaginations of millions of young children with her first book and successfully matured the series over time so those children kept eagerly awaiting the next book even as they got older.

 

[JCFarnham]

I don't really want to bundle on Twilight, but I haven't read more than a chapter of Charlaine Harris books so I can't fairly comment (though I'm not at all sure about her skill...)

Meyers' Native American-flavoured shapeshifter take on the werewolf is nifty.

I've always maintained that while Twilight isn't for me, I'm not the target audience and I'm not a fan of the writing, etc. the general ideas that went into the setting are actually fairly cool when you think about it out of context of the plot and questionable morals.

 

[kayd_mon]

Terry Brooks is good at getting young, pre-Tolkien-exposed readers to like fantasy books.

 

[Anders Ämting]

I don't really want to bundle on Twilight, but I haven't read more than a chapter of Charlaine Harris books so I can't fairly comment (though I'm not at all sure about her skill...)

Meyers' Native American-flavoured shapeshifter take on the werewolf is nifty.

I've always maintained that while Twilight isn't for me, I'm not the target audience and I'm not a fan of the writing, etc. the general ideas that went into the setting are actually fairly cool when you think about it out of context of the plot and questionable morals.

Honestly, the thing I didn't like about Twilight was the prose. I don't mind the plot or the characters that much, but I really thought it was terribly written in a technical way.

Anyway, having failed to read through the book and switching to the movies, I can say that New Moon seems to be easily the best installment. I actually found it genuinely enjoyable.

Terry Brooks is good at getting young, pre-Tolkien-exposed readers to like fantasy books.

He's also, from what I can understand, the guy who made fantasy mainstream.

 

[Sadie]

Ha, it's like nowadays no bad book discussion can exist without paying tribute to Twilight and Fifty Shades...

I'll say this much: I will never understand why these books are as popular as they are, but they encouraged a lot of women to explore their sexuality and improve their sex lives.

Also, Patrick Rothfuss had what looked like a promising start to a potentially good series before the 2nd book...

 

[Steerpike]

Honestly, the thing I didn't like about Twilight was the prose. I don't mind the plot or the characters that much, but I really thought it was terribly written in a technical way.

It was competent, if mediocre, writing.

 

[Steerpike]

I'll say this much: I will never understand why these books are as popular as they are, but they encouraged a lot of women to explore their sexuality and improve their sex lives.

It's good story-telling (as opposed to the technical quality of writing) that does a great job at engaging the target audience.

 

[Mindfire]

*Sigh* Why Twilight? Why do you come up in discussion so often? Please, just go away. -_-

 

[Steerpike]

*Sigh* Why Twilight? Why do you come up in discussion so often? Please, just go away. -_-

You don't have to comment on it every time

 

[Sadie]

It's good story-telling (as opposed to the technical quality of writing) that does a great job at engaging the target audience.

Good storytelling involves

1. A plot
2. A believable and engaging conflict within that plot
3. Well-developed, interesting characters

These are what I would consider the main ingredients to good storytelling, of which Twilight has zero. The main conflict and intrigue here are whether Edward and Bella are going to get married and have sex and live forever as hot beautiful vampires, which you know from the start that they will.

I wouldn't mind technical faults in a story (language or grammar-wise) as long as the plot is good. In this case, it isn't.

But if it made gazillions of teenage girls happy, then maybe it has a right to exist.

 

[Steerpike]

Good storytelling involves

1. A plot
2. A believable and engaging conflict within that plot
3. Well-developed, interesting characters

These are what I would consider the main ingredients to good storytelling, of which Twilight has zero.

I disagree.

It has a plot, that seems obvious enough.

Believable conflict - well, I think that gets pretty subjective. It's believable enough within the world Meyer created, whether I like her world or treatment of the mythology or not.

Characters - this is where I think most of Meyer's success is found. Whether you or I like it or not, millions of people (and not just teenage girls - I know lawyers, doctors, Ph.D. in their 40s, both male and female who loved the series) found these characters interesting and engaging and absolutely couldn't wait to find out what happened next.

