What makes you think you've beaten Sturgeon's Law?

90 of these posts are posted by complete shitty writers with those statistics.

I do not think I'm in the top 10, and I may never be. My ultimate goal in life is to get my book(s) sold all across the country. Maybe then I will beat Sturgeon's law

Here's something:

Who here can go and find something in their medium, that's being sold, and say "yeah, I can do better than this."

And no. I don't mean "I know I'm better than Twilight."

Don't even think of pulling that.

<3

^^ I know I can beat the Halo Expanded Universe among others.

Maybe in a few years.

Okay, let me try this again: Compared with amateur writers, one way I "beaten" Sturgeon's Law is the fact that I recognize my flaws as a writer. Identifying the problem is one part of solving it, but there are plenty of aspiring writers out there that think their work is genius and are ready for a rude awakening.

So while the quality of my writing is debatable, I have the insight needed to hone my writing towards higher levels.

edited 21st Aug '11 8:08:58 PM by chihuahua0

I don't consider myself a particularly good writer in general, but within the boundaries of my age and experience I think I'm doing okay. I'm sixteen; I figure there's nothing wrong with spending a while in the bottom 90% while I'm learning.

I don't know if I've beaten Sturgeon's Law. The beta readers haven't answered back. I hope it's just because they're busy and not because my writing was so horrible, it broke their brains. (Just kidding.)

But, seriously, I really don't know if I've beaten the odds. Every time I look at other works of writing (especially examples from the genres for which I write), I think about all of them, "They're so much better than me!" When I was a fledgling Pokemon fic writer, I used to think that way about Cori Falls. Yes, really. I'm just not very good at judging the quality of my work compared to other works or compared to a standard, unless it's a piece of academic writing.

I'd say that I'm good at grammar and spelling, but that's not enough. That's like saying, "I'm an excellent student because my average is seventy-five percent." I'd say that I'm good at keeping people in-character, but I may be interpreting the characters all wrong. Or maybe there might not be just one interpretation of a character (I've had people tell me they had a better grasp than me on characters I'd created in original fiction and could basically write the story better than I could, but they wouldn't tell me how to make it better).

I'd say I'm good with continuity, but what if I just can't see all the plotholes, or what if I'm not good at explaining things without infodumping?

I'd say I have original ideas, but there's always the argument that anything good has been done before (usually, I just answer, "It hasn't been done by me" and go on with it).

Too long, didn't read; I need beta readers to tell me if I've beaten the law.

@AHR: I have. I don't suppose you've seen my Adventurers Wanted liveblog? It would be here. In short: I know I'm better than that crap. In long: I know I can show instead of tell, characterize compellingly, and plot way better.

Well, I did finally get someone to read what I had so far, somehow. They seemed to like it quite a bit.

I haven't ruled out the possibility of head trauma, though.

Not any that I've read, but then again I don't read bad books. I don't know if it's because I'm good at picking out what I like at a glance, or because I only really pick up stuff after numerous recommendations, or if I've just been lucky, but I can't recall many bad books- or even mediocre ones- that I've read.

Except for school assignments, and then mainly Dickens. But that's hardly in my genre.

Maybe some of the stuff I read when I was much younger? I dunno, I can't remember the quality of that stuff very well.

edited 21st Aug '11 10:44:15 PM by deathjavu

I've picked up some essentially-random titles from the sci-fi shelves of used bookstores (because I was collecting by illustrator), and let me tell you, that stuff is bad. I trust most of the people on this forum to come up with better plot devices than a poison capsule embedded in the heroine's heart that goes off when her true love speaks her name.

so bad it's good? or just plain bad?

I don't.

Claiming that you've beaten 90% of all published writers in a particular genre is a very ambitious claim. Because, think about it. If you are already that good, you would have been able to be a full-time writer capable of living on royalties already.

I am not that good, at least not yet. I know my writing is better than Maradonia Saga and a good portion of fanfictions, arguably on the same tier as Eragon and Twilight (and that is a stretch), and worse than everything else.

edited 22nd Aug '11 2:11:13 AM by ArgeusthePaladin

I'm currently trying to do better than a specific published work, so . . .

An aside on one-upmanship

edited 22nd Aug '11 3:58:20 AM by feotakahari

I'd like to believe that, but unfortunately there is not a 1:1 correlation between skill and getting published, and even less so between skill and sales.

I trust I don't have to provide examples for that anecdote.

...

...

or >:| ? I just can't decide.

