Two Things the Worst Book I Ever Read Taught Me About Writing
I’m in awe of just how bad this book was — but at least I got something out of it.
Before you read any further, let me assure you: I will not be naming what the book is. It’s probably not the one you’re thinking of. No, not that one, either. I’m not going to drag this book through the mud because while I, personally, really didn’t like this book, I also know that others do like it, and I don’t want to dim their shine or discourage anyone from reading.
That said, oof, I hated this book. It was a book club pick, though, and I started the book club (although didn’t select the book), so I wanted to make sure I read it all the way through. And as a result, I really started to examine just what made me cringe so hard at it.
Don’t get me wrong — I’m not a literary snob. I’ll read any genre, and have favorites from romance to middle grade, classics to pulp.
“Yeah,” one of the members of the book club said when I started to complain about this book, though, the May selection for the club. “How is this one that different? What makes it so bad compared to all the bad books out there in the world?”
The answer, I realized, was that it failed on every level of what makes a good book.
I wrote previously about the six elements of story telling. In short, I hypothesized that all novels must contain at least six elements to really be considered a novel: plot, character, world, prose, depth, and immersion. You can read more about the elements here.
When my friend asked why I detested this particular book we were reading so much, I realized that it had failed at every level of the elements. The plot was meandering and pointless — many times, it felt like the characters came to conclusions with thin evidence or discovered things by coincidence only. The characters were overwhelmingly vapid and inconsistent — the author said, for example, that the main character liked art, but she never once did anything artistic or commented on artistry. World details were superficial and cliched, and the fantasy elements felt random and illogical.
Beyond that, the prose was so awful that I kept pulling out phrases that were quite frankly grammatically incorrect and nonsensical. I was well past the point of thinking there was any artistic merit here; I was looking for simple comprehension and clarity. There was zero depth — in fact, I felt that the book failed on morality and held several questionable issues on consent that enraged me as the author superficially skimmed over the implications of her characters’ own actions. All of this made the book far from immersive for me.
It had failed at literally every level of what it meant for a book to be good.
“But,” another book club member pointed out, “remember the book we read in January? You didn’t like that one either, but you didn’t hate it the way you hate this one.”
Thinking on that, I realized that my dislike for these two books were on different levels. The January Book utterly failed at plot for me — I felt like the pace was really slow, and I had trouble connecting with the characters, who made decisions I would never have made.
But the world was highly detailed and gorgeously written, and the prose was elegant, almost poetic.
“And what about April’s pick?” another member said. “It wasn’t high art by any means, but you liked that one.”
She was right — the April book had simplistic prose and the world building was a little iffy. We’d dedicated a big chunk of discussion that month to the fact that, if you looked at the magic system of that world too closely, it fell apart. But the story was so engaging that I didn’t question the world while reading, nor did I care about how inelegant the prose had been.
LESSON ONE: A novel does not have to succeed on every element — but it can’t fail at every element either.
The difference for me was a novel does not have to hit every element of a book to be good — at least in my eyes. I was entertained by a story that wasn’t beautifully written because the characters and plot were well done. It had failed at world-building and prose, but the other elements had carried the story and made it enjoyable.
And some books fail at elements enough to make me not like the book, but still see their validity. I didn’t like the January Book, nor did I hate it. I could recognize that I wasn’t the right audience for that book.
But I hated the May Book.
That’s because, for me, it did not succeed on any level of what makes a good book. There was nothing for it to stand on.
However, when it came time to discuss the book in the club meeting, a few of the members disagreed with me. And in our discussion, I was reminded of one important thing:
LESSON TWO: The elements of good storytelling are subjective — especially the last one.
Everyone in the book club agreed that the May Book failed at the first five levels of story telling. We didn’t break it up that way, but we did all basically agree that the plot was weak, the characters inept, the world lacking, the prose childish, and the depth shallow.
But a handful of the book club members pushed back. “We don’t care,” they said. “It was still entertaining.”
And I am so glad that they spoke up and reminded us that all the elements of good storytelling are subjective. And the most subjective of all the elements is the last one.
The last element of storytelling is how immersive the work is — does it entertain, does it allow the reader to escape, does it provide enjoyment? And no one — no one — can judge that but the individual reader.
Whether or not a book provides entertainment is indefinable and individual. What entertains one person will bore another. It’s not as simple as a matter of taste — there are books that enthralled me at certain periods in my life that I would hate at other times. There are books that are terrible for a variety of reasons, but mean something important to someone for a specific, personal reason.
Even the worst books have value to some.
And that is why there’s not really any such thing as a “bad” book. It can be bad to you, it can fail on every level by your standards, but that absolutely does invalidate the book to others, who see it on a different level, who got something different from it.
This is, of course, why censorship, banning books, and shaming people for reading certain genres is bad. There may be elements of every book that exist, but they’re not static. There is no rubric or checklist of what makes a book valid, valuable, or even good.
You can only define quality for yourself.
