Okay, who threw the tomato?
Her prose is not bad, it's not great like Anne Rice,
I think you just made my head explode, dude.
I had to fix that for clarification, it was a little ambiguous.
Personally I am a love/hate patron of Meyer, I hate most of the things that make Twilight popular, but having read the books, they ironically have much going for them as they do going against them. Her prose is not bad, it's not great like Anne Rice's is, but it's not bad considering she is pretty young. It is at least better than Stephen King's prose. Her character developement is pretty good, but Twilight mostly suffers from the dialogue and girlyness.Meyer's writing is mediocre, which is okay for a YA book like Twilight. Rice is extremely purple and verbose, with a lot of words that could really be cut, and really, she didn't get much better over time. King knows how to write, and he does a really good job when he writes about writing, but he doesn't take his own advice most of the time. And he's all over the place because he sits down and writes without much of any kind of plan. I would think his editor is also somewhat at fault there, too, for not making him rewrite. Though that's just a guess. Rowling is decent, though she has her own problems, though those are more with the actual story than the writing, other than over using adverbs in dialogue tags.
I have heard good things about The Host, I will have to give that one a whirl.
Considering that this is early in Meyer's career, maybe if the fame hasn't gone to her head, maybe she will mature into a great author.
*Trebuchet? I learned a knew type of catapult.
Interestingly enough:
While comparing Meyer to J. K. Rowling, Stephen King stated, "the real difference [between J. K. Rowling and Meyer] is that Jo Rowling is a terrific writer, and Stephenie Meyer can't write worth a darn. She's not very good."
Meyer was the second bestselling author of the decade, according to a list published by Amazon, beaten only by JK Rowling. Meyer had four books on the bestselling list, compared to Rowling, who had three.
Funny that King criticize's her prose when his prose is not so great and is light years behind great writer's like Anne Rice, Charles Dickens, JRR Tolkein, etc.
I haven't read Meyer yet, but Anne Rice's book is only the second one that I set down without ever finishing.
The other being Moby Dick.
I had to fix that for clarification, it was a little ambiguous, and I added some more comments.
I agree that Rowling is a much better writer, but I have read King's writitng and he really isn't a very good writer so I am not sure where he gets off telling a girl almost half his age that her writing isn't very good.
Kind of like if I took a elementary school kids paper and told him it sucks, and that his writing is not as good as mine.
I have also read much of King and I kind feel the same about King as I do Meyer. It's like the both have potentially GREAT stories, but they also have an equal amount of shortcomings as the do quality material. (except King has had more time to improve but doesn't, in fact I think he get worse and worse)
I have read many classics as well such as Ernest Hemingway, etc. in school, so I have an idea of what is considered good prose.
To me Jim has a nice balance. Not overly pretentious (which Anne Rice might be a little), and not overly simple, but simple enough to enjoy, and not all over the place bouncing off the nuthouse walls like King.
1) JK Rowling is NOT a good writer, she is popular there is a difference
JK Rowling is a successful writer. Her world building was superb and her stories entertained people from all over the age spectrum. The sales for Harry Potter all over the world were astronomical, especially for a kids' series. Until I'm able to say the same, I think I'm gonna hold back from throwing stones. :/
And for that matter - Stephanie Meyer is a successful writer. She had a target demographic and she exploited it perfectly, whether or not that was what she meant to do. For all the crap we like to lob her way she is still a published, successful, widely known author.
I'm interested in learning from the successes of these women. Do they have their flaws? Of course. Are they still crazy successful authors? Hell yeah. And frankly, it's studying their accomplishments that can help us, not sulking over the flaws that their agents and editors and publishers and readers didn't care much about.
...and if they did care, it wasn't enough to hurt their sales.
I'm interested in learning from the successes of these women. Do they have their flaws? Of course. Are they still crazy successful authors? Hell yeah. And frankly, it's studying their accomplishments that can help us, not sulking over the flaws that their agents and editors and publishers and readers didn't care much about.
If you hope to match their success, you must realize that what initially got them published was luck. What made them successful was luck, and good marketing. The same goes for many writers mentioned in this thread...
My point being, learn to write as well as you can. Don't make intentional mistakes for styles sake. Ultimately it's networking and luck that get you published. And don't write anything like Meyer's book. There's a glut of that type of thing in the markets right now.
JK Rowling is a successful writer. Her world building was superb and her stories entertained people from all over the age spectrum.
I'm interested in learning from the successes of these women. Do they have their flaws? Of course. Are they still crazy successful authors? Hell yeah. And frankly, it's studying their accomplishments that can help us, not sulking over the flaws that their agents and editors and publishers and readers didn't care much about.
Well, IMO it wasn't just "luck and marketing" that got Rowling and/or Meyers published.
They both had to at least conceive and then write a story that connected with their audience in the first place.
That's a matter of skill & perseverance.
Heavy on the perseverance.
