Sense of the words

A good way to review is to try finding out the sense of the words; what the writer wanted to do and how could we help him doing it better, always keeping in mind his own style and personality, not ours. It is necessary to tell the difference between efficient writing and writing that we simply enjoy.

By reading a lot we discover that, even when the teachings from the masters are essentially good, many books succeeded without following that path and many times openly going against their advice.

Even novels by authors known for their reflection about the writing process (like Stephen King and Elmore Leonard) break some of their own advices in their novels.  On the other hand many bestsellers seem to be badly written and edited. But they are very successful.

Where is he going with all this? You might be asking yourself. Simply to prove that our analysis and review criteria are not shared with everybody. To understand that even when the technical base is good enough to produce a review, the intuitive component (the one that makes us decide if it is good or bad writing but without knowing why) is very important.

We start being good critics when we analyze the work from every possible angle. When we lose the fear to tell the author exactly where we lost interest, which part we do not like, at what moment the story becomes confusing, the moment when it seems that something is missing or something is too much.