I recently read an article titled The Trouble With Imitation In Fiction on a writing advice website called Springhole.net. This website focuses on teaching young writers to write better fanfiction, and this advice can sometimes be applied to any type of story. In my earliest writing days when I was obsessed with writing fanfiction, I would refer to the website for advice on how to improve myself. Unfortunately, the writer of this website has lost their grip on reality.
Three years ago, they wrote an article warning against imitating popular fiction. “Many writers, especially young and inexperienced ones, assume that if a work is popular, then it must be good quality.” There is an element of truth here: A lot of fledgling writers do misunderstand what makes a work popular.
However, no one believes quality is what makes a book popular. Just look at The Twilight Saga, one of the most popular series of all time that is literally the worst thing ever put on a piece paper quality-wise. The popularity of work is a combination of marketing and the entertainment value of the work itself—a lot of tween girls found the story of having a hot vampire love you in weird and stalkerish ways to be flattering, even though most adults would reasonably call Bella a narcissistic drama queen. Fifty Shades of Grey understood what made Twilight popular and became popular because of it. Women like stories about being targeted by hot and powerful men, whether that power is wealth or vampiric powers, and about exploring that relationship no matter how fetishy it is.
The writer claims that people ignore flaws in a work if someone is popular, something which is only historically true in cult-like mentalities. “As [the popular author] gradually lost [his or her] goodwill, people were more and more open to seeing the flaws in her work.” No, people were more critical of a work because they now hated the writer, which happens whenever an author becomes controversial. The old saying “death of the author” stems from divorcing bad people from their own works because people like the work but hate the author. But the maker of Springhole.net seems content to contradict themselves: “The point is not to comment on which elements of [a popular work] may have been objectively bad, but to highlight how big of a role that subjective perception [of the author] played in [his or her] success and fame.” In other words, a writer’s work cannot become popular unless the writer her- or himself is already popular. Quality of a work doesn’t matter because popularity of a work is completely independent of it.
This mindset is verifiably false. Just look at Twilight and Fifty Shades of Gray. A popular concept is popular completely independent of the popularity of a writer. The quality of that writer’s work is entirely dependent on how effectively they deliver this popular concept in an entertaining way and how they market it to the correct audience. The Harry Potter series focused on a boy who had a terrible family and who one day discovered they were a wizard and that they could visit a magical, special school that allowed them to escape their terrible family. This concept is naturally going to appeal to kids who either have terrible home lives or who hate boring old school. The Percy Jackson series uses the same basic concept but with a summer camp, and it is also extremely popular, though the writing is arguably worse. Wings of Fire has a similar concept but all the characters are dragons, so it’s not relatable to anyone who doesn’t like xenofiction, which is a lot of people. I haven’t read An Unfortunate Series of Events but I’m told it has a similar concept. Harry Potter is such a culture phenomenon because it took a popular concept and executed it with real and obvious talent of the writer. Any claim otherwise is just cope because of her controversial takes. What the Springhole.net creator doesn’t understand is that a creator doesn’t have to have the same opinions as the reader to have obvious and recognizable talent.
People with superpowers has always been and always will be an extremely popular concept. Harry Potter, Percy Jackson, and Twilight alone prove this. The longest running comics, DC and Marvel, prove that it is a timeless quality. The existence of demigods with superpowers, such as Hercules and Achilles, shows this concept has existed for thousands of years—and it doesn’t stop being popular or cool when a bad writer gets a hold of the general concept. In fact, it’s only natural that when you put this popular concept into the hands of a talented writer then it is going to be a sweeping phenomenon. Joss Whedon has always been a talented writer despite being extremely controversial and a sexist man behind the scenes, but the Marvel movies wouldn’t be so popular without him. Even his famous quirky Marvel is still replicated in movies today, but without him it’s flat and terrible—the exact kind of imitation new writers need to be warned against doing. But claiming that Joss Whedon is talentless just because he’s obviously a bad person only shows any advice you provide will be useless. The writer of Springhole.net is a performative activist and that undermines any goodwill an aspiring writer will have in them because they have stopped making any sense—and all other advice given on this website has to be painstakingly analyzed for these massive mental failings. New writers don’t have the patience, time, or experience to do this effectively, and they might not even catch these issues before its too late.
But this is just an example of a prevalent mindset throughout the internet. If the writer is a bad person, then that writer has no talent and their success is attributed to luck. This is cope. It’s hard to imagine a bad person can become popular. We collectively hope they would be stopped before it becomes a very serious issue, but when a person is popular and their writing amazing then greedy co-workers and producers and directors and managers are more likely to ignore the flaws that person has because him or her makes them bank. That’s the reality of Hollywood. That’s the reality of video games. That’s not the reality of books. Should businesses be punished for failing to punish people for being terrible human beings in the workplace? Yes. In reality, greedy people rarely do that so it’s important to exercise self-control and vote with your wallet instead of pretending a few words are going to fix anything.
However, when it comes to writers having different opinions than the readers and already being filthy rich, well, deal with it like a normal adult. Complaining about it in the middle of giving writing advice isn’t being a normal adult.
