Can a popular novel be badly written?

[pidgeon92]

What the Night Knows by Dean Koontz. I finished this last night, and it was just awful. The editing was bad. The story just was all over the place. The author, editor and publisher should all be embarrassed.

[RolandD]

Originally Posted by pidgeon92

What the Night Knows by Dean Koontz. I finished this last night, and it was just awful. The editing was bad. The story just was all over the place. The author, editor and publisher should all be embarrassed.

I grew tired of Koontz back around 1990. Almost ever book was the same plot rehashed with different, but not much different characters. Although, Strangers and Phantoms are still two of my favorite books. I recently read his Odd Thomas series and enjoyed them immensely.

How is his Frankenstein series?

[teadonkey]

I'm going to talk strictly about entertaining writing here. If I start veering into writing aimed at teaching/learning... I'll just never stop talking.

I've always found the subject of "good writing" to be very interesting. I think it's a more interesting topic than "good movies" or "good television programs" or even "good video games". Looking at all of these, you can say that they are all forms of entertainment, and that "good" is relative to your interests and tastes.

Writing, though, is more than entertainment in many ways. It's a more active form of entertainment. Instead of having a story told to you, like in a movie or television program, you tell YOURSELF the story by reading it, and you bring to the table all of your prior experiences, opinions and personality. Any piece of writing can engage you, inspire an emotional response, spin you off into some crazy thought train.

I would say the ones that are GOOD are the ones that engaged you without you needing to put forth any effort. If you read a book and felt emotion without needing to TRY to feel it, you've read a good book, regardless of how you felt about the subject matter/type of book.

So to answer the OP's subject line - If it inspired feeling in so many people... it's arguably a good book. Even if you hate vampires and whiny teenagers. Just because it's a good book doesn't mean everyone has to have a nice opinion of the subject matter.

I'm preeeetty sure this is an unpopular view, though.

[gmw]

Originally Posted by teadonkey

... I'm preeeetty sure this is an unpopular view, though.

Let's just say that I don't think we're in the majority ... but neither are we on our own.

[Vivian]

Originally Posted by teadonkey

I would say the ones that are GOOD are the ones that engaged you without you needing to put forth any effort. If you read a book and felt emotion without needing to TRY to feel it, you've read a good book, regardless of how you felt about the subject matter/type of book.

It's not always a bad thing to have to put in effort while reading a book. What if you're reading a mystery? You may have to put in effort to keep all the clues in mind and work out the different possibilities before the reveal. A lot of people enjoy this sort of effort.

If you're reading a science fiction book, you may be dumped into a strange, familiar world and have to work out, from whatever information woven in with the story, what the heck's going on. Sometimes it's not easy but it's still worth it--to fans of science fiction.

On the other hand, if the author has been unclear in her description, forcing you to struggle more than you should have to in order to get a picture of the scene and characters and what's going on, that's the author's failing. I find this with a lot of literary fiction. The author is too busy making everything sound poetic to be clear. This is something I find unbearable, and I wonder why literary fiction is supposed to be so great and a higher art form than genre fiction when most of it is so bad.

[Grimm]

Yes, see Stephanie Meyer and Dan Brown.

[OtterBooks]

I don't wonder if a popular novel can be badly written so much as why and so frequently.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by OtterBooks

I don't wonder if a popular novel can be badly written so much as why and so frequently.

That's easy. They sell.

The bigger question is why the mass audience is style and tone deaf, and finds them readable.
______
Dennis

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by Vivian

All the same, I don't think art is entirely subjective. There's got to be some kind of line one can draw and say, this is quality, that isn't. It may be a fuzzy line, but it exists. Can't we agree, for example, that Arthur Conan Doyle was a better writer than Dan Brown?

Art is entirely subjective. At a particular point in time, there may be a consensus on what is good and what isn't, but it's a consensus based on people's subjective opinions.

If someone is mistaken about an objective fact (i.e., whether concrete has sand in it), you can prove to them that they are wrong by pointing out the presence or absence of sand and they will agree with you. If your sister really likes the Twilight books and you don't, you can't "prove" that it is bad. The best you can do is point out things you don't like about it.

Originally Posted by RolandD

I'll give you MY definition of 'good' writing, and then you can rip it to shreds.

I take a pragmatic view. A writers job is like a teachers. To get the information across to the reader/student in a clear, concise, understandable, and entertaining, manner. For me, 'good' writing equals entertainment received, minus effort involved.

A writer's job is not necessarily like a teacher's. A writer is not a teacher, and there are many kinds of good prose other than expository

Example:

Lolita, light of my life, fire of my loins. My sin, my soul. Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.

