Monday, September 14, 2015

Authors Behaving Badly

Kristen Houghton has an mildly interesting Huffington Post piece entitled A Bad Book Review Isn't the End of the World. It begins with the following quote
"Writers, fall into two groups" said Isaac Asimov, acclaimed science fiction author. "Those who bleed copiously and visibly at any bad review, and those who bleed copiously and secretly at any bad review."
I say "mildly interesting" because apart from a few anecdotes it doesn't have much to say that is new. But it does serve as an interesting jumping off point into the recent controversy over Chuck Wendig's Star Wars book and the way he has handled the criticism from fans.

Authors reacting badly to reviews is not new. Every couple of months I see something on the internet about an author who has lost their shit at negative reviews on Goodreads or Amazon. Sometimes the author responds with the threat of a lawsuit, as in the example of the reviewer who titled her 1-star Amazon review "Taking a bullet for all readers - oh god save your money!" and posted the book cover and author photo on her own website only to have the author threaten to sue for copyright infringement.

There are even websites that collate lists of author explosions.

The motivating example here is Chuck Wendig's response to fans following the release of his book Star Wars: Aftermath. The book has attracted a lot of bad reviews (roughly 40% 1-star reviews on Amazon when I last checked). Critics have cited many factors as being important. These include a controversy over the introduction of gay and lesbian characters to the Star Wars Universe (which is apparently not all that new), the writers style, in particular the decision to use third person present tense, and the introduction of modern terms and notions that appear, if not anachronistic, then at least out of place in the setting (e.g. one character refers to social media concepts like "trending").

Perhaps predictably, the reaction to these negative reviews has been to blame them on homophobia. This narrative has been picked up by the press, as in The Guardian story Star Wars novelist strikes back at gay character slurs and the CNet story 'Star Wars' author compares homophobic fans to the Empire:
Some fans who don't believe the "Star Wars" universe has room for gay characters have flooded Amazon's "Aftermath" page with negative, one-star reviews. In fact, one-star reviews count for 40 percent of the book's overall reviews.
Wendig himself seems aware that the negative reaction is more than just the result of homophobia, and also reflects changes made to the Star Wars Universe and to his voice as an author. But he does tend to get prickly in his main blog post on the issue. On the issue of voice:
As for my voice: I can’t do much about that. I’m me. My writing is my writing. I took a long time to find my voice and if it’s not your thing, I respect that. (That said, it also doesn’t make it “bad” writing, as some have suggested. It’s just not what you prefer, which is entirely okay.)
I might quibble with that; if your writing alienates a large fraction of your readers, then it would appear to satisfy a reasonable definition of the term "bad writing". But I accept that some readers might really like the voice and so it might be "good writing" for them.

On the changes to the Universe and fans feeling betrayed by Disney's decisions, he does express some sorrow but ultimately shows contempt for the fans who express their upset through negative book reviews:
I’ll say only this — if the only reason you didn’t like the book or left a review like that is because of some kind of campaign against it based on the EU/Legends canon, I am sorry. Honestly. I get that it sucks that some of the stories you love will remain unconsidered and unfinished. That’s not awesome. I’m not really sure what else would’ve been an option in terms of carrying that forward, though I also don’t know that Disney has officially put Legends out to pasture in terms of no new content ever. I will say, though, if your love of the EU drives you to campaigns like this, or hate-tweeting me or hate-mailing me, you’ve stopped being a fan. That’s not what being a fan is. Loving something is fandom. Hate isn’t, or shouldn’t be, part of it. Fandom is about sharing awesome things with like-minded people. It isn’t about spreading hate and forming spiteful tribes. That’s heinous fuckery. Do not partake in heinous fuckery.
I disagree. I think passion is at the heart of fandom. Passionately debating the relative merits of works of fiction is at the heart of fandom. Not mutual love-fests with only like-minded people.

On twitter, he basically states that they should keep their opinions to themselves:
Both Wendig and the commentators seem to be downplaying the problems many readers have with using third person present tense. I think they are wrong to do so. Unless it is done very well (and it is very hard to do very well) it can be very alienating for the reader. I rarely find that I enjoy books written this way.

Wendig threw a tantrum over this back in July:
This commentator seems to think complaints about writing style don't equate to "content" in the context of a negative review:
Most of the reviews have little in the way of actual content. There’s little discussion of what, exactly, is supposed to be bad about Aftermath, yet they are also very homogeneous in their opinion of what’s wrong with the book. The big target is Wendig’s writing style, which is third person present tense, a style that he’s honed over the majority of his work. Maybe I’m just cynical, but I’m surprised that this many reviewers have pinpointed this particular style as their main reason for hating the book.
It is also very wrong to try to distract from this criticism by focusing on the homophobia of a few commentators. When I looked, there were 233 1-star reviews on Amazon. I glanced at them all, although I got tired of quoting from them after the first couple. Most of them had content and their complaints were mostly about the quality of writing. Few zeroed in on the issue of gay characters (although many pointed to them as token characters with their sexuality irrelevant to the plot). Some early samples:
The author's diction choices and phraseology are a constant distraction.

