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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Enforcer" data-source="post: 3125722" data-attributes="member: 396">"Just when I thought that I was out, they pull me back in." The point of my last post was that I was tired of spending time arguing this thread. There's objectively bad (and good, and average) writing out there, the end. I appreciate the compliments, however. The ability to have polite disagreements is a major asset to this site and a credit to the mods and the users alike.Good work adds something to the field, it advances the artform in new and unexpected ways, and it's technique is excellent. Enjoyable art is just that, enjoyable--the technique may have flaws, it may be cliched or overly derivative without adding anything fresh, and it won't stand the test of time. Also, I'd argue with the claim that all artistic works are meant to be enjoyed, some are meant to anger, to provoke, or to outrage instead.No. Copying someone else's work is not subjective. Cliches are not subjective. Using Deus Ex Machina because the writer was too lazy/stupid to actually advance the plot in a way that makes sense is not subjective. They're all signs of poor writing. I'll grant you emotion/thought-provoking though. Except I didn't enjoy it partly because the writing was objectively bad. Whereas you were able to ignore that in favor of the story.And I simply disagree. Further, my challenge to find someone who thinks Eragon was well-written stands--if everyone thinks Eragon was not well-written, it's not subjective anymore, but rather must be based on some objective standard. And again, well-written is mutually exclusive of enjoyable.The difference is that the quality of Paolini's writing skills is objectively bad, whereas the story ideas and passion behind it are a matter of subjective taste. I subjectively hated those elements too, you did not.So then as long as a sentence is readable then it can't be bad no matter what? Forget Paolini, time to pull out some of the crap I wrote in 1st grade and get it published. You can read it, the sentences even make sense, but it's still objectively bad writing.And that personal standard that subjectively chooses to ignore writing skills when judging a book is fine. That doesn't erase the existence of an objective standard for writing. As for the "collection of commonly held opinions," so is every objective standard ever, from science to writing skills. Your problem seems to be that the standard for writing skills is based on widely-accepted human opinion...so is every objective standard there is, even hard scientific fact. Why do you think there's a scientific method? Everyone just randomly decided to go about experiments the same logical, unbiased way?Well, based on the objective standards for writing, you would be wrong. Awkward sentences=bad writing, plot holes=bad writing, cliches=bad writing. The fact that you liked the book regardless says something about your subjective standards, it doesn't make the book well-written.That's what the objective standard is, widely-held common opinion. No robots decided this, human beings did. As a culture, we've created objective standards on what is good and bad writing, Paolini doesn't meet the standard. You may not like the objective standard, but it's still there regardless.Well, we certainly disagree on whether Eragon sucks or not.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> I can't remember another time that I've absolutely refused to finish a book because it was so bad.But yeah, there's an objective standard for the craft of writing, and you don't like it. I won't argue anymore whether or not there is an objective standard. There just is, I can't explain it any better. And no, I don't think any book that fails that objective standard is automatically worthless. But, it is automatically poorly-written. However, the beauty of the objective standard is that people who don't want to waste time on books that aren't well-written can be forewarned if they wish (man do I wish I had read the review of Eragon before I started, but I was being polite to my co-worker who I had hooked on A Song of Ice and Fire).</blockquote>

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