What Makes a Good Writer?

March 8, 2026 — Pat Bertram

What makes a good writer? Is good writing subjective, or is there a standard? Is a good writer necessarily a good storyteller?

I thought I was finished with such questions when I stopped writing books, but I don’t remember if I ever thought of these questions from a reader’s point of view. As a reader, either I found a book readable, or I didn’t. Either the story engaged me, or it didn’t. If I was okay with the book, I read it. If not, I read the ending, and if the ending seemed to be fitting (or a fitting reward for slogging through the book), I’d go back and finish the book. If not, that was the end of it.

For the past couple of years, I found myself not finishing most newer books, so I reread a lot of older books, many of which weren’t really worth reading again. Now, I figure if I’m going to reread books, I might as well continue my studies of The Wheel of Time saga, which brings me back to the questions I put forth above.

I’ve come across a lot of reviews and discussions where people say Robert Jordan is a terrible writer, which amuses me to think I’m immersed in the words of someone who is becoming so excoriated. (The substitute writer who finished the series is held up to be the epitome of a good writer, but no. Just no. I struggled through the books he wrote to finish The Wheel of Time, and I’ve not been able to read a single one of his own books. His writing is plebian at best and his stories boring.)

Years ago, I read in a book called The Practical Stylist by Sheridan Baker: “Clarity is the first aim; economy the second; grace the third; dignity the fourth. Our writing should be a little strange, a little out of the ordinary, a little beautiful with words and phrases not met every day, but seeming as right and natural as grass.”

That quote seemed to me to be the definition of a good writer, and I tried to write like that. Robert Jordan does. Some of his writing is truly classic and beautiful. The substitute author does not fulfill any of those requirements, but he does write in the preferred style of today, which is lots of dialogue, short sentences, short paragraphs, quick changes of point of view, with little that is elegant or dignified or graceful, and nothing out of the ordinary.

Like all authors, Jordan has tics (overworked words and phrases), and he does at times let his world building get in the way of the story, but that doesn’t make him a bad writer, just an unedited one. (That’s what an editor is for — to scrub unwanted words and meanderings from the text. Or at least point them out. But he married his editor, and though she continued to be his editor, he wouldn’t let her change a single word. Apparently, she and his publisher let him run with his books the way he wanted because he made them a fortune. Also, come to think of it, any rewrites would put him way past deadline.)

It is interesting to me that he wrote books that appealed to preteen boys as well as old women (well, one old woman). It also amuses me how often those boys say they outgrew the books when they tried to read the books years later. And yet, here I am, still growing into the books.

I do admit, though, that my interest in the books has less to do with entertainment and more to do with deconstructing his world, finding the puzzles and clues and references to our world, seeing how he wrote what he did, and to better understand his subtleties.

My latest find changes the books for me, or changes at least one character.

In the saga, the power of the universe can only be used by women because the men’s half is tainted, which makes them go insane if they use it. Despite this, the hero uses the men’s power out of necessity. Over time he begins to hear a voice in his head — the voice of the man he’d been thousands of years before. The way Jordan wrote this voice, it seemed to be an entirely different person. The voice knew things that the hero didn’t, and the voice seemed insane and totally at odds with the hero.

I don’t know how many rereads it took for me to realize that the voice was the hero. Because of the taint, memories were slipping beyond the barrier of forgetfulness that kept people from remembering previous lives. The voice created out of madness seemed to the hero to be the source of the memories. And the reason the voice was totally at odds with the hero is that the voice carried all the emotions that the hero couldn’t allow himself to feel. For example, he had to be hard to do all that he had to do. (The poor guy was barely twenty years old, prophesied to save the entire world from the Dark One, guaranteed to go insane, fated to die during the last battle, and everyone in the world wanted to use him or torture him or imprison him.) So while he’s being hard, trying to be what he thinks he needs to be to prepare for the last battle, the voice in his head is gibbering in fear, weeping, trying to run away, and sometimes laughing madly — feeling all the emotions he can’t afford to feel. And the conflicts he so often has with the voice are a reflection of his own internal struggles, having to be what he so does not want to be.

My knowing that the voice is in fact the hero, not a separate entity, makes him even more of a tragic figure, a human dealing with almost insurmountable pressures from both within and without.

