Explanation - invariably I will read a fantastic book, beautifully written with a sweeping or moving story that is profoundly impactful…and some amateur reviewer will have written, “That book is so boring! Blah, blah, blah, nothing exciting ever happens!” 🙄
When I read these, I often pause to try to imagine what sort of book those reviewers WOULD like, lol. No doubt its probably an elitist, pompous exercise…but its fun imagining for a moment a book filled with non-stop, over the top action, gory or imaginative deaths by the dozens, torrid romantic liasons, CIA and KGB and SS agents around every corner, etc. Ive been tempted to write that book, tongue in cheek, just so those reviewers would have something to be happy about.
Then I thought…maybe someone has already done this? Intentionally written a book so egregiously over-the-top that even those action-aholics might be tempted to say, “too fast, and too much excitement…” in their reviews?
“Something Happened” by Joseph Heller. Nothing happens.
Sounds like you are describing fanfic.
Fanfic is something I’ve never read, actually. I could see how it could grow into an exercise in excess - a fan who like a particular aspect of something writing a book or story filled with nothing but that thing they like.
Probably why I’ve avoided it, lol.
Fanfic typically overexplains everything. They’re definitely not as fast paced.
Modern pop culture is actually trending more towards that kind of writing than lean and brisk stories that go too fast. That’s how we get all these bloated movies and TV series, and books by big name authors that run about 300 pages too long.
But, to me that’s the point of fanfictions.
Total wish-fullfilment. It’s daydreaming about a media in writing.
Some are great, others are trash.
But seriously, why one would bother with unedited, amator writing if not to scratch that itch?
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality was kind of written to address all the complaints about the poor decisions made by Rowling’s characters. It’s actually pretty good.
I think we’ve been reading different fanfiction 😅
most of what I’ve read has been writers slowing down and filling in everything that the source material rushed past. 10k words on one quiet moment in between plot points. Or AUs where instead of all the drama and action, the characters just work at rival flower shops or whatever.
Fanfic is not always like that. And I hate this prevailing thought that all fanfic is trash.
Saying that the medium is a little reductive and repetitive is hardly calling it trash.
Have you read every single fanfic on the Internet to pass that judgement?
Yeah, his name is Dan Brown.
You know, you have a point there! 😂
I remember reading Brown’s first book when it came out and enjoying it. But man, did he open a Pandora’s box of poor copycats…which included even himself.
But hey, he’s created a niche and populated it with his work and made millions. More than I’ll ever do.
I think I get that with John Grisham. First novels I read of him were like, “what if an idealistic young lawyer tries to help poor people?” or “what if a kid witnessed a murder haha”. Then I read a recent book and it was like “ok this guy rapes a girl and a black kid gets blamed and goes to prison 9 years on death row and and a whole BML movement happens and the rapist gets a brain tumor and decides to confess and the community doesn’t care and the black kid dies and the cancer rapist flees and suddenly the pastor of the cancer rapist is who we follow now?”
Ha, ive noticed that as well! Sort of gave up on Grisham over a decade ago.
What is this last book?
Good God!
My sister, the literary nut, got me to read the Da Vinci Code. I remember getting to the end and being like, “What the hell, that was pointless.” And she was just like, “I KNOW, I just had to have someone else share in my pain!”
People who do tis are no longer my friends…
It’s my dad’s entire book shelf. Lee Child, Dean Koontz, John Grisham, David Baldacci. Well it’s half his book shelf, the other half being WW2 And Civil War nonfiction.
So your dad is a Republican? (Sorry, couldn’t help myself. It’s a reference to a joke by comedian Shane Gillis.)
No joke, I only heard of this man Dan Brown for the first time a couple hours ago on a Masterclass ad. It’s funny that I now see him again on this thread.
I mean no offense by this but are you 25 or younger? This guy was one of the biggest authors of the 00s.
27 haha. And also European, maybe that has something to do with it.
That explains how you missed bestselling author Dan Brown.
“The famous man wore a red sweater.” No one can (or should) write quite like Dan Brown.
Mr Rogers?
Don’t make fun of renowned author Dan Brown.
Just stop Dan. It’s unbecoming.
Or the other name on a James Patterson book.
Different people have different tastes. Having a different taste. Having a different taste does not make your preference more superior, nor does it make someone an “amateur reviewer” - whatever that means.
The tone of OPs post is a bit questionable. But “this is so boring, nothing happens” is definitely an amateur review in the same way “exciting book, so much happens”
Absolutely nothing about what he said has any correlation to feeling superior to anybody. He sees a common criticism and is criticizing that, which he’s completely free to do. I honestly think you feel lowkey superior to “nerds who read only big books and hate on Everyman books”
Having more selective tastes than someone else is okay. Having extremely negative feelings towards something everyone else likes is okay. Those are just opinions.
