What do you look for in a book?

I've been reading through the threads on various forums on the net, and saw a lot of comments about wither or not certain books are worth reading. Well, that got me thinking, we as authors want to write what people want to read, right?

Our goal is to improve our writing so that readers will enjoy what we write. Or at least I assume that most authors feel that way about it. The question on most writers' minds than is: How do we go about improving our writing?

Well, I think the first step is to look at what we ourselves read. So, what is it that you read? What is on your bookshelf? What do you check out from the library? Why do you read what you do? Why did you choose this book and nor that book? Why do you prefer that author over this one? What is it that makes certain books enjoyable for you?

When you head to the library or the bookstore or even Amazon.com, what is it that you look for in a book? What makes you choose to buy one book and not the other?

Try this exercise and see if it doesn't help you to become a better writer.

Sit down and think about what it is that makes a good book good to you, and write it down. Look at your favorite book. Why is it your favorite book? What is it about that book that hooked you in the first place? Was it the cover art? The author's reputation (i.e. you've liked other books they wrote). The characters? The plot line? The genre? The writing style? Examine everything you can think of and than write down all of the reason you can come up with as to why and how that book became your favorite book ever written.

Do this with all the books you've read lately that you thought were really good books. Is there a pattern in the type of books you like to read? Do they all have one or more things in common?

Do it in reverse with books you didn't read or stopped reading. Why did you not read it? What made you stop reading? Why was this book not as good as it could have been?

I have just done this, and here is what I came up with:

As much as it pains me to admit it, when in the bookstore or library, the first thing that catches my eye is not the book's story, plot, or author, it is the cover art. I see the cover art and say: What a great cover! Than I pick up the book to see if I like anything other than the cover. I think about half of my 10, 000+ books I bought just for the cover art, without ever reading the blurbs or the book for that matter.

My conclusion here is: Even if you can't write a good story, make sure you find a good artist to do your cover art, because the cover art will sell the book, even if your writing doesn't! Of course, this is not exactly a bonus for improving my own writing skills, but it does tell me that I'm heavily influenced by cover art, and so cover art should matter when it comes to the point of getting your story published.

For books I actually read and enjoy reading, the cover could be a blank white page for all I care, if it's a good book, I'll buy it regardless of the cover.

What makes it good for me: characters. I have to have at least one character that I can identify with or fall head over heels in love with or whom I can root for. I tend to favor male main characters (MCs) over female, probably because I'm a female and I like "falling in love with" the MC.

The MC is not always the character I like best however. More often than not, I prefer the villian. Points to picture of my favorite book villain Lord Sesshomaru from the book InuYasha by Rumiko Takahashi. ---->

In the case of books like InuYasha and Harry Potter, my favorite character in each series was only a minor character (Lord Sesshomaru and Professor Snape) and I read the series more because I liked these particular minor characters, more than for any other reason!

All in all, be they heroes or villains, main chars or minor chars, it's the characters themselves that draw me into the story, and keep me reading it and wanting to read more stories about those characters.

Second to the characters, I like good "life like" dialog, and a lot of it. You can't have a character driven story without dialog. However, not all dialog is good dialog, you start harping out in barely legible ye old English and the book'll get shelved before I finish the sentence. Make it sound real. I like to read words I can think of as real. Words that sound like someone is actually behind them. You don't speak in perfect grammar and neither should your characters.

I like books that are heavy in dialog and light on description. I think it is for that reason alone that I read a lot of comic books, manga, and graphic novels. All three of these types of books are 100% dialog based. Zero description. You read at a break neck fast pace because you don't have to stop an examine that there are 50 shades of purple in the sunset.

When the author stops the action of the story to start telling me the shapes and colors of the leaves on the trees, and the way the clouds are swirling by . . . I'll shelve the book and look for something else to read.

I see more than two pages in a row that are void of dialog . . . I'll shelve the book and look for something else to read.

