Supermarket paperback grammar...

[elfs]

While I was browsing in the local supermaket, I picked out two romance novels at random, the kind that has a handsome, well-oiled torso on the cover, sometimes straddled by the bright white flashing thighs of the heroine, and thumbed through them.

The first one made me cringe as the POV switched back and forth between the hero and the heroine in the same paragraph. Repeatedly. The author seemed to think that giving the reader enough information involved constantly flipping back and forth between "He wanted..." and "She felt..." sentences.

The second one was worse. After the meh-handled love scene, the paragraph ended with this gem: "Her gaze tangled with his, enjoying the sensation, before she rose and stretched." Her gaze enjoyed? Really? Where the hell is your editor? How did this get past your beta readers?

Man, I should get back into writing. This stuff is terrible.

Comments

Don't confuse your sorts of quality

[http://www.flutterby.net/User:DanLyke (from livejournal.com)]

As someone familiar with porn and slash fic, you, of all people, should be able to remember that abstract notions of quality don't necessarily have any correlation with whether the work fulfills the needs of the audience...

I often make this mistake, wonder how someone could possibly find this piece of crap product that I want to throw at the wall useful, and then I realize once again that I am not a market sample.