On recieving conflicting critiques

I have had good feedback for the WORDING of my beginning. But not everybody had a mental orgasm when they read the first few sentences that's all. I'm just merely questioning the conventional norm that if a standard fiction reader is not creaming in their jeans by the first few sentences, its unfair to say that the rest of the book is going to somehow suck because it did not begin with an action sequence or a witty phrase of dialogue. These were things that I purposely avoided, despite advice to the contrary, for personal artistic preference to go against the grain.
 
I think the point I was driving at is that there isn't a conventional norm, except within genres. If a book isn't an action thriller, it's unlikely to begin with a chase scene, for example.

There's another argument that occurs to me as well, of course: Get published, then get artistic. :)
 
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Starchaser3000 said:
I have had good feedback for the WORDING of my beginning.
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That's the first thing to achieve.

However, don't underestimate the power of hooks - you don't need to start with a big one, but you do need to find a way to invite the reader into your world.

And if you feel the need to avoid using hooks, you need to justify doing so in terms of the story, not "artistic reasons", because that can easily come across as arrogance and immaturity if not too careful.

And try to be a little less colouful with your language please - remember, this is a family friendly site, thanks. :)
 
If I understand you correctly, Starchaser3000, you're saying that you have made an artistic choice to intentionally make the first pages boring, in order to set yourself off from the common crowd.

Alas, you're doomed to failure. There are so many new writers who are unintentionally boring, no one is going to be able to distinguish the artistic principles of your kind of tedium from ordinary inartistic commonplace banality.

I suggest you try another approach.
 
Decide what you want to achieve, and then achieve it.

There is some good advice here on how to achieve readership and draw people in, without compromising artistic integrity. But of course it may be that you are unconcerned with changes that might bring you more readers, and that is fine - it is your book after all!

In which case, I wonder what it is you are looking for, since that advice appears to be not what it is you are looking for?

I do firmly believe, especially in the day and age of self publishing, that an author should create what they want with the aim they wish to achieve, and that aim might not be "more readers."

EDIT - people won't know what is on the way, of course, if you put it after something different (eg fast paced action wont be what they expect from a book with a slow and considered opening) - whether you WANT them to know is of course up to you, and your choice!
 
I really don't think what I have written is anything that special or unique. I consider it a parody/spoof of the fiction/fantasy genre and nothing more. But someone told me that some of the violent content could be considered to have dark fantasy elements as well. Like I have a vivid description of a bloody human sacrifice ritual just to name a few. But still, the overall feel IMO is cartoonish sex and violence that I have been told could be interpreted in bad taste, where I see humor instead.
 
Starchaser3000 said:
Only because I wanted to put the prologue in the beginning, and merely put the sex, violence, drug and alcohol abuse, just a few paragraphs later?? Then I would not want such over critically conceited snoots reading my book anyway.
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I think you may have your Id (Irony detector) switched off. Your Ego, on the other hand... :p
 
Starchaser3000 said:
Only because I wanted to put the prologue in the beginning, and merely put the sex, violence, drug and alcohol abuse, just a few paragraphs later?? Then I would not want such over critically conceited snoots reading my book anyway.:)
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No, because the prologue doesn't belong anywhere if you believe it is going to bore readers. The whole book should be as good as you can make it. Anything less is just being lazy.
 
Teresa Edgerton said:
No, because the prologue doesn't belong anywhere if you believe it is going to bore readers. The whole book should be as good as you can make it. Anything less is just being lazy.
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This is true. Which is why I believe that me over stressing that a few rude and obnoxious critics being livid about the first few sentences not being perfect, having absurd names for my characters, and the fact that I omitted page breaks for listing chapters, means I'm a total retard for doing it that way. I really worked hard in detail in constructing the plot, pacing, sound continuity, and dialogue throughout the entire book.

