Lacking

Am at the moment reading Charlaine Harris’ Dead Until Dark (Sookie Stackhouse Mysteries). It is slow going. I keep comparing it to Meyer’s exquisite debut, Twilight. In retrospect, I think Meyer may have borrowed from Harris’ hero, Bill Compton the vampire. There are many similarities. Edward and Bill: both vampires. Both have similar characteristics and are trying to live among humans. Both vampires are drawn to a specific human, namely Bella and Sookie, respectively. But the telepathy is switched between Harris’ heroine, Sookie, and Meyer’s antagonist, Edward. However, because of the writing style, I still think Edward, by far, is the sexier vampire. Maybe it’s the fact that there are so many obstacles in the way of Bella and Edward’s getting together that makes the story so delectable. As quoted in Amazon, “love burns high when thwarted by obstacles”; the reader feels so much more in Twilight than Dead Until Dark.

Where Meyer takes her time to describe her characters and settings, I find Harris’ style not quite as descriptive or fluent. The latter’s fleshing out of her characters are not quite there and her ‘script’ seems to be lacking, if only because it reads too simplistic to me. Meyer creates a palpable tension and chemistry between Bella and Edward. Even other YA writers like Sarah Dessen seems to be able to paint the delicacies, the pulls and pushes of a relationship better than Harris. Harris just seems to jump about all over the place. She lacks the ‘sophistication’ that authors like Dessen and Meyer ooze.

Sigh, basically if I were to write a novel, it would be like Harris’: lacking. I simply have no patience to write descriptions. So much for entertaining thoughts of writing a book: everything’s going up *poof* in flames.

Maybe I should shoot for a short story, or writing an illustrated book instead…