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Articles about craft.

Perfectly Flawed

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This article, by Lionel Shriver, originally appeared on Financial Times on 10/21/11.

Complex but compelling, maddening but memorable, many great literary characters are unattractive. As the film of Lionel Shriver’s ‘We Need to Talk About Kevin’ is released, the author explores the appeal of the unappealing

Like most writers, I’ve received my share of rejection letters. The most common criticism lobbed at my earlier manuscripts was that my main characters were “unattractive”. Ironically, though the accusation was meant to consign my novels to the bin, in latter career I am now perhaps most celebrated for crafting characters who are, to a degree, unattractive. But what does this mean?

Let’s start with what it doesn’t mean. We’re not talking about villains, whom readers are invited to revile with relish – who are deliciously unattractive on purpose. Neither are we talking about the anti-hero: a protagonist the author has clearly portrayed as malign but for whom, curiously, we root anyway. An endearing mobster, Tony Soprano is an archetypal anti-hero. Ditto Calvin Piper in my fourth novel Game Control – a renegade demographer whose modest proposal to solve human overpopulation by killing two billion people overnight makes the man and his festive misanthropy no less beguiling. Anti-heroes aren’t actually unattractive – literarily, they function exactly like heroes – but morally they shouldn’t be attractive. We feel a little guilty about cheering them on, which is part of the pleasure, that daring little dance on the dark side.

Thirdly, we’re also not talking about characters who are unattractive by accident – whom the author intends to be loveable but who drive you insane. For example, Ignatius Jacques Reilly, the buffoon in John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces, got powerfully on my nerves. Sometimes you simply cannot bear the company of an author’s characters, who inspire the same claustrophobic desperation to flee as overbearing dinner guests, and in that case you should read a different book.

 

Click here to read the rest of the article on Financial Times.

 

62 of the Top Writing Articles from 2013 (That Can Help You in 2014)

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This post, by Brian Klems, originally appeared on Writer’s Digest on 1/2/14.

Over the past year I posted articles on this blog that covered everything—from grammar to writing better characters to getting published and more. Here’s a cheat sheet linking to what I consider the 62 best articles that can help you reach your writing goals. I broke it down into categories, as you’ll see below. These articles can help you no matter what phase of the writing process you are in. My goal is to help you move your writing career forward, and, by making this easy-to-reference guide, you’ll have a chance to bookmark it and have a one-stop place to help you have a successful year of writing.

Here’s to your best year of writing yet! ~Brian

 

Click here to read the rest of the post on Writer’s Digest. It includes links to 62 WD articles on everything from craft to marketing.

 

6 Ways Micro-Publishing Strengthens Your Author Career

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This post, by Christina Katz, originally appeared on Jane Friedman’s site on 12/27/13.

For writers—especially nonfiction writers—a well-lit publishing-path through the murky wood of pundits, doomsdayers, and bestseller advice is micro-publishing.

Micro-publishing is not new, but when I use the term, I am referring to both the size of my publishing “house” and the length of my publications. In other words, micro-published books are short, tight, and swift. Experienced authors can deliver them in a steady flow, which can be less demanding and taxing than what it takes to create full-length books.

Micro-pubs vary widely in genre, format, and price point. (And fiction writers might consider serialization to be a better description of their micro-publishing landscape.) Micro-pubs with enough demand can become physical books eventually, usually when there is existing readership or demand for physical copies.

A meaningful discussion of micro-publishing has been pushed aside during the ongoing tug-of-war between traditional publishing and independent publishing (self-publishing). But we are well beyond “everyone is a writer” at this point. We have progressed into “everyone is a publisher,” if they wish to be—and we have been living in this realm for some time already.

Fortunately, micro-publishing benefits the industry as a whole by bringing some much-needed simplicity and directness into a publishing equation that is often weighted down by its own complexity and contracts. And it also benefits you, the writer. Here’s how.

 

Click here to read the rest of the post on Jane Friedman’s site.

 

Not Every Sentence Can Be Great But Every Sentence Must Be Good

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This post, by Cynthia Newberry Martin, originally appeared on Brevity on 1/8/13.

In “Letter from the Pulitzer Fiction Jury: What Really Happened This Year” (The New Yorker online, July 9, 2012), Michael Cunningham, one of the three Pulitzer fiction jurors for 2012, wrote the following about sentences:

– I was the language crank, the one who swooned over sentences. I could forgive much in a book if it was written with force and beauty, if its story was told in a voice unlike anything I’d heard before, if the writer was finding new and mesmerizing ways to employ the same words that have been available to all American writers for hundreds of years. I tended to balk if a book contained some good lines but also some indifferent ones. I insisted that every line should be a good one. I was—and am—a bit fanatical on the subject.

