I Like Things That Are Popular

I'm going to tell you a dark and evil secret that I've been harboring for a long time now: I'm going to buy The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown, and I'm going to read it. I am looking forward to it and I will probably enjoy it. I enjoyed reading the Da Vinci Code, after all. I read it because my Dad loaned it to me after a friend loaned it to him, and Dad reading any book is a big deal. I figured any book that actually managed to hook him was worth at least trying. That was when the Da Vinci Code was really starting to get a lot of buzz, probably right when churches started complaining about it (generating more buzz). I can't really tell you why Da Vinci Code was so popular then, but I can tell you that I read it because someone else recommended it to me and I trusted their opinion.

DVC was a pretty quick read for me. It had some parts that dragged out a bit long, and some parts that were pedantic, but the story itself kept me reading. I wanted to follow the adventure to its finale, and I enjoyed almost every step of the journey. I questioned some things I read in it, which led me to look up a lot of things and have some very interesting conversations with people. In the end it turned out that a piece of fiction was not a piece of nonfiction, which was no surprise to me - at least the facts were more accurate than the average conspiracy theory that purports to be true. Dan Brown spun a good yarn, I enjoyed it, and I still think about the story sometimes. Also, I didn't like the movie near so much. There is just something to Brown's telling the story that is more appealing than the story with the author's voice stripped out.

I'm sure I like lots of things you like. At least one thing, in fact. I like Depeche Mode, The Eagles, Firefly, Inglourious Basterds, Braveheart, and Neon Genesis Evangelion. I like Sailor Moon, Britney Spears, Project Runway, Miyazaki movies, and Scrooged. I like The Long Kiss Goodnight, Road To War, JFK, and Ghost in the Shell. I like The Killers, The Prodigy, Chemical Brothers, Doctor Steel, and Lady Gaga. I also like kittens. I like an anime named Robot Carnival that only 1 out of 50 anime fans I meet, if that, have ever seen or even heard of. I also happen to like Da Vinci Code.

I don't like Twilight. This is because teen romances don't appeal to me, and I only like vampires if they're being killed in bloody gruesome spectacles. I don't think it's bad to like Twilight, though. I have some friends and family who like Twilight, and I've yet to disown them for it.

Is it easy to write something popular? I don't know yet because I've yet to create a blockbuster. I've written a story that some people like, though, and some people don't. I've written some stories in my life that a LOT of people like and I really don't know why they did. I'm pretty sure that Brown and Meyer, at some point, felt the same way - I'm willing to bet that they still do wonder why anyone likes what they did.

I don't think you just sit down and write a breakaway hit on purpose. There is not a formula for it for one simple reason: these people invented the formula. Meyer was probably not scanning through a list of bestseller prompts when she wrote Twilight - she started in Buffy fanfiction, so you can see her roots there. I don't think she ran a bunch of numbers to figure out that teenage girls would swoon over some pale guy who sparkled in the sunlight. I don't think she cackled over her writing desk or simply pooped the words right onto the paper. I don't think Dan Brown has written a secret algorithm that takes in variables and spits out Angels and Demons, Da Vinci Code, and The Lost Symbol. There is no formula for success. Brown and Meyer are good storytellers.

Being a good storyteller doesn't mean you are technically proficient in writing, it doesn't mean you are going to write something that appeals to everyone's tastes, and it doesn't mean your book is better than any other. It does mean, however, that a larger number of people are going to enjoy your story. The majority of people who buy books are reading for the story, not for your attempt to make a name for yourself in the halls of Academia. This means that when it comes to a technically apt but dry masterpiece and a juicy bit of story surrounded by too many adverbs and the bits of hokey wooden dialouge, most folks are gonna go for the story.

My favorite storyteller is Stephen King. He is also my favorite writer. The separation is important, because I think far fewer people read King for his writing than for his storytelling abilities. I just happen to like how he puts things, how he makes characters down to earth through dialouge and through specific narrative vocabulary. I like the ethereal bits of sentences floating about in italics when a thought drifts through someone's head

ding-dong for the freesias

and I like how direct and blunt he is about describing the grisly stuff that I want to look away from. Is this why I started reading Stephen King's work? Hell no. I read his first book because I wanted to know how Peter got down from the tower after being framed for assassinating his father, the King of Delain. After that I wanted more of his stories. He had a damn good hook, the best hook - the ability to catch my interest.

How do you catch someone's interest? How do you become a good storyteller? I've read some good blogs and books that tried to answer those questions, and none of them had a formula in reply to it. There is no formula for good storytelling, and there is no answer for why some good storytellers aren't as academic or proficient at technical writing or niche-oriented or geeky or cute as you are. Their success, however, is not going to hurt you. Maybe other writers will react to that success by copying their themes and subject matter, and that will be annoying. It is annoying. But it is not the fault of Meyer, Brown, or King that lazy authors decided to try to take a shortcut to success. That does not make Meyer, Brown, or King lazy. It does not make them bad writers or hacks. It just kind of sucks, and no amount of deriding those three authors will make the problem stop. The deriding does nothing of benefit for anyone, in fact, not even for you.