Why I hate Twilight Part I: Stephenie Meyer is a Horrible Person and Writer
Section B: Grammar
Has anyone noticed the amount of grammatical errors in the series? Because it drove me crazy. I realize a lot can be typos, and the editor should catch mistakes, and most errors have been corrected in later versions of the novels, but seriously. The woman is incompetent. "Who's" instead of "whose," "the" instead of "they," capitalizing improper nouns, disagreements between tenses...
“The room was familiar; it had been belonged to me since I was born.” –Twilight (page 9?) Nice huh?
There is more than terrible grammar that can make writing just plain bad. You need to have good structure. Something that flows nicely. I've found on more than a few occassions she will use a word that sticks out to me, one that isn't used too frequently in the English language, and then she'll use it two more times on the next page. It's called a thesaurus. Get one. Or maybe it's that she uses it too much. Some of those words couldn't be found without use of a thesaurus. How many times do you come across "masochist" in your everyday life? FLIPPING POTATOES! It's for teenagers.
Now let's talk about my favorite--the word "chagrin." You can really only get away with using a word like that once or twice in a book. It pops off the page and the reader remembers it. Steph? She uses it fifteen times throughout the series. That's excessive. It also says a lot about the general mood of the saga as a whole. Blegh.
So I came across this site that is hilarious. It breaks down Twilight into all of its ridiculous parts. My favorites are "The Number of Times Bella is Clumsy or Makes a Reference to her Clumsiness-- 26 and "References to Edward's Beauty"-- 165. And that is further broken down into fifteen subcategories. It's the funniest thing I've read regarding Twilight. Please take a peek http://otahyoni.livejournal.com/130432.html
So that was refreshing. I love writing when I'm angry. It's blograpy: blog therapy.
Today Dr. Lamb made a reference to the snake in "JUNGLE boy or whatever" when he said "trust me" over and over about the proper arrangement of atoms in molecules. I laughed out loud. I'm more dumbfounded by the fact that he's actually seen Jungle Book than anything.
P.S. Hazel? Where are you? It tells me your blog cannot be found and this is distressing :(
"The room was familiar; it had been belonged to me since I was born."
ReplyDeleteWTH? Don't the books go through a proofreading process? That's ridiculous! It's sad since this book has sold so much and I wonder if anyone has noticed the errors you pointed out. I'm not too fond of the series. It gives off too much of a high school vibe.
Thank God someone agrees with me. I can't wait to show that link to some of my Twilight-obsessed friends. I think the book is absolutely ridiculous; the writing was atrocious.
ReplyDeleteMaking every sentence sound smooth and natural may be one of the hardest parts, as it requires quadruple checking everything and remembering what’s been used. Thank goodness we have MS Word to help with this sort of thing these days.
ReplyDeleteThere is no excuse for all those grammatical errors though.
"The room was familiar; it had been belonged to me since I was born." Made me laugh so hard. This sentence REALLY should not be in a book. It sounds like those sentences that are on English worksheets in grade school that have some obvious error that you have to find and correct.
ReplyDelete"The room was familiar; it had been belonged to me since I was born." My copy of the book doesn't have the *been* in it. Could have been an editing error, although I agree, the writing sucks. I am a fan of Twilight, but only because I enjoy the story and the fact that none of it could or would ever happen. I enjoy hearing why others dislike it! =)
ReplyDeleteWhen it comes to Smeyer, whenever I read her grammar errors, I do one of the following: A) Read out the contraction, B) Read the sentence in a VERY THICK, VERY APPALACHIAN accent or C) Depending on how glaring it is, I'll do both A and B.
ReplyDeleteI just...editors. They get paid to edit. Both the publishing job and publishing internship I applied for talked about "reading manuscripts for errors" and I'm beginning to think Little and Brown fired all of their editors when Twilight was going through submissions. Really? Really!? I understand missing one or two because we're human, our eyes get tired, but c'mon, if you get multiple people to read the thing, you'll catch the glaring ones at least.
Also, an addendum to the Smeyer hate, Brigham Young gave her a FUCKING DEGREE IN ENGLISH LITERATURE!!!
And I can go all day about her overusing words, especially adjectives. If I see "chagrin" used one more time, I'll be, well, chagrined.
Dude. It completely kills my soul. I got a chapter in and had to stop because it made me want to burn the book or something.
ReplyDelete"Lithe" and all its forms are also used more than they should be.
ReplyDeleteThat's all I remember from the series.
Toni: Agreed. I really don't know how it made it past editing. Maybe they were too DAZZLED by Edward's beauty to notice?
ReplyDeleteAnna: I love that link. I go to it when I'm bored lol
Drake: There really isn't an excuse. If you're going to make writing your career, you should probably learn how to do it correctly first.
Eric: hahaha it does!
Collegegirl828: and I enjoy hearing why people like it lol
Paige: LOL! It would totally be better with an Appalachian accent! NO CLUE as to how she got that degree. It's atrocious really. I don't understand how all those people read the novels, and they still come out loaded down with errors! DON'T GET IT.
DB: Hahaha I actually read them all, but I should have stopped early on :D
Chelsea: I never noticed "lithe" but it sounds familiar now that you mention it. Why is she so awful?
I feel like the Twilight series could make a good graphic novel. Or maybe not. Considering it'll actually be the length of the half the book because you won't have to read about his beauty. You'll just have to see it.
ReplyDeleteI'm loving reading your thoughts on the Twilight series, Lex. Keep it going!!
ReplyDeleteI LOVED Harry Potter. The series sucked the reader into its world and didn't let go until the very last page. Although I enjoy the Twilight series, story-wise, I found myself putting the books aside and not returning to them for days--a tell-tale sign that it's not captivating me, certainly not like Harry Potter.