This book—what can I say? It is written differently. Differently than anything I have ever read. Why? Never seen so many short sentences. Very short. Super short. Choppy? Yes. Hard to concentrate? Yes. Hyphens? Oh—the hyphens. Never seen so many hyphens—in my entire life. His writing style? Hard to follow. Just like this review. So many short sentences. Likes all these I am writing. I can be a writer too. Obviously. This is how the whole book is. Many examples. The hyphens—did I mention all the hyphens?

I do take issue, though, with the choppiness of most of it, the misused and abused punctuation, the literary laziness of it all.

The writing style is sloppy, to say the least. The characters are one dimensional and boring.

I was going to stand up for the author, and say that his writing style is for him to decide and that in the end what matters is the story, but having seen him unable to take any criticism, well then he is to blame too for this mess.
This is not just my view; other commentators have also come to the conclusion that it is about writing style and not homophobia:
I think the problem is inadvertently well summarized in this tweet:
That is, some authors (and I presume Wendig is one) choose to write in third person present tense for the challenge of doing so. They write this way to show off for their author friends. Reading these authors is akin to watching a gigantic circle jerk which, for most of us, is just not that enjoyable. And the authors that do it should be prepared to face the consequences in terms of fan backlash.

This is not to say that I have no sympathy at all for Wendig. Naturally, I am on Wendig's side when it comes to the homophobia.  His response here is pretty good:
And if you’re upset because I put gay characters and a gay protagonist in the book, I got nothing for you. Sorry, you squawking saurian — meteor’s coming. And it’s a fabulously gay Nyan Cat meteor with a rainbow trailing behind it and your mode of thought will be extinct. You’re not the Rebel Alliance. You’re not the good guys. You’re the fucking Empire, man. You’re the shitty, oppressive, totalitarian Empire. If you can imagine a world where Luke Skywalker would be irritated that there were gay people around him, you completely missed the point of Star Wars. It’s like trying to picture Jesus kicking lepers in the throat instead of curing them. Stop being the Empire. Join the Rebel Alliance. We have love and inclusion and great music and cute droids.
But he needs to learn that taking risks with your writing, and then attacking your readers and reviewers when your risks do not pay off, is going to drive readers away. I personally do not foresee reading any of his work in the future as a result of this incident. I don't want to be a guinea pig in an author's writing experiments. And I don't want to be exposed to contempt or outright abuse when I write that I did not enjoy a book. Nor do I want to be labeled a homophobe just for disagreeing with you.
.
Other authors are weighing in, too.

Cedar Sanderson has a strongly worded response to Wendig on Mad Genius Club:
When you confront your reader with, in the first paragraphs, sentences that don’t make sense, you are doing the worst thing to readers an author can do. Mislectorism. Betrayal. You’re showing your readers you hate them, and they will respond to it. “This particular ship has seen action: plasma scarring across the wings and tail fins; a crumpled dent in the front end as if it was kicked by an Imperial walker.” Look at that sentence. Consider that it is not alone. I don’t think I have ever seen as many colons in one passage in all the thirty-some years I have been reading. Nor have I seen this many sentence fragments in once place. I shudder to think of how many dashes and hyphens met their ends here. If I had to name this style I’d call it post-Modern chop suey, because everything is minced and mixed together until it resembles a dog’s breakfast.
(I like the term Mislectorist, apparently due to Mike Hoover).

In a comment on Sanderson's post, Amanda S. Green reached much the same conclusions that I did from looking at the reviews:
I’ve taken the time to read the reviews not only on Amazon but on B&N as well. Let’s look at the B&N reviews to start. There are 17 reviews there for a 3.5 star cumulative review. 6 of those 17 reviews are 5 stars. However, and this is a big however, of those 6 reviews 4 are one line back and forth comments between reviewers that have nothing to do with the book. Another has no comment at all. So let’s toss them out. The final five star review is a true review by someone who liked the book. The rest of the reviews deal with the plot or writing style. One review, one of the more supportive ones, does say that the inclusion of a gay character felt forced. Over all, the complaint, even among those giving good reviews, was that the writing was not at the level it should be and that Wendig did not appear to love the universe he was writing in.

If you look closely at the Amazon reviews, you see much the same thing. Yes, there are those upset with the fact the EU was tossed out. But most of the reviews concern the writing style or the story structure. Sure, there are a few who object to having a gay lead character, there always will be someone who doesn’t approve of something. But the overall message is that the book is poorly written.

The key thing here is to look at the author’s behavior and how he is alienating a fan base. He has basically called all those who don’t like his work homophobes simply because they don’t like his work. That is not a way to win friends or influence people, at least not in a good way.
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