Midnight Sun

I'm going to admit it, blog: I read the chapters of "Midnight Sun" Meyer had posted on her website. It had previously been a point of pride that I never read anything by her, nothing of Twilight save for brief excerpts that made me hate her for the horrid grammar and inability to lead a plot line to something interesting. Until two weeks ago it worked out well for me.

My friend purchased the comic version of twilight and in hopes of being able to 'read' it without all of Bella's irritating inner monologues and self doubts that I had been able to absorb even from the small bits I had been able to get my hands on, I actually picked the book up. It kept with all of my assumptions and expectations. Bella still came off as annoying and self centered as I had thought. Edward interested me, however slightly. A few of his lines were quite amusing.

When it came to my attention that there was a version of Twilight from Edward's point of view, I went to her website and dug it up. Even her Authors Note had me twitching: I've read too many internet-only authors who whined the same way she did, emoted and whimpered about losing interest because someone slighted them or their works. Regardless, I spent the next two days and long hours reading the damned thing.

Jasper and Alice came off as slightly badass. Edward read as something slightly less annoying than Bella with much more character development. He's very analytical and, true to claims, horribly masochistic.

I'm not about to bitch and moan about the character development (rather, lack thereof on the part of Bella and how exactly Edward got his feelings for her) but to discuss the writing style in general.

It read like a typical fanfiction. I write fanfiction on the side, I know how easy it is to slip into the cadence of simple writing and quick bursts of plot followed by weak attempts to create rich and inviting characters instead of mixing the two. Every word should move the story forward was not something Meyer seemed to learn in Creative Writing while in high school. She tries to insert large words where shorter, more precise words would have been much more appropriate in an attempt to sound like a 'real writer'. Meyer overcompensates for perceived lacking in her writing - maybe she reads too many critiques online.

If she wrote fiction for the sole purpose of posting it on the internet as opposed to charging people to -read- it, I'm sure she would have been quite popular. A truly fantastic fanfiction writer is Maldoror; if SHE wrote a novel, I would definitely purchase it and immediately. She took Gundam Wing to a believable and fantastic level in 'Freeport' and 'The Arrangement'.

Unfortunately for Meyer, fanfiction writing doesn't translate well into the real world of writing. There is a harsh and sometimes startling difference between writing for a novel with a specific audience and writing fanfiction for a specific audience. In an attempt to not insult the entire fanfiction reading community, I will word this next statement as delicately as possible: if you are writing a fanfiction for a show, series, or movie, most people are just satisfied with decent in-character depictions of already established characters and acceptable writing. It's hard to find a writer worth their salt writing fanfiction so when they do, people jump and latch on as if they were a male angler fish.

Writing for a novel is different. Unless you are writing for the Star Trek or some major fan-based novel series, you don't have a previously created plot line to work from nor do you have characters that people (fans) are automatically familiar of and know how their minds work. Everything you do is from scratch; you can't depend on people inferring everything based on what they already know of the characters of the world.

The Twilight series is written as a fanfiction. Meyer herself has stated that it was originally based on a dream she had - many stories have been, don't get me wrong. The difference between a novel based on a dream and a novel that sounds like a fanfiction based on a dream is that she gets caught up in her 'ideal' characters and refuses to let them grow through her writing. It seems to me that she has decided they are fully grown and will never become anything more, no matter how many thousands of words she may have written with them as an overly pretty backdrop to an equally pretty but poorly written plot.

While Edward's voice is sometimes very amusing (admittedly, I laughed once or twice, out loud), it cannot mask Meyer's voice. When you're reading and get the thought of, "This is actually not bad. I wonder how the original author would have written it. -Oh." there is something wrong.

Long story short, I do not think I'm going to bother with reading any more of Meyer's works. Not only does the underlying idea of systematic abuse, obsessive stalking*, and changing yourself for the 'perfect' guy upset me as a person but her style of writing, her voice, and her grammar simply drives me up the wall.

At least I gave it a chance. I can now honestly say 'It's not for me' and not have people try to shoot me down by asking if I have ever read it. Rock on.

Until next time, bloggers.


*To counter that, Edward -does- tweak a little at acting like a stalker.