Those things had to take place 100% prior to any 'luck' or 'marketing'.
Virtually every author professionally published will have some story variant of how much sheer perseverance it took to get noticed and published.
Luck plays into it here - Once they had something to sell, and that something was recognized by *someone* reading the slush pile (or however it happened for them) as "Hey! This has a market - I can make some cash with this stuff!"
THEN the marketing comes in.
And, generally speaking, the real big marketing isn't done by the author. It's done by the publisher.
And while I would not say that either authors works are the kind of thing where one starts reading and cannot put it down because of the gripping narrative, or deathless prose, (or whatever superlative works for you), it isn't exactly "bad". (I've browsed the slush pile before. The word is usually dreck. Or gawdawful. Or "Pleasemakeitstopnooo!")
Both authors works tap into a certain commonality of human experience, and despite the writers limitations, they manage to do it well enough to sell boatloads of books.
The Backstreet Boys aren't Bach. But they are exceptional for what they are.
Ditto Rowling & Meyer.
I don't hate twilight per se but i hate the massive amounts of attention it gets and the fans
Hemingway is not a good example of good prose. He's a reporter at heart and it shows in his lexicon and syntax. For good prose look to: Twain (for his use of dialect) Orwell, Steinbeck, and for someone writing in a similar time and style Jack London has much better prose than Hemingway
However, no one really gets ticked when there is a Pokemon fad or Dragon Ball Z fad,
On the same token, more power to those successful authors for figuring out what sells.
And I agree with your first statement mostly too. I just feel like King is over-rated, but that is probably my bias because the entire time I was reading the Dark Tower I was thinking Jebus Chris!, what the hell is going on, and then at times it was like, ok now he seems to be sobering up (the author i mean) then it's like oh no, i think he just dropped some acid. Then as someone else stated, it's like he never knows how to end the books, he just makes up some terrible ending when he gets tired of writing the story, and I get that with King "its all about the journey" but for me a book needs a good conclusion, otherwise it kind of ruins the whole thing for me. As for prose, maybe he's prose isn't that bad and I just can't see past the twisted stories he writes.
I am entirely unconvinced they did figure anything out, though.
Well I'll say that King doesn't remember writing Cujo he was so messed up and he's admitted as much. As for the Tower, it is about the journey and it is about the cycle. "Ka is a wheel" and it comes full circle, with enough of a change that one could see that the end of the series is the beginning of the final journey. But a lot of his books do conclude the story arc, but are always somewhat open on the characters in them.
However with the Dark Tower it's like we are only seeing day 3 of a 7 day book. (i am just using day figuratively here, could be week or month or year if you want, or any numbers) And I get that it leaves something to the imagination, but I am not completely satisfied with that ending and I think it was kind of a cop-out ending.
The cool thing about Run Lola Run and Groundhog's Day is that we get to see where they make correction in the loop each time. With Dark Tower, King ingeniusly lets the reader imagine what happens so that King doesn't have to do the work.
I also get that sometimes endings are meant to be open ended, like the recent Inception, but in my heart I feel like King used it as a scapegoat to just get away from the series because he couldn't tie it up. Because honestly, what happens when Roland does get it right? I don't think King knows.
I think another flaw is why does the loop begin half into the story, it doesn't actually come full circle but more like a question mark shape.
Huh? Sorry, I didnt hear you. I was working on loading the trebuchet. ;)
@ThrythlindGod, that takes me back... The Silmarillon was the first book I ever read in English, back when I was 14 or so... Picked it up on a school trip to the UK. Horrible. Took me maybe 3 months to make any sense of it. On the up side: any book I ever read after that was easy by comparison.
I struggled and never finished the Silmilarion because I bought some old copy from a library (green hard back with some gold symbol on it, I lost it though) and I struggled with the English in it, I think it was an early translation or not translated at all. I don't know if they have different translations of this?
@Thrythlind
I struggled and never finished the Silmilarion because I bought some old copy from a library (green hard back with some gold symbol on it, I lost it though) and I struggled with the English in it, I think it was an early translation or not translated at all. I don't know if they have different translations of this?
God, that takes me back... The Silmarillon was the first book I ever read in English, back when I was 14 or so... Picked it up on a school trip to the UK. Horrible. Took me maybe 3 months to make any sense of it. On the up side: any book I ever read after that was easy by comparison.I still haven't finished reading it. Although part of that is picking up other books I have more interest in. And because it's written so much like the Bible that it can be difficult to get through. I know people who would keep a notebook to list all the characters to keep them straight.
LOL.
What's ironic is the topic of this thread is "despite the flack I'm going to get...." but I don't think anyone has given meg_evonne any flack.
I've been at a writer's camp for two weeks and returned to find the responses on this thread. I'm so pleased that we can have such wonderful discussion from both sides of an issue and still expand our knowledge on the publishing world.
You guys really are the best! Thank you for your thoughts and your civility. And I love your avatar MoSeS.