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we can write if we want to
How totally unnecessary.
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I finally caved in and bought the About A Boy DVD. And Steve bought the novel the other day - so I read it, too. Although I didn't really enjoy High Fidelity the novel, objectively I saw evidence of craft. I mean this novel is actually a slightly more interesting story than the other one, but the characters don't hit you in the gut quite as hard. Still pretty hard though - they have that brutal and painful honesty that Rob did, although no one is quite the fucking jerk that he is.
I keep saying that there's two things you have to do to write a good book - you have to have an interesting story, and you have to be able to tell it. I think one of the best ways to tell it is to have sympathetic characters. For years and years The Eyes of the Dragon by King was the pinnacle of a well-told story for me - though if you think about it, the plot is pretty weak and formulaic. But you fall in love with the characters. That's always been my bag, too. I don't have so many interesting stories to tell, as just a bunch of stuff happening to people I love. (Although technically they aren't actually people.) This is why I can't bear Tolkien; first of all, he can't tell a story for shit, and second of all, well, I didn't feel for the characters, anyway. Except Bilbo Baggins. No one else, though.
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I finally caved in and bought the About A Boy DVD. And Steve bought the novel the other day - so I read it, too. Although I didn't really enjoy High Fidelity the novel, objectively I saw evidence of craft. I mean this novel is actually a slightly more interesting story than the other one, but the characters don't hit you in the gut quite as hard. Still pretty hard though - they have that brutal and painful honesty that Rob did, although no one is quite the fucking jerk that he is.
I keep saying that there's two things you have to do to write a good book - you have to have an interesting story, and you have to be able to tell it. I think one of the best ways to tell it is to have sympathetic characters. For years and years The Eyes of the Dragon by King was the pinnacle of a well-told story for me - though if you think about it, the plot is pretty weak and formulaic. But you fall in love with the characters. That's always been my bag, too. I don't have so many interesting stories to tell, as just a bunch of stuff happening to people I love. (Although technically they aren't actually people.) This is why I can't bear Tolkien; first of all, he can't tell a story for shit, and second of all, well, I didn't feel for the characters, anyway. Except Bilbo Baggins. No one else, though.
Thank you.
When I say it, I am frequently smacked down. He was writing history not a novel and, for the most part, it reads like it (tedious, dry, and prone to tangential explorations of minutia only the most ardent Tolkien disciple could care about). I will admit, like the fellow above, that I did feel a little for Merry and Pippin, but otherwise the characters were just names in a very long book (or trilogy of books).