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Message: <blockquote data-quote="takyris" data-source="post: 3112855" data-attributes="member: 5171">Actually, not true. There are several aboriginal traditions in which this would be a holy experience that would produce enlightenment or a dream state. Pain is much more subjective than western science would have us believe.So by your logic, we can only talk about how hitting yourself in the head with a hammer hurts YOU particularly. It would be WRONG to apply a general standard of agreed-upon measurable factors to come up with a result.Nothing. My comment was in reply to someone saying (to Whizbang or Chain Lightning, as I recall), "Oh yeah? Well, what major books have YOU published?" in response to their less-than-stellar feelings for Eragon.People who understand how an apostrophe works. People who spell "writing" correctly. People who have taken literature courses in college, or writing courses in college, or cinema courses in college, or SOME kind of artistic appreciation course that helps you get past "Oh, some people like some stuff, and other people don't, so who's to say what's good?"Yep. It's not a perfect system. That's why I try to be specific when I review a book -- one book is going to appeal to people who love setting and don't care about dialogue, while another book is going to appeal to people who love characterization and can overlook a shaky plot.If the negatives outweigh the positives, it's a bad book. That doesn't mean it can't be read and enjoyed. I've said multiple times that people can enjoy bad books. There are books I'd note as bad that I enjoy a great deal myself, because they do a bad job overall but a great job on some of my particular loves. They're niche books.If you've done any formal study of literature, these kinds of questions are addressed. There's a difference between breaking a rule you know well and tromping all over a rule you've never noticed.If they can't differentiate their own enjoyment from an arguable, debatable, but ultimately existent standard of quality, then that's their problem. Okay. What I'm getting here is that we're talking from two fairly distinct points.I majored in English and got my Masters in English as well. I've been participating in fiction writing workshops for about ten years. I've been working as a copyeditor, a marketing writer, and most recently a dialogue writer professionally since graduating.So yes, actually, I can tell you whether or not writing is good. It's my job. It's what I'm paid to do. It's also what I do for fun in my free time.If you want to play "Everyone's opinion is valid, and therefore we can't say whether any writing is actually good or bad," you're welcome to do so. But the proper phrase to use is, "I enjoyed it."I can't tell you whether or not you enjoyed a book. But I can, and will, tell you whether a book was good or bad. If you want to argue with me on the subject, and I'm by no means infallible and make no claims to be such, feel free to start talking about plot and characterization and setting and voice. But "You can't prove that this is bad writing" goes by the wayside in Freshman English. I have very specifically stated the opposite several times. People should publish whatever other people will pay money for. It's a free market.I didn't put it like that, because I don't spell "writing" that way.If you want to use the argument of genre to say that there's no objective standard of judgment, you're welcome to try. When I went to college, there were courses on Science Fiction, and there were people teaching Tolkien as great works, so it doesn't hold with me.It is, in fact, possible to say that a given work is a poorly written example of its genre.</blockquote>

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