Does this sort of duality and layering make Jordan a good writer? And a good story teller? I tend to think that it does. I’d really like to think that good writing is not subjective, that there are standards to meet. Storytelling, however, is subjective. Even constant readers have genres and authors they stay away from, regardless of how good or bad the writing is.

Still, I guess, it doesn’t matter. I’ll continue to read what I read, and to eschew what does not interest me.

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One.

 

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Skimming

March 7, 2026 — Pat Bertram

I have the terrible habit of ingesting books whole without actually reading the words. I’ve never been able to explain how I read — it’s not skimming exactly, but if I read every single word individually as if reading aloud, the meaning of what I’m reading gets lost in the words themselves. Maybe the way I read is a form of meditation. Or daydreaming without visuals. (I have aphantasia — the inability to form images in my mind.) Despite having said that, I do occasionally skim, especially scenes of violence or sections that don’t keep my interest, and considering that I have read more than 25,000 books of all genres, unless the writing is better than merely competent, most books have huge sections that don’t keep my attention. Also, when it comes to fiction, there are few plots or characters that don’t echo in my head — some because I’ve read those very books before; some because they are similar to those books.

Which is why it surprises me that the Wheel of Time saga has caught my imagination enough to allow for rereads. Though there are chunks of the middle books that I can’t bring myself to read again, or even just to skim, I find myself trying to slow down and savor the rest of Jordan’s words. (Even subtracting out the last three unreadable books written by the substitute author as well as the chunky parts of Jordan’s books, there are still approximately three million words that I do read. And if half of those are used for prosaic storytelling, there are still one and a half million of Jordan’s words to savor.) A lot of his writing is truly beautiful. The subtleties are beguiling. And there is much to puzzle out as I deconstruct Robert Jordan’s world and his writing.

Sometimes I miss little things if I get to skimming a section I remember well, until something draws me back. For example, in a passage I read today, a character noticed the hero’s guards/ guardians/ personal army outside the hero’s room quietly playing a finger game: knife, paper, stone. A little later, three of those people entered the hero’s room to deal with his latest infraction of their “honor.” As they left him, one said they’d won the right to punish him and warned him not to dishonor them again. Written out like this, it’s obvious that their game (their version of rock, scissors, paper) was to choose those three, but when these elements are separated by several pages, the association becomes so obscured I missed it in previous rereads.

Admittedly, the situation wasn’t important to the overall story, but it tickles me to find such correlations. Because of this, I’m training myself not to skim, but that will work against me in the long run — without skimming, most books are not worth my time to read.

When I was young, I often read as a way of expanding my mental horizons — a way to work out in advance how I would deal with the circumstances the characters are faced with — but that’s no longer an issue with me since most fictional situations are now either somewhere in my past or will never be in my future. A choice between love and a career? No longer applicable. What to do with an unexpected pregnancy? Definitely not applicable! Taking revenge on someone? Not something I would ever do. Save the world from the forces of evil? Only applicable if that evil appears in my own backyard and even then it’s not something I want to contemplate. (I’m wary enough of thoughts to think that thinking itself can bring down upon my head whatever it is I am thinking of.)

Without any necessity for reading myself into the story, most novels become ho-hum, especially if the writer can’t make me care for the characters. Without skimming at least a part of the book and skipping other sections completely, I’d probably never have read most of the books that I did. Not finding other books of interest to me could be why I’m caught in the spokes of the Wheel of Time.

I’m not sure where I’m going with this, and since you’re probably skimming this essay anyway, I doubt it matters.

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One.

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Figuring Out the End of The Wheel of Time

January 30, 2026 — Pat Bertram

Yesterday I wrote about parts of the Wheel of Time that should have been edited out or at least shortened considerably.