I think that's where many of my story ideas came from, "I like this but I didn't like this, why didn't they do that, oh man, that would be a really cool change, etc."

edited 22nd Aug '11 12:15:09 PM by deathjavu

I'd like to point out the entire wall at my local borders (or at least, the entire wall that was at my local borders... fuck you, bad economy!) of Twilight knock-offs, and the thousands of 12 year olds writing terribad Naruto fanfiction.

Seriously (well not actually seriously, this is hyperbole), anyone who has passed an English class in their life is probably already in the top 50% of writers.

Regarding your "one-upsmanship": I don't do this exactly, but one thing I really like to do in coming up with story ideas is look at standard types of works and find the stuff they never put in - to take one example that's bothered me since I was ten, what happens after the Alien Invasion is beaten off?

To judge my own work would be pretty biased, but I've been told that I write with a high level of competence (grammar, spelling, vocabulary range, etc.) and that I apparently have a "distinctive", "compelling" and mature writing style. My best friend (who doubles as a bit of a beta) says that my characters are well-rounded/developed and that their reactions to different situations are realistic and very believable. I'm pretty confident in his feedback because we do have a brutal honesty policy with each other, but I doubt I make the 10% at this point in my career. It would take a lot more opinions to justify a statement like that anyways.

To answer my own question, I tend to take the "cheap" way out, and end up comparing myself to webcomics that are being published. This is mostly because I want to write graphic novels.

It's a very very cheap way to get an ego boost, but I never claimed I was fair.

I'm personally not worried about Sturgeon's Law with regard to myself or other writers. I agree with kaschei that grammar and spelling are such rudimentary skills that they need not be cited as the characteristics of a good writer. It really should go without saying, but I understand why it comes up in conversations like this one.

Confidence in one's writing is vital to the strength and success of the literature in question. Some people have complained that making positive remarks about a work that one hasn't even published is a mark of egotism, but I don't think that's the case. Rather, the difference between healthy confidence and arrogance is a matter of awareness. Egotistical people are blinded by their exaggerated self-worth, and their writing suffers as a result. Confident writers know how good they are and make it a point to continue to hone their skills. Discipline, for me, is a crucial trait of high-quality writing.

Originality is overrated and severely misused. Originality is not equal to quality. Fledgling writers and even many veterans get way too caught up in making some brand new approach to a story, and while that approach may be brand new, it's not necessarily good. Some of the best works of literature are based on common elements of plot, characterization and setting. This isn't to say that originality is trivial, but what I do mean is that originality is secondary to how you package your idea. Take a common storytelling device and frame it in a way that suits your writing technique. Many writers can't do this.

The movie Avatar, for example, was a very cliched story that we've all seen several times before. However, it was largely successful because the basic story was formatted in a way that most people hadn't seen before. My story isn't incredibly original, but it takes a basic and familiar plot/characterization style and dresses it up in a way that many future readers should find refreshing.

Stephanie Meyer may be unoriginal and her grammar leaves much to be desired. However, people are still buying her books, and even her critics pay an ample amount of attention to her work. I'm not necessarily substantiating that any attention is good attention, but the fact of the matter is that overcoming Sturgeon's Law may have more to do with the work's general acceptance as a total platform rather than its sole literary dimension. In other words, a good story is not always a good book and vice versa. Yeah, a lot of fiction sucks, but the good works of fiction I see are the ones that don't get so caught up in being the next masterpiece. Not everyone is going to agree with me here, but writers who overextend themselves and try to out-perform everyone else are the ones that tend to be over-the-top and ironically juvenile. For me, good writers are people who just want to tell a great story on its own merits.

edited 25th Aug '11 9:59:56 PM by Aprilla

The catch, of course, being that the blind egotist is also often blind to their own blindness.

I think the best anyone can hope for is a sincere desire to be a better writer *

Which way improvement lies is a question best answered by other works and other writers, by readers and critics, etc.

• 1 @ 100%

@ Aprilla, agree on the originality point. There's nothing quite so annoying as an aspiring writer who thinks they're the world's greatest gift to fiction because they've thought up a creative trapping for a story we've all heard a million times before. Grandiose and cool are not synonymous with high quality.

I disagree, actually. Even if you're the greatest writer who ever lived, if you keep turning up cliches, I won't enjoy your story. Originality isn't more important to me than quality, but it's as important.

If I may be permitted to toot my own horn:

Research. Plenty of research and attention to detail. I have what could be almost described as a fanatical policy on World Building, and for some pretty good reasons. I'm one of those obsessives that has this compulsive need for things to make sense. I like observing complex systems and seeing how it's sub-systems interact.

^^ You missed the point. I am talking about cliches, which some people dress up in "original" trappings and think that they are doing something spectacularly novel.