True to his word, during the jury process, Cunningham argued successfully to eliminate a contender because, “although there were plenty of good lines, there were simply too many slack, utilitarian ones.”

Since July I’ve been thinking about Cunningham’s insistence that every sentence should be a good one. I would periodically look for his letter online, and, having forgotten I’d already printed it, print it again. When I was going through a pile of articles in my office recently, I found I had three copies. Then, Pam Houston, when reading my novel-in-progress, marked a sentence with this word: boring. When I took a closer look, she was right. The sentence was boring. And utilitarian. Only there to move the reader from point A to point B.

I don’t read looking for bad sentences, and now I wonder if I read right over them. Or do the best books not contain bad sentences?

Is it possible to write a whole book of sentences that are at least good?

I pulled books from my shelves and searched through them. I ignored sentences I had underlined, and I ignored first sentences—both of books and of chapters. Where would a bad sentence hide? Page one hundred forty-three, I thought. That’s where a bad sentence would hide. So in each of the books, I turned to the first complete sentence (that was not dialogue) on page one hundred forty-three. Here’s what I found, starting with the language crank’s own sentences:

–The Hours: This cake says “Happy Birthday Dan” in elegant white script, uncrowded by the clusters of yellow roses.

–By Nightfall: Rebecca sips contemplatively at her coffee.

–Mourning Diary, by Roland Barthes: M’s fit of anger yesterday evening.

–The Two Kinds of Decay, by Sarah Manguso: This adrenal suppression occurs if prednisone is taken for longer than seven days.

–The Year of Magical Thinking, by Joan Didion: She was reaching a point at which she would need once again to be, if she was to recover, on her own.

–Stop-Time, by Frank Conroy: The balcony trembled.

We hear plenty about writing great sentences; what we don’t hear enough about is the bar we don’t want to slip below—the bar each sentence must meet. And that is not the bar of great but the bar of good. These six sentence examples are not great, but I believe each one meets the crank’s requirement of good.

What makes a sentence good?

 

Click here to read the rest of the post on Brevity.

 

On Breaking Up With An Author: An Open Letter To Stephen King

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This post, by Publetariat founder and Editor in Chief April L. Hamilton, originally appeared on her Indie Author Blog on 12/30/13.

I originally posted this open letter to Stephen King on my Facebook page, but it generated such a lively and sometimes heated discussion that I’ve decided to share it here. Let me preface what you’re about to read by saying I’ve been a big fan of Stephen King going all the way back to Carrie. Granted, I was only 8 years old when that first book was published, but I started in on King at the age of 13 or so and happily devoured everything he had to offer well into my 20’s. Whenever I wanted a good, old-fashioned scare from the type of book I didn’t dare read alone at night, King was my go-to source.

In 1999 King was hit by a car and needed an extended period of convalescence. He even spoke publicly about the possibility of retiring. It didn’t last, he came back in 2006 with Cell, and he’s continued to release new novels, essays and other works since. And I haven’t liked a single one of the novels he’s written since his return. Book after book, year after year, he continues to disappoint me and make me regret having given him the benefit of the doubt (and my time and money) yet again.

With that said, here’s my open letter.

– – – – –

Dear Stephen King:

It was a lovely reader-author relationship while it lasted, but it’s been over for at least a decade and it’s time for me to move on. I think it’s really wonderful that you’ve found faith and feel that it, and sobriety, have turned your life around. I just don’t enjoy the fact that those two things have become the central themes of virtually every piece of fiction you’ve written since you discovered them.

I came to you looking for truly frightening, taut, dark and edgy supernatural horror that explored the limits of human strength and character in the face of pure, inexplicable evil. But you haven’t been writing that kind of material for a very, very long time and what you have been writing has been so self-indulgent, maudlin and overwrought that’s it’s difficult for me to believe you even have an editor anymore.

I held out hope that with Dr. Sleep, your long-awaited sequel to The Shining, you would return to form at last. I was wrong. It’s less a supernatural horror thriller than an overlong, overwritten examination of sad-sack, grown-up, recovering alcoholic Danny filling in as your usual Christ figure as he takes on your recently-typical cadre of banal baddies.

 

Click here to read the rest of the post on the Indie Author Blog.