One of those story lines involved the hero rescuing a nation from an evil king who’d usurped the throne while the daughter heir was off doing other things. In addition, the hero twice conquered another nation. He intended both countries to be ruled by the daughter heir who would have been the rightful heir under normal circumstances. But because he said he was “giving” her those thrones, there was a huge furor since she claimed they were hers by right. Except they weren’t hers by right any longer. He’d conquered both nations. He could have put anyone in charge as he did with other nations where he defeated the evil rulers. But she was angry at him because of that word: give. Sure, she didn’t want people to think she was his puppet and so she needed to gain the crown on her own by having the ladies and lords vote for her. But there they were, on the brink of a cosmic catastrophe, and she worried about them thinking she was a puppet? It seems to me that if all existence were at stake, that would be a minor issue. Certainly not one worth tens of thousands of words.

What makes the whole thing even sillier is that the city, Caemlyn, was a Camelot equivalent. (In the King Arthur Legend, The Battle of Camlaan was the climax to his rule.) So it might have made sense, perhaps, to waste time on a plotline that went nowhere if only to establish the importance of that city, except that the very first casualty of the cosmic battle was Caemlyn. So at that point it mattered not who ruled.

It surprises me that I ever bothered to read these books in the first place, and I probably never would have if I hadn’t been laid up at the time and desperately needed something to read. Then, when I realized what the books were with all their real-world references, not just homages to previous series, like The Lord of the Rings, but a retelling of the King Arthur tale as well as dozens of other myths and legends from around the world, I got interested in finding all the subtext. Then, when I found out how terrible the ending was, I decided to try to figure out the real ending. Which is where I am now. But sheesh. All that verbiage! Luckily, I know how to skim, and I am not at all adverse to skipping huge sections. (The seventh book took me two or three days to read. The eighth took me two or three hours.)

I am finding bits, though, that would have made the ending more interesting. The most obvious would be to have accepted that most of the characters had already reached the end of their arc and were ready for the last battle. In one case, the substitute author repeated an entire character arc. In another case, he simply undid the arc, erased the character’s growth and his acceptance of responsibility, and returned him back to his immature ways with no further development.

Another thing that should have been addressed is that at one point, the kings and queens of the northern nations all decided to head south with their armies. They did not like what the hero was doing to the southern nations, not realizing he was rescuing those nations from the forces of the Dark One, and they didn’t want the same thing to happen to them. So they decided to do something about it. The subtext (and even Robert Jordan alluded to it) was that this displacement was part of the dark side’s plan, and was helping to further disrupt the forces of the light. This coalition was going after the hero, and the whole thing was so hush-hush, that they were ready to kill anyone who found out or who got in their way. Not exactly a peaceful mission. By this time in the books, it’s obvious that nothing happens by coincidence, and yet combined, this northern coalition ended up with thirteen Aes Sedai (the women power wielders, who some called witches). And thirteen Aes Sedai, when linked could destroy the hero, no matter how strong he was against them individually.

And yet, despite this, the rather weak reason given during the substitute ending was that they were there to test the hero to see if it was okay for him to fight the Last Battle. Um, yeah. If this were true, all they’d have to do was send an envoy, asking for an audience. Instead, they took a force of 200,000 as well as all those Aes Sedai to deal with him. And if they found him unworthy and killed him, they would have doomed the entire cosmos to the dark side. Definitely sounds like a plan made by the evil ones.

Even sillier, they were acting on a so-called prophesy that had been handed down by word of mouth for 3,000 years, negating one of Robert Jordan’s themes, which is based on the game of Whisper, or Telephone, or Gossip, whatever it was called in your part of the country. In the game, someone passes a secret to the next person, who passes on what they heard to the next person, and in the end, what results is generally nothing much like what was originally said. His point was that things change over the centuries, that stories change, that names change. So the chance that this prophesy, passed down orally through the millennium, would be the same at the end as at the beginning isn’t that great.

Even worse, though this army that had been manipulated by the dark side to leave their lands could have become a great disrupter at the last battle, instead the substitute author brought in a devil-ex-machina — an entire hitherto unknown army of dark friends.

I’m thinking I’ll eventually give up my idea of figuring out the real ending (for me just to decipher, not to write). Until then, it is rather an interesting puzzle. If I can get through all the scenes that should have been edited out, that is.

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One.

