Quote:
Originally Posted by Sydney's Mom
I don't think a popular novel can be badly written, if you mean gramatical errors, holes in the plot, etc. There are certainly a lot of popular novelists whose writing style I don't care for, but their grammar is fine and their plots are good. Scott Turow comes to mind. I haven't read a book of his in years, because the last one I read, I felt the style was overly lyrical. Obviously, that is just me, because he is hugely popular.
I read a lot of books with not great writing, where the plot doesn't depend on reading every word. I just skip the boring parts.
|
I think there are actually a
lot of books with huge plot holes that are nonetheless popular. Dan Brown has made an entire career out of entirely nonsensical, ridiculous plots (even inventing a discipline, "symbology", to make his plot make some kind of sense).
Speaking of Dan Brown, I think one other thing that goes into good writing (and is absent in bad writing/bad writers) is originality. There are tons of books that are just rehashes of the plots of other books. (Once you've read one of Brown's books, you've essentially read them all, with minor variations.)
Sorry to pick on Brown, but he's really the best contemporary example I could give of a terrible writer who writes very popular books. (Others may prefer to use Stephanie Meyer as an example, but I haven't read any of the Twilight books.)