I started the draft of this blog post in the summer of 2013, continued to add to it through the whole Goodreads purge plus the fiverr reviewer debacle, then abandoned it in the Great Well of Drafts. Prior to today (14 April 2021), the last edits I made were in December 2014. I held off on publishing because I wasn't sure there was really any purpose to it then. Maybe now the audience has changed. Or maybe not. At any rate, I've taken the draft, expanded and revised it, fixed a few things and updated others.
More than likely, the intended audience for this will never read it. If they do at least read it, they will more than likely believe it doesn't apply to them. Even if they believe it does apply to them, they will more than likely insist that it's wrong. They will offer excuses, or claim that their situation is different. In the end, however, they won't pay any attention and will go on as before.
That's their choice. I can only put the information out there; I can't make anyone do anything.
So why do I do it? Why keep this draft around for well over six years and then resurrect it?
I honestly don't know. But I do, and I did.
Every night I do my best to keep a promise to myself of squeezing in at least one half hour of reading before falling asleep. My Kindle is great for comfortable reading in bed, so when I can't keep my eyes open a second longer, all I have to do is slide the Kindle into its pouch, turn off the light, and give myself up to dreams. The Kindle's drawback is that I can't easily embed detailed notes, but I can highlight and always have paper and pencil handy if something really important comes up. Yes, paper and pencil in bed.
One night's reading back in 2013 was full of really important somethings, but unfortunately I was too tired even to reach for pencil and paper. The best I could do was highlight some areas before I gave up reading and went to sleep, hoping I'd remember the purpose of those highlights in the morning.
I did. That's how this draft began.
The book in question won't be identified, not because this wasn't a review blog in 2013-14 -- and at the moment it still isn't, not really -- but because the issue goes across many books over the intervening years, far too many to be cited here. In fact, I've changed the details so that most of the examples can't be identified.
What became apparent very quickly, both while I was reading the book that night and while I was scribbling down the notes the following morning before they could evaporate from my brain and right up until I re-read it today to verify some details, was that the story had enormous potential. The genre is outside my historical romance comfort zone and so I wasn't sure if all my observations were entirely valid. Some, however, involved issues virtually universal to all genres of popular fiction.
To start with, the formatting was flawed.
Real books have indented paragraphs.
Look at a few. Look at the best sellers on the Amazon Kindle list. They all have indented paragraphs. All of them. When I see an author-published book formatted in block paragraphs -- or even worse, indented block paragraphs -- I know instantly that the author is not a reader, does not even know what real books are supposed to look like.
Block paragraphs, however, were only one problem with this particular 2013 digital edition. Several paragraphs were split in the middle of sentences, probably where the writer had hit a hard return while composing rather than a space, and the publishing software created a new paragraph, complete with blank line. Had this happened only once or even twice, I might have overlooked it, but combined with block paragraphs, these additional breaks were frequent enough to be distracting in the first dozen or so Kindle pages.
Had the author not even looked at the finished product to make sure it had the basic appearance of professionalism? Did she even know what a book was supposed to look like?
She's not the only one. This is a not infrequent complaint: Even though paragraphing glitches are easily spotted on a careful proofreading pass, they're common in a lot of author-published digital books.
Punctuation errors abounded, particularly with dialogue. The most common and most annoying involved commas and periods outside the quotation marks: "Mary is such a sweet child"! my aunt often told us. "You should strive to be more like her". This was not a case of different conventions for American and British usage; the errors were inconsistent, indicating either lack of care or lack of knowledge.
Again, this is not uncommon. Punctuation helps the reader make sense of the words. "Let's eat Grandma" means something very different from "Let's eat, Grandma." Far too many self-publishing writers make far too many mistakes. If called on it, they shrug and say, "Well, you know what I meant."
Maybe. Maybe not.
Returning to that 2013 book: Words and phrases, especially those referring to people, were frequently repeated to such an extent that they became glaring. The point of view is first person, and the narrator begins with an account of her childhood. In one scene she describes a tragic accident that happened while she and several young relatives -- siblings, cousins, etc. -- were playing a game they'd been strictly forbidden because it was dangerous. One of the children, younger than the narrator, is referred to as "our little cousin." Though identified earlier with a given name, she is never called by name in this particular scene. "Our little cousin" warns of the danger, but "our little cousin" goes along with the older children anyway. "Our little cousin" resists joining in with the risky play, but "our little cousin" is eventually persuaded to participate. "Our little cousin" proves to be most adept at the game, and "our little cousin" is roundly applauded for her skill, to the point that "our little cousin" becomes more and more daring. "Our little cousin" forgets her earlier caution, until the other children begin repeating "our little cousin's" earlier warnings back to her. "Our little cousin" ignores those warnings, and of course tragedy becomes inevitable.
At that point I realized how desperately this book needed editing. I was on page twelve. The only note I posted on the Kindle was "This would never have got through our critique group."
In the years since, I've seen these and similar problems dozens of times. Sometimes I never make it through twelve pages. So many basic issues with a book could have been fixed before the author hit the "publish" button if only she had had a competent critique partner . . . and listened to their advice.
These aren't plot problems or research errors or character inconsistencies; they're basic fiction writing skills the lack of which can ruin the best story. Many readers won't even be aware of them as they're reading, but some will. And if you're going to put in the time and effort just to type all those thousands of words, doesn't it make sense to put in a little more effort and make them the best thousands of words possible?
Another book that may or may not have had a great story buried under the words opened with a long paragraph in which every single sentence began with a participial phrase. Wiping bitter tears from my eyes . . . Climbing the dark stairs . . . Arriving at last at the door to my mother's room . . . Knocking tentatively . . . . Praying there would be an answer . . . Turning away and swallowing the lump in my throat . . . . . .