So I suppose it gets back to the fact that #2 and #3 are highly subjective. When I say it is "good story-telling" what I mean is not that I liked it myself (not my type of story), but that she told the story in a way that resonated with millions of readers. That's about the closest thing to objective evidence of good story-telling as you can get.

 

[Sadie]

Hmmm, seems like we are going off topic here.

You do make some valid points and I have not been very clear as to what I mean.

In terms of plot, it does have the journey of Edward and Bella to being together. However, that is about it. The rest feels like a pile of sudden convenient accidents. When Edward leaves and Bella is depressed, there is no conflict in her just being depressed, so she conveniently starts hearing Edward whenever she puts herself in danger for no reason, and as far as I remember, it is never explained why she heard him, though I might be wrong, it's been a while. When she jumps off a cliff, Alice is suddenly conveniently unable to see anything concerning werewolves, conveniently bringing us on a journey to Italy where Edward is about to sparkle himself to death. Victoria is always conveniently somewhere out there hunting Bella but fails to actually do anything until Eclipse. This is just nitpicking the minor faults. I could go on.

The characters never cross over from their cardboard existence into believability. The entire Cullen family, their friends and villains seem to have no agenda of their own other than to help Edward and Bella be together/destroy Edward and Bella. They do not exist outside of this relationship.

However, like you mentioned, the popularity of the books is undeniable. This is not because the characters are good - but because Twilight provides great escapism. A world where you are about to become immortal and forever beautiful together with your equally undead, beautiful sparkly husband, and where everything, including other people, revolves around you and your relationship. No matter how many degrees a person has, we all like to escape and feel like we are the most important being in the Universe. To give another example, Mills & Boon books have templates that the authors must abide by. The characters are as cliché as they get and yet Mills & Boon publishes over 700 titles a year. Because the characters are so developed? Because the plot is so twisty and unpredictable? Nah, because it's great escapism. There is safety and shelter in predicability readers know the books strive to make them feel good about themselves.


I am not judging Twilight or Mills & Boon fans, we all need some sort of escape. I am just pointing out that it is a badly written book with a sloppy plot and unrealistic characters. Which people can still like if it makes them feel sexy, important or just better because they've read about somene going from a bad place like they might be in, to perfect happiness.

I think we need to either continue somewhere else or agree to disagree, this is getting way too off topic

 

[Steerpike]

I am not judging Twilight or Mills & Boon fans, we all need some sort of escape. I am just pointing out that it is a badly written book with a sloppy plot and unrealistic characters. Which people can still like if it makes them feel sexy, important or just better because they've read about somene going from a bad place like they might be in, to perfect happiness.

I think we need to either continue somewhere else or agree to disagree, this is getting way too off topic

Heh. Yeah, only a little off-topic. But since I started the thread I feel some liberty

Last few things I'll say about Twilight -- you said yourself, Mills & Boon publish like 700 novels a year using this same escapist formula. But not one of those comes near the success of Twilight. There has to be some other factor that distinguishes Twilight, and I think it is because Meyer engaged readers in a way most authors can't or don't. People can say it is all marketing, but that's also too simple of an answer. If all you had to do what market your way to a success on that scale, every publisher would do it. And, as I've noted before, an editor shelled out 3/4 of a million dollars to Meyer, who was an unpublished, unknown author. You don't do that unless you see something there as well. You and I don't have to like what that something is, however.

 

[Jamber]

Going very much out on a limb (against its popularity): Outlander and Voyager, twin cures for mild insomnia.
The writer knows how to sustain characterisation. It must have been very tempting to add a few interesting traits to Claire, but Gabaldon was stoic.
Apologies to the writer who clearly knows what she's doing, but it just wasn't my read.

Edited because it sounded like I was against popular fiction in general (which isn't even remotely the case).

 

[Mindfire]

Going very much out on a limb (against its popularity): Outlander and Voyager, twin cures for mild insomnia.
The writer knows how to sustain characterisation. It must have been very tempting to add a few interesting traits to Claire, but Gabaldon was stoic.
Apologies to the writer who clearly knows what she's doing, but it just wasn't my read.

