As my nearly-lifeless corpse makes another slow rotation on my personal, "lots of good story ideas; not spending the time to write them out properly" rope, I've gained some inspiration from a couple of other writers. Stephenie Meyer, author of the teen/romance/vampire series
Twilight, and adult romance author Nicholas Sparks. Both are enjoying massive success with their work, and both entered my consciousness recently. Meyer's Twilight is getting a ton of attention since the first movie just opened to gargantuan business, and Sparks popped into my attention via a profile of him in Entertainment Weekly magazine. I'll start with Sparks, since he (and his work) are more easily dismissed.
The guy and his books had never penetrated my consciousness until last week, when I finally got around to flipping through a month-old copy of Entertainment Weekly that had been sitting (as that lame magazine usually does) beside my toilet. I used to subscribe to the mag, but the endlessly-deteriorating quality of the content (and the popular entertainment it chronicles) gradually sapped my interest. My subscription lapsed last year and I hadn't missed it at all. My surprise was therefore not entirely pleasant when new issues started appearing in my mailbox this Fall. I threw out the first 4 or 5 unopened, but eventually found myself flipping through the new issues, then hating myself for the 10 or 15 minutes I'd never get back. I've now taken to depositing them
in on the toilet, for obvious reasons... I might run out of TP some day.
(Curious about their origin, I finally asked my dad. He admitted that he'd given me the subscription, since when he renewed his own subscription they'd offered him a free one for a guest. The odd part is that he hates the magazine more than I do, and has even less interest in pop culture. Yet we're both receiving them in the mail.)
The issue in question I'd saved for some months since it was the memorial Paul Newman issue. I wasn't saving it for sentimental reasons, since frankly, I don't know much about his non-pasta sauce career. I saved it since I hadn't looked through it yet, and (foolishly) thought the issue would prove informative. It was, in a way. I now know that everyone in Hollywood loved him, and that even his bad movies and mailed-in performances were among the best ever committed to celluloid. It was just the sort of hard-hitting journalism that had me thinking about resubscribing to EW at least oh, never, during the time my subscription laid fallow.
More interesting than Newman's pictorial hagiography was a profile of best selling author Nicholas Sparks, contained in the same jam-packed issue. I read it for purely professional reasons, and found it quite informative. I'd never heard of the guy, but I had heard of one of his books. He wrote
The Notebook, which I've never read, but I did recall hearing of the movie adaptation, which I've never seen. Hey, it's more familiarity than I can boast of with most pop culture phenomenas.
The Notebook might be Sparks' most famous novel, but he's far from a one hit wonder. As the EW article proudly proclaimed, he's the author of 14 bestsellers in 14 years. See for yourself;
its online, and from it I'll quote a couple of writing-related chunks:
A novel takes him a few months to conceive and then five months to write. He sets a daily goal for himself of 2,000 words. He writes for five to six hours a day and types approximately 60 words a minute, which he says leaves him with 54 minutes an hour to stare at the computer and six minutes to actually write. ''See,'' he says, with a friendly shrug of his shoulders, ''it's not an unbelievable pace.''
...Sparks admits to an ever-present cloud of worry hanging over his head. ''After every book I feel like the well is dry,'' he says. ''Well, that's it! Got nothing. Done. Washed up. Don't know what I'm going to do. Maybe I'll write a cookbook.'' But then he practices his standard method of formulating the skeleton of his next love story. ''Okay,'' he says, getting excited, ''I just wrote The Lucky One. So the next one won't be a military story. I know that right off the bat. These characters were in their 20s, okay, so the characters are not in their 20s. Okay, so if you're in your 40s, what are the dilemmas? Oh, wait, I've got Nights in Rodanthe coming out, and that's a love story with characters in their 40s, so if I come out with a book just like that, people will think I'm not original. Okay, what are the dilemmas that typically face 30-year-olds that I haven't done? Are we dealing with a woman who has put herself on hold for the sake of her career? Very common for women. See, you want something universal. So, hmmm, where does that go? Could be anything. Hmmm, let me do her biological clock. Hmmm, maybe she goes to her 20th high school reunion? Ah, yes, maybe she had a boyfriend? Was he ever married? Was he divorced, is he widowed? Does he have kids? What if this, what if that, what if this...''