Give me dialog. Lots of Dialog. I want to get inside the characters heads. I want to know what they are thinking and feeling, wither they are saying it out loud or thinking in their head doesn't matter, as long as I know the character is alive and thinking or talking about something. They must be doing. Talking is doing.

In other words, don't tell me about the characters, show me the character through words and action. This is a case when show don't tell becomes the rule I love.

Characters that stand around talking getting boring after a bit. I need characters that a doing something. In my case most of the characters I like are running around with swords fighting duels and demons.

I like pirates! I like ninjas! I like samurai! I love manga! The only thing they all have in common it a whole lot of action and a whole lot of sword fighting in that action.

Must have action . . . books without action do not fair well when read by me.

Settings. Settings influence your characters. Settings should be well written and clear, free of confusion. Setting is good in moderation. Setting breaks up dialog. Setting acts as the break between the action.

Settings should not take the lime light though unless the setting itself is the MC. Remember that your story is about your characters not the setting, so keep that in balance. It is easy for an author to start going on and on and on and on. I once read a book that had three whole pages devoted to describing the shades of purple in the sunset. Today, years later, I can't remember what the book was. I do remember that after three pages of glorifying the purple clouds and purple reflections on the water and not once single character in the mix, I put the book down and didn't finish reading.

Setting is good, just don't get carried away and go overboard with it.

How long is the story? Is it a 20 page short story? A 700 page Harry Potter giant? Can I read it in an hour or will it take me a week or more to get through?

Book length, how long or how short the book is greatly affects what I read. I am more likely to read a book from 25 - 175 pages long, than I am to read a book 400 - 700 pages long.

Why?

I like to get to the end of the story in one sitting. I would rather read several short books telling one long story (InuYasha for example), instead of one long book (Lord of the Rings for example.) I actually prefer that the book be chopped into smaller mini-volumes, that way I can read start through without having to put the book down, than tomorrow I can pick up the next volume and do the same.

I do read long books, in fact the Harry Potter series ranks as one of my all time favorites, but I do so rarely, preferring instead to read lots of smaller books.

Stories need a beginning and middle and an end. They need to start somewhere and go somewhere, and tell me how they got from where they started to where they ended up. Surprisingly, not a lot of stories actually do this. It is not uncommon for me to get to the end of a book and go "Huh? What is there a chapter missing here? What happened? Where did the end go?" I hate it when that happens and am not likly to read a second book by the same author if the first book I read by them did this.

Stories need a beginning and middle and an end, but I like stories best that "don't quite end", by that I mean, it leaves an opening hole so that there could be a second, third, or fourth book,in other words it allows the option to continue the story at a later date. They got to the end of the story, but it left an opening for another story to be told. That's good. That's very, very good. I like that.

That brings us to what I find most important: a series. . .

That brings us to what I find most important: a series. Series are the best. I am more likely to read a book if I know it is a "volume one" and that there will be a volume two and a volume three, etc to look forward to.

Most of my favorites books are parts of a series: Retief, InuYasha, Harry Potter, Bunnicula, Nancy Drew, Pippi Longstocking, Sherlock Holmes . . . the list goes on and on.

I love to read five, six, ten, twenty books about a single character, esp if it's a character I can identify with. Looking at my favorite series Retief and InuYasha, you see this factor weighing in heavy. Retief goes on for 14 volumes, ending only because the author himself died. One of the things I love best about InuYasha is the series goes on for more than 50 volumes!

Another factor that weighs in heavy is the genre of the story; if it's a Gothic romance with a terrified girl and haunted house on the cover, I'll buy it no matter what it is, just cause I collect Gothic romance books, eventually I read them, sadly only a few are actually worth reading, but the cover art was worth the price of the book.

The genre I enjoy reading the most is science fiction, I love GOOD fantasy, followed by mystery, than horror, and lastly romance. Action and adventure stories are great, but there are so few writers that can really pull it off. Fantasy I like IF I can find any that is original, they all seem to be rip-offs of each other, they all sound alike, like they were all written by the same author, it gets boring after a while.

~~EK