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When Editors Don’t Edit

January 29, 2026 — Pat Bertram

Too often, novels that start out good and end with a satisfying twist, lose traction somewhere in the second half. The best that can be said of those parts is that “stuff happens.” Nothing important to the story, nothing important about the character, nothing that propels the plot forward. Just stuff happening. Ho hum. This seems especially true of authors who are extremely profitable. I don’t know if the editors just give a cursory look before passing the manuscript on to be published, if they are too intimidated to ask for rewrites, if deadlines proscribe rewrites, or if it’s simply that no one cares because no matter how good or bad the book is, it will still make a fortune.

The Wheel of Time books are a good example of this. The first seven are generally good, sometimes great, and sometimes truly brilliant, but after those books, the brilliance fades, the lovely writing gets lost in the muddle, and the best that can be said is that “stuff happens.” There are still remarkable parts, but those parts are surrounded by hundreds of pages where things happen, but they don’t seem to have anything to do with the thrust of the book, don’t seem to move anyone closer to the last cosmic battle that will determine if life and even the universe will continue as it is.

I understand that Robert Jordan liked turning fantasy tropes on their end, for example, making women major players (in most fantasy written before him, women had bit parts if that). He also was playing against the lone hero concept, not just with three interconnected heroes, but also with the idea that the entire world had to cooperate to make it possible for the forces of light to win against the darkness. But, as I pointed out before, what an author intends and what ends up in readers minds is not always the same thing.

Some people like those parts, where tens of thousands of words are devoted to the women characters setting up their power bases, and I sort of understand the necessity, but not the huge portions of books devoted to their power grabs. A lot could be simply skipped, later showing that they achieved their goals, because as the books stand, two of major heroes mostly disappeared, one for an entire book. The third one’s story could be vastly truncated, especially since the same basic story (his fight with himself about whether or not he is a leader) plays out again and again. Even after he accepts leadership, there is a whole other book that repeats that entire character arc. Admittedly, this repeated arc is not Jordan’s fault, but the fault of the author who finished the series, since the substitute apparently didn’t pay attention to the fact that the characters had almost all become who they needed to be to go to battle, and so made a hash of it.

Still, I can understand why people don’t care that those final books didn’t make sense. His editor didn’t care. Since she was also Jordan’s wife, I imagine ending the series in any way possible was her way of honoring him and his last wishes. The publisher certainly didn’t care. A barrelful of money rested on those books. And most readers didn’t care because there was an ending to a series they had lived with for most of their lives. Besides, after all those books where stuff just happened without any sense that the story was moving forward, people were thrilled that the story finally pushed toward to an ending. (Not THE ending, but an ending.)

In the last books that Jordan wrote, there are still flashes of brilliance, still parts where exciting events took place, but yikes. The rest of it should have cut considerably by a few hundred thousand words or more, but apparently no one dared suggest such a thing to such a popular author.

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One.

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Would-Be Fantasy Writer

January 28, 2026 — Pat Bertram

The Wheel of Time book series has apparently inspired as well as created a couple of generations of fantasy writers. Although I have never been able to get into any of those other stories (the books may have been inspired by Robert Jordan, but their worlds and their writing styles fall vastly short of his example), I can understand the urge to create one’s own world. I’ve thought about it myself, perhaps continuing the story I began in Bob: The Right Hand of God. Although Bob: The Right Hand of God is a stand-alone novel, it does seem to lend itself to a sequel since anyone born into that re-made world would have to start developing a new civilization (or not), but I don’t have any interest in writing the sequel. To me, the interesting part of the story was the de-creation of life on Earth as we know it. Anything further seems as if it would be just a ho-hum book. A been there, read that sort of thing.

So, if not Bob: The Right Hand of God, then what? Create a whole new world and culture as so many fantasy writers do? I considered that possibility, thinking a world of my own would be a place to escape to in my own head if not in fact but, though I hate to admit any failing, I don’t have the imagination for such an undertaking. (Although I’ve written two novels that could be considered fantasy, both took place more or less in our own world.) Nor do I need to live any more in my head than I already do. Besides, the truth is, so-called real life is fantasy enough for me.

