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How can you tell a novel is good?
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You can't judge for yourself if your book is good, at least not until you've got a ton of writing experience under your belt and maybe not even then. Since I teach writing and do ms. evaluations, I see a ton of unpublished work. This statement won't win me many friends, but it's true all the same: most writers believe their work is better than it actually is.
Before I get pummelled and kicked to death, let me say that I include myself among "most writers." I always think everything I write and edit is perfect; then my agent and editor weigh in and adjust my thinking.
It's a good idea to have your work looked at by the best readers you can find/ afford before thinking of submitting it. Also a good idea to train your own eye by reading the best fiction you can lay your hands on. Obviously opinions and taste vary, but look for fiction in which not only story but also language matters ---that's one reliable sign, IMO, of fiction worth reading. And when you do find a book that blows you away, read it a second time from a craftsman's perspective, to see how the writer did what he did.
Amadan
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This is nonsense.
Like I said, Dunning Kruger effect.
The really horrible cases can't write for shit, and simply don't believe grammar and punctuation or a coherent plot matters.
The more tragic ones can actually write decently, but they aren't quite good enough, and rather than working on what it is that keeps them from being published, construct elaborate rationales about how they can't get published because the publishing gods are against them, they didn't include enough sex scenes, their writing is just too weird and edgy for the market, etc.
Yes--but others seize on good, smart critiques to make the work better. There's no shame in writing a bad draft---that's what it takes to get to a good one.
What's the Dunning Kruger effect?
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The Dunning Kruger effect is the inability of the incompetent to recognise their own incompetence and the delusion of superiority that results.
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Actually, I have not evaded the question, I have simply provided an alternate explanation to this, which I said first:
But, I don't think that is even specific enough, becasue good is in the eye of the beholder.
James has it right. The only way to really tell is if the book sells, and then it only means it's good enough to seel but not necessarily good (in other words, there are many bad books in the bookstores).
Every word of this is solid advice, especially the last paragraph. Don't take your work to anyone you particularly care for, for a multitude of reasons, but mostly because they are likely to simply indulge and flatter you.
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No.
Publishers publish books that they think they can make a profit on.
If your book is something lots of other people want to read, they can make a profit on it.
So if you want to be published, you have to write stuff lots of other people want to read.
The thing that's tripping people up here is a conflation between artistic merit and saleability.
A book can be brilliant yet so esoteric that there isn't a large enough number of people in the world who want to read it for a publisher to make a profit selling it. It's a "good" book in terms of quality.
A book can be utterly compelling and enjoyable trash and get published. It's a "good" book in terms of saleability. It might have little artistic merit.
It's up to you how you want to define "good", but if you want to be published, you have to write something that is saleable, i.e. lots of other people will call "good".
"Bad" by what standard? Once it makes it to the market, the standard for judging good v. bad is different. Any book that makes it to the "market" in a respectable way has to be better than any book that doesn't, by any objective standard.
Which was my initial point.
caw
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The bestseller lists prove otherwise.
In that case I expect Stephenie Meyer to soon collect her Nobel Prize in Literature.
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Only if your definition of "good" is "sold to a publisher in the current market". Which is hardly an objective standard. Even sales are subjective measures, as they are dependent on so many variables, such as the advertising spend, the author's prominence (or lack of it), etc etc.
We can make up objective standards for books, like those automated editors that count your that's and tell you you've exceeded your page ration, if you like. But they won't tell any given reader whether they'll enjoy any given book.
If a book sells, that tells you it's saleable. If that's your definition of good, then okay, it's a good book. But it would be easier, and more objective, to say it's saleable, not that it's good.
Look at what happened after the Cold War ended as an example. Suddenly, spy thrillers were dead in the water. They were exactly the same books, as well or as badly written as prior, but nobody was buying. So did they mysteriously transmute into bad books by some objective standard? Hardly. It was the market, not the writing, that changed. They didn't become bad books; they became unsellable.
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Amadan
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No, it does not. This isn't an opinion, this is you arguing that up is down and the sun orbits the Earth, and being awfully silly and sour grapes about it.