If you want to know how a book like that might be, read Ron Goulart. Specifically his science fiction, like The Hellhound Project or Hail Hibbler or Big Bang. The vast majority of his work (a whopping 180 novels in total) is like that, albeit not for that reason: he just had a knack for formulae and a liking for money!
Interesting! Do you enjoy them?
Im not usually looking for over the top action or thriller novels, but if someone is good at their niche, whatever it is, I’m usually willing to give them a try.
I LOVE them.
Let me be absolutely, unequivocally clear: most of them are mediocre at best. Nearly everything I’ve ever read by him, mainly his SF, is basically the same novel with some variations, albeit intelligent and funny ones.
BUT.
They’re quick, outrageous, funny (the man was fond of satire and anarchic humor) and in every novel you can see the craftsman at work on another more-or-less identical, unrefined armchair, but what a comfy armchair it’ll be! I don’t know, I just find him immensely entertaining. He also was a pop culture historian with a lot of publications to his name and it shows in the best of ways.
His franchise work like the TekWar series by Shatner, which he ghost-wrote, a LOT of Flash Gordon and other things, is usually really good. The Groucho Marx: Detective series is a hoot.
If you read only one maybe try Hail Hibbler, it’s deranged :D
Thanks! Sounds fun.
Read literally anything by John Ringo. I recommend the Into the Looking Glass series. It involves, among other things:
- a US submarine blasting rock music (as an in-universe soundtrack) to show how cool they are to the Chinese listening on sonar
- dual wielding sniper rifles
- mech suits
- anthropomorphic warrior cats
- a judo practicing, rock climbing, alien-fighting genius theoretical physicist that speaks with a Southern accent and repeatedly in-universe has to explain that Southerners can be smart too
- copious amounts of fawning sycophantism for the US military
I can’t tell if it’s entirely sincere/a bit cringe or if he knows what he’s doing and enjoys writing half parody, over-the-top nonsense because rule-of-cool works better when you’re not taking it seriously.
Interesting! Thanks for sharimg, and your bullet point list sounds hilarious. I’d love it if it was written in a self-aware, half-parody sort of way. The name sounds familiar…I may already have something kept his in my library.
If someone were to write something like that, it might be a co-written, over the top spy-on-spy adventure with intrigue, violence, and sex in nearly every filthy, mind-melting paragraph. It’s possible. I mean hypothetically speaking. 🤠💙
Possible…but has it been done??
We need a Michael Bay for books!
E. E. “Doc” Smith has entered the chat
Battlefield Earth is incredibly boring and internally inconsistent.
Despite the space battles that, among other things, involve a bunch of scots flying what is essentially a salvage ship rigged with explosives into the hangar bay of an enemy capitial ship and blowing it up. Or bugging the room of a master spy and then watching as he sweeps for bugs. You’d think that it should be rather exciting. Somehow it fails at it spectacularly.
The only decent part of the book is the initial world building IMO, where the initial group of post-apocalypse survivors have forgotten how to read english but still speak it, and the aliens never bothered to learn, so when the protag learns to read english from finding/visiting a library it kicks off the plot.
Sir Apropos of Nothing fits this description for me. The point of it is that big, dramatic, awful things are happening constantly and Apropos, along with everyone around him, is constantly on the brink of absolute disaster. It’s also funny and legitimately well-written. The kind of person who makes that complaint would probably love it.
Probably not written for your stated intent, and while sometimes full of romances and brief exciting events, most of E.M. Forster’s books have no plot and absolutely nothing of any consequence happens.
His books are not about events or plots. They are about people, class contrasts, and a bit of hypocrisy. He definitely had points to make.
I watched several of the movies made from his books, and on first viewing when I was very young, I couldn’t figure them out, they were unmemorable and made no sense. On second viewing, when older, and having read about what he was trying to do, they made a lot more sense and he practically hits you over the head with his points.
Try “The Mezzanine” by Nicholson Baker. It’s an entire book that covers the thoughts of a guy named Howie who is riding down the escalator from the mezzanine to the main floor at his lunch hour. “Nothing happens”, but everything happens.
Bleak House. Dickens wrote it to be meandering, nonsensical, and pointless. Like the trial it’s about.
Wow, good contribution! A different genre, but sort of the same point. Thanks!
Those books already exist haha; people (generally speaking) will always want a book like that; I’m so glad the slower, more thoughtful books exist for people like me who get overwhelmed by too much Action and Plot. No reason to put another one out in the world, there is probably one being written, unironically, at this very moment.
“There’s nothing new under the sun”
have… have you never been to an airport “bookstore”? (i’m elitist! kill me!)
Lol. As an aside…its interesting how many people people seem to misunderstand or miss the intent of my original post. There was no desire to demean or cast aspersions on anyone, just having some fun with different reading habits and preferences.
i certainly bear no ill will. i thought the original post was going to be about writing a book in which nothing happens.