Stephanie Meyer Responds To Criticism: It Hurts
Stephanie Meyer has responded to the criticism of her new book Breaking Dawn on a couple of websites today. Click Here for the link to a series of video’s on Entertainment Weekly and below is from an interview from MTV Movie Blog.
‘Breaking Dawn’ Exclusive: ‘Twilight’ Author Stephenie Meyer Reacts To Harsh Reader Complaints — ‘It Hurts’
‘You see the punch coming; that doesn’t mean it’s not gonna hurt when it hits,’ Meyer says.
Last Saturday afternoon, less than a day after “Breaking Dawn,” the conclusion of Stephenie Meyer’s “Twilight” series, hit shelves, the Internet grumblings began. Of course, many readers were still eagerly drinking up the saga of Edward and Bella. But one fast reader expressed her disappointment in the book by launching a discussion on Amazon.com urging fellow disgruntled fans, “Don’t burn your copies of the book — RETURN THEM.”
(SPOILER ALERT, though we’ll try to keep them vague for all you slowpokes.) And judging by the heated back-and-forth that followed, there are plenty of other Twilighters complaining about what is or isn’t in the book: the lack of more explicit sex scenes, the excessive amount of sex scenes, the implausibility of Bella’s pregnancy, the pace of the story, the lack of a big battle scene, the whole Jacob section, and on and on. One blogger told Entertainment Weekly that the story “didn’t seem to fit the world that I thought Stephenie Meyer created.” So how does the author feel about this venomous reaction to the novel that sold 1.3 million copies in its first day?
“You see the punch coming; that doesn’t mean it’s not gonna hurt when it hits,” Meyer told MTV News on Thursday. “There’s no way to make everybody happy. When I do one thing that a lot of people want, there’s always the opposite reaction.
“But how can you possibly meet up with the expectations that this book had?” she asked. “It just got so built up. There is no book in the world that could stand up to that. So I knew it was going to happen, but at the same time it hurts.”
Of course, members of Team Jacob can’t be too thrilled from the very start of the book. But Meyer won’t pander to their preference for Bella’s hot-blooded werewolf pal.
“If they really love the characters, then I would hope that this would make sense to them, because these are the true characters,” she explained. “This is the story the way it was always meant to be.”
And other readers are giving Meyer grief about the fact that Bella does get a “happily ever after” without having to make any major sacrifices.
“I think she worked for it pretty hard,” Meyer countered. “It doesn’t always work out that way. Sometimes you make a decision about what you want and you pay for it and you suffer for it and it doesn’t work out. Those types of stories always leave me horribly depressed. I’m not going to live in a world for a year at a time where that’s going to be the ending. If people wanted a really depressing, tragic ending, I gave them a lot of hints that it wasn’t going to be that way. They really shouldn’t have been surprised!”
And though Meyer knew the complaints would come, she was surprised by what some of them were about. One minor quibble seems to be the awkward name of Bella and Edward’s daughter, Renesmee.
“I should have known that people would feel that way,” she laughed when we read aloud one comment about Bella’s hybrid of Renee and Esme. “The name has been real to me for so long now that I’ve forgotten how unusual it would sound to everyone else.”
Meyer did seem taken aback by the “don’t burn it, return it” threats. “I’ve read a lot of books that I didn’t like very much, and that thought never occurred to me, because I had read them! I hadn’t heard of [doing] that before. That’s not fun to hear.”
But Meyer holds out hope that “Breaking Dawn” detractors will eventually see her side of things. “I hope that if they really do enjoy the other books, they’ll realize that this is kind of where it was supposed to go.”
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I know that it might hurt when someone criticises you, but for crying out loud, she’s a 35 year old author! My advice to her would be to take this criticism and not see it as a bad thing- rather see it as a way to make her writing better. Seriously…
stephanie meyer’s way off man. any dude who puts himself through that much crap can do much better than some random chick from nowhere. what’re you trying to say about real guys? that we’re good for nothing? give us some credit
I am avid reader and i enjoy books from several origins. I do not discriminate so when my seventeen year old cousin told me that I should read twilight I looked at her and said yeah. So I am twenty three living in the big city and i decide to read a book that was specifically written for teenagers. By the way I am a English major so this was going to be interesting after hearing the reviews. But you know what I read so many serious books that it felt good to read a Candy book. I think that people are being way more critical then they have to be. In my opinion it was poorly written and not very descriptive and too many mistakes. Regardless of the syntax and grammatical errors i still thought that it was a good story. I believe that her book did what it was suppose to do keep people wanting more. For that she has accomplished a lot…. That’s the problem now we are way too serious. I love
Austen as writer and in enjoy several genre’s of literature. As a English teacher I just enjoyed living in that Edward and Bella world it was fun, nothing to serious 1
Just chill people it not real !!!!1 just enjoy it for what it is.
Live, laugh and love `
I liked Meyer’s book and i give her credit for all the time she put in it. i feel sorry for all the people who don’t seem to understand! and maybe the “dude” wants to put himself through those kinds of things for a girl. that is what love is, all men do things for women that they dont want to and its because of LOVE!
It’s not the criticism that should hurt, it’s the actual books. I’ve read two of them, and I have to say that they deserve all of the criticism I’ve seen out there. The characters are two dimensional and have very little growth, the story is poorly told, the sentence structure is juvenile and something you would expect from a teenager, and add all of that to the fact that Bella and Edward are practically the definition of Mary Sue characters it’s no surprise that these books have comments such as the aforementioned “don’t burn the book, return it”. The sad thing is, that if this was written well and the characterization handled properly it could be a good story. But because of how Ms. Meyers handled it, it just isn’t.
So, just to recap, “love” is making yourself do things you don’t actually want to do for someone else? Good luck with that.
No book can live up to expectations? Everyone thought Harry Potter 4,5,6, and 7 were good…
Although the characters are poorly constructed, and the writing style horrendous, I do not begrudge Meyer for creating a world of imagination and interest in literature for teenagers.
But really, they may want to read some other stuff too….
Ok I’m a writer myself, so I have nothing against Stephenie Meyer personally. But I think she seriously needs to slow her writing down & consider the overall tone that her books are evoking. Take Twilight, for example: Looks are everything. The only way that the illustrious Bella Swan will give you any attention is if you look a certain way & don’t talk too much about yourself (no, scratch that – just don’t talk at all – she would rather listen to her own thoughts/opinions, which constantly change & make no logical sense). She hates Forks, she ignores her dad, the weather is miserable…everything in her life depresses her.
Bella Swan is one of the most shallow, insecure, spoiled and ungrateful brats ever written. It would help if her love interest was at least a likable person, but Edward Cullen is not. He is a demeaning, controlling person with behavior bordering on abuse (at least in his introductory chapters). There is no reason for Bella to be attracted to him, and yet, she falls so hard for him that nothing else matters…including her REAL friends and family who have stuck by her and even put up with her annoying tendencies. It makes me sick to think that I enjoyed this series at one time.
Think I’m crazy? Check out this link:
http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=18045071355&topic=10133
If she recollected herself and actually stood up for herself and improvement I’d probably be inclined to try reading future books.
But I guess the book returns hurt sales enough that she had to roll belly up in submission. She really just kinda keeled over at the criticism in order to kiss up to angry fans hoping they’d “change their minds” as this is “kind of where it is supposed to go” (WTF is this? Are you trying to convince people to stay further away from BD).
In any case, that reaction was very disappointing.
Criticism: It’s Part of the Writing process. Get over it, or stop writing. Kthx