Here's the latest NYT book and ebooks combined fiction best-seller list. Aside from 50 Shades of Grey and a couple of 50SoG knock-offs, I mostly see women's fiction romances (not typically "30% sex scenes"), crime and legal dramas, and some literary and fantasy fiction.
I've seen you hammer this theme repeatedly, and it's simply wrong and foolish. "The publishing world is too shallow and mercenary to recognize my unique genius" is almost always the cry of someone who needs to look at his own writing, not the overabundance of sex and explosions in best-sellers.
Ah, but the truly lucky turn their hobbies into professions, why can't everyone?
Mike
Jordan, or King, or Pollak, all had more than just luck....they busted their asses. Jordan practiced the night of their last playoff game in college; no time off. King collected rejection slips on a nail, until their weight bent that nail, then got a new nail. There was some sliver of luck in their natural aptitudes and skill sets they were born with or developed before they even considered their particular careers, but there's at least a thousand folks who had the same skill sets and didn't have the same drive, who are now in office jobs or selling cars on a Honda lot.
In graduate school (I wasn't a born cell biologist either) my first PI used to say "if it was easy, everyone'd be doing it." That holds true for writing too, as well as most things in life. And not every good writer will succeed anyway, sadly. But "luck" is, while still an element of the equation, grossly oversold in this sort of discussion. Learning and tenacity and a willingness to practice all carry a good deal of weight too.
as for the OP, what is "good" will depend how you want to define it. Lorna's acid test is a great one if you want to be a commercial author.
Edit: in light of the following post, other useful acid tests include if it makes you happy personally, or if it engages your target audience. Just don't confuse them, or assume one automatically begets the other.
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this general bitterness seems to come from your experience in SYW here and several other places, and you keep trotting out the same dead horse and beating it, over and over.
Decide what you consider the indicator of "good" Shika, and have at it, but you want to have that cake and eat it too (probably while still being able to bitch about the buttercreme frosting, in fact)--if you don't care what others think, and you're writing for yourself, then you can meander all you like--in fact, you should...but your constant whiny derails seem to stem from the fact others critiqued your work as taking forever to get somewhere--YOU lost your readers, don't sit back and blame it on "a sheer genius devoid of gratuitous sex and violence" because you're ignoring a ton of work in your own genre that's gotten by just fine without that also, just so that you can have a self-indulgent little pity-party, and along the way you are peddling your sour grapes as some sort of voice of reason. It isn't, it is just you deciding you'd rather write for yourself than the reader, and then deciding you'll just blame the reader for not meeting you all the way over on your end of the court, instead of halfway.
*waits for nasty-gram from moderation, but this pattern of blaming the market is getting old and is a bunch of self-serving crap. :-(
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This is utter, sheer, unadulterated, pure, concise, to the point, undiluted and without parallel or equivalent, nonsense.
You know a book is good if it stands well post publishing process. When your readers say they like/love/think your book is good, then it's good. I mean look at Twilight. People say it's good. What more could you ask for? A movie deal? Maybe you should've been a script writer.
IMHO.
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Mykall, forget the personal diatribes here and go for story.
We writers live in our little cocoons, in the world we conceive and the characters we invent. A story told well is all you can hope for until it passes from your hands. All the opinions in the world are just that, opinions colored by individual perspectives. They're not crystal balls. After you write it, the book takes on a life of its own, separate and apart from your ideal for it. That new life can bring you joy and pain, but sitting here with the book partially or even fully written, you have to trust your own preferences and research and self-confidence.
To me, what makes a good book is one's storytelling ability. If you understand the ingredients for storytelling and how to make it live and breathe without indulging the movie in your head, you're ahead of the game.
So many of us are influenced by the film and video and games media that we convince ourselves that the same will work for fiction. We believe that because it got printed it must be good, or because it's popular it must have that elusive magic. The originators of those films and games couldn't foresee the outcomes as they created the story, they just had a burning idea and gave it birth. Same goes for fiction, but with so many differences that spoil the analogy.
Please don't try to write "what will sell." By the time your idea hits the publishing world, something else will be hot. The only way this would work right now is if you could grind out a vampire hottie in six weeks and e-publish it yourself.
