In the thread on tropes I happened to ask:
Quote:
Originally Posted by gmw
[...] I find I can analyse what makes a book a "bad" (or not so good) - in my eyes, at least - but I have yet to work out what makes a book good. And failing that, how do I know if I am achieving good?
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When I got the following reply from Cinisajoy it seemed to me worth a separate thread:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Cinisajoy
You will know you are achieving good when you get lovers and haters.
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I think the essence of this is true - you will know when people start talking about you - but I have a quibble/clarification:
I can accept that you probably won't really
know until people start talking about you, but just because they are talking about you won't mean you've done good (or bad). It's not just whether they're saying nice and/or horrible things. (I can think of a few examples that would get me kicked to the P&R forum.)
I think it's whether they are saying things that bring some of what you put in your story back to you. I have garnered very few reviews so far, so people are not talking about me, suggesting I've done neither particularly good nor particularly bad (or maybe I'm just still on the TBR pile, whatever). Of those few reviews, so far only one clearly suggests to me that the person saw what I saw*.
They don't even have to have liked what they saw, but if they seem to have seen what it was I tried to write then I call that doing good.
There is, I suppose, a certain amount of vanity in that - but why else do we publish except the vanity of thinking we've creating something that others might enjoy. But it does sum up what I hope for as a writer. It's possible to achieve success, and be "good" in the eyes of the others, but until I am convinced others see what I saw when I was creating the story I won't really think that I've got it right.
* Other's have told what they saw and that's great (I am most certainly not criticising any of those that left reviews), but people see all sorts of things in stories - sometimes when talking about a specific book with someone you can start to wonder if you read the same story. What I'm getting at with the "saw what I saw" thing is being able to feel that the story I tried to tell actually made it over intact. Even with the best (or worst) of reviews this is not always clear.