Disillusioned Writer

I’m reading through the final book in another series and…wow. I’m having a hard time. If anything, I’m learning what I DON’T like about some novels. That’s a good thing – it may help me figure out what not to do in my own novel.

I’ve found a couple of typos (my pet peeve) and there are a lot of characters to follow – two of which are brand new and are the main characters. Also, I think the author is trying to cover so much ground in a single book that she had decided to forgo the ‘show don’t tell’ mantra in order to shorten the ultimate length of the book. I may have to go through the other books to see if they are also like this. I remember liking them a lot, but now I have a different eye and my tastes are changing as I write my own novel.

There’s just no depth to the book. I take that back – there are a few moments that seem like she spent some time making the scenes or interactions really work, but the remainder of the book feels like it was the first draft. I hate to say that. I really do. Writing takes a lot of time, patience, coffee and hair pulling and it’s hard to say bad things about any author when I think about the massive amount of work that went into writing the book. On the other hand, there’s a certain level of writing that I am becoming accustomed to as I read through novels to learn the craft. Unfortunately, I was looking forward to this book...