[HPFGU-OTChatter] Writing - Good & Bad - Edward Cullen?

[P. Alexis Nguyen]

Steve/bboyminn:
> In our discussion of Harry Potter, we have found or at least
> discussed what we feel are logical inconsistencies in the
> story. But these are very small things, that are only seen by
> deep probing critical minds. I don't that most people are
> even aware of them.
SNIP
> So, while Meyer was able to weave a nice romantic tale, you
> really have to look at the story with THE MOST uncritical
> eye to buy it.

Ali:
See, I would take a totally different view on this.  I think I would
put both JKR & Meyer in the same writing category of good storytellers
and mediocre writers, and neither are on the level of, to cite someone
whose name has been around the list, Jim Butcher.

With Twilight, your problem doesn't seem to be the internal logic of
the story but with the logic of the story as it relates to you.
That's not a problem an author can solve nor should be expected to
solve.  You didn't understand how an old vampire could stand to go to
high school, but within the context of the story, I think this
explanation of why the Cullen "kids" were in high school was one of
the few things Meyer did well (and despite owning the books and movie
and liking the first book, I still think Meyer is more of a hack than
Dan Brown, so I'm not likely to go defending her randomly).  I will go
so far as to say that, as far as internal logic, Twilight and HP are
on the same level, a few stumbles but nothing major.

The problem is, of course, JKR had a better handle on her story and
her writing improved immensely as the books moved forward.  With HP,
certain elements just never worked for me (Snape, Lily, James, etc. -
that entire previous generation had zero appeal, personally) but her
writing flowed well enough that it overrode my brain's reactive
instinct to jump out of the story.  There was a certain appeal to the
writing that compensated for the bad storytelling.

Meyer's writing, however, was not noticeably better after book 1, and
she seemed to have major issues reining in her story, so her lack of
writing skills couldn't help alleviate the poor logic of her story.
With Twilight, elements that didn't appeal (the baby, Jacob, the
imprinting, and the oh so many others) had nothing to help them along.
 Meyer's writing was without flow, without technical skills, by which
I mean her story ran away with her.  Does the crazy baby story work
logically within the story's logic?  Yeah, I could see how it could.
Do I care about it?  No because there was no proper introduction of
the story, no proper reasoning of the reason to introduce this
pointless plot point - if the point of the story is to get Bella &
Edward together, what does a baby have to do with it?  Channeling my
12th grade English teacher: Meyer's editor apparently never asked "so
what?"

All in all, though, good storytellers and mediocre writers is how I
would term both JKR and Meyer.  JKR has the potential to be a great
writer, I think - her writing, technical skills-wise, seemed to
improve as the books progressed but I did think her story seemed to
have less charm as her writing improved.  With Meyer, I feel like
maybe she's not cut out for the series writing - Twilight (as in the
first book) had a bit of magic to it, the draft of Twilight retold
(Midnight Sun?) from Edward's point of view shows glimmer of good
writing with natural flow - because the bad writing didn't really
become the show at center stage until the later books.

Let's just all read Jim Butcher or Dumas, pere, in either the original
French or a great translation.  They've both got Meyer and JKR beat.
:)

~Ali