There are theories that all time exists at once, so we are living our past and our future at the same time we are living in the present. My very first book, the terribly written one that no one will ever see (mostly because a few months ago, in a fit of decluttering, I threw away the only copy of the manuscript), was the story of two people who meet and fall instantly into if not love, then an incredibly deep connection, only to find out that they are reincarnations of each other. My question (and hence the premise of the book) was that if everything exists at once and if there is any validity to reincarnation, could this happen? There is an obscure theory that we are all reincarnations of one another. That not only is there a single electron that moves so fast and through so many dimensions and quantum processes that it creates the entire universe (or even multiple universes), but that there is also a single soul that we are all part of. (Yeah, I read weird stuff, which is inevitable when one reads almost anything almost all the time.)

Other theories say we are creating the world as we live it, that nothing exists yet but possibilities we haven’t yet encountered or envisioned. Other theories suggest that everything exists in our thoughts, that we are thinking into reality the world we live in. The reason we are such a mess is that everyone is thinking of different things and wanting different things. If everyone thought of the same thing at the same time, then that thing would come into fruition. Of course, the chances of that happening are nil since whenever you have even just three people together, one will always be thinking of something else, daydreaming or disagreeing or whatever goes on in people’s heads, and the other two will be saying they are thinking of the same thing, but that thing could be completely different for each of them. (For example, if they are trying to envision an apple, one might see a green apple, another red.)

Am I getting too silly here? Well, not too silly for a fantasy writer, but except for Bob: The Right Hand of God and Light Bringer, I probably will never be a fantasy writer. Probably will never write another book, either, but who knows. I could get bored with the books that currently exist and need to occupy my mind another way.

 

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One.

 

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Point of View

January 27, 2026 — Pat Bertram

The Wheel of Time culture shows me exactly why people can’t agree politically on . . . well, on anything.

By Wheel of Time culture, I don’t mean the various cultures in the books, though there are many, but the real-life culture surrounding the books. There are hundreds of websites devoted to discussions of the books, many websites that offer encyclopedias of Jordan’s world, other sites that offer snippets from Robert Jordan’s notes showing the development of his ideas and that sometimes include answers to questions fans ask (his answer most often is, “read and find out,” though sometimes he does elucidate). There are also companion books to the series that offer more information on characters, motivations, glossaries, a dictionary of his made-up language, explanations of things that don’t show up in the books like outlying cultures that have little to do with the story and things that Jordan never wanted people to know.

His subtlety (which it seems he prided himself on) is such that often there is no way to find the truth in the books themselves. In one case, we don’t find out who killed a particular bad guy until we see it in the glossary of the following book. I understand that he wants people to think about the issues and the happenings in the books, tries to get them involved in his world, and accords them the intelligence to be able to fill in vague lines. (The person who finished the series after the death of Jordan had no subtlety, no granting readers a modicum of intelligence, and explained every little detail.) I can also understand an author wanting people to figure things out on their own, such as Frank R. Stockton did in his 1882 story, “The Lady or the Tiger,” but at times it also feels a bit like a cheat. If it’s important, it should be in the books somewhere. If it’s not important, it shouldn’t be treated as if it’s some sort of mystery. (Though as Jordan admitted once in an interview, he was surprised when these — to him — throwaway incidents garnered much discussion.)

Still, as long as I can find out the information I want by checking online sources, I don’t really care that much if such particulars aren’t in the books since I certainly can’t remember every single detail of a 4,000,000 word story. I often end up checking on characters who showed up again after 1,000,000 words and I needed a refresher on who they were and what they had done. Sometimes if I can’t find an explanation for a certain minor point in any of the encyclopedias, I end up reading various discussions to see if any reader had figured it out.

All this to explain why I get caught up in other people’s opinions of the various aspects of the books.

It makes sense, of course, that people would have disparate opinions about the unsaid bits, but what’s really interesting to me is even when the story is explicitly laid out, when the characters’ actions are visible to everyone, when the motivations are obvious, that readers all see something different and are vocal about defending their point of view.

And this is just a story. The words are static. There are no edited versions of the sentences making them seem to say what they didn’t say, no edited videos making us see a different version of the action. It’s all right there in the books. And yet, the interpretations are wildly different. Some people hate a couple of the characters because their plot line goes on and on and seems to accomplish nothing. Other people love those characters and hate other characters. That makes sense to me. Some people even hate the main hero while loving the books, which doesn’t make sense to me, but it doesn’t have to make sense. It’s about preference.