Yet I still question the notion that even if a book starts off with a catchy character interaction action sequence or starting off with some intriguing dialogue, if by page 50 its just a barrage of plot heavy bore, I'm throwing it aside. I can't force myself to read the rest of it because I fell in love with the very beginning somehow. Sounds like a weird jedi mind trick if you ask me for the people that do this when they read.:eek:
 
You're absolutely right -- a book that starts brilliantly and then turns gruesome is even more annoying than a book that starts gruesome -- because you get your hopes up that it's going to get better and you waste X days reading it and waiting for the interesting bit to come back.

On the other hand, I think it's possible to make a book interesting all the way through.

If you're writing for yourself, and you clearly are, you have no need to defend your decisions. I think you should be confident that you've written the book that you would like to read, and not worry too much about the critics you mention.
 
Oh, there are quite a few comments across the forums where someone has picked up a book and then left it because they felt disengaged. Yet others read the same works and enthuse. Different readers have different preferences, and this will inevitably be something that impacts critiques. :)
 
Hex said:
You're absolutely right -- a book that starts brilliantly and then turns gruesome is even more annoying than a book that starts gruesome -- because you get your hopes up that it's going to get better and you waste X days reading it and waiting for the interesting bit to come back.

On the other hand, I think it's possible to make a book interesting all the way through.

If you're writing for yourself, and you clearly are, you have no need to defend your decisions. I think you should be confident that you've written the book that you would like to read, and not worry too much about the critics you mention.
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The effect that I'm trying is like I want the reader to FIRST think that its a mild and non threatening fairy tale fantasy world and then BAM!! The more exciting and adult themed stuff happens in barrages.:p Even with this simple explanation, some people had been more than insistent that I still do the put Chapter 2 before Chapter 1 method. Though I know perfectly well why this method is fundamentally sound, I think it would have ruined the entire premise of what I had intended in the first place.

I said:
Oh, there are quite a few comments across the forums where someone has picked up a book and then left it because they felt disengaged. Yet others read the same works and enthuse. Different readers have different preferences, and this will inevitably be something that impacts critiques. :)
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True. Like I don't care much for crime/suspense, horror, or vampire/romance stuff. So there is no way someone like me could critique that FAIRLY.
 
I like fairytales a lot, and a book that started out that way would be something I'd like to read.

This fits in rather neatly to something I've been worrying about -- my new wip starts off as a sort of dark, urban love story and takes a huge jump at about 25,000 words into something very different. I worry that readers will be put off by the change because they've been led to expect one thing and then dropped into something completely different. It sort of fits with what Orson Scott Card says in his book on writing about telling the story the reader expects (ie answering the question you asked at the start).

Did you find people got upset by the switch into a darker world? Or once they committed to the book was it okay?

(sorry, VB, thread hijacking)
 
Hard to say. So far the critique of my work from random people over the internet has been mixed. Which is what I had figured it would be all along. People that would generally never read something like my work gave some helpful positive and negative constructive criticism for sure. But the editor I worked with did a great job in formatting, and eliminating word repetitiveness, and formulating better sentence structure in my manuscript.

I say stick to the changing into a darker world. Stuff like that has been published before to be successful. I'm sure if your delivery is good, you should be able to make that concept shine through.
 
My readers so far have never objected to the combination of light-hearted and increasing dark. My darkest story (and it is very dark had one dedicated horror reader and two military men in tears by the end), also has a slapstick element. It begins with humour and ends with a situation whereby the protagonist and antagonist lose, but the antagonist flies away whereas the protagonist is destroyed but can't kill himself. There has been a complete agreement by readers I need an epilogue to offer them a shred of hope :)
 
Then you have to be a great writer if you could move people to emotional tears like that. Can't imagine my work driving people to tears like that unless they think it sux that bad. Haha In your case, you are just really good in your craft and know exactly what you are writing about
 
Well feedback from various sources like your own is mixed - tend to find some people will read everything I throw at them overnight until it's done, and others won't get past the second page.
 
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