After hearing last year about Boris Johnson’s thriller, then about Saddam Hussein’s romance novels, I got thinking about why people from all sorts of backgrounds are drawn to writing fiction. Reading them, I’m struck by two thoughts, firstly by how easy lots of professional writers make writing fiction look, and secondly by how much you can come to understand a person by the way they write.
Are there any novels you know of from unexpected authors? Have you found any that are decent as books apart from their creators? What is it about novels that draws non-writers that’s missing from, say, pottery or interpretive dance?
Whenever I read a book with coauthors, I wonder how much of the book came from each.
Sometimes, when reading something like Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, you can really tell who wrote what bits. They have such distinct writing styles.
Then again, I wonder if maybe one of them may have tried to imitate the other’s style at times. So maybe it’s not so cut and dry.
Either way, you can tell the story is a meld of the two sensibilities. Really great pair up, one of my favorite books.
Either way, you can tell the story is a meld of the two sensibilities. Really great pair up, one of my favorite books.
Yeah, the books I thought of were the science fiction novels Buzz Aldrin and John Barnes coauthored.
Sometimes, when reading something like Good Omens by Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman, you can really tell who wrote what bits. They have such distinct writing styles.
Then again, I wonder if maybe one of them may have tried to imitate the other’s style at times. So maybe it’s not so cut and dry.