Things a book can be good at. [Writing resources]

[Sci-2]

Rather than walk on the back on of the Ouroboros with regards to "good books", "bad books", and "good bad books", I wanted to think about the things a writer can do in terms of skill. Feel free to add/argue/discuss the things I point out below.

In the way an athlete can be strong, fast, possess endurance, have good hand-eye coordination and so on it seems to me that writers can possess ability in the following (this is off the cuff, so bear with me):

Poetic Prose: Obviously Calvino and Rushdie fit here. In SFF off the top of my head there's Duncan, Valente, Mieville, McDermott, Bakker. An ability to utilize language in creative ways, where an out loud reading shows a facility with rhythm.

Symbolism: A secondary concern for me, though I admit it was the symbolism of Great Gatsby that made me fall in love with it. The danger of message, to me, is "allegorical flattening". (I think Kalbear coined this term? Or Bakker himself, to explain my criticism?)

Pacing: The book never feels like pages are filler. Simple enough, not sure who's really good at pacing. It isn't something I worry about much in my own selection of authors.

Evoking Emotional Response: I'm thinking Stephen King and his ability to scare with stuff that would be stupid outside of context. (See stuff that happens in It.) We can also put erotica here.

Humor: Joe A, Pratchett, Martin at times.

Characterization: Martin. In terms of romance, let me say this is a big problem for the SFF genre. I can barely think of any real emotional response I've had to characters' romantic relationships.

World Building: Martin, at least terms of Westeros and feeling like you are there chilling. Mieville in terms of his fictional mashups combined with his own ingenuity. Bakker for twisting Tolkien into some kind of Scriptural setting. Sanderson for his magic systems.

Plot: Making me give a fuck about what happens to the characters. Martin, at least for the first three books that I've read. Bakker for his metaphysical whodunit.

[Datepalm]

Stopping tables from being wobbly, hiding things things in hollows excavated from their pages, supporting shelves, keeping random bits of paper from flying away, drying out flowers, flattening things that have curled,decorating a room....oh, not what you meant? I thought we were trying to come up with nice things to say about Bakker.

[mashiara]

I'm so exhausted I can't even begin trying to come up with something coherent. Instead, I'll just link to this, which I'm sure most of you have seen already.

http://www.demotivation.us/books-1247061.html

[Sci-2]

Heh, like I said first thoughts that came to mind. Not trying to suggest Bakker is the next Rushdie or anything.

[Isalie]

One of the most important factors for me is atmosphere. It's a close cousin to emotional response I guess. Concerning emotional response and King I think he's much better at the atmosphere, gotta love his suburbia-from-hell that he got going.

[Contrarius]

Characterization -- Berg, Bujold, Hobb . For vividness of character, Abercrombie.

What you descrbe as a plot attribute, I see as an essential part of character. Plotting talent means that the author can put tkgether an interesting series of events that string together in a logical way. Caring about what happens to those specific characters is due to good characterization.

[Contrarius]

Oh, and emotional response. You know I'm big on that. But it can be surprising where you might find it.

For instance -- Imo Dick Francis/Mary Francis can be great at that, creating emotion with very few words. There' one scene in particular, where the mc is wanderig lost in woods with an arrow in his back, that really got me. Also Louise Penny, another mysrery writer, makes her characters so *real* that I had to stop reading mid-book and take a break for awhile just because she was being mean to my favorite guy. Oh, and good old Cormac -- I had to stop reading Blood Meridian because it was just so devastatingly bleak. Those are all strong emotional responses.

[Isalie]

Emotional response to me is really more a case of laugh/cry.

I would characterize the example you got in the OP as more of an ability to make the unbelievable believable within the context of the book.

Concerning symbolism, I would say that there's different layers of perhaps different value. Gatsby as a representative of the American Dream is one type whereas the color blue in TGG is another. Personally I appreciate the second kind more, even though I would not go so far as to call TGG allegorical.

[NickSnow]

I think that the most important part of any book is character. You can have an amazing, intricate plot with deep symbolism; it can have an interesting atmosphere and great writing, but without real characters it all means nothing. The characters have to be real enough to connect with, to love or hate or love to hate. This is the most important part of a book for me and the part I look to first.

[Zach H]

Big killer moments that simply grab you and make you think "this is why the author wrote this book." Matthew Stover always delivers in this regard. In the case of something lacking, I'd say A Dance With Dragons.

A story just being itself, in ways other stories can't match even when they're really trying to do something similar. Kelly Link comes to mind as an example of this originality.

[Sci-2]

I wonder if we can consider the concept of mash-ups in and of themselves. For example, to keep the Bakker theme going, a good bit of the storyline apparently is Tolkien+Bible+Dune+Blood Meridian...

[Kalbear]

Synthesis is a better way to describe that. Dan Simmons is a master of synthesis. So is Tim powers.

[Isalie]

I wonder if we can consider the concept of mash-ups in and of themselves. For example, to keep the Bakker theme going, a good bit of the storyline apparently is Tolkien+Bible+Dune+Blood Meridian...

I think that in Sweden at least, this would fall under intertextuality, don't know about abroad.

[Talleyrand]

I found the last Eragon book to be good at fending off angry goats and the occasional attack swan if nothing else

[Sci-2]

Speaking of TGGatsby, a nice overview of it's colors here:

http://chibehsuke.wordpress.com/2010/05/04/colour-symbolism-in-the-great-gatsby-wtf/

[Arthmail]

I think we need books that degrade their characters more, like Bakker, so you feel better about yourself.

And perhaps more black seed.

[polishgenius]

Pacing: The book never feels like pages are filler. Simple enough, not sure who's really good at pacing. It isn't something I worry about much in my own selection of authors.

For me, pacing is a lot more than just never dragging or whatever, and it's certainly not simple. Specific example: Jim Butcher's Dresden Files have fantastic pacing, because not only does he build things up fairly steadily to a big climax (the simplest form of action-pacing but common for a reason and easy to get wrong), but he always gives Harry a safe haven or two where he can hide from the hectic for a few pages which gives a little lull and helps the flow. His Codex Alera on the other hand are, for me, a lot less accomplished in part because he doesn't do this and therefore the books just turn into a mad rush to the finish which gets a bit wearying.

Other authors who are good at it: Steven Erikson, Joe Abercrombie, China Mieville, Richard Morgan. Authors who are bad at it: Martin (except in aGoT), Sanderson, Alastair Reynolds (well, he's generally pretty-to-very good up until the ending where he is often shite, although I suppose you could make ending well a whole separate category)

Characterization: Martin. In terms of romance, let me say this is a big problem for the SFF genre. I can barely think of any real emotional response I've had to characters' romantic relationships.

With Martin, I've tend to find (and this was crystalised by the show which does it much better with additional scenes and some reworked lines) that while individual characters are brilliant, their interactions are pretty average.

[Eyelesbarrow]

Stopping tables from being wobbly, hiding things things in hollows excavated from their pages, supporting shelves, keeping random bits of paper from flying away, drying out flowers, flattening things that have curled,decorating a room....oh, not what you meant? I thought we were trying to come up with nice things to say about Bakker.

Pffshaw. Jason Bourne has taught us that a book is

against a candelabra-wielding terrorist assassin. If you pair it with a tea towel, you're going to be unbeatable.

[Caz]

Stephen King can indeed make the absolutely unbelievable totally believable. A lot of people think I'm a sandwich short of a picnic when I tell them that...mayhaps I am!

[Francis Buck]

I think we need books that degrade their characters more, like Bakker, so you feel better about yourself.

And perhaps more black seed.

Don't forget the honey-smell of unwashed anuses.