Rhonda, you do realize people (like my sister, my mother) would read the bad examples and say, "What was wrong with that?"
You are viewing a single comment's thread from:
Rhonda, you do realize people (like my sister, my mother) would read the bad examples and say, "What was wrong with that?"
proof positive as to why "50 Shades of Gray" was such a hit with people. some of the absolute worst writing i've ever read (NOT hyperbole) and yet people ate it up.
james patterson is also making money hand over fist for creating subpar fiction. there's not always a good accounting of taste, but taste is alway subjective, so...there's the rub.
The absolute worst is John Grisham's "Gray Mountain." It's very difficult to inspire people to write better fiction when they see authors like him publish first drafts and make bank. But the key is this: publishers will buy what sells. Grisham's name sells, not his skill. Snookie made how many millions off her autobiography a few years back? Most of us don't have a name to sell. So I do my best to try and convince fledgling writers to understand this early, and put the work in.
I recently saw a video of an impressionist reading a chapter from 50 Shades in a variety of cartoon voices. Much better than the book. I laughed so hard I cried.
"put the work in"
and honestly, that's the best you can do at the end of the day. if you don't, you're just wasting your time.
Amen.
I find this a terrible truth... One of the reasons I don't want to work with publishers unless I need to, is that they don't care about the actual book as much as they care about what they can make of it.
It's not a bad thing, because most of time the 'good books' sell well, but at the same time things that some of people like, like the things I find in fanfiction (Good fanfiction cause %95 of them are written more badly than my level when I was 15 years old) won't get published ever.
Typically, fanfic won't get published anyway because of copyright issues. There are exceptions, but that's why we don't deal with fanfic in the workshop.
yeah I know this... I meant fanfics that are written in a good way... I said fanfics because I read them a lot and I know %95 are bad, most of the writers have good ideas but don't know how to express them.
Yes. I know, @carolkean. Well, not about your sister and mother. LOL!! But the whole time I was writing that, I kept thinking of all the people who will stare at it and stare at it trying to figure out WTH is so bad about it. People who've put the time in honing their craft will see it instantly.
yeah, I too find it hard to notice what's bad about most of this... But I still noticed instantly what's wrong with some of them even though I didn't know that before reading your post.
Anyone who haven't written their own story and got a lot of crisitsm on it, won't notice these.... maybe they will notice one writing is better than the other but won't call the inferior of the two "bad".
That means... maybe %98 of people on earth?