Edited because it sounded like I was against popular fiction in general (which isn't even remotely the case).

Popular? Never heard of 'em. What are they about?

 

[Steerpike]

Popular? Never heard of 'em. What are they about?

Outlander along has sold over 17 million copies. If you add up the sales for the entire series, it must dwarf even that. Apparently, someone is making or has made a musical of some sort out of it as well.

 

[Sadie]

Heh. Yeah, only a little off-topic. But since I started the thread I feel some liberty

Hehe. Then I will shamelessly take the liberty of replying before I move on to no longer clog the thread with replies not relevant to the topic

Last few things I'll say about Twilight -- you said yourself, Mills & Boon publish like 700 novels a year using this same escapist formula. But not one of those comes near the success of Twilight. There has to be some other factor that distinguishes Twilight, and I think it is because Meyer engaged readers in a way most authors can't or don't. People can say it is all marketing, but that's also too simple of an answer. If all you had to do what market your way to a success on that scale, every publisher would do it. And, as I've noted before, an editor shelled out 3/4 of a million dollars to Meyer, who was an unpublished, unknown author. You don't do that unless you see something there as well. You and I don't have to like what that something is, however.

I think that "something" is exactly the same formula Mills & Boon uses, only with vampires and werewolves. A seemingly plain and seemingly flawed heroine but without any actual flaws, whom every male admires, on a quest towards sexual fulfillment and marriage to The Perfect Guy. It's still romance, only no one ever did it with vampires before. (Anne Rice is not romance, she is just plain creepy). I think this is why it got huge, appealing both to teenagers with its romance and supernatural bits, and to an older audience who were either into romance already, or who could only open up to romance when it had the supernatural bit in it. The vampire craze was huge but it died down now, quickly becoming a cliche. I think this is partly thanks to Fifty Shades, partly to the fact that supernatural fans hopefully moved on to better fantasy and the others just returned to their usual romance fix.

To make somewhat of a transition back to the topic: Gene Wolfe. I absolutely hated The Shadow of the Torturer and read it to the end only because I am a completist with an OCD. If I start a book, I have to finish it no matter what, or the unread book will stay a constant bother in my mind until I read it to the end. While reading it, I greatly admired Wolfe's language, the way he crafted the story, how complicated the plot was, how it took me a while to realize that Severian is actually a very unreliable narrator. I still hated the book as a whole, but could not help admiring the writer's skill.

This is a writer whose book did not agree with me but whom I still consider a great master of his skill. Meyer? Not so much.

 

[Steerpike]

I think that "something" is exactly the same formula Mills & Boon uses, only with vampires and werewolves.

Thanks, Sadie. You've said a couple of times now that it is just plain, formulaic, and so on, but you sidestepped the question I posed above, which is that if it is so much like everything else and so plain and formulaic, how did Meyer's work achieve the enormous success it did and why didn't everyone elses? Meyer wasn't the first to do this with vampires.

I enjoyed The Shadow of the Torturer a great deal, though I can see where it wouldn't be for everyone. Gene Wolfe is a brilliant writer. He's a master of a variety of aspects of storytelling, as you said. Meyer certainly is not, in my view, but I believe she is quite skilled at telling a story to her target audience in a way that engages them, makes them read more than they would with another book, and keeps them clamoring for more. A lot of writers who are highly skilled from a technical standpoint can't pull that off.

 

[Jamber]

I think that "something" is exactly the same formula Mills & Boon uses, only with vampires and werewolves. A seemingly plain and seemingly flawed heroine but without any actual flaws, whom every male admires, on a quest towards sexual fulfillment and marriage to The Perfect Guy. It's still romance, only no one ever did it with vampires before. (Anne Rice is not romance, she is just plain creepy).

Mills and Boon have fairly wide and diverse (though as you point out tightly controlled) formulas, as do all the romance publishers. It's an interesting project to dip in occasionally -- I've often been surprised by the diversity and (believe it or not, at least in some imprints), levels of realism. You might be too, Sadie.