Title: What makes a book a good read? | Scott Berkun
Headings: What makes a book a good read?
What makes a book a good read?
Content: This fact is both wonderful and horrible. Wonderful because it means if you can find an audience for your particular approach to writing, you can be successful even if the rest of the world doesn’t like it. It’s horrible because success and what is good are entirely subjective which makes it easy to lose confidence, give up, or get distracted by looking for some mythical magic formula for “writing good books” which doesn’t exist. There are certainly good books on writing and story structure which are helpful, especially for new authors, but they’re more rough guides than step-by-step-magical-spells. Since books have no hidden parts, all the words are there on the page, it’s of great value to study books you and others think are good reads and ask “Why does this work the way that it does?” It’s also useful to think what makes for a bad read. A bad read probably means: The writer is very confused about what is interesting about their subject for the reader
The way sentences and paragraphs are constructed is confusing and hard to comprehend without reading them more than once
The book is organized poorly and it’s hard to understand why one story or chapter follows another
There is no momentum, emotional interest or curiosity created for the reader
Most serious writers have early readers who read drafts, give feedback, and help the writer understand what’s working in their current draft, and what it isn’t. They’re learning from actual readers which parts aren’t as strong as they think. All first drafts are bad.