 

Faux Controversies and the Singular Plural

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This post, by Rich Adin, originally appeared on An American Editor on 12/23/13.

On another forum it was asked whether authors should “push the grammar envelope” and embrace the singular plural. I think the wrong question is being asked when you ask whether authors should push the grammar envelope for two reasons: First, because it ignores the purpose of grammar, which is to ensure that there is communication between author and reader. Second, because to push the grammar envelope assumes that there are firm rules to be pushed. The first reason far outweighs the second, but neither is ignorable.

Regarding the singular plural, it is neither pushing the envelope to use it nor a violation of a firm rule nor a distraction from communication (in most cases; there are cases in which it is clearly wrong because its use is confusing). In other words, I think that editors, writers, grammarians, usage gurus, etc., make the proverbial mountain out of the molehill when they oppose the singular plural.

Consider what makes a great editor. A great editor is someone who ensures that a reader understands the editor’s author; that is, ensures that the reader does not leave the book thinking the author is in favor of, for example, genocide, when the author intends the contrary. An average editor can cite chapter and verse of why x is not to be done, but cannot explain why doing x makes the author’s point unintelligible. The amateur editor either blindly accepts the singular plural or remembers having been taught that the singular plural is incorrect and thus blindly changes it.

However, if the singular plural is incorrect, it is incorrect because it makes the author’s point unintelligible, not because a group of self-appointed grammarians have written that it is wrong.

English is difficult enough without making it impossible. Editors constantly twist and turn to apply “rules” of grammar in the mistaken belief that there are rules of grammar. What are too often called rules are really current conventions.

 

Click here to read the rest of the post on An American Editor.

 

10 Tips for Attracting a Top-Notch Freelance Editor for Your Novel

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This post, by Jodie Renner, originally appeared on the Crime Fiction Collective blog on 12/8/13.

With so many authors self-publishing these days, the best independent editors are in high demand, so if you’re looking for a knowledgeable, experienced professional editor to help you make your fiction manuscript the best it can be – and improve your overall writing skills in the process – be sure to take some care with how you seek out and approach them.

Due to the high volume of requests, sought-after freelance editors turn down many more writer clients than they can accept, so it’s important to make a good first impression.

First, make sure your manuscript isn’t still in rough draft. Try to find time to hone your craft (see my to-the-point editor’s guides to writing compelling fiction), then go over the manuscript a few times to spark up the characters, raise the stakes, add conflict, tension, and intrigue, pick up the pace, and tighten the writing.

Next, do your research and look for editors with good credentials and reviews, who edit mainly fiction and read and edit your specific genre. Google “freelance editors, mysteries” or whatever, or go through an editors’ association like EFA or EAC.

Then read through the editors’ websites to find out about their services, process and requirements. What kinds of problems/issues do they look for? If it’s only grammar and spelling, you can get an English teacher friend to do the same, for a lot less money or even free. To make the most of working with a professional, choose someone who first looks for other, more important possible issues, such as a shaky premise, a boring plot, cardboard characters, confusing viewpoints, stilted dialogue, insufficient tension, inconsistencies, slow pacing, plot holes, info dumps, showing instead of telling, and convoluted or too-formal phrasing.

You need an editor who can ferret out big-picture issues and help you with all the various techniques that, when ignored or botched, can sink a novel, and when flagged and addressed, can turn a mediocre or good novel into a real page-turner that sells and garners great reviews.

Once you’ve determined that the editor is up on current fiction techniques and industry expectations, be sure to read and follow their submission instructions. On my website, for example, I specifically request the following from potential clients: the genre, total word count, first 15-20 pages, 10 pages from somewhere in the middle, a brief synopsis (a few paragraphs to half a page), and a brief description of each of the main characters.

Without this information, I have no idea whether we’d be a good fit and I’d be the best editor for you. I can’t assess the level of work required to bring your manuscript up to industry standards or whether your story would fire my passions so I can give it the zeal and commitment it deserves. Nor can I provide you with an estimate of my fees without doing a sample edit or reading several pages to see what’s involved. The quality of writing and the storytelling skills vary hugely from one manuscript to another, so of course the amount of work (time and effort) – therefore, cost of editing – will also vary hugely.

Here are 10 tips for attracting a top-notch, in-demand editor for your fiction and getting the best possible edit or critique for your manuscript:

 

Click here to read the rest of the post on the Crime Fiction Collective blog.

 

Considering A Collaboration

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This post, by L.J. Sellers, originally appeared on her site on 8/3/13.

