Once you know your genre, start figuring out what readers are expecting when they pick up a novel of that type. I can guarantee that schlocky author we mentioned at the beginning of this post has nailed those genre beats. Maybe the beginning of your novel is a steamy romance, but around the halfway mark, it turns into an intergalactic fight to the death. Even if your prose is beautiful, your characters fully-formed, your dialogue zingy, you might be thwarting reader expectations.
This is a cardinal sin. Your email address will not be published. The characters are cardboard cut-outs. The action is melodramatic or unbelievable. It breaks every rule in your well-thumbed writing craft books. In short: Mediocre novels get published because they hit genre beats. What are genre beats? But I know, some stories turn out bad, for whatever reason. This is life; you have to take the bad with the good.
Great thoughts. Who knows? You may try Ivanhoe again one of these days and love it! Art is subjective even within the life of one reader. This made me grin. Thank you! Still grinning…. Glad it brought a smile to your face! I view poorly written but uber-catchy books this same way. People will still want well-written books.
All these genres just serve different appetites, sometimes even in the same consumer. What a great post! I have been trying to find the answer to this question ever since I started writing. Yet, if agents and publishers go ahead and let a presumed but poorly written bestseller loose on an eager reading public, why are so many other good books turned down?
We are always told to produce the best MS possible. OK, I agree. But when I read some real horrors in the grammar etc dept, I begin to wonder. Is this the level of the reading public? I hesitate to mention Fifty Shades of Grey, but when Random House printed all three books in their seriously flawed glory, my respect for the publisher dropped.
Did RH think, never mind about cleaning up this drivel; just send it out. Readers will never notice. Again, readers must demand better books. If the piece touches me in some way, I feel it was worth it. Christine: You make a great point. There are rare moments when I crave a fluffy piece of writing, same as I crave the occasional donut.
Lorna: Ultimately, it comes down to both professionalism and simple brotherly love. Slamming someone else in public is rarely good form and certainly not kind or worthy.
If we compare the average national or probably even international reading comprehension to what it was even a hundred years ago, we suffer in comparison. Publishers are both catering to the needs of the public — and perpetuating them. Traci: For me, that kind of emotional connection will get me to forgive all kinds of flaws.
But, of course, emotional connections are much easier to achieve when the technical structure is solid.
Nice piece. I totally felt you with this. For the amount of praise that it gets, I was terribly disappointed when I read the Great Gatsby in high school.
Your point about writers as readers and musicians as music-lovers was very well taken, too. Sounded great to me! When I read a book and spot half a dozen typos per chapter, it says to me that someone somewhere got lazy with their job.
When I read a book that has a noticeable abundance of errors or contradictions to previously-stated facts, I pick up on it. Sure, everyone makes mistakes. It happens. Will it still have flaws? Like I said, everyone makes mistakes. I want to look back over time and appreciate my stylistic evolution, not feel distracted by an increase in failed edits prior to publication. Blue Shoe: Much of the brouhaha about the classics is based the weight of time.
Probably not. Story technique evolves. As I discussed in this post last week, most stories will be better off for having a little more patience applied to them. No single book is for everyone, but every book might just find a happy reader.
That gives me hope! But as I think about it, it seems a sort of possible chicken-and-egg situation. Or both? It is a puzzlement. Julie: Exactly! Art both reflects and influences society. Great post! As one commenter already noted, story often trumps quality.
Sorry stories with sorry prose do get published, however. A story alone comes and goes; but a quality story endures. It has been a sometimes tedious pursuit, but also one that has been incredibly rewarding and broadening.
BUT at the same time, I get upset when I hear agents saying that they only sign on the best of the best. No, they sign on what they believe will sell. Not the best writing out there. I think bad books get published because of the contracts and tight deadlines.
Well-known writer has to produce a book to meet the deadline. I read one where it looked to me the author was up against a tight deadline and got to the end and ran out of time. Why would there be any other reason to have a book about a murder in the Supreme Court and then make it a random killing at the end? You will get published if you sell, and we all have a different way to perceive books.
I recently bought, in hardcover, an author I have always enjoyed and the book was so bad I struggled to finish it! It was as though she had a 3 book deal and had to get this last book out there she sent in the synopsis and no one bothered to edit it, they just sent it to print!!!
She is often found on the best seller list! They pride themselves on this. And who suffers because of it? Do some objectively bad books get published? Are editors and agents sometimes willing or even just apathetic participants in this? How can it be both? Some books gets sold because of their prospective money-making ability.
Some get sold because of the passion of the team behind them. This post was very humbling and informative. Ultimately why a book sells is more a matter of what the consumer wants and in this day and age of instant gratification the reading public wants to be entertained now. However, if the goal was to make the book commercially successful then it would have to be written in a more fluid and updated style befitting the needs of the readership. It was a valuable lesson which I continue to apply as I embark on my second novel.
So true. If my novel or novels sell, then great. After just reading Divergent, I was mulling this very question. Divergent is a best selling YA book with a movie coming out shortly, but is full of stilted writing, plot holes, and nonsense.
But it does have an interesting premise albeit overused these days and the story clips along. I think the comments have it right. There is a large market today for entertaining stories, even with poor technical writing, shallow characters, and plot nonsense. This is fine. Also, I hate classics.
Everyone reads differently. Other people, though, love that place and seek out that place. A lot of the stories I have read with just plain awful dialogue, flat characters, poor description, and inexplicable plotting nevertheless key into some cultural or political sentiment that I can see appealing to this or that segment of the public.
People like it not so much as fiction, but as a sort of veiled booster piece for one of their causes. Like this: Like Loading Eight writing manuals that are not an absolute waste of time. Loading Comments
0コメント