# What books had the best story and worst writing? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [April 10, 2005, 4:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-had-the-best-story-and-worst-writing/298669 "2005-04-10T16:54:21Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Annie-Xmas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecc23a/32.png) [@Annie-Xmas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Annie-Xmas)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2005, 6:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-had-the-best-story-and-worst-writing/298669/41 "2005-04-11T18:27:46Z")
Gaston Leroux’s “Le fantom de l’Opera” is pretty unreadable. But I hear the story has made tons of money. Same with Victor Hugo’s “Les Miserables.” ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2005, 7:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-had-the-best-story-and-worst-writing/298669/42 "2005-04-11T19:29:35Z")
I like William Martin as an author. He’s sort of the Boston James Michener…you know, he’ll trace a family from colonial times to today, and I really like his books. But he can’t write endings. He’ll be going on at a nice clip, pulling you into the story. Then you hit the last chapter, and it just ends, abruptly, without making sense. It’s as if he was just writing until he reached his page length, then he ends with something on the order of “and then everyone died. The end.” ---
**Author:** ![EmeraldGrue](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dc4da7/32.png) [@EmeraldGrue](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/EmeraldGrue)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2005, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-had-the-best-story-and-worst-writing/298669/43 "2005-04-11T19:39:48Z")
Heh heh heh, Victor Hugo. I can’t decide whether his style can be removed from the story or not; it just gets so goddamned pretentious sometimes: > [@Victor Hugo](#): > > Several weeks had elapsed. It was now the beginning of March. The sun, which Dubartas, that classic ancestor of periphrasis, had not yet styled “the grandduke of candles”, shone brightly and cheerily. > > - Chapter 1, Book VII, The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (Modern Library new translation) Stuff like that. You just want to slap the author and tell him to snap out of it. How on earth does it matter here what some poet or other said about the sun? The comments about Neil Gaiman…they _wound_ me! ---
**Author:** ![Horatio\_Hellpop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Horatio\_Hellpop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatio_Hellpop)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2005, 8:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-had-the-best-story-and-worst-writing/298669/44 "2005-04-11T20:02:59Z")
The best characters come from the most dreadful writers: Sherlock Holmes Tarzan Fu Manchu James Bond I guess they’re archetypes _because_ they’re two-dimensional. I just wish more literary heavyweights would dabble in some of these characters (Are the John Gardner _Bond_ books any good?). Doc Savage was a pretty decent character, but I think Robeson got five bucks every time he threw in the term “piano wire chest.” ---
**Author:** ![Leaper](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/4bbf92/32.png) [@Leaper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Leaper)\ **Post date:** [April 11, 2005, 11:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-had-the-best-story-and-worst-writing/298669/45 "2005-04-11T23:16:00Z")
Wasn’t **Frankenstein** written for a holiday contest, and thus created a little hurriedly (or at least under less than normal circumstances)? True, even then they had editing and rewriting, but still… ---
**Author:** ![Talon\_Karrde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/c5a1d2/32.png) [@Talon\_Karrde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Talon_Karrde)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2005, 3:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-had-the-best-story-and-worst-writing/298669/46 "2005-04-12T03:20:27Z")
I believe that the original story that Frankenstein comes from was written for a little competition among her circle of friends, but the actual novel was written later. I actually enjoyed the prose in it. Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Well, for the most part it’s okay for its time but I gave up at a point where I couldn’t stand the writing. It’s not far after the first part with Johnathan Harker. There’s a newspaper article in it that describes a ship, and the writing is so dry and dull that I gave up on the book there. I normally really live Edgar Allan Poe’s writing, but the first few pages of “The Fall of the House of Usher” have several sentences that are utterly terrible. They are long and have tons of commas and are needlessly complex. I find that type of writing confusing, and don’t really understand it unless I read it sort of backwards. The Scarlet Letter. I don’t remember the author, but I couldn’t stand the prose. I like the theme quite a bit, though I do think the author got carried away with the symbolism. ---