Janet Evanovich and Lee Goldberg, J.T. Ellison and Catherine Coulter, JA Konrath and each of his writer friends—everywhere you look, authors are teaming up.

The trend seems more prevalent than ever, and I suspect it’s because authors are operating more independently now and because they have to work so hard to reach new readers. Collaborating with another writer brings a whole new readership to each partner, at least for that story or series, and hopefully with spillover to other works.

I never thought I could work that closely with someone. I don’t even have a writing group because it feels too collaborative. Of course, I count on my beta readers (and editor) for feedback, but that’s after I’ve nailed down the main story.

But I was approached recently by a friend about doing a collaboration, and I surprised myself by being receptive to the idea. Now that I have an FBI agent with her own series, a collaboration that brings Agent Dallas together with another established protag seems like a productive idea.

 

Click here to read the rest of the post on L.J. Sellers’ site.

 

Teachers, Writers, Speakers: On Confidence & Owning Your True Authority

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This post, by Susan Piver, originally appeared on her blog on 12/19/13.

Recently I began working with a master coach to develop my public speaking chops. While watching a video together of a recent talk I gave, he pointed out to me every instance where I gave away my authority, whether through intonation or body language. It was eye-opening to say the least. “See how you’re rocking from foot to foot? That’s what teenagers do when they’re asking to borrow the car.” “Notice how your intonation goes up at the end of most sentences? It appears as if you are questioning yourself which actually causes the audience to question you.” And so on.

It was crazy and also embarrassing. I had never noticed these things about myself.

When planning a talk, I think about what I can offer that is useful and what words I might use to express my ideas. Throughout, I ride a roller coaster of self-doubt. Do I really have the right to teach? There are actual experts on this topic and I know I’m not one of them. What if a real expert is in the audience? What could I possibly add to this topic that hasn’t already been said more effectively by countless people? And so on. The thing is, I thought I was hiding all of this. Come to find out, I was not. The disconnect between verbal and non-verbal communication was palpable.

As he pointed all of this out to me, I realized that this was not the first time I had heard some version of, “Please own your authority.”

I remembered a time I submitted the first draft of a manuscript to a publisher which was sent back to me with the following note: “Susan, please delete all such phrases: ‘it seems this way to me, but it may not to you,’ or ‘this is my opinion; you may disagree,’ and ‘this is what I learned; you may find otherwise.’ Not only is it confusing to the reader, it is irritating.”

 

Click here to read the rest of the post on Susan Piver’s blog.

 

Amazon Turns the World of Web Serials on its Head

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This post, by PJ Kaiser, originally appeared on Tuesday Serial on 9/13/12.

When it comes to publishing serial stories, writers have faced a conundrum. There are very few online formats that lend themselves to publishing installments. Smashwards specifically disallows unfinished works, and Amazon and Barnes & Noble force the publisher to package each installment separately unless it’s a completed work. This means each episode / installment has its own price, its own cover, its own description, its own reviews. The reviews make it a particularly sticky issue because if the first installment has glowing reviews, those reviews don’t show up automatically on the seventeenth installment. Readers have to go to some trouble to track it all down.

Roz Morris recently wrote an insightful post about her somewhat frustrating experiencing publishing her novel “My Memories of a Future Life” in installments on Amazon. She recapped her issues and lamented the fact that Amazon and other publishers didn’t easily allow for the publishing of a serial in installments.

Just after she had published her post, however, Amazon made an announcement which has the potential to revolutionize the publishing of serial stories. You’ll see at the bottom of her post, she included an addendum about Amazon’s announcement.

For full details of Amazon’s announcement, you’ll want to check out this press release from the Wall Street Journal’s Market Watch. The upshot of this is that Amazon now has a new format specifically for serials which will allow readers to pay one flat fee and receive all installments of the story: past, present and future. It keeps reviews in one place and doesn’t clog up the reader’s kindle with multiple entries for the same story.

At the moment, Kindle Serials do not appear to be a self-publishing platform, although it does appear to bypass the role of the agent. Amazon’s submission guidelines provide no indication of how serials are evaluated, how many might be considered for publishing or any specifics. We hope that over time that will become more clear and of course we also hope that the platform becomes a self-publishing option.

As writers, publishers and everybody else try to figure out how Kindle Serials will work, there’s a lot of buzz about it on social media and the interwebs.

 

Click here to read the rest of the post on Tuesday Serial.

 

3 Techniques to Proofread Your Story

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This post, by Andre Cruz, originally appeared on his The Word blog on 10/3/13.

