Posts tagged Toys

Almost every main character that James Patterson writes is a complete Mary Sue. Sometimes, to avoid this, he enjoys tacking on “flaws” that either could easily be overcome in-universe