What was the first book you read that made you think, "Wow, I can write a better book than this!" Mine would have to be the worst work I've read by Mr. Stephen King, Rose Madder. I thought it was just atrocious. King's writing style was just as great as ever, it's just so dull.
I read that book. I didnt find it dull, but it reeked of pretension. I know some people who really love that book, but I dunno. All the symbolism and Mary Poppinsesq picture jumping seemed a bit childish to me. On topic; if Twilight doesnt inspire people to write a novel, I dont know what will. That hunk-a-junk lookes like it crawled out from a Shirley Basey concert. Lol.
Where do I start? Song of Susannah recently reminded me that if Stephen King can sell 350 million copies of his books then there's something seriously screwed up in the universe. I honestly believe I'm a better writer than he is in that book! I also read a trilogy called The Night Angel Trilogy recently which made me bang my head against a brick wall in anger at how poor it was. Slightly off topic, but Robin Hobb's Farseer Trilogy is a series that inspires me to write for a completely different reason: it's one of the most staggeringly well written pieces of fiction I've ever had the good luck to come across, and it reminds me of why I love playing in the English language so much.
Somehow I never pick books I think are bad. If I get sucked into it, then I usually disregard the suckitude of the actual writing.
It was Twilight for me too. I was like... I'm young, and captivating as this story is... I can write one less juvenile... Thus my novel work began
I wish you the best of luck! Just remember if you stick to a cliche vampire story with teenagers who fall in love because the other is hot you'll be rolling in the dough and have Hollywood begging for a script... But seriously don't quit!!!
The windwalker by Elaine Cunningham. It was a forgetten realms book, part of a trilogy I started back when I was a freshman in highschool. I finally decided to finish it and within the first chapter I started picking her characters apart, thinking how they should have been written. Truth is though I don't think I could write better than her. It takes a lot of work to put together an even halfway decent novel.
Thank you very much Haha... I'll end up writing a vampire novel later, as I've tons of inspiration for one... but they won't glitter, and they WILL bite people. Mine's a werewolf story. And the werewolf isn't named jacob. And he's rich.
Song of Susannah is part of the Dark .Tower series. All those books are weirdly written. I don't remember which first made me think I could do better, but I know I have read some that I thought the writing was pretty pathetic. Just can't think of them now.
Well, I'm not much of a prose writer, I prefer writing scripts. But I guess the first movie I saw that made me think "I could do so much better than this" was Dreamcatcher. I was so excited for that movie but they killed it. They made Morgan Freeman look stupid.
Like Aeroflot, I never choose bad books. However, there are three series in specific that made me want to write and so forth: Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings and Artemis Fowl. Harry Potter were the first books I read, and those made me want to write. I sucked. LOTR helped me extend my vocabulary and hone my grammar, and finally, my actual writing style is influenced by the Artemis Fowl series--I couldn't resist the "agile prose, rapid-fire and wise-acre" style Mr. Colfer has.
TWILIGHT!!! *shakes fist at the sky* lol it made me start a werewolf story too, but mine will be a lot better when it's completed. I'm a chapter in but I've only been working on it for two weeks and the whole thing is phased out so I'm really quite happy with my progress. (ps, I read all four books in about a week and I think I lost too many brain cells to count, but hey at least they're entertaining :-].)
Dog In, Cat out. Read it in a dentist surgery while waiting for an appointment. Yes, it is a picture book, but it was either that or 5 year old gossip magazines. Perhaps I’m being a little to critical, it was written for six year olds after all. You be the judge. The story, if it can be called such, goes like this. Dog in, Cat out Can in, Dog out, Dog out, Cat in Dog in, Cat in…. …For twenty pages. It also won a prestigious children’s book award, I was stunned, and for several seconds felt like slitting my wrists, and throwing myself off a very tall building...
A writer called Tracie Harding - I read a collection of ghost stories of hers. She also does sci-fantasy stuff I think, but I'm not into that at all. The ghost story collection was such a self-indulgent book with pictures of her friends and tales of why she wrote the stories etc, and most of the stories weren't any better than what I could do. So I thought to myself 'hmmm...if she can do it....!'
My own work makes me think that... There isn't one book that has made me go "right, if this hack can get published, I've got every chance in the world", but that might have something to do with not reading books I don't like. (With the notatble exception of one particular book, by Sebastian Faulks >_>). But you have to take into account that the quality of a book is one skill, marketing it to agents/publishers is another. I often think I could do better when watching movies and TV shows, though. For example, I would never write a script set in medieval times where every sentence begins with "mayhaps" in an attempt to give it "ye olde English" feel.
Um... I don't think I've ever read a book where I didn't, at the very least, enjoy the uniqueness of the writer's style...I guess I just think all writers are different and no one style of writing is better than another. I think my main thing for writing was in fourth grade when we had to do narrative writing and I realized, Oh... I can write stories and read them. So yeah. I respect all published writers and try to see their style for what is- an expression of self. Just my thoughts. ~Lynn
Twilight? I LOVE the way Stephanie Meyer portrays her characters and gives them life. But that was the only redeeming feature imo
For me, it wasn't really one specific novel, but many novels that made me sort of start to realize "hey, I can do better than this!" If I had to pick one though it would be Eragon. It's not the way he writes or anything that bothers me-the "technical" part of it seems fine. For me though it's the characters and the plot, the typical fantasy "chosen by destiny child that can do anything" and the other cut and paste charaters as well as a very unoriginal plot that made me think "well, I could probably do a bit better if I really tried"
For me, it was a number of writers, Dan Brown for one, Seabury Quinn (though I love this writer, he is just very entertaining and nothing else) and Robert Ludlum. I started reading The Borne Identity and got very bored, though I've been meaning to reread it. Three people that keep me interested in writing are H.P. Lovecraft, Don Delillo and Thomas Pynchon.
for me it has been several published writers Bachman, Meyer, Rowling, Rice, And family members. I found it runs in the blood but like family one always make it better then the last.
I agree with Lemex. Dan Brown ( as in Davinci Code versus say Eco's Foulcault's Pendulum ) and Quinn just like my fave Lovecraft , I love him, but style ugg.
Every book I read for school that are called "great pieces of literature" make me think that just about anybody can write a better book than they did. lol Just my opinion of course.
I can't remember what my book was, but I do remember reading it and thinking, "Really? Someone got this published. " If no agent accepts my book after I read that one then I must really suck. Lol"
Twilight. I read it, then I read the following three books. I just wanted closure really. Basically, once I was done I thought two things. First, it could all have gone into one book, if only some of the scenes did not drag on for several pages with descriptions of the sparkles or twinkles of teenage infatuation. And secondly, I always loved vampires , as villains. Vampires are supposed to be predatory. They are supposed to scare virgins, with fangs and insatiable bloodlust. Edward just didn't do it for me. He seemed like a cover boy for teenage angst with several coats of pearly varnish. I want to write a book, a scary one, with blood, lots of blood, and evil vampires. We'll see how it goes.
In my opinion vampire's are not mindless zombies out for blood. I see them as sexy lustful beings. Lust for blood, flesh, and power. I write about vampires and use them in different ways in every book. One book the MC is an "Edward" type vampire. In the first I wrote the vampire's are "ABVH" type vampires, and in the second she's a mixture of the two worlds. P
