Thursday, July 5, 2012

Where I kiss some authors' asses and dis others....


Hey - I know some people LOOOOOOVE the Twilight series - but I couldn't get past the first few chapters....just didn't grab me.  However, I just want to send out a general appreciation to all writers - whether they write book series that start out amazingly and then stutter to a standstill (coughLKHcough) or continuously put out amazingly brilliant novels that keep me enthralled (Ilona Andrews, Devon Monk, Terry Pratchett, etc); or have a few series that I might enjoy one of but not the other (Ann Aguirre's Sirantha Jax vs her other series, Patricia Brigg's  Mercy Thompson vs the Alpha/Omega series,   Love one series, the other not so much - though the writing from both remain excellent) or whether I just don't like a book (haha, no examples on this one) - I have to say I am always in awe of the fact that a book is produced complete with dialogue and situations.

I've had my share of creative writing in school and never felt comfortable with trying to come up with poems or short stories.  The closest I ever came to feeling creative was writing essays for college courses.  I never understood how an author can come up with all those little details when building a world.  Sometimes I don't really want to read all about the workings of said world, but then again, we all know some authors are way better at writing enough to follow and some seem to produce pages and pages of details (James A. Michener, Chris Moriarty, Joel Sheppard).  Sometimes the details are interesting.  Sometimes not.  Sometimes both.  But the thought of having the ability to have a whole world imagined - especially in SciFi or Fantasy - that is amazing.  Brilliant.

Dialogue - That's another thing that I am in awe of, especially with good, snappy dialogue   or dialogue between characters that speak in differing ways (J.A. Campbell, Ilona Andrews, Devon Monk, Terry Pratchett, Suzanne McLeod, Stacia Kane) - that, I think takes real creative talent.  Even the writers that produce boring repetitive conversations (coughLKHcough) have some talent to come up with the thoughts spewed out by their characters - and so I appreciate that, though I may not think their writing is especially enthralling.

It wasn't until I challenged a group of kids to come up with a short story using their weekly spelling words that I even got a taste of this.  I am not creative.  At all.  But because I was challenging them, I told them I would try this also.  So I did.  Now, I can't remember the exact words we had, but I ended up coming up with this short story about a former monster hunter who is attacked.  Complete with oozing green slime that came out when they were stabbed.  It was gross.  I had a little bit of fun, but I realized there is no way I could come up with a complete book.  It was a fight scene, one that I used to hint at a guild for hunters....

Especially when I read one of those books that you do not want to put down - I am always amazed at everything that must have gone into creating a story complete with places, things, people, situations, dialogues and plots.

Writers have amazing brains

Brilliant




1 comment:

  1. The thing is as readers we are extremely picky. We want it our way or it just won't keep our interest. That's why I love the fact that there are so many styles of writing.

    ReplyDelete