Good grief. Now, I'm a writer. I've written over 250,000 collective words in stories I'm trying to sell. But for this? I have no words whatsover.
I think the best nutshell summary is out of that list of Amazon reviewer tags: "weapons-grade stupidity". I couldn't describe this better if I tried.
Bwahahahaha! That's hysterical. As if our Roomba wasn't already frightening enough to our cat AND our parrot... ;D Thank you for the giggle!
*delurk* Erk, how awful. :( That would have freaked me out something fierce... and I feel sorry for the poor gent that his passing went unnoticed, but I am glad that at least it seemed to be peaceful.
Sympathies and condolences to you and your neighbors!
That is a thing of beauty. Thank you!
With interest, I'm following everyone's mentions of various and sundry authors that they can't go back and re-read. Patrick's comment in particular got me thinking, too.
Where I fall into this seems to be that I've got authors for whom I've read a single work or a piece of a work, and disliked it violently enough that I won't go and pick up anything else by that author. One fantasy novel in particular was a "throw across the room" kind of deal where round about page 40-45 or so, the hero told the heroine that all she really needed was a good man in her life--and I bailed right there, and haven't touched anything else by that author.
My exposure to Chalker is limited, but I did try to start reading his Changewinds trilogy. I got as far as the protagonist deliberately arranging to take control of the character she doesn't like by triggering her transformation into a brainless blonde bimbette, realized I really didn't like that character, and fled.
Anthony... he's another author to whom I've had limited exposure. In fact, the only thing I can actually remember reading by him was a novelization of Total Recall, which I read only because I was writing a fanzine review for it at the time. It was so badly edited that I never felt moved to pick up anything else by him, despite being occasionally advised that he's written some good stuff. So far, I'm not seeing anything on this thread yet to make me change my mind.
But out of the authors I do actually regularly read, it's a harder call. I'm annoyed by the direction the Anita Blake books took, but I have yet to decide whether that's turned me away from ever re-reading the earlier ones (perhaps while pretending that the series stops at Obsidian Butterfly).
Anne McCaffrey annoyed me with her propensity for setting up all these wonderful strong female characters and then turning them into domestic gooey-eyed baby-making machines while their menfolk actually get to hold the positions of power (Menolly, Brekke, The Rowan, etc., and I'm convinced that the only reason Killashandra didn't start pumping out babies was because the Crystal Singers were established going in as unable to breed). But I'm not sure yet whether this has ruined my ability to ever re-read any of those books.
Melissa Mead said:
(This midichlorian business really ticks me off, BTW. How come all of a sudden heroes need to have the right bloodline? What made the Force wonderful to me was that is was just THERE for anyone who would trust it.)
AMEN. And not to mention that trying to kludge a scientific 'explanation' onto the Force completely ruined its mysticism. The Force really did not need to be 'explained'.
S.E. said:
To put it another way: you don't need to write yourself to get into a character's head, and minor similarities are more than enough to give a writer his or her foothold.
Exactly. This is why I find myself with a bit of a sheepish grin at the whole Sue/Stu thing--just because I've found that both in my roleplaying experience and in my writing experience, a little piece of me gets into all the characters. The challenge for me has been to learn how to then let that character become his or her own person.
Really, if someone just starting out writes nothing but Sues and Stus, it's not a big deal. We've all done it. I spent years upon years doing it before I learned better. However, when someone has got five or six novels under his/her belt, the tendency should be gone.
Let me make a general note of that as a goal to shoot for by the time I write my fifth or sixth novel. ^_^
S.E. said:
"*doesn't get why people need to write Sues and Stus, when flawed, fragile, real characters are so much more fun to work with*"
I can think of a couple of reasons, mostly based on my experience with text-based online roleplay games.
#1, inserting oneself into the role of the protagonist is a very easy way for someone to develop that protagonist in their heads. If the character is essentially you, you don't have to work very hard to figure out what he or she will do in any given situation.
#2, which is related to #1, a roleplayer (or writer) may be trying to indulge in a form of self-therapy by putting the character into an unconquerable situation that plagues him or her in real life. By having the character conquer the situation, they get a form of escape from dealing with it--or in the better cases, might figure out a way to deal with it in reality as well as in their story.
It takes skill and practice for a roleplayer or writer to do more than this with a story. Not everyone starts off with the talent to do so without working at it... and while it's a skill that can be learned, certainly, not everybody manages to pick it up. Also, as I think is getting demonstrated well in this discussion at large, veteran writers can fall into the trap of self-insertion just as well as neophytes can. :)
Steve E., it sounds as if your wife and I have more in common besides our name! :) Obsidian Butterfly was the last Anita Blake I actively enjoyed--partly because I liked Edward as a character and partly because it was a relief to get a vacation from all the Jean-Claude-vs.-Richard relationship angst.
As for the Merry Gentry books, heh. A good friend of mine once remarked that she didn't need to read Ms. Hamilton's fantasies about sex with long-haired elf boys, she had plenty of those on her own. ;) That sums up my opinion about that series quite nicely.
I too read Charlaine Harris and have indeed noted the similarity to the Anita Blakes in tone, only without the gratuitous gore and sex. Which is making Ms. Harris' books a lot more enjoyable to me these days.
Jim said:
"I just got the latest Anita Blake novel from the library, and when I got 200 pages in I realized -- there's been one chapter about the vampire hunter stuff, and 190+ pages of weird soft-core porn.
I put the book down and instantly felt better. I went back to one of the early books and found it to be just as enjoyable as I remembered, so I'm not burned out on her writing or the character -- I just don't like where she has gone as a writer. I'm clearly in the minority as she keeps selling better and better, but I'm done reading the new ones."
I too am one of the Anita Blake fans who's jumped ship because of the direction the storyline has gone. I cheerfully admit that the series is total potato-chip fiction, but every so often Ms. Hamilton used to make me smile with neat concepts and imagery; I really liked her Oldest Vampire On the Planet, old enough that he wasn't even Homo Sapiens, and the imagery of a vampire immolating himself in daylight as an act of self-sacrifice and redemption, surrounded by a cloud of his totem butterflies.
The last one I read was Narcissus in Chains and I haven't touched another one since.
Kate, thank you very much for the link! I have several folks with whom I'd like to share it. :)
The extra special fun part of Bush's having signed that law in Texas is that it has apparently recently led to a black baby in that state having HIS feeding tube pulled--against the express wishes of the mother.
Joy, oh glee.
I will if she'll tell me to finish editing mine. ;)
Yow. I'm glad your husband was able to catch that problem, and that y'all get it worked out ASAP with your doctor!
Eek, many sympathies to you both about the flu!
And the hamster picture is adorable, even if it brings to mind very strange and conflicting visions of Hamtaro and the "Ultra-Peepy" episode of Invader Zim. ;)
I found out about this person a few days back, and was appalled beyond belief on a multitude of levels. I've already ranted at great length on my own journal about this issue, so I'll just say here that it saddens me greatly that the current legislative environment in this country is such that ideas such as this do not get shot down on sight. We're supposed to be better than that.
Hi there! New reader here; I wanted to thank you for sharing the links off to Ms. Donati's posts about writing good sex scenes, and for the rich food for thought regarding folks in the fanfic community and the large potential for what will happen when they make the jump over to being pro. I'm coming out of a very similar community--online MUSHes--and have found a lot of similar trends in that particular group as well, folks who have been spending years in online roleplay honing their writing craft and then going and making the leap to being professionals.
Since I'm pursuing making that very leap, I found both your commentary and Ms. Donati's very thought-provoking indeed, and I shall enjoy coming back for more. :)
Cheers,
Anna
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