I was looking back recently on a book that I enjoyed when I was younger. I'll refrain from naming it, but suffice to say that it was pretty popular at the time with several groups that I have no part in, was made into a series of movies, and is pretty widely laughed at today. At the time I really enjoyed the books, or at least some of them, but I've since realized just how wrong I was about that. When I was looking through the books again, I was struck with just how irritating parts of the books were. And unfortunately, those parts made the majority of the story.
So the question I have to ask myself is why I enjoyed them at the time. And, for that matter, why a lot of people enjoyed them. I think that, more than anything, they were easy to consume. They weren't particularly long, they didn't have a lot of complicated words, and the story was simple enough to follow. There weren't a lot of side stories, and when there were, they tied back to the main story pretty quick and easy.
Unfortunately, that was about all those stories had going for them. There were few redeemable characters, what little story there was was frankly quite bland, and I don't think a single character managed to get any development by the end of the series. The things that made the story different from other stories hadn't been done before because they were really dumb decisions. If I tried to read them now, I don't think I'd be able to make it halfway through the first book before I had to put it down.
However, having read them when I was young, I wonder if anything that made them enjoyable at the time has sat with me. If I've internalized any of the writing style from those books without realizing it, and I don't even recognize it now as I write. I'd like to think that I can write something better than those books, but no one can deny that they sold well. I don't know if I'll ever be able to tell a story that sells nearly that well. And I'm not saying that selling copies is the end all goal, but it would certainly be nice, and it has to say something about you're writing, after all.
I don't think I'd be able to recognize if I had in fact taken in any of the writing style of those books without carefully rereading them, and comparing them to my own writing. Which would not be easy as, like I said, I don't think I could ever make it through a single one of those books again. Even for the purpose of bettering my writing, I just don't think I could do that to myself. I'd probably be more likely to discourage myself from ever reading anything again than to improve my own writing.
I'm better off reading other things that I actually enjoy and consciously trying to emulate the parts of those books that I enjoy. Not storywise, of course, but style. I want to have my own writing style, as I'm sure all writers do, but I think that part I more or less have down. The next step is refining, and adding on, and improving, and to do that I need to see what other options there are out there, and how to make those options my own.
And if I ever come across something like those books that I enjoyed when I was younger, at least now I know what to do with them.
Use them as the example for what not to do.
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