A short time ago, the Smart Bitches had a thread titled 'Everybody Else Loved It But You Didn't Like it at All', in which people got to list and talk about popular books that just didn't appeal to them at all.
http://www.smartbitchestrashybooks.com/index.php/weblog/comments/everyone-else-loved-it-but-you-didnt-like-it-at-all/
I was surprised by the number of people who disliked Nora Roberts. With some it was just one book. Others wouldn't read her at all.
One of their main reasons was head hopping.
I've read Nora for years now. She was my reintroduction to Romance. I like just about everything she writes, formulatic or not.
The point to this post is that I'd never heard of head hopping. Not until I started surfing the online communities and started writing myself. I suspect most folks are like me. They must be, Nora is probably a multi-millionaire.
I had and have no problem following the storyline. I was never in doubt as to whose head I was in. I was shocked to find I'd head hopped in the very first paragraph I'd ever entered in anything and that was the first time I'd ever heard the word. I wasn't in the person's head, not really, but I can see now that the main character couldn't have known what the person was doing.
It's all very complicated, this writing. But La Nora makes it look easy. And I have to wonder if it's just the tight, internet Romance community that notices these things. Or are there millions of people out there who just don't give a damn as long as it's a good story with characters you can relate to.
As far as I'm concerned, Ms Roberts can head hop all she wants to, if that's what she's doing. Never bothered me and evidently it never bothered all the folks who made her a best seller
Everyone is waxing rhapsodic about Courtney Milan's novella, Unlocked, and I had to force myself to finish it. I thought it read like someone who did everything right and none of it from the heart.
ReplyDeleteI don't trust the general readership.
Or I should say that I don't trust the online reader and writers. They create so many rules and blast them at full lung capaacity while the truly talented like La Nora just write as well as possible and ignore the self-imposed internet writing rules.
Get a few ebooks under your belt and you become an expert on what constitutes good writing.
Pah. Good writing is good reading to each individual. Nora is brilliant. C. Milan is probably brilliant despite leaing me emotionally cold.
And head hopping is just an easy complaint for those who have nothing better to do.
Pah on them too.
(I need a nap.)