From the post –
There has been a resurgence of crap in the last few years. I don't mean published crap, but crap in relation to writing in general. And I'm blaming Twilight, Harry Potter, and every other significant, top-selling literary franchise currently flooding the shelves. As the co-owner of an online writing workshop for young writers, I have seen first hand what the surge of sales and admiration of these books has done. The quality of written English, in general, has drastically de-evolved. That's not to say that there aren't good writers, just that the profusion of online writing forums (of all stripes) and the injection of relatively sub par storytelling into the mainstream landscape has created a new environment indubitably friendly to the prospect of universal value. It's a nice thought, but a faulty one.S.M.D. lists off a series of specific problems in the post that include text-speak, disregard for Standard English, incoherence, and flagrant disregard of reality. While I agree that these are all HUGE problems, I think that laying the blame on the feet of Twilight and Harry Potter is wrong. There are many, many other factors that have helped in the degradation of the English language and it is impossible for the blame to rest completely on two book series and those that have tried to ride on the coattails of their success.
It is faulty because there is no such thing as universal value that actually places real value on something. The only universal value in writing is the one given to anyone who tries, but that ends, for anyone with the heart to tell someone about reality, where accomplishing the task turns into trying to do something more. The conditions have, I think, been set for this sort of presumed universal value, and for the infusion of poor knockoffs, poor storytelling (plotting, etc.), and other problematic relationships to the very idea of writing.
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Where am I going with this? All of these problems have been rising dramatically in the last year, due almost entirely to the influx of popular titles into the public of would-be writers. More and more wannabe writers (young and old) are flooding my forum with the expectation that they will be the next Meyer or Rowling, but then they disappear moments later when they realize that a) you can't be on a writing site and not conform to standard written English; and b) sometimes when you suck, you actually suck. A lot of them come in expecting to write in a way that not even an elementary school teacher would accept (not in fiction, but in communicating with others), and then are shocked to find that a site for writers might actually have standards. These folks want to be the next Meyer, and they'll do everything they can to be it short of actually working on their craft; to tell them that they have a lot of work to do is to tell them that they will fail, always (some of them undoubtedly will, even if they try to work on their craft). But, they don't disappear forever; they go to other places where they are not subject to such rules, where they can put out incomprehensible drivel and receive glowing comments instead of anything resembling a critique (there is, after all, absolutely nothing helpful about such things as "OMGZ dis r awzum!!!1!").
And this worries me because it feels like the end of good writing. I get the impression that standards are being relaxed, not in publishing, but in the wider web, and the way the community functions is to provide places for people to get false hope, to dream of things that aren't possible, and to continue to fulfill their fantasies without a dose of reality. Not everyone is cut out to be a writer, of any kind. Some people simply are better suited to other duties, but everyone can try. But the most basic thing we all need as potential writers is a modest ability to use the language we intend to write in and a healthy dose of the reality we all live in. We can't pretend to be writers and conform to a non-standard method of communication that involves complete disregard for even the most basic of English rules--capitalizing letters is not that difficult.
Even worse is the fact that I don't know how to to figure in the influence of popular titles like Twilight or Harry Potter. There is a correlation, but what kind? How do they mix? And do we just let this flooding of sub par occur? Do we address it? How? Is it bad or good? A logical consequence?
Below is the comment that I left on the post. It’s pretty long but I thought it was worth reprinting here. Also I would encourage everyone who has a soft sport for the fantasy and sci-fi genres to check out The World in a Satin Bag blog.
While I 100% agree that the written form of our language is being butchered on a daily basis, I think that trying to lay the blame on series like Twilight and Harry Potter is a stretch (if not flat out inaccurate). Are those series to blame for would-be writers writing stories that are complete rip-offs? Absolutely but that is another matter entirely.
The biggest cause to the current deterioration of the English language in written form is the internet and text messages. About ten years ago I worked in the technical support department at AOL. While at work, we spent a pretty good amount of time in various chat rooms. It was then that I first started to see chat-lingo (a.k.a. lol, roflmao, brb, etc.) and since then things have only gotten worse. Now I’m not completely against chat-lingo, heck I use it when it is appropriate, but I know that there is a time and a place for that and for using proper English. Fast-forward to 2009. I work for another company (still in a call center doing tech support…sadly) that uses chat rooms as a major tool for communication. It is in those chat rooms that I see our language raped on a daily basis. Not only do people not know how to spell (something that I admittedly have problems with) but they are unable to use proper capitalization or punctuation to save their lives. Granted the point of the chat rooms is as a quick communication tool to get questions answered in order to help customers, so I don’t begrudge all of the shortcuts used (I use quite a few myself) but there are times that I literally have to ask someone what he/she just said because what was typed was completely incomprehensible.
I mention all of this because I know that MANY of the people guilty of these crimes against the written language have never read Twilight or Harry Potter, let alone any book. For the most part these are people who are obsessed with other things (like sports, cars, and some even computers). So based on my experiences, the works of Meyer and Rowling have little to nothing to do with the abuse of written English.
On the matter of regurgitated plots, etc., I had a writing teacher once that said not to worry about it. He said that even if you were borrowing heavily from another source, your own point of view, personality, and experiences would make your story unique (or at least not exactly like what has influenced you). One thing to understand though, he was not at all a “literary” professor. He was a guy who had been a cop and now writes action/adventure novels and teaches on the side. He brought to the classes his experience in the publishing world and dismissed a lot of the snobbery of the “literary” world. He tried to focus on the skills that would actually help students get published. I thoroughly enjoyed the classes and learned a lot.
I have to admit that in my own writing, I have drawn heavily from the things that I enjoy reading and watching. Because of that I know that my vampire manuscript (which you can read the first four chapters of here) has a Buffy the Vampire Slayer feel to it and that the epic fantasy that I’ve been working on has a Shannara with Jedi feel to it. Is this a bad thing? I don’t think so, as long as I write a story that is well thought out, put together, and executed, then who cares if it has similarities to other works of fiction. Heck, most, if not all, hero tales share the same set of characteristics. So does that mean that Harry Potter is a rip-off of Superman, Heracles, or Jesus just because their stories share many of the same plot elements and characteristics? No. These elements are part of our collective subconscious and find their way into our myths, folktales, scriptures, and literature. (Note – If you can’t already tell, I’m a big fan of the work of Joseph Campbell.)
More than anything else though, the Twilight and Harry Potter series have gotten kids into reading and that is a great thing. I spend a lot of time at our local library and there are always kids there checking out and reading books. My kids have read more in their eight and nine years respectfully than I did in my first 25 years. When I was young we didn’t have things like Harry Potter or Twilight to draw us into the glories of reading. We had cartoons, TV shows, and movies and books just never seemed to rank in comparison. One thing that I thoroughly regret is the fact that it wasn’t until I was in my mid-20s when I started to read for fun. Since then I nearly always have at least one book going and my performance in school had greatly increased (not that I am any closer to a BA but that is anther matter). I love to read and make sure that my kids see me reading and encourage them to read as well (also the schools are doing a MUCH better job in the reading department than mine did when I was young). This is why I think for all of the bad, imitations that they are bound to spawn, series like Twilight and Harry Potter are great things and do far more good than harm.