Originally Posted by teadonkey

I would say the ones that are GOOD are the ones that engaged you without you needing to put forth any effort. If you read a book and felt emotion without needing to TRY to feel it, you've read a good book, regardless of how you felt about the subject matter/type of book.

I think your point about the "effort" part is overbroad. Some reading requires and rewards effort; some things are inherently complex and are best enjoyed that way. Likewise, some writing is more interesting because it is complex (see my "Lolita" example above). Also, people have many different experiences, and what may require effort for a HS dropout to read may not require effort for you to read.

I think that Anthony Trollope is a much better writer than David Weber. But Weber requires less effort to read.

Note however, that effort alone is no sign of quality - sometimes the author makes you work to little point, or simply due to his unclear writing. And that's bad, I agree.

[eddiek]

I found it hilarious that was reading "Women are from Mars, Men are from Venus" the other day and I found a typo in the middle of the book. You would have thought it would have been fixed after all these years. Even the best books can be badly written in my opinion.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by eddiek

I found it hilarious that was reading "Women are from Mars, Men are from Venus" the other day and I found a typo in the middle of the book. You would have thought it would have been fixed after all these years. Even the best books can be badly written in my opinion.

The question is where the typo came from. It may not have been in the original manuscript. And in any case, typos are not evidence of bad writing, but of bad proofreading. And depending on the number and type of typo, it may have been noticed but someone decided not to fix it, as making the fix costs money, and if no one had noticed (quite likely), why spend it on a fix?
______
Dennis

[Seanette]

Originally Posted by Vivian

On the other hand, if the author has been unclear in her description, forcing you to struggle more than you should have to in order to get a picture of the scene and characters and what's going on, that's the author's failing. I find this with a lot of literary fiction. The author is too busy making everything sound poetic to be clear. This is something I find unbearable, and I wonder why literary fiction is supposed to be so great and a higher art form than genre fiction when most of it is so bad.

Probably snob factor.

[teadonkey]

Originally Posted by Vivian

It's not always a bad thing to have to put in effort while reading a book. What if you're reading a mystery? You may have to put in effort to keep all the clues in mind and work out the different possibilities before the reveal. A lot of people enjoy this sort of effort.

If you're reading a science fiction book, you may be dumped into a strange, familiar world and have to work out, from whatever information woven in with the story, what the heck's going on. Sometimes it's not easy but it's still worth it--to fans of science fiction.

On the other hand, if the author has been unclear in her description, forcing you to struggle more than you should have to in order to get a picture of the scene and characters and what's going on, that's the author's failing. I find this with a lot of literary fiction. The author is too busy making everything sound poetic to be clear. This is something I find unbearable, and I wonder why literary fiction is supposed to be so great and a higher art form than genre fiction when most of it is so bad.

I'm almost exclusively a mystery book reader. I love puzzling it out. But if I need to put forth effort to be interested, then it's not a good book to me. Effort to puzzle something out because I am ALREADY interested is not what I mean here. I mean, you shouldn't have to work to become interested in the story. The story should already reach out and grab you. If you have to work to piece things together because it's that kind of a story, that's perfectly fine.

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

I think your point about the "effort" part is overbroad. Some reading requires and rewards effort; some things are inherently complex and are best enjoyed that way. Likewise, some writing is more interesting because it is complex (see my "Lolita" example above). Also, people have many different experiences, and what may require effort for a HS dropout to read may not require effort for you to read.

I think that Anthony Trollope is a much better writer than David Weber. But Weber requires less effort to read.

Note however, that effort alone is no sign of quality - sometimes the author makes you work to little point, or simply due to his unclear writing. And that's bad, I agree.

Effort and rewards are required in, say, a book written in a different language or a book written a few hundreds years ago when there were different sayings and ways to word things. But what I meant was that a good book shouldn't require me to TRY to like it or at least TRY to find it interesting.

Hum. Perhaps I was a little unclear with the word "effort" and how I was applying it.

[Vivian]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

I think that Anthony Trollope is a much better writer than David Weber. But Weber requires less effort to read.

I tried to read David Weber once and I found it required effort because it was confusing. I read a lot of sentences twice. Eventually it became too painful to read because the writing was so laughably bad. But I did have fun mocking him on my blog: http://vivianskvetch.blogspot.com/20...-gone-bad.html. So I guess I can say that David Weber has, indirectly, given me pleasure. I'll never touch one of his books again though.

[HarryT]

David Weber is a great story-teller but, IMHO, a poor writer. He picks a few phrases and uses them over and over again. Eg, Honor Harrington, never merely speaks, she always "speaks in a soprano voice". She never "folds her arms", but "folds her arms under her breasts" (where else is she going to fold them? ). And one which, I must admit, had me in fits of giggles, she is "a multi-millionaire, several times over" .