Writing Wednesday: If You Don't Have Anything Nice to Say...Say Lots of It!

The Monday before last I wrote reviews of "Ant-Man" and "Fantastic Four" and you might have noticed that the review of the latter was a lot longer.  Why is that?  Because I didn't like it as much.  That seems to be what happens, doesn't it?  If you don't like something, you have a lot more to say about it than if you do like something.

Another example is someone on Goodreads read and rated the whole Scarlet Knight series.  The five books he liked, he just gave 4 or 5 stars without saying anything.  The three books he didn't like, those he could actually write something about.

I'm not really complaining because I do it too.  In the case of the movies I reviewed, as I said about "Ant-Man" is another good-not-great Marvel movie.  If I had written one I could have taken a review of "Thor 2" or "Iron Man 3" and swapped the names.  Seriously you can do Mad Libs on most Marvel movies by now.  Whereas with "Fantastic Four" people had been talking so much crap about it there was a lot meatier stuff to discuss.

You know what they say:  conflict is essence of drama.  Which is probably why things we don't like bring out our words a lot more than things we do like.  Plus there's that need to vent, which is really what got me started posting customer reviews on Amazon.

And yet as an author it's nice to hear what someone does like about a book.  I mean I know I'm not the only writer who's horribly insecure and needy about that stuff.  You like me?  WHY do you like me?  Was it this?  Was it that?  TELL ME!!!  (And then the person thinks you're a weirdo and no longer likes you.)

Of course I don't feel bad just giving a rating if for instance it's a really old book and the author is dead.  I mean, it's not like Shakespeare probably gives a shit if I liked Hamlet or not.  Or if it's someone really famous because again why does Stephen King give a shit if I liked The Green Mile?  He's busy counting his money and ripping off Simpsons plots.

But with authors who are alive and not famous (like me for instance) it's nice to provide a few words at least.  It's not the least you can do, but it's pretty close.