But misinterpreting the story? Seeing what isn’t there? Not seeing what is there? That doesn’t make sense to me since we all have access to the exact same words. I suppose it’s possible that it is I who is misinterpreting the story, since after all, I am totally the wrong demographic (older by decades!) but even that would prove my point, which is . . .

Hmm. What is my point? I suppose it’s that if people can’t even agree on what they are seeing in a book series, can’t agree on what is right and what is wrong when it matters little, it’s easy to see why there is no agreement about what is best for us individually and ultimately the country.

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One.

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The Lord of Chaos

January 24, 2026 — Pat Bertram

In the Wheel of Time book I’m reading now, the story starts off with one of the bad guys being summoned before the head bad guy (not a guy, exactly, but a cosmic dark force that’s the opposite of the Light). The head guy gives his minion many directions, which we are not privy to, except for the last: “Let the Lord of Chaos Rule.” At the end of the book, this same bad guy again goes before dark force and asked if he did good. The Dark One lets out a loud laugh.

All through numerous rereads, I never could understand what the bad guy did because except for the beginning and very end, he’s practically invisible throughout the book.

But then, I never paid attention to the reason things happened in the book but the obvious since they seemed to be isolated actions taken by various characters. This time, I’m looking at the things that happen, thinking perhaps they are the result of the dark side’s behind-the-word machinations. And now it’s obvious.

The “lord of chaos” comes from the real Medieval and Renaissance New Year’s tradition of upsetting the class system, where the peasants become the rulers and rulers pretend to be peasants. The person chosen to be the “lord” of this celebration was called the Lord of Misrule or the Lord of Chaos, and was often the least competent person around, adding to the hilarity. (Perhaps that’s why the Dark One laughed at the end of the book? Finding the chaos his edict created hilarious?)

During the book, a shepherd (the hero who is meant to fight the dark force during the last battle) leads nations. (He doesn’t become king for another 500,000 words or so.) A blacksmith and a gambler command vast armies, a juggler becomes a wise mentor, queens become maids, an untried girl is chosen to lead the women wielders of power. (She was chosen as a puppet, and the only reason this particular chaotic bit doesn’t have the desired effect is that the dark minions completely underestimated her lust for power. Once she gets it, she grabs hold, and never lets go until it finally kills her.)

Often the bad guys play both sides. For example, it’s minions of the dark that have the hero kidnapped and tortured, but also, minions of the dark that save him. Chaos, indeed! (Create chaos, but in the end be sure to let the Lord of Chaos live so he can rule!) We don’t find out until later that some of the people that are supposed to be on the side of the light are actually on the other side, which adds to the chaos. These people might have their own orders, or they might be victims of compulsion, or they could simply be incompetent, all of which adds to the chaos.

Besides, no one knows the truth, though all characters, all factions, believe they do know what is true. The hero is the devil. The hero will destroy them. The hero needs to be killed. The hero needs to be controlled. The hero needs to be protected until he is delivered up to the Dark One at the Last Battle. The hero needs to be put in prison. Very few people ever stop to realize that the hero is doing what he must, that if he’s imprisoned, he will never grow into what he needs to become in order to win (which could be what the dark side wants, but the light also wants the imprisonment because they don’t believe he will voluntarily do his duty), and despite the very large disparities of belief, they all act with utter conviction.

Do you see where I am going with this post? (Minus the hero bit, that is.) Although the book was written thirty years ago, it seems (spookily) as if I am reading an allegory of our times. In a world of short-form content and edited video clips, it seem as if very few people take the time to delve deeper into the background (or foreground) of events to try to find out the truth. Everyone sees what they believe is true and they act on it because for them, it is the truth. It’s as if we’re living in two distinct worlds where there is no overlapping, so while both sides can be saying the same thing (“the opposition is ignorant,” for example) and both can be acting according to their honest beliefs, they both mean completely different things and have completely different results.

Let the lord of chaos rule, indeed.

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Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One.

