Why Good Writers Read Bad Books

 

I've spent the last two weeks thinking about a book I just finished. No, sadly not because it was so great I couldn't wait to tell you all about it. I disliked it so much. This book was a handoff from a friend who gave it to me with the words, 

"This isn't the type of thing I read but I thought you..."

She, in turn, was given it by a friend of hers. Are we endlessly pawning off the only sold copy of this title, hoping to find someone who likes it? Ever the optimist, I sloughed through 300+ pages, certain it would ultimately "get better." By the last page I was asking myself why I had finished it. (Of course, the question of why readers finish books we are clearly not enjoying is a subject for another post.)

Not daring to pass it off to one of my book loving friends, I put it on my growing stack for the local library used book sale. Due to a combination of snow, cold weather (-4° this morning) and a bout of flu, the book stayed at the top of that stack, forcing me to think about it.

Readers are always eager to tell you a hundred different things they love about a book: the twists, the quirky characters, the beautiful setting descriptions, the unusual format, the humor...we will go on and on if given the chance. Have you ever asked a reader their opinion and they didn't like the book? Too often we are brief and unspecific. If we're polite, "It just wasn't for me." If we're direct, "Ugh, no." Sometimes you only get a pained look or a shake of the head. OK, on to the next title.

As only a person on the verge of cabin fever can, I began to obsess about the book. What exactly didn't I like about it? I picked it up one night, leafed through it and made a list!

1. Character Names - Why do two unrelated characters in a book have to have the same first name? This quirk alternately annoyed and confused me. Of all the names in the world, you couldn't give everyone their own name? There were also two sets of related characters with the same first name. Also frustrating but a little more forgivable.
2. Long Chapters - At the beginning of each 50+ page chapter there was a brief paragraph outlining political events happening in the city during the time period. Perfectly fine if you read every chapter in one setting. Stopping in the middle meant losing track of what decade we were in and having to page back to find the chapter beginning for a brush up. There sometimes being years between chapters made it difficult to keep track of how old the characters were at any given time. I had to do math! Also the vagueness about the passage of time didn't help me experience the story. At times I would be asking myself, is this later in the month or is it years later? 
3. Character Evolution - The young man who hid a violent streak under gentlemanly manners became an old man who hid a violent streak under the veneer of money. The timid man eventually became head of the family but remained timid. The young women unsure of her groom's love on their wedding day was still unsure on the day he died. The bitter, homesick young woman died a bitter, homesick old woman. There were no epiphanies, no improvements, no spirals....just a steady march to death as the exact same people they were on page one, just a little older and richer.
4. Impetus - Several times while reading, I put this book down for days and didn't think about it once. Didn't wonder what would happen next, didn't want to finish "just one one chapter", didn't try to sneak in just a few pages. In the beginning, I thought this family that was slowly climbing the economic ladder would be pushed off and have to crawl their way back to the top but , no. Basically they made money, found and lost love, died, made money, found and lost love, died...for several generations. Where were the surprises?

I realize these are just personal dislikes. I'm sure there are plenty of people out there who love a generational sage about a slow and steady slog to the top while dealing with confusing time periods and names. But what did I do with this cranky list of mine? I opened up my WIP and read through with these complaints in mind, trying to ensure I wasn't subjecting any future readers to them.

Perhaps that is why we finish reading books we don't like. To pinpoint what we (and potentially our readers) won't like. What do we find annoying, uninspiring, confusing, boring, trite? What exactly makes us say "I don't like that book"? Then we can make a list and apply it to our own writing.

Have you ever been inspired to change your writing by a book you didn't like?

Jodi M. Webb writes from her home in the Pennsylvania mountains about everything from DIY projects to tea to butterflies. She's also a blog tour manager for WOW-Women on Writing and a writing tutor at her local university.  She recently changed a character's name in her WIP because two woman who were close friends both had names that began with the letter M. No taking chances confusing people.Get to know her @jodiwebbwrites,  Facebook and blogging at Words by Webb.