Quote:
Originally Posted by HarryT
The problem is that it makes it unclear what it is that you're asking. Are you asking how you can know if your books are well written, or are you asking if you're "doing good" in the correct meaning of the phrase - i.e. doing good deeds? The point of writing is communication, and when there's ambiguity it obstructs that process.
(I still don't know which of these two meanings you intended!)
|
One of the reasons why I stuck with colloquialism was that I thought (apparently incorrectly) that it was a succinct way of communicating what I meant without long explanations. (I seem to be naturally verbose, and struggle to keep things short - but I do try ... sometimes.)
For me, at least, well written implies that the writing is eloquent and well formed. It does not follow that I actually enjoyed the story. The Long Earth series was well written, but as much as I love Terry Pratchett (I tend to be ambivalent about Stephen Baxter), I did not enjoy them very much. So this thread was not about whether a story was well written - or not only that.
To explain what I mean by the thread subject, I can do little better than quote the quote from the OP: "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?"
So I am talking about that nebulous concept of what makes a book "good". This is more than being well written. It is more than being fast-paced, or intriguing, or insightful, or well structured. It is the combination of all those things, plus the elusive feeling a reader may get of having been "touched" by a work (not every story hopes to do this, but some do).
The open question from the previous paragraph is whether it is important that (at least some) readers think the book is good, or whether the writer does. But the two overlap. A writer is inevitably their own first critic; they
must be able to tell whether what they have written is worth keeping. If they cannot do this, how can they proceed?
When I got my first harsh criticism from a paid professional reviewer I was devastated, not because of the individual criticisms, most of which were fair, but because the summary said that while I showed promise as a writer I should give up the current book and try something new. This summary hits something completely fundamental in a writer: I judged the work to be worthy of sharing, and had been told my judgement was wrong. If I could not trust my own judgement, how could I possibly write anything else?
I got past that, eventually, and worked on the many worthwhile things in the review.
But the experience did leave its mark. I realised that the reviewer had been trying to read a different story to what I had been trying to write. One result of that is that it is very important to me that the story I am trying to tell comes across accurately. Even if the reader ends up not actually liking my story, if they actually read
my story then at least I can feel that I did my job as a writer.
One difficulty with this, as discussed with Cinisajoy, is that readers bring their own baggage along with them, and will not always see what the writer was trying to show. What Stephen King (in "On Writing") calls a writer's ESP relies on a certain amount of shared background, and this allows the writer to take shortcuts, leaving the reader to fill in the gaps. This process is never perfect. Even so, what I hope to see in some small percentage of reviews is that my story actually made it across intact.
As you say, the point of writing is communication, but sometimes the words, especially when not well chosen for their particular audience, can get in the way of communication. It is possible to be precise without being clear (think legal documents). The writer's job is to find the balance, but this is difficult (impossible?) without outside help. So I keep hoping for reviews that will let me know if I've done my job.