Great post. I find that I despise serviceable novels by the “30 percent” more than terrible ones because they take longer to announce themselves and thus waste my time with their dreary, trope-addled competence and paper-chewing prose flavor. Donald Maass, in his book THE BREAKOUT NOVELIST, had it right when he wrote: "The type of novel submission that's the toughest to spot—and the most essential to reject—is the one that is skillful, competent, literate, and ultimately forgettable."
I really love this breakdown!! For me, the worse books are actually the ones that are just fine. I've read some terrible self-published romances that are so bad I genuinely will never forget them and even love in a twisted, Stockholm syndrome-y way loll. I also think the "just fine" writers suffer from writing that lacks a pulse. And I actually think THIS is much harder to quantify than voice (I mean most of us DO know what voice is, we use it everyday). But some novels just feel...alive? Despite being lopsided or oddly paced, maybe even because of these qualities. What I've noticed about the works that thrum and the works that don't is that the former feel like only that writer could've created that text, it's kismet, there's a fizzy specificity to it that "just fine" writing lacks, and also a leaning into idiosyncrasies rather than flattening them, I imagine by honing these ticks in revision rather than letting them in haphazardly or editing them out entirely. To the chorus of writing advice I'd add: read poetry if you want to elevate your prose! Poets are all about breaking and bending language to make the quotidian feel new. You can get a super cheap subscription to POETRY magazine and encounter a medley of different voices every month for like $25 a year or something. So worth it. Great post!! Thanks for writing this!
I'd really think to think some more on what exactly gives writing the feeling of aliveness as its so hard to pin down. I'm going to ponder this and do a post latter--two things come to mind, but there must be more. also good call on poetry- I should have thought about that!
Thanks for writing this. The group I keep thinking about a week later is the deplorable one. It seems to me that a deplorable designation is subject to context and taste, things that don’t have much to do with “good” or “bad” writing. For example, it may have been completely acceptable to, as a white writer, write an entire novel from the main perspective of a person of color a few years ago, but I’m not sure that would pass these days. Perhaps trying to would even be seen as deplorable by some. I can think of several very successful, traditionally published novels along these lines, and I wonder if they would have made it out of the gate in 2024.
I think about that particular thing quite a bit. I think minorities span a broad array of perspectives on this, but the argument tends to be distilled into its most extreme positions (ie, POC saying don't do it, white people saying why can't I). But I would guess that the majority of minorities (maybe even a strong majority- and I fall into this group ) don't actually object to white writers writing POC characters they object to them 1) doing it badly or 2) writing an "issue book" (ie a book that centers that character's minority identity.) In the latter case, it feels like "you're just taking up space of someone who actually belongs to that group." I'm not sure exactly where publishers stand on this, because I could see them not wanting to be caught into some kind of controversy and wanting to be seen as being more friendly to diversity.
Really interesting and thank you for weighing in. Who is “allowed” to write what is a whole nother topic. I finished Yellowface and (as a white writer) went down the wormhole thinking about it.
fantastic, this "grabbed" me, I write poetry and I don't use punctuation, but sometimes I think I have a shift in perpective here and there. Anyway, thanks!
Great post. I find that I despise serviceable novels by the “30 percent” more than terrible ones because they take longer to announce themselves and thus waste my time with their dreary, trope-addled competence and paper-chewing prose flavor. Donald Maass, in his book THE BREAKOUT NOVELIST, had it right when he wrote: "The type of novel submission that's the toughest to spot—and the most essential to reject—is the one that is skillful, competent, literate, and ultimately forgettable."
I really love this breakdown!! For me, the worse books are actually the ones that are just fine. I've read some terrible self-published romances that are so bad I genuinely will never forget them and even love in a twisted, Stockholm syndrome-y way loll. I also think the "just fine" writers suffer from writing that lacks a pulse. And I actually think THIS is much harder to quantify than voice (I mean most of us DO know what voice is, we use it everyday). But some novels just feel...alive? Despite being lopsided or oddly paced, maybe even because of these qualities. What I've noticed about the works that thrum and the works that don't is that the former feel like only that writer could've created that text, it's kismet, there's a fizzy specificity to it that "just fine" writing lacks, and also a leaning into idiosyncrasies rather than flattening them, I imagine by honing these ticks in revision rather than letting them in haphazardly or editing them out entirely. To the chorus of writing advice I'd add: read poetry if you want to elevate your prose! Poets are all about breaking and bending language to make the quotidian feel new. You can get a super cheap subscription to POETRY magazine and encounter a medley of different voices every month for like $25 a year or something. So worth it. Great post!! Thanks for writing this!
I'd really think to think some more on what exactly gives writing the feeling of aliveness as its so hard to pin down. I'm going to ponder this and do a post latter--two things come to mind, but there must be more. also good call on poetry- I should have thought about that!
Thanks for writing this. The group I keep thinking about a week later is the deplorable one. It seems to me that a deplorable designation is subject to context and taste, things that don’t have much to do with “good” or “bad” writing. For example, it may have been completely acceptable to, as a white writer, write an entire novel from the main perspective of a person of color a few years ago, but I’m not sure that would pass these days. Perhaps trying to would even be seen as deplorable by some. I can think of several very successful, traditionally published novels along these lines, and I wonder if they would have made it out of the gate in 2024.
I think about that particular thing quite a bit. I think minorities span a broad array of perspectives on this, but the argument tends to be distilled into its most extreme positions (ie, POC saying don't do it, white people saying why can't I). But I would guess that the majority of minorities (maybe even a strong majority- and I fall into this group ) don't actually object to white writers writing POC characters they object to them 1) doing it badly or 2) writing an "issue book" (ie a book that centers that character's minority identity.) In the latter case, it feels like "you're just taking up space of someone who actually belongs to that group." I'm not sure exactly where publishers stand on this, because I could see them not wanting to be caught into some kind of controversy and wanting to be seen as being more friendly to diversity.
Really interesting and thank you for weighing in. Who is “allowed” to write what is a whole nother topic. I finished Yellowface and (as a white writer) went down the wormhole thinking about it.
fantastic, this "grabbed" me, I write poetry and I don't use punctuation, but sometimes I think I have a shift in perpective here and there. Anyway, thanks!