I wouldn't necessarily draw that conclusion. In extremely commercial
fiction, storytelling and premise frequently take precedence over the way
the words are put together. So much so that James Patterson, for instance,
only writes outlines and then gets other writers to do the first-draft
leg-work of his novels for him. They might be good writers, but that's
neither here nor there. Nobody buys Patterson for the quality of his prose.
Millions of people, however, buy him for the quality of his stories.
Patterson's admitted that he's not particularly good at the
putting-the-words-together part, but then lots of great prose stylists
aren't that hot at the storytelling part.
Al
----- Original Message -----
From: "Nathan Cain" <IndieCrime@gmail.com>
To: <rara-avis-l@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, November 20, 2008 12:53 AM
Subject: Re: RARA-AVIS: SMALL CRIMES AND DRAGON TATTOO
So, the secret to being a successful writer is to suck at it? Is that
true of any other profession?.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 19 Nov 2008 EST