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Books I Want to Read

January 21, 2026 — Pat Bertram
Daily writing prompt
What books do you want to read?
View all responses

The books I want to read are novels with a new story (which is hard to find since it seems so many novels repeat the same old stories with minor variations) or a truly different twist on an old story. The characters in these new — or old — stories are loyal and kind, nice until it’s time not to be nice, have integrity, do their best and when they don’t succeed, try to do a better best in some way. Often these characters have a talent or skill, but the story challenges them in ways that those abilities don’t help, and in fact force them try to find ways to use their lesser abilities. (For a simplistic example, a person with great eyesight would be at a disadvantage in a lightless cave and would need to rely on their perhaps diminished hearing.)

These books are also all written with clarity and grace using words and phrases that are sometimes lyrical or out of the ordinary, but always clear and understandable.

The books are of various genres, but at their core they are all great stories with relatability and depth, a sense of wonder and perhaps a touch of strange. No category romance! And not much science fiction or fantasy, either. (A lot of fantasy starts out very confusing and quite frankly, I have enough trouble sorting out the confusion in the real world. I don’t need to bring more confusion into my life.) Some speculative fiction would be on the list of books I want to read, especially if the stories are rooted in an everyday world and only after the story is established does it branch off into extrapolated plausibility (or implausibility).

The books also keep me absorbed without nail-biting tension. Curiosity about what is happening is better for me since tension, like confusion, is something best left to the real world. In fact, if a book makes me too tense, I read the ending, and if the ending fulfills the author’s contract with the reader, giving a satisfying and fulfilling resolution (another thing that’s in all the books I want to read), I’ll go back and finish reading the book with a deeper understanding of the situation.

I’m sure there are other characteristics I’m looking for in the books I want to read, but for now, this will do.

Oh, you want the titles? If I knew the titles of such paragons of the written word, I’d have already read the books!

The truth is, although the books I want to read have all the elements I’ve just described, I read just about anything as long as it engages my attention enough to get through the first chapter. Besides, somewhere in all the sludge are gems just waiting to be found.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One.

Posted in books, fiction, life, writing. Tags: , , , , , . 11 Comments »

Subverting Stereotypes in The Wheel of Time

March 24, 2025 — Pat Bertram

Last night, I spent a considerable amount of what should have been sleeping time looking for bad reviews of the last three books of The Wheel of Time series. After the death of the real author, the series was finished by a stand-in author, who did an execrable job, and I wondered why none of those books rated less than a three-star review on Amazon.

One reason, I discovered, is that a lot of people give him kudos for doing a thankless job, but it wasn’t thankless. He got paid for his work, and those books helped catapult him into the fantasy-writer stratosphere.

Another reason is that he writes in a simplistic style that appeals to today’s readers — short sentences; quick scene changes; lots of action; little real character development; not a lot of depth, emotional or otherwise. All of which is antithetical to Robert Jordan’s writing.

I also tend to think a lot of the acclaim he gets for his Wheel of Time books is because they are in direct contrast to Jordan’s books. There is no doubt that Jordan’s last few books could have used some heavy editing (though oddly, one of the substitute author’s acclaimed books is more or less a replay of the Jordan book that people tend to hate) but much of what people seem to object to in Jordan’s writing are things that shouldn’t be an issue.

For example, when Jordan started writing The Wheel of Time books, there were few female protagonists in that genre. This lack makes sense in a way because the writers of high fantasy tended to be male. Also, the genre seemed to attract more males than females in the beginning (or at least it was assumed to be so). Writing a male protagonist was safe — females will read books written by and for males more often than the reverse.

Jordan tried to turn this assumption on its head, writing both male and female protagonists. He tried to balance the power between males and females, and he tried to subvert stereotypes. It surprised me to discover that so many people think his writing is sexist, though in a world of his own making, with sexual dynamics of his own making in that world , how can he possibly be considered sexist?

One of the problems is that his readers are so young. (I have yet to discover a group of readers my age, online or off, who have any interest in reading the books let alone discussing them in any depth.) These younger generations don’t realize there was a time not that long ago when women were considered gossipy, flighty, unable to handle finances, and needed to be looked after as if they were children. In fact, it wasn’t until 1974 that women could obtain credit cards in their own name without a male co-signer. At the same time, it became illegal for mortgage companies to refuse loans to unmarried women as had been common.