**Author:** ![Millit\_the\_Frail](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/51bf81/32.png) [@Millit\_the\_Frail](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Millit_the_Frail)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2005, 4:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-had-the-best-story-and-worst-writing/298669/47 "2005-04-12T04:05:53Z")
I’m 23, but just last year I got caught up in the **Dragonlance** fantasy novels. (I haven’t read the whole setting or anything, just the two main trilogy collections by Margaret Weis and Tracy Chapman.) They’re written for young adults, so it’s not surprising that there’s plenty to be desired in the writing. The stories, however, are quite amazing. I would love to see them as films, but there’s no way that they would be any good without a LotR-trilogy-sized budget. Mr. Frail is going for a Master’s in Creative Writing and thinks that the brilliance of the narrative is unintentional. How’s that for “crappy writing, great story?” ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2005, 4:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-had-the-best-story-and-worst-writing/298669/48 "2005-04-12T04:58:50Z")
I’ve never even considered the question. I mean, I figured that if I liked the story enough to finish it, then I must have enjoyed the writing. ---
**Author:** ![pepperlandgirl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/f17d59/32.png) [@pepperlandgirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pepperlandgirl)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2005, 5:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-had-the-best-story-and-worst-writing/298669/49 "2005-04-12T05:41:45Z")
> [@Talon Karrde](#): > > The Scarlet Letter. I don’t remember the author, but I couldn’t stand the prose. I like the theme quite a bit, though I do think the author got carried away with the symbolism. Hawthorne. I’m guessing by the “carried away with the symbolism” that you’re not familiar with the rest of his works. He’s about as subtle as a sledge-hammer to the head and he has absolutely no self-control when it comes to symbolism. See **The Minister’s Black Veil** and **Young Goodman Brown**. I love him dearly. ---
**Author:** ![Large\_Marge](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/50afbb/32.png) [@Large\_Marge](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Large_Marge)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2005, 6:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-had-the-best-story-and-worst-writing/298669/50 "2005-04-12T06:01:36Z")
“The Search for the Green River Killer” is the most poorly written book on which I’ve ever wasted $5.95. There were countless typos, verb splits, tense disagreements, and about 30 pages in, I realized the author had spelled a sheriff’s name THREE DIFFERENT WAYS. Sad. Truly sad. The editor (if there _was_ one) should be shot. Immediately. In front of his/her peers. Without a cigarette or a last wish. And no blindfold. ---
**Author:** ![Horatio\_Hellpop](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/e5b9ba/32.png) [@Horatio\_Hellpop](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatio_Hellpop)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2005, 8:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-had-the-best-story-and-worst-writing/298669/51 "2005-04-12T08:40:21Z")
> [@Leaper](#): > > Wasn’t **Frankenstein** written for a holiday contest, and thus created a little hurriedly (or at least under less than normal circumstances)? True, even then they had editing and rewriting, but still… The most-read version of **Frankenstein** is the Third Edition, written 15-20 years after that famous night at Byron’s villa. Mary Shelley, kind of the Courtney Love of her era, used the bulk of her literary powers rewriting that book several times. She wrote a couple other novels, including **Walpera** , but few modern readers have read them. You want to read something hacked out overnight? Dr. Polidari’s contribution to that same contest, “The Vampire,” survives in some form or another. Well, I don’t think he had a literary reputation to protect. ---
