Being "The best"

I have seen that writters tend to be very competitive.

Unfortunately or rather very fortunatley there is no such thing as being "the best". While tope ten list of books and top seller books are very important they just mean that a story was liked by many not that the story is the "best"

While there is such thing as quality and objetivivity (The mere fact that we can improve is prove that there is such thing as quality)that helps us to admire the greatest authors in literature like Tolkien and shakespeare at the end what matters is what you as an individual like.

To give an example imagine a teen girl is reading her favorite book of the Twilight saga. When she is reading herself as Bella Swan and having fantasies of being in the twilight world metting the cullens and being Edward's girlfriend. In her mind and at the moment she is reading it twilight is the best book ever.

It doesn't matter how many nobel prizes other authors are winning or how many prizes "The Labyrinth of Solitude" is winning nor how prestigious Shakespeare. For her (at the moment) Stephenie Meyer is the best author ever. When you are reading a story and you like it only that story exists and matters.

It's true that good works of fiction are more likely to be liked but no always. Some authors don't get to ever find their fans and some are not even on their country or even time.

As shocking as this will be Harry Potter as good as it is doesn't appeal to many people and a lot of people in fact like other works of fiction like The Lordof The Rings for instance.

In fact this is the reason why you hears words like (overrateed and underrated"). Overrated just means "many people disagree with me but I am right!. People will have differen opinions and tastes after all and there isn't on "better taste or finer taste" they are all simply different. Some people will love fantasy and some don't some will like your work and others don't.

You never know how many people your work will appeal to.But one thing is for sure. If you strive for quality and you do your best, you will always have people that like it.

In my opinion authors should seek to be the best they can be and true to themselves more than actually being "the best". "Who is the best" will be always be the choice of the fan :) individually.

edited 19th Feb '12 9:25:12 AM by FallenLegend

Make your hearth shine through the darkest night; let it transform hate into kindness, evil into justice, and loneliness into love.

Well, comparing yourself to other people is the safest and simplest way to evaluate yourself at writing. You cannot easily say "my writing is good", but you can say "my writing is better than Meyer/Paolini/Fanfics/Other Stock Example" with confidence*

. (And no one ever claims to be "the best". Even if they believe it, they will say "better than most".)

However, I can't really say that I've noticed writers to be overly competitive in general. Besides, pretty much everyone was against the idea of the "You Do Better" thread, which presumably inspired this.

Bestseller lists are just like the Billboard charts: it reflects what's popular, but what's popular may not always be the best.

So, if you want to write and compare your work to what is listed as "the best", keep in mind that what's popular may not always be best. What is a good idea is to just have a broad scope of literary works. Don't shun the popular new stuff and don't just read the old revered stuff. All kinds of stories can help you write the best that you can.

That's just how I see it.

(屮≖益≖)屮 彡 ┻━┻ F*ck yo' table; Go read my book! —> http://goo.gl/mtXkm

Such a view has some merits. The trouble is, telling yourself that quality can't be objectively measured and all work reads differently to different people is a really excellent way for terrible writers to get out of admitting that they're terrible writers.

Scepticism and doubt lead to study and investigation, and investigation is the beginning of wisdom. - Clarence Darrow

I think quality is the only objective factor there is. After that what's good and what is not will depend on every person.

Make your hearth shine through the darkest night; let it transform hate into kindness, evil into justice, and loneliness into love.

For example, some people have a different threshold for quality, and some people enjoy certain works in a different way, relative to its intended purpose.

For example, you can argue My Immortal is one of the best books, with the reasoning that it's So Bad, It's Good and that it's either the best Troll Fic or case of Poe's Law.

But who determines what's the best in literature? What science tells us what's the best?

Exactly

Nothing that's my point

Make your hearth shine through the darkest night; let it transform hate into kindness, evil into justice, and loneliness into love.

Ah, the old objective quality vs. quality by popular vote argument...

There are different kinds of "quality", and each appeals to a different target audience. So you can say a literary classic has a certain quality that My Immortal doesn't, and the many people who appreciate that kind of quality will testify to that.

Is this quality objectively better than the qualities that My Immortal has, but the classic doesn't? I want to say yes, but I suspect that the true answer to this question is very complicated, and too close to "no" for comfort. Different people judge by different standards, and trying to decide which standards are better is problematic because, of course, different people will have different ideas of the standards by which we ought to judge standards, and you see where this is going...

