Good story/bad writer: (Was: What a snob!)

[justcarol67]

zanooda wrote:
> 
> LOL! More than that, the simple fact that I have even read her books to the end should be considered a compliment to the writer, because I don't like love stories much, and I usually simply hate vampire stories, and hers is a little bit of both :-). Still, something is off in her books, even though I can't put my finger on it.
>
Carol responds:
I just read an online excerpt from "Twilight," the first few pages of the first chapter. Setting aside tiny things like not knowing that Valley of the Sun is a proper noun and should be capitalized despite living in Phoenix, I agree that "something is off." She's relying too much on exposition (telling rather than showing), but even when she uses narrative strategies like description and dialogue, the story is lifeless. The narrator has no distinctive personality, no "voice," and the style is drab and dull. I didn't bother to finish the excerpt.

Now I know why I like J. K. Rowling. She may have the math skills of a second grader and too many inconsistencies to count, but she's lively and she creates an imaginary world that immediately seems real, along with memorable (if not always realistic) characters--Dickens without the rambling and moralizing, I suppose.

Carol, who has developed a serious aversion to exposition through overexposure to it