I Hate Successful Writers. I Also Hate Crap

In the beginning, there was J.K. Rowling and Harry Potter and it was good. I enjoyed the books and was amazed at the effect the series had on the reading community. Children were excited to read in a way that had not been known. The movie adaptations lost me, but the books themselves were structurally sound and told an interesting story. I especially respected Rowling for slapping a definitive ending on the last book instead of drawing the plot out into obsolescence.

I am a writer (or, depending on your definition, I will be a writer) and as such, I am exceedingly jealous of other, more successful writers. I envy Rowling her title as the first millionaire author, but I do not dislike her. I do, however, despise the state of juvenile literacy that has resulted from her success. Everyone wants to publish the next Harry Potter. The problem is that no one is willing to wait for the next J.K. Rowling. The result is one flash flood of mediocrity after another that makes less talented authors rich because their audience doesn't know the difference between a compelling character and a Kid's Choice Award nominee.

Let's take a look at the meteoric rise of Christopher Paolini, author of Eragon. I have to admit that I was suckered into reading this book and its sequel. His writing style struck me as immature, but not detestable. The problem is his story is too much like every other fantasy book out there. It's a Lord of the Rings immitation, but Paolini is no Tolkien. I can pinpoint the exact moment I lost any respect I had for Paolini. There is a scene in Eldest (Eragon's sequel) where a host of characters are attempting to cross a river. One says something to the effect that he has arranged for several barges to pick them up. Someone responds, "Barges? We don't need no stinking barges!" That's right, folks, an allusion to Blazing Saddles. Who the fuck does Christopher Paolini think he is? I will not pass any judgment on the Mel Brooks film, but I am personally insulted that Paolini thinks he is so clever and such an artful writer that he can slip this in without anyone noticing. It's just a shame that the majority of his fanbase is too young to realize he's calling them stupid.

Christopher Paolini, you are a hack. The only reason your book saw the light of day in the first place is that your parents owned a publishing company. The fact that you have movie and video game money as a result of that is disgusting. I hope you have a good, long laugh with your other home schooled friends in Montana about how smart you are.

I have not read Stephanie Meyer's Twilight series, but I did have the displeasure of watching it's movie adaptation. Accordingly, the rest of this post will be based on my analysis of the film, speculation based on what readers have told me, and her hideous Wikipedia picture (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephenie_Meyer). If that bothers you, turn back now.

First, a note on the movie. Watching Twilight was the worst experience I've had in a movie theater since I worked at one and had to clean an auditorium after an elderly gentleman crapped himself in his seat and his caretaker slunk out without notifying anyone. It was the most God-awful movie I've seen since House of the Dead. At least HoD had the convenient excuse of being based on a first-person shooter video game. The characters in Twilight were so flat as to be one dimensional in the extreme. The tweeners must find it comforting that each character is uniformly assigned a single emotion for the entirety of the film. Cuts down on all that brain thinkin', I suppose.

People need to stop recreating vampires. For crying out loud, the only downside to being a Vam-Meyer is that you sparkle in the sunlight. Sure, you lust for blood, but apparently it's nothing that a hormone soaked teenager can't resist. Where's the inner turmoil? Meyer's vampires suffer from the same curse that makes Superman so much less interesting than Batman; they have no significant flaws. Don't tell me that it's impossible to write a contemporary work of fiction with respect to traditional vampire dynamics. I've seen it done. I refer you to George R. R. Martin's Fevre Dream and Ray Bradbury's From the Dust Returned. You don't need to reinvent the wheel, but you damn well better make sure it goes somewhere before you put sparkly rims on it.

In conclusion, let me say that I am horribly jealous of all these writers. I absolutely wish that I was in their places and hope for a fraction of the success that they have experienced. I cannot say for sure that I would not take the same paths as them, given the same circumstances. I do know, however, that before I'd even think about lending my creative property to movies and video games that I would make sure I had a worthwhile product and demand to oversee the scripts (if not write them myself). I definitely would not make shitty inside jokes in my writing to impress the cool kids in Montana, no matter how lonely I was or how many guns they may own.