For this reason I believe "How does this work hold up to standard X?" is a more fruitful venue of discussion than "How good is this work?", as long as X is reasonably well-defined.

edited 21st Feb '12 4:58:27 AM by TripleElation

Pretentious quote || In-joke from fandom you've never heard of || Shameless self-promotion || Something weird you'll habituate to

I am just competitive and arrogant. I want the attention, really.

Read my stories!

Seems relevant.

edited 21st Feb '12 8:33:27 AM by moocow1452

My webzone.

I think this whole thing depends on the writer's personality and temperment. Some strive to be the best to push the envelope of what they can do. Others want to stand tall amongst the writers they admire as examples to future writers, just as their favorite writers encouraged them to write.

True, it is important that the works of writers should reflect who they are, but don't throw out that striving to be "the best" when it comes to internal motivations.

edited 21st Feb '12 11:38:01 AM by EldritchBlueRose

Has ADD, plays World of Tanks, thinks up crazy ideas like children making spaceships for Hitler. Occasionally writes them down.

Regarding the objective vs. subjective quality debate:

While I do believe there is a large subjective component to determining the quality of a work, I believe that there are objective means by which you can judge a work's quality.

Personally, I think there are four markers of quality writing:

1. Technical proficiency demonstrated by proper spelling, grammar, and syntax.
2. Consistency, both internal (no contradictions within the work itself) and external (general conformity to how the real world actually works, or how it could conceivably be extrapolated to work).
3. The ability to make the reader empathize with the focus characters of the work.
4. A coherent plot constructed in such a manner that enough suspense is maintained throughout the work to maintain the reader's attention.

The last two are highly subjective; the first two, however, are quite objective. You can bend them to some degree and still have a good-quality work, but if you neglect them entirely you'll never rise above mediocre (and it may also affect the more subjective portions negatively as well).

I think it's also helpful to keep Goethe's Three Questions for Critics in mind:

1. What was the artist trying to do?
2. Were they successful in doing it?
3. Was it worth doing in the first place?

edited 21st Feb '12 1:56:57 PM by Specialist290

I've always disagreed with the third question there.

To a degree, I'm with nrjxll. I mean, readers don't have to necessarily empathize with the characters, but if that's the case, they should care about what the characters are doing. One, the other, or both. Like so:

edited 21st Feb '12 2:59:31 PM by CrystalGlacia

"Jack, you have debauched my sloth."

Yes, "engaging characters" is a better way to put it than "empathetic characters."

There's also writing style (fluency, pacing, evocativeness) and ideas (are they interesting? Do they make sense?).

Actually, I was talking about Goethe's Three Questions there. Although I do agree that characters don't need to be empathized with so much as just engaging.

I want to be, if not good, at least creative. Let's take as a comparison Alien Dice. I cannot reasonably argue that it's a well-written comic, and the art is some of the derpiest I've ever seen, but there's no way to hate a comic that simultaneously deconstructs the mons genre and reconstructs pulp romance.

(At the very best, I hope that I can serve as a source of inspiration to other people, as many bad authors with good ideas have served as a source of inspiration to me.)

That's Feo . . . He's a disgusting, mysoginistic, paedophilic asshat who moonlights as a shitty writer—Something Awful

tl:dr for me

When you like something only that work exists for you.quality is the only objetive quantifier. But at the end personal preference triumphs any "best work"

Make your hearth shine through the darkest night; let it transform hate into kindness, evil into justice, and loneliness into love.

On topic, with regards to "was it worth doing?", is that writing or reading? They're quite different things.

I think it's worth being the best you can be as a matter of personal pride, but that's obviously a subjective evaluation. As far as showing your work to other people goes, though, I think you should aspire to show them something in some way "worth" reading, whether it's something that they will enjoy or that will inform them or whatever, and for that you need to take your readers into consideration.

Welcome To TV Tropes | How To Write An Example | Text-Formatting Rules | List Of Shows That Need Summary | TV Tropes Forum | Know The Staff

yeah I basically wrote a laconic of my long post

edited 21st Feb '12 7:35:17 PM by FallenLegend

Make your hearth shine through the darkest night; let it transform hate into kindness, evil into justice, and loneliness into love.

Oh, I see. Sorry about that, I thought you tl;dr'd everyone else. My bad.

Welcome To TV Tropes | How To Write An Example | Text-Formatting Rules | List Of Shows That Need Summary | TV Tropes Forum | Know The Staff

I see everyone's point about the "empathizing vs. engaging." I may have to revise my list a little.