[SPOILERS!]

One of the things I find the most frustrating about being a wide reader as well as a writer is the reading community’s hate/hate relationship with spoilers.  You don’t want to ruin the story, sure.  But we have these things called spoiler tags.  No one can force you to read something explicitly identified as a spoiler.  And yet it’s impossible to find full summaries of books anywhere short of a sporking.

Why would I want to read summaries?  Because many of the people who write reviews are really bad at it.  Especially for the negative reviews.  Part of it is bad because of a desire to avoid spoilers, but just in general, it’s really hard to write a good review, especially for your average reader.  That said, it’s really frustrating to have a review discuss how bad the romantic relationships and world-building are, and how predictable the plot is, but not know why they think that.  Everyone has different opinions, and tastes vary widely, so reviews like that can be completely worthless.

And now I’m going to be a little bit controversial here.  I don’t think spoilers are really that big of a deal.  For the big reveal, maybe.  However, if a writer is really any good, you can know many of the major plot points and still love the book.  It’s one thing to know that the MC ends up with the bad boy, and quite another to see how she gets there.  Especially for trainwreck scenes.  Many major twists involve attributes of the trainwreck, and the whole point of a trainwreck is that it’s better if you know what’s coming.  This is especially true of romantic subplots.  And let’s be honest, a lot of “big twists” are fairly predictable anyway.  In fact, that seems to be a major complaint in those vague reviews I mentioned earlier.

And then consider how often people re-read books.  It might not be as common now as it was in the past, but it still happens quite a bit.

 

So what, really, is everyone so afraid of?

 

Less Time Writing Blog Posts, More Time Leaving Myself Behind

I read this wonderful post over on The Rejectionist right after reading Nova Ren Suma’s “What Haunted You at 17” blog series which celebrated the release of her book 17 & Gone, and I realized that I am terrible about leaving.  I hate leaving: places, people, times of my life.  Every time I think about how I’ve drifted away from someone I really cared about, it leaves me on the verge of tears.  Forums I used to be on haunt me.  Things I used to do, like running cross country make me sad I stopped, even though it was the best decision for me at the time.

Even if this post bores you, you should absolutely go and read the ones I linked to and talked about, because they’re practically beautiful shorts stories in and of themselves.

In many ways I agree with what her R-ness says in that post, and the stories in the Haunted at 17″ series say a lot to back it up.

What about you?  Is leaving important to achievement?  Does it make for good stories?  Should we be spending less time on the internet these days and more doing things for real?