**Author:** ![Abe](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/f1d935/32.png) [@Abe](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Abe)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2005, 11:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-had-the-best-story-and-worst-writing/298669/52 "2005-04-12T11:17:38Z")
How is Tolkien a bad writer? Likewise, how can you accuse Philip K. Dick of bad writing when, to my knowledge, he deliberately wrote in monotone in order to let the extravagant and ridiculous developments in his fiction take over? I find his style is almost hypnotically effective. I remember _Dragonlance_. Highly entertaining, although I get the impression that what the writers started out with a D&D game as inspiration but never played it to the end. I say this because some of the plot seemed painfully contrived: that whole part towards the end with the half-elf and his dragon-riding girlfriend made me want to throw up. With a host of interesting characters to chooe from – even the good ones that haven’t been killed or revealed to be supreme beings, they have to zoom in on the blandest (Tanis) and the most two-dimensional (Kit or Kittie or whatever is the name of that cardboard cut-out) in the entire story. The series is certainly not a masterpiece of the English language, but it is actually better written than a lot of fantasy out there (admittedly, that is not saying much). I too have always thought they would make good movies, given a few important fixes. Stephen Donaldson uses language that has been described as elephantine. Although it is in some parts quite clumsy, overall it fits very well the high degree of introspection and character analysis, and is probably the reason why some people are so disturbed by the hero they actually want to kill him. Without Donaldson’s extravagantly overdone penmanship and his inimitable diction, the series would probably be an abysmally boring exercise, rather like some heavy pieces of Russian literature. James Fenimore Cooper wrote a good story in an absolutely appalling manner in _Last of the Mohicans_. [Samuel Clemens’s essay on Cooper’s literary offences](http://www.pbs.org/marktwain/learnmore/writings_fenimore.html) is definitely worth reading – rarely has a writer been thus panned by another. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2005, 11:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-had-the-best-story-and-worst-writing/298669/53 "2005-04-12T11:36:46Z")
> [@Kaspar Hauser](#): > > They get much better, prose-wise. I think it’s been said that she rushed the first few books into print. I’m almost finished with the last one now (_The October Horse_) and it’s the best one yet. Much terser and the dialogue is much more natural sounding (though not entirely). So you have plodding prose and dull characters for, say, 3,000 pages, and then it starts getting interesting? Wow. She’s like the Bizarro Robert Jordan. ---
**Author:** ![Scott\_Plaid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/258eb7/32.png) [@Scott\_Plaid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scott_Plaid)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2005, 12:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-had-the-best-story-and-worst-writing/298669/54 "2005-04-12T12:57:00Z")
I have always been a big fan of fantasy novel involving people from the current period of time entering lands of wizards and warriors. Since I first found such novels, and the concept of Magical Realism" in entertainment. I have read each example I can find. You can imagine how thrilled I was when I heard the plots to some Dean Kuntz novel… I mean, they all apeared to be about real people dealing with bizarre events, which like M.Night Shyamalan did a pretty good job of in unbreakable . (and not much else.) Alien invasion, being trapped in an otherwise deserted office building with a serial killer, Calvin and Hobbes being a real life story, with the tiger being real, and protecting you from harm, etc. Then I actually read the books. ::Where’s the puking smiley?::He can write in such a way that I can envision the scenes, but the men all seem the same, and it seems so depressing. ---
**Author:** ![Bridget\_Burke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/7cd45c/32.png) [@Bridget\_Burke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bridget_Burke)\ **Post date:** [April 12, 2005, 1:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-had-the-best-story-and-worst-writing/298669/55 "2005-04-12T13:14:30Z")
> [@Chance the Gardener](#): > > I’m surprised no one has mentioned **Philip K. Dick** yet. His prose just makes me clench my teeth, but I love the stories. It seems that if the sentences were just rewritten they’d improve tenfold. I’ve got a theory that if I read him in translation he’d actually be better, but I’ve never sought French editions of his stuff. Once I do, I’ll know. I remember a discussion about Philip K Dick–perhaps on NPR many years ago. Apparently, he only had an editor for only 2 books: _The Man in the High Castle_ & another whose name escapes me. Inhabitants of the SF ghetto got no respect in those days; Kurt Vonnegut escaped but memorialized them with his tales of Kilgore Trout. Yes, Dick’s work needed editing–but it was not available to writers of cheap paperbacks. I’d still rather re-read one of his weird adventures than plunge into the overheated, overgrown prose of editor-disdaining Anne Rice. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-books-had-the-best-story-and-worst-writing/298669.md?page=2)