After I complete a story, I just want to be done. Don’t you? I mean, to develop a story from mind to paper takes time and after spending a lot of it you want to kick your feet up and move on. You figure to have someone else proofread your story, since you’ve heard that it is better to have a fresh pair of eyes look at your manuscript.

In the beginning of my writing career, I felt that way. I figured that once I completed a story I needed someone else to look at it for proofreading. I thought that proofreading my own story was not only a waste of time, but toxic to my story’s overall success.

That is not the case. In fact, I have found that it is the complete opposite. No matter who you find to proofread your story. Even if they offer some of the best proofreading services, nothing beats you reading through your manuscript yourself for errors before you send it to a proofreader.

Think about it. No one knows your story as well as you do. So when proofreading your own manuscript, you are more capable of finding things that should be there, but aren’t, such as certain dialogue and narrative. A proofreader will only be able to correct what is there and if they are capable enough to feel something is missing in the manuscript, will they be able to correct it as well as you would? I don’t think so.

 

Click here to read the rest of the post on The Word.

 

12 Mistakes Nearly Everyone Who Writes About Grammar Mistakes Makes

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This post, by Jonathon Owen, originally appeared on The Huffington Post on 11/20/13.

There are a lot of bad grammar posts in the world. These days, anyone with a blog and a bunch of pet peeves can crank out a click-bait listicle of supposed grammar errors. There’s just one problem — these articles are often full of mistakes of one sort or another themselves. Once you’ve read a few, you start noticing some patterns. Inspired by a recent post titled “Grammar Police: Twelve Mistakes Nearly Everyone Makes,” I decided to make a list of my own.

1. Confusing grammar with spelling, punctuation, and usage. Many people who write about grammar seem to think that grammar means “any sort of rule of language, especially writing.” But strictly speaking, grammar refers to the structural rules of language, namely morphology (basically the way words are formed from roots and affixes), phonology (the system of sounds in a language), and syntax (the way phrases and clauses are formed from words). Most complaints about grammar are really about punctuation, spelling (such as problems with you’re/your and other homophone confusion) or usage (which is often about semantics). This post, for instance, spends two of its twelve points on commas and a third on quotation marks.

2. Treating style choices as rules. This article says that you should always use an Oxford (or serial) comma (the comma before and or or in a list) and that quotation marks should always follow commas and periods, but the latter is true only in most American styles (linguists often put the commas and periods outside quotes, and so do many non-American styles), and the former is only true of some American styles. I may prefer serial commas, but I’m not going to insist that everyone who doesn’t use them is making a mistake. It’s simply a matter of style, and style varies from one publisher to the next.

3. Ignoring register. There’s a time and a place for following the rules, but the writers of these lists typically treat English as though it had only one register: formal writing. They ignore the fact that following the rules in the wrong setting often sounds stuffy and stilted. Formal written English is not the only legitimate form of the language, and the rules of formal written English don’t apply in all situations. Sure, it’s useful to know when to use who and whom, but it’s probably more useful to know that saying To whom did you give the book? in casual conversation will make you sound like a pompous twit.

 

Click here to read the rest of the post on The Huffington Post.

 

Put Yourself into Your Writing

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This post, by Steven Ramirez, originally appeared on his Glass Highway site on 10/10/13.

There’s nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein.

That quote—or variations of it—has been attributed to the sportswriter Red Smith, among others. I’ve thought a lot about it over the years, trying to determine whether the writer was (a) being funny, (b) over-dramatizing or (c) attempting to impart real wisdom. Recently, I’ve come to believe that C is the correct answer.

Good writing is about the mechanics. Great writing is about putting yourself into the words. Actors talk a lot about this—putting themselves into their character. I once asked a friend of mine who had studied method acting at the Actors Studio, “Do you actually become the character?” “No,” he said. That would mean I’m insane. Good point.

So, must writers become the characters we are writing about? No, but there are three things I believe to be essential if you want the reader to believe they exist.

You Must Understand
Without understanding, you’re doomed to writing thin, unbelievable characters. I should know—I’ve written enough of them. We all have. In screenplays, people always talk about a character’s backstory. Screenwriters spend a lot of time writing detailed histories of their characters, things like where they went to school, whether they have siblings, the kind of music they enjoy, etc.

Me, I don’t do that. I always start with someone I know or someone I’ve met. Sometimes, I create a composite. The point is, by honing in on a specific person, I’ve already got my backstory. To me, it’s a waste of time to create a fake history when there are so many real, interesting people in the world. And this is not say that I don’t embellish.

