what are you talking about? Pooptastic is a perfectly cromulent word!
You think you can do better? Not from what I can see in your review. The last line is funny... yep, that's about it. And yes I did just review your review.
You sound a little butthurt there Glix. I thought his review was fine, and I think it is good advice that any aspiring author needs to take: find a terrible novel, and read it whenever you feel your own writing is bad. I do the same with Rich Shapero's Wild Animus.
Book me today! I also review weddings, funerals and bar mitzvahs.
Right, the review is ok, just ok. That is my criticism, it is bland. I can't see any signs of any stylistic flare whatso ever. Absolutely nothing that would support his claim that he could write better. The last line made me laugh yes, but at that frequency of witticism I could hardly call his writing style superior to a Christopher Poalini's. At a local seminar for aspiring authors I have infact received the exact oppossite advice, according to the speaker: the worst thing you can to is try and outdo a style you think is inferior and unenjoyable to read, strive instead to write the kind of story that you yourself love to read, you'll enjoy it more and the end result will be better too.
Well, I appreciate your feedback, sir! I don't truly know whether my writing is better than Paolini's; I merely meant that it can it least inspire others to try better. I never claimed I was a better writer, so your claim that my claim has no evidence has no evidence, because no claim was made. Also, I said that I was a poor writer myself in the second paragraph. I believe, if you look, that I refer to myself as a hack. Thus Chrisropher P. is someone I can look to for encouragement as a highly unoriginal person.
All joking aside (but is it REALLY a joke to say I'm a bad writer?), I don't think that Stephen King's advice and that of the speaker you mentioned are mutually exclusive. Bad books are good for the purpose of avoiding what does not work. If a doctor can't diagnose cancer then he can't really treat it, now can he? We need bad writing (see above review) to differentiate between what works in fiction and what doesn't.
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Terribly crafted, but surprisingly useful.
Inheritance is, in a word, pooptastic. Okay, so in a made-up word. But there are a couple ways that the series can benefit us. The first way is obvious, and many have pointed it out, but I say it nonetheless: doorstoppers. Paolini's pointlessly longwinded writing has made for some books of impressive weight. Maybe they can be used to hold down buttons in order to solve in standard dungeon puzzles? They're probably cliche enough.
The second use is as a beacon of bad writing, nonexistent research, and just plain wrongness (as in Uncanny Valley creepiness). As I am working on my first foray into writing a full novel, Eragon has shown me what a bad writer really is capable of. I am at once shown errors that no writer should make, and encouraged in that even a bad writer can make a fuck-ton of money if they make their story nice and flashy. So, being a hack, I can look to Paolini as inspiration.
Oh, shit. I forgot that his parents ran a print company and actually produced that monstrosity. And after that, the pretentious snot was lucky enough to have a Knopf executive's nephew (I think it was a nephew) read the book and fall in love with it. Yeah, I think he was an elementary schooler.
The last use is to provide that magic moment Stephen King described, when you put down a book and say: "Boy, that sucked! I can do better than this, and this got published!"
Anyway, I can hardly begin to bash the cycle adequately. If you want someone's much better thought out criticism, I recommend Kippur's Eragon Sporkings. They're hilarious, and go very far in depth. Thank you for reading, unless you are Christopher Paolini, in which case: PLEASE STOP!