Once again, this would never have got through a competent critique group.
It's not just the repetitiveness of the phrasing. It's also the heightened risk of a misplaced or dangling modifier. Turning away and swallowing the lump in my throat, a low growl came from beyond the door.
Another book I read more recently began with the main character pushing her way through a crowd. In the very next sentence she pushed her way through a door. Before the first page ended, she pushed her way through a noisy party. And before the second page ended, she pushed her way through another door . . . into another crowd.
Is it possible this was a deliberate stylistic choice meant to convey the character's frame of mind? Perhaps, but if so, it wasn't a good one. Nor was it the only instance of repetition. Remember "our little cousin" from the book that started all this? The "pushing through" book also referred to the woman throwing this party as "the elegant hostess," "the Senator's elegant wife," and "the elegant woman," all within those first two pages.
I didn't read any further.
Although I still put Christopher Vogler's The Writer's Journey at the very top of the list of books every writer should read, Stephen King's On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft contains some of the best insights on the actual writing process, word after word, sentence after sentence, page after page. While King does get into the "rules" of writing a little bit, the grammar and stuff, he seems to be more into how to use these tools -- he even calls it the toolbox -- in a hands-on way rather than theoretical.
Most of what we get in school is theory, applied only to class assignments and then in rigidly defined form: book reports, essays on current events, research papers, and so on. The same tools still apply in writing fiction, but they can serve far more functions than our teachers allowed us to practice.
One of King's most trenchant observations, which he himself considers perhaps controversial, stuck with me. After describing what he calls the four levels of writer -- bad, competent, good, and great -- he posits limitations.
. . .[W]hile it is impossible to make a competent writer out of a bad writer, and while it is equally impossible to make a great writer out of a good one, it is possible, with lots of hard work, dedication, and timely help, to make a good writer out of a merely competent one.For most of us, our teachers aimed to make us competent. They gave us the rules as tools to use constructing our assignments and that was all they cared about. There was no effort on their part to make any of us good writers, and no concept of turning any of us who might naturally be good writers into great ones. (I tend to agree with the notion that truly great writers are born, and their greatness has nothing to do with how many copies they've sold or how big their movie deals are.)
King, Stephen. On Writing: A Memoir Of The Craft (Kindle Locations 1605-1607). Scribner. Kindle Edition.
The question then becomes how many of the writers of these badly written books are bad writers beyond any realistic hope of significant improvement, and which (if any) are competent writers who just haven't yet been turned into good ones?
Are readers expected to know the difference? Are readers expected to alert the writers? Are readers expected to alert other readers? Or are all of us just supposed to accept whatever is thrown at us?
The more I look at books like those described above but that still garner hundreds and sometimes thousands of five-star reviews, I wonder if anyone cares. Nora Roberts is still going to sell millions of books. Stephen King is still going to sell millions of books. The rest of us will be lost in the maelstrom of swirling garbage, bad writers, competent writers, good writers, all thrown together.
The reviewers certainly aren't helping when they throw around five-star reviews like Mardi Gras doubloons.
Reviewers have the right to review as they choose. I know there are accounts on Goodreads that have literally hundreds of reviews/ratings and perfect 5.0 GPAs. (Goodreads Promotional Average.) If they've ever met a book they didn't love, they've never written a word about it.
In doing some research for this post, I found a Goodreads account that has over 9,000 reviews. The account has been active since 2011, so approximately ten years. That's 3653 days or so, and if in fact the reader actually read all those books since opening the account, that's roughly three books a day, every day, for ten years. Her GPA was a modest 4.86. Do I think she read them all? I don't know. Do I think she was being honest about her ratings? I don't know.
Do I think the ratings for a lot of books are inflated by reviewers such as she who almost never give anything lower than five stars?
Yes, I do.
I spent a lot of time in 2014 and 2015 documenting the literally thousands of purchased reviews posted on Goodreads and Amazon, reviews paid for by the authors and written by "gig" writers on various sites but primarily fiverr. The belief was then, and perhaps still is, that if an author-published or small independent press published book got enough five star ratings and reviews on Amazon and Goodreads, the algorithms would push those books onto readers' recommendations, readers would buy, and the authors would become instantly rich and famous.
The key to success, according to this philosophy, was that promotion and reviews were far more important than good writing or good storytelling. In fact, skill and talent were unimportant! Throw together any old crap, buy a bunch of five-star ratings on fiverr, and you've got it made.
For the most part, it didn't happen. The review writers probably made more money than the book authors. Many thousands of reviews were removed from both sites, many dozens of reviewer accounts were terminated. (Many reviews and reviewers returned under new accounts, but that's another issue.) And for all I know, it's still going on. I did what I could to keep Goodreads and Amazon reviews honest, but they apparently weren't having it.
So the avalanche of five-star reviews rolls on. And reviewers who don't give all five to every book run the risk of being insulted by the authors, doxxed, and threatened with bodily harm. (See author Lauren Hough's release day explosion of name calling on 13 April 2021, literally while I was in the midst of assembling this.)
The forces are arrayed against honest critical reviews.
Furthermore, I think the failure -- regardless of the reason -- of reviewers to give critical reviews encourages readers to accept bad writing uncritically because they themselves don't know any better. It's a vicious circle, and far too few people -- readers, reviewers, other writers -- are willing to speak out to break that circle.
Who benefits? The established writers. The traditional publishers. The agents. The unscrupulous freelance editors.
But maybe the bad writers benefit, too, because they get to believe their writing is good, that people legitimately love their books, that they don't have to work to improve.
So in the end, does it really matter?
I don't know. I honestly don't know.
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