 

Click here to read the rest of the post on Glass Highway.

 

Creating A Discussion Guide For Your Book

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This post, by Lisa Lickel, originally appeared on the AuthorCulture site on 12/9/13.

Love em, Hate em, want them in the back of the book or not—discussion questions do add a new dimension to your work.

I’ve had publishers tell me they don’t want them in the book, and know of some publishers that require questions. I’ve put them in one of my books, and have designed them for several of my books as well as for other books in my book club when I’ve been the discussion leader.

Why questions? Questions are good for personal reader reflection, but especially for a group discussion guide. I think that questions in the back of the book make your work look serious. Readers can skip them if they want. A discussion guide may mean inclusion in book clubs. Why do I want book clubs to read my book? First of all, these questions give me a place to do some explaining that I can’t inside the text; it also gives me an opportunity to point out my subtle genius points that may have been, sadly, overlooked. Think of it like watching the TV show Lost with JJ’s subtexts. Secondly, sales, library sales and borrows, word of mouth, my friends. Possible author face time. Feedback. Book clubs are always looking for fodder, and while it’s annoyingly true they tend to choose NYT bestsellers, there’s no reason to think yours can’t make a list or two.

The larger publishers like Random House often have author pages with all kinds of goodies-author interviews and background for the books, and discussion questions. Read some of them for some pointers.

ReadingGroupGuides website is one of the top ones to go to for great discussion questions, but they’ve gone from a $100 to $20 fee to have your material placed there. However, if you can get in on other readers’ group blogs, and especially GoodReads, an Internet search will bring up your name and book. I’ve placed questions on GoodReads for my books. Don’t forget to put them on your own site, Amazon and BN author pages and forums.

How to devise your questions for either fiction or non?

Foremost, never make them yes or no questions, or lead to obvious answers. If the questions are in the book, you can refer to page number, such as, “On page 142 Cala Lily has a breakthrough. What is it and how did it affect her feelings toward Reed?” However, it’s best not to be that specific due to readers having different versions.

How many questions should you write?

 

Click here to read the rest of the post on AuthorCulture.

 

The Cardinal Sin No Writer Should Ever Commit

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This post, by Jody Hedlund, originally appeared on her blog on 11/26/13.

This post contains SPOILERS for the newly released book Allegiant by Veronica Roth. So if you’re planning to read the book and don’t want to know what happens, then click off this post and come back after you’ve finished the book!

I already made the mistake on Twitter of blabbering about Allegiant with no thought to the those who might not want to know what happens. I won’t make the same mistake here! So again, please don’t read further if you want to avoid a MAJOR spoiler.

I read the first two books in the popular dystopian Divergent series this past year. But they didn’t wow me, especially the second book, Insurgent, which I thought was rather slow and confusing at times.

But my daughter LOVED both. So she kept me well informed when the countdown began for the third book’s release. When the big day came, she asked me to buy it for the Kindle since the wait for it at the library was like a million years long.

I clicked over to Amazon to check on price for the Kindle and the audio versions. And to my utter bafflement, the book had less than three stars as the overall rating. Of course, I was even more astonished to see that the one star reviews completely outnumbered the five.

As I started browsing to see why the book had garnered so many one stars, I read things like:

“Possibly the Worst Trilogy Ending I’ve Ever Read” and “Horrible Just Horrible!!” and “Outraged”

After seeing those headings, I had to read the reviews. I couldn’t help it. I wanted to know why readers hated this book!

SPOILER ALERT!!!!!!

The number ONE reason why readers hated the book was because in the end, Roth KILLS OFF her main character. Yes, the heroine DIES.

Over and over in the reviews readers say they felt betrayed by Roth, that now they wish they hadn’t read any of the books in the series, that they won’t read them again or go see the movies.

The bottom line is that readers are crushed. They invested time and money into the books. More importantly they invested emotional energy into falling in love with the heroine. And after waiting with such expectancy for the series to come to a satisfying conclusion, they are instead left feeling empty and hopeless.

After reading the reviews, I now have absolutely NO desire to read the last book. In fact, I now felt like I wasted my time reading the first two. So even though I haven’t read Allegiant, I can completely relate with what readers are saying about it.

As I analyzed the overall reader reaction (along with my personal response), I quickly realized that Roth committed a Cardinal Sin that no writer should ever commit. And that’s this: Don’t kill your main character.

 

Click here to read the rest of the post on Jody Hedlund’s blog.