jb says: Hey Stella, nice surprise finding you in this neck of the woods. Thanks for the comment and the link.

However, I am annoyed now – with myself – this programme was obviously on the in Mills & Boon celebratory week with the BBC (or was it ITV?) and I forgot about it. Damn! I suspect it’s now too late for iplayer, too. (I am so inattentive with the telly schedules!)

I know why I ended up reading crime and thriller fiction as the main genre for me, and it comes back to comment Kelli made above. I like pace and descriptive narrative slows that down for me. Years ago when reading general or literary fiction, where I saw a chunky paragraph that started with something like how the sun looked as it set across the lush green field, I skipped it. Every time. I wanted more of the action, more of the plot, more of the actual interactions between human beings.

Margaret Thatcher may not be for a U turn, but I am happy to say that I have developed over time and I am now more ready to accept some acutely and intelligently observed descriptive narrative in my crime fiction, and to enjoy it. It can add a bit of flesh to the bones, where relevant and enticingly written.

Patterson and his immitators have not won, but do have a place in the world. I used to love JP’s books and waited for the next, but I stopped reading when they started to hang on a thin thread that made the book look more like a script. (And the presence of so much “white”, including blank pages between chapters, looked wasteful and the opposite of environmentally-friendly.) They became all fast-paced plot and little else for me. However, they sell in the millions and have a clear and successful market; so I say that it’s good that people are reading. And an introduction to one author leads on to another, as always, so it’s best not to overlook the power of one mega-successful author (and his tribe).

We all have different tastes and these may change over time. Do publishers respond to reader tastes or dictate them? That, I think is an interesting question. For example, where did the current enthusiasm for historical crime fiction come from in the UK? Readers or publishers? I have felt bombarded by the stuff, but have read a good few now and enjoyed them, to my surprise (less surprise as time rolls on). But I wonder how that took off and and I continue to wonder who actually controls the marketplace – the consumer (who theoretically should) or the supplier of the goods?

Writing to a formula could make the job easier but creativity would be capped.

I will tell you where I struggle. When writing, I often use complex sentences. I spend more time dummying up my writing to make it acceptable for the average person than I do writing the content in the first place.

But where my writing sentence structure is complex, my ideas usually aren’t. Some of your articles are much deeper than what I usually write or read.

Thank you for another interesting post on writing.

Kelli

jb says: Main thing – it has to be accessible. Once you’ve overstepped the mark of accessibility there’s no use for terms like good or bad writing.