: Re: Is it bad if I don't like the "best" books in my chosen genre? (This question is about reading but it pertains to writing as well). I write fantasy, and as a result, I've read a lot of

Short answer: J.K. Rowling claims never to have read a fantasy book in her life, and she did just fine. For that matter, J.R.R. Tolkien hadn't read much fantasy either.

Long answer: who considers the books on your list "best" in their genre? I haven't heard anything other than ridicule for Wheel of Time and Shannara, and I'm not too fond of Harry Potter either (nothing"obvious" about liking that series). The Lord of the Rings is for me a life-changing classic on par with Hemingway, but then a lot of people don't enjoy reading Hemingway. People are different in their likes and dislikes.

Be analytical in your reading: if you like a book, what is it about it that makes it "work" for you? If you don't like it, what "doesn't work"? @Weathervane gives a good explanation on this. Any book has its strengths and weaknesses. Try to find those in the books you are reading, learn from the strengths, avoid the weaknesses. If you fear that you're "missing something", it might be enlightening to talk to someone who liked those books: maybe you did miss something, maybe it's they who missed some problems, and maybe it's just that they weigh the relative strengths and weaknesses of the book differently from you.

J.R.R. Tolkien wrote the book he wanted to read, because it had not been written yet. So can you, if you find out what it is that you want to read, and what it is that makes you turn away from a book.

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: Re: Is it bad if I don't like the "best" books in my chosen genre? (This question is about reading but it pertains to writing as well). I write fantasy, and as a result, I've read a lot of

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: First quarter friends As I've mentioned before, I'm working on a military sci-fi novel. Here's the trouble with the military: you don't spend all of your service, start to finish, with the same

: How and when should I introduce my main character's superpowers? This story includes a select group of individuals who contain superpowers and the main character is obviously one of those few.

: British / American language mishmash English is not my mother tongue. I am completely fluent in English though, and I write my fiction in English. Here's the problem: I live in neither the

: A better sentence for a sequence of events This is an extract from my personal 300 word writeup about a video. Can anyone suggest a smoother way to write my final paragraph? The first paragraph

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