It was only a handful of years after these major real-world changes that Jordan started thinking about his series. In his attempt to subvert stereotypes, he reversed things — women in his series consider men to be gossipy children who don’t have any sense, so the women think nothing of bullying the men to get them to do what the women think is right. Making things more complicated, in Jordan’s world, men are raised to be chivalrous, putting women’s safety first, and protecting them even if they don’t want the protection. This leads to an underlying theme of the story — men don’t understand women, though they try to. Women don’t understand men, though they think they do.

Adding further to this complicated dynamic, the “magic” system had become one-sided. It used to be that both men and women could tap into the power that drove the universe, so they were equals. But during the time of the story, only women were able to use the power, so it threw the balance off.

And yet readers try to fit today’s mores into Jordan’s world.

What really made me stop and think during my research last night is that most of the people in the United States today became adults after those life-changing laws governing women’s financial autonomy came into play. If only 20% of people were born before 1964, then that means 80% never had to deal with (and probably never had to learn about) a fairly recent time when things were so terribly unbalanced in the real world. No wonder so many Wheel of Time readers haven’t a clue what that particular theme of Jordan’s was all about.

In the end, I suppose it doesn’t really matter why the substitute author gets lauded for his awful writing. In my world, those books no longer exist, so unless I can come up with my own ending, the series ends with the real author’s death.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One.

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Secrets

February 4, 2023 — Pat Bertram

The fiction world is fueled by secrets. If no character had a secret, there would be no story to tell — at least, not many — because most often stories revolve around uncovering secrets, what people will do to keep those secrets from being uncovered, what the consequences are for letting the secret out both for the one holding the secret and the one discovering it, and how those secrets determine the lives of those affected by the secrets.

Some secrets the characters keep from themselves. Romance is a good example of this, especially in the pointless type of romance where the characters fight all the time to keep from letting themselves know the truth — that they’ve fallen in love.

Some secrets are silly. Again, romance is a good example, especially in the Hallmark Christmas movie kind of romance where the ultra-successful heroine goes back home to find that her first love has also returned. The secret they are protecting turns out not to be a secret at all but a misunderstanding stemming from their inability to communicate. An Affair to Remember is one such example and although it’s not a Hallmark movie, it’s just as silly — to me, anyway.

Other secrets are more serious — murders, hit-and-run accidents, hidden pregnancies, babies given up for adoption, false or forgotten identities, abuse that’s hidden by both the abused and the abuser, teen peer pressure that gets out of hand resulting in a tragedy that ripples for decades.

And some secrets are multigenerational — something one’s grandparents did, for example, that influences the current generation. Janeane Garofalo’s movie The Matchmaker is a good example of this, where a politician looks for his Irish roots in the wrong place.

(I am amused by my mention of movies since books are what I’m thinking of, but the sad truth is that I remember titles from movies I saw years ago and not the title of the book I just finished reading. It’s not a memory issue; it’s that I don’t really pay attention to book titles.)

All of these secrets make me wonder if everyone is hiding a secret, or if that’s just a fictional conceit. I can’t really think of any secrets in my life that would be enough to motivate a story of any genre. There are things I don’t talk about, of course — there’s no reason to bare my total past, especially the things I did as a child that I am ashamed of — but what small secrets I have are not enough to drive a story. I suppose there are things in my heritage that could be considered a secret since no one really knows the truth. For example, the story goes that my great-grandfather, an inventor and peer of Edison and Tesla, had two wives. One he locked in an insane asylum, the other he threw down the stairs, but no one knows which of those women is our great-grandmother. Not that it matters — we obviously get whatever instability we have from the paternal side.

It does give me a different perspective of the world, though, this idea of everyone hiding a secret. Because those secrets generally don’t devolve into murder and mayhem, I can continue to take people at face value.

But still, I wonder what all of you are hiding.

***

Pat Bertram is the author of Grief: The Inside Story – A Guide to Surviving the Loss of a Loved One. “Grief: The Inside Story is perfect and that is not hyperbole! It is exactly what folk who are grieving need to read.” –Leesa Healy, RN, GDAS GDAT, Emotional/Mental Health Therapist & Educator.

Posted in books, fiction, life, relationships. Tags: , , , , , . 9 Comments »
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