Round 3: Rowling vs Meyer – Time to Actually Discuss THE WRITING

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book titles, books, Breaking Dawn, criticism, Eclipse, Harry Potter, j.k. rowling, literature, narration, New Moon, plot, reviews, Stephenie Meyer, Twilight, Twilight Saga, writing

I have talked about the messages behind Twilight and Harry Potter, and now, I think, it is time to actually discuss these two ladies as writers.

I know, crazy talk.

There are many different aspects of writing, so I’m going to try and go through them individually, since each writer has strengths and weaknesses. There are a lot of aspects to consider, so there will be a fourth round as well.

I’m going to give Stephenie Meyer a head start…

(A note about spoilers: I will keep Harry Potter spoilers to a minimum, only letting go the kind of information that you could pick up from your standard movie trailer and have probably picked up on already, unless you live in a world without other people. Twilight spoilers, on the other hand, abound, because I can’t “spoil” Twilight any more than I can “spoil” a compost heap.)

In Which Carol Reads Eclipse And Throws A Book Against A Wall

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criticism, drek, Eclipse, literature, reviews, Stephenie Meyer, Twilight, writing

*headdesk*

I finished Eclipse the other day. It’s been difficult trying to narrow down what stuff to bitch about, because there’s so much wrong with everything.

Good stuff: They finally wrap up some plot lines that have been running since the start of the series. Also, the character of Jacob is almost three dimensional, since he has both good and bad qualities and usually says interesting things. When he’s around, the story is almost interesting.

Edward, on the other hand, totally loses any remaining Byronic qualities and becomes an insipid piece of female fantasy with absolutely no personality.

Bella remains an idiotic, martyring, moaning, boy-obsessed twatwaffle who is basically a bad person. Stephenie Meyer remains an astonishingly bad writer (never mind whether or not you like the story or the characters, the writing is bad. Just awful. Swifties and weird grammar and misapplications of the word “literally” everywhere).

Reading: Eclipse

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authors, books, Eclipse, grammar, reading, Twilight

Dear Ms. Meyer,

I’ve been reading the first few chapters of Eclipse, and there are some things I feel that I need to say.

1. When you introduce someone as “my best friend (and werewolf)”, you imply that this person is also your best werewolf. If you want to say that he is your best friend and also happens to be a werewolf, you could say “my best friend (a werewolf)” or “my best friend (who is also a werewolf)”. Or you could stop treating your sentences like clown cars and write the information in totally separate phrases.

2. By the end of the first chapter, I noticed that Bella had another incident of forgetting to breathe. She really is the dimmest protagonist I have ever had the misfortune to encounter.

3. I’m confused.

Bella is up in her room when she smells “the unmistakeable scent of a smoking burner rising from the kitchen”. Now, leaving aside any discussion of the smell of levitating oven elements, it is revealed in the next paragraph that the smell comes from noodles in a pan (a pan?) that were not stirred and have now congealed into a “mushy hunk that was scalded to the bottom.”

It seems like the problem must have been more an issue of boiling dry than stirring, but both are bad, so ok.

While I try to suspend my disbelief to the point where I could accept that a grown man who batched it for 16 years doesn’t know how to boil pasta, I continue reading and see this: “the pasta lump bobbed in the boiling water as I poked it.”

So, wait, it is in water?

It’s in water, but it burned enough to make smoke? Has this ever happened to you?

Please explain. I may need this information for personal reasons.

4. Your readers think independently of your protagonist, so you can’t create a mystery just by making Bella confused. When Bella fails to put two and two together, your readers are not equally mystified. Instead of thinking “OMG double twos, what does it mean??”, your readers are thinking: “four. Four. Four. FOUR, YOU EVERLASTING MORON.”

So when Jacob calls Bella and tells her he desperately needs to talk to her about something, and then asks her if she’s going to be at school tomorrow, there really is no mystery created. Bella may spend the next two pages thinking deeply, desperately trying to figure out how Jacob’s need to speak with her could possibly be related to her attendance at school… but your readers have already figured it out. You aren’t creating mystery or suspense. You’re just showcasing Bella’s idiocy, especially since she never does figure it out.

Now, I haven’t read the next chapter, but let me guess: Jacob’s going to show up at school and try to talk to her alone, right? And Bella will be super surprised?

Thanks for your time,

Carol