Also note that the works of Stieg Larsson and Suzanne Collins got their success because of compelling story and character ideas--not what was commercially hot when written years earlier.
Stick to your belief in your original idea and your ability to convey it. Study the craft, because writing is a craft that must be learned like any other. And when you've mastered it, you will know whether what you have written is good. Or not.
We writers live in our little cocoons, in the world we conceive and the characters we invent. A story told well is all you can hope for until it passes from your hands. All the opinions in the world are just that, opinions colored by individual perspectives. They're not crystal balls. After you write it, the book takes on a life of its own, separate and apart from your ideal for it. That new life can bring you joy and pain, but sitting here with the book partially or even fully written, you have to trust your own preferences and research and self-confidence.
To me, what makes a good book is one's storytelling ability. If you understand the ingredients for storytelling and how to make it live and breathe without indulging the movie in your head, you're ahead of the game.
So many of us are influenced by the film and video and games media that we convince ourselves that the same will work for fiction. We believe that because it got printed it must be good, or because it's popular it must have that elusive magic. The originators of those films and games couldn't foresee the outcomes as they created the story, they just had a burning idea and gave it birth. Same goes for fiction, but with so many differences that spoil the analogy.
Please don't try to write "what will sell." By the time your idea hits the publishing world, something else will be hot. The only way this would work right now is if you could grind out a vampire hottie in six weeks and e-publish it yourself.
Also note that the works of Stieg Larsson and Suzanne Collins got their success because of compelling story and character ideas--not what was commercially hot when written years earlier.
Stick to your belief in your original idea and your ability to convey it. Study the craft, because writing is a craft that must be learned like any other. And when you've mastered it, you will know whether what you have written is good. Or not.
I like this. In the end, if it makes me happy (and it does), that's really all that matters. BUT, if it sells well, hey that means I get to do MORE of it, and not just at night. Ah, to dream...
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If it brings someone joy, it's good.
Beyond that it is simply a matter of scale: how much to how many for how long.
If you want to know if it will bring joy to many other people, the only sure fire way is to get them to read it and tell you.
Beyond that it is simply a matter of scale: how much to how many for how long.
If you want to know if it will bring joy to many other people, the only sure fire way is to get them to read it and tell you.
Which comes back exactly to my point (which seems to be persistently missed in this thread): If the book doesn't get published, it brings zero readers joy. I still don't fathom how a book that can't get published, and I don't count self/vanity printing as "publication", because any imbecile can accomplish that, how in the bowels of Hell can you judge it as "good"?
Once published, a whole new set of standards applies to judgment of a book's quality, including sales numbers, but also including the more subjective judgment of critics. I can understand that. But, to reiterate, any book that does achieve respectable publication has risen to that new set of standards, and is by definition "better" than any book that doesn't achieve such publication.
Who here has knowledge of a "good" book that cannot and never will be published? If so, why is it "good"? As in, better than the rock I use as a doorstop in my kitchen.
caw
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I'm not missing your point. I simply disagree with you.
A self/vanity published book can definitely bring readers joy, even if you don't approve of the method by which it's brought to them. How did 50 Shades achieve your 'objective' measure of its quality--trade publication--if not by bringing joy to thousands of readers who found its first incarnation on a fanfic site? Are you saying their joy somehow doesn't count because it wasn't facilitated at that point by Random House? Or that they're not really 'readers' because they're reading Twilight fanfic on the internet?
PG Wodehouse couldn't get his Jeeves books published in the UK. He had to go to the US to get them perceived as 'good'. But they were exactly the same books. Spy thrillers were just as 'good' after the Cold War as during it, but you couldn't give them away.
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Thank you, Buffysquirrel. We can sit and try to discuss the objective qualities of a good book and yet no one can ever agree on what they are. As I said earlier, someone can sign high praises for a book and extol its good qualities. Someone else can pick it up and completely disagree.
Good is what I like, not good is what I don't like. Same thing works for everyone else.
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Amadan
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If a book cannot and never will be published, it's not good. But the fact that it hasn't been published yet doesn't mean it's not good enough to be published.
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