I imagine a "serious" author would/should be horrified by that cavalier, soulless, automated approach to formulating the cookie-cutter characters and cliche plot of a novel. Even if it is a romance novel. And sure, it's as contrived and commercial as an episode of Pokemon, but Sparks is a business man, and a very successful one. Write for the audience, don't fall into a rut, give a wide variety of readers something to identify with in your work, and don't overthink things. I find it interesting to read a novel with quirky, unique, idiosyncratic characters, and I'm sure most people would say the same thing... but there's a reason countless crappy sitcoms and lawyer shows and cop dramas are on TV for 15 years; people enjoy familiarity. It's why most fantasy series start out brilliant and inventive and then tumble into a slow grinding
progression procession that continues until their author's death.
And sometimes after. People like characters they know, and characters who are like them, and characters they can identify with. Plus it's a hell of a lot easier for an author like Sparks to crank out a book a year if he's not researching disparate professions and creating characters he has to deeply psychoanalyze.
Who can argue with success?
As for Twilight, it's being hailed as a successor to the Harry Potter series, but that's largely wishful thinking on the part of publishing publicists. Twilight has sold a tiny fraction of HP, since it's got a tiny fraction of HP's appeal. It's essentially
90210 with fangs. Watered-down Anne Rice. Beautiful high school kids flirting and fighting and falling in love, but some of them are vampires, and they're oh-so tortured and immortal and pretty. Especially the boys.
Like all romance novels, even/especially
the occult-flavored ones, Twilight is written to function as a form of female wish fulfillment. Insecure new girl in town falls in love with god-like vampire hunk, who sweeps her off her feet. Every woman feels ugly and unloved and stupid and clumsy at times, and according to the Amazon.com reviews, Bella certainly lives up to that. But she's not an ugly duckling, she's a Swan (Literally. That's the character's last name.) and the super hunky vampire falls in love with her and is devoted to her and fights for her and saves her from danger and he's perfect and dreamy and hunk, etc, etc. He might as well be a prince, or a pirate captain, or a any other romance novel lead of the type
Fabio once posed for.
The conflict comes from evil vampires, and from the passion denied between the m/f leads. The hunky vampire dude doesn't want Bella to become a vampire like him (because living forever and being beautiful isn't worth having to go to high school and date stupid 17 y/o's for 113 years), so he can't really "take" her as he wants to. But she wants to be taken, since she wants to submit to his masculine perfection. Etc. As
Ebert pointed out, it's basically an abstinence play, substituting blood sucking for sex. Why they don't just have sex, or why that's not enough to tide them over if they do, is unknown. (I might read the novel someday, just to satisfy my own curiosity, but I have not done so as of yet.)
What connects these two authors, besides their romance-styled writing (Sparks bristles at his work being called "romance" but I don't think Meyers is fighting the inevitable), is their success. And their workmanlike approach to it. I haven't read that much about Meyers' writing schedule, but Sparks' is inspirational. He, and just about every successful writer I know of, treats their avocation as a profession. Schedule a block of time every day, and spend it working. You don't get to surf the internet if you're not motivated, or blog, or watch TV. As Sparks says, he writes 2000 words a day, even though that only takes 6 minutes an hour to type.
There's a
great line about writing that's always stuck with me. "The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair." It's unfortunate that this quote is the most famous thing
its author ever wrote -- why couldn't Twain or Hemingway have said it? -- but the strategy is sound.
Stunning talent is not required to be a successful writer. In fact, it's arguably a detriment, since it will drive you to distraction trying to perfect every sentence. Workmanlike prose is better, since it's good enough for 95% of readers, it's faster to write, and it's much faster to (not) edit. If you know your rough draft is virtually as good as it's going to get, you save time on rewrites.
One interesting difference between these two authors is how their detractors revile them.
The Notebook has
1500 reviews on Amazon.com, with a 4-star average. Of the 180 1-star reviews, most are brief, dismissive, and uncontroversial. They say it sucks, it's boring, it's trite and mawkish and sentimental, etc. But they are far from inspired in their insults. Most of the 1-star reviews or just one or two paragraphs, and can be skimmed in seconds. The book isn't bad enough to stir outrage amongst its detractors. Most offer surprise only that it's so popular, or that so many other people profess adoration for it. Few have more than 5 or 6 agree/disagree votes, and I didn't see any with more than 12 recommends.
On the other hand,
the 1-star reviews for Twilight are impassioned. There are 2900 reviews in total, and the book has a 4.5 average, which is exceptionally high. Of the 291 1-star reviews, most are discourses. Multiple paragraphs long, they rip into the book like the star boy vampire into a fleeing hare (he only sucks blood from animals; that's how you know he's the good guy). Many of them have hundreds of recommends; the most popular one now is at, "498 of 600 people found the following review helpful." These people put effort and intelligence into describing why the novel sucks, and many of their pans are quite entertaining, and quite nasty. A number of them attack not just the book, but the author as well, calling the female lead a "
Mary Sue" of the highest order. Here's
a quote from one that's got 192 agreeing votes:
I may just sue Ms. Meyer as it is possible that she stole the fabric covered books I wrote my own fantasy novels in when I was 13 - this book is written in the exact same style. The protagonist is a "slender" brunette, apparently so lovely that boys fall over her as soon as she arrives at her new school, including a superior and (as we are continuously told so as to avoid actual description) "godlike" and gorgeous vampire who never bothered with any other girl until he was spellbound at first sight (and evidently, smell).
This is not a typical YA novel heroine considering most readers cannot identify or sympathize with someone so amazing and physically attractive. Then I took a look at the author... oh yes, I get it now. We have a term for this and it is MARY SUE. The author has made the main character a thinly veiled perfection of herself and provided absolutely no personality to the character. In fact, every character in this book is barely even a cardboard cut out - no one has any real personality beyond some fleeting stereotypes and everyone behaves predictably and completely unconvincingly. It is like reading "slash" fiction, as Edward only speaks in that way that only exists in slash - males do not act like this in real life, they do not poke you gently on the nose, beg you to tell them ALL about every minute detail of your life and treat you like a newborn baby. Only in slash.
One
other quote, since it made me laugh. 169 people found this one helpful.
The plot revolves around Bella Swan, a Mary Sue whose primary skills seem to be having a martyr complex, attracting trouble, and falling down.
As I said, I haven't read either book, so I can't offer my opinion (and since I'm about 50 book and movies reviews behind, even if I did it's doubtful any of us would live to hear it). I do find it interesting how much their hate mails differ, though. Sparks' novels appear to be disposable pap; it's a romance novel, you go in knowing that, and no one expects too much. If you like romance novels, you enjoy them and get your kick. If you don't you dislike it and probably don't care enough to go on Amazon.com and vent.
Twilight attracts a larger and far more passionate audience. It's a romance novel, but it's also a saga with a world fiction and a vast and devoted young (and not so young) female audience.
I wonder if the occult genre factors into the passion of the reviewers? Sparks novels are just real world, regular people doing regular things. They're not the usual Old West, Pirate Ship, Medieval Kingdom, fantasy romance novel setting.
Twilight is ostensibly set in the real world, but it's got occult vampire magical elements, which puts it into fantasy, and therefore it brings out more love and hate in its readers? Or is the greater passion about that novel due more to the young adult skew, which means its readers are more likely to be teens with hotter emotions, plus more familiarity with the Internet and time to go argue for or against the novel on amazon.com?
Labels: publishing, twilight, writing
