Dorothy: Nice to see you again!

He said, “The prime motive was the desire of a tale-teller to try his hand at a really long story that would hold the attention of readers, amuse them, delight them, and at times maybe excite them or deeply move them.”

LizV, there’s an orange “Archive” list to the right of the text. I *think* that leads to the older posts; haven’t tried it yet.

I think this is a new phenomenon since the server move? At least, I seem to remember being able to waste a lot more time — er, that is, immerse myself in your writing wisdom for more extended periods — by wandering about in the old posts previously.

In my own case, what I think makes a good book is flow. If I am constantly jarred out of the book I can’t read it; when it’s good I don’t notice the pages turning, it’s more like watching a movie than reading. That’s what I shoot for in my own writing (‘Fortunes Rising’ http://tinyurl.com/792oqpd)

As I’m a fantasy writer, the other part of my judgement is more philosophical. I’m tired of ‘save the world/universe’ stories. I see nothing wrong with adventure stories, and want to see more of them, so that’s what I set out to write. No worlds saved in the eleven novels I’ve written so far. I don’t mind epic scale, but it has to BE EPIC to have an epic scale. I think it’s a bad choice for society at large as well; focussing on saving the world let’s us off on saving our neighbors who need help that we can actually give. A point, strangely enough, made by Amy Heckerling in “Clueless.” You never know where the nuggets of wisdom might come from.

The important thing here is to recognize that “Good” isn’t just one thing. And the question to ask is, “good for whom?” For technonerds and other detail enthusiasts, who appreciate deep consistency and exploring implications of a change? For socially-oriented readers, who are looking for character development and interpersonal tension? For escapists, who want a relief from the unpleasantness of everyday reality? For idealists, who hunger to see their worldview vindicated?

Yes, all those are simplifications, but the point remains — different potential readers are looking for different things in their books. You can’t please them all, and if you try you’ll please nobody. What you can do, is try to please some particular group of people… usually, one of the groups that includes the author!

In general, if a book isn’t good for the author, they won’t have the investment needed for their craft. And yet, there are exceptions… consider Piers Anthony’s Xanth series, where the author got tired of the conceit long before the readers did, but he still knew how to churn them out. So I’d say “pleasing the author” is secondary to “pleasing some group of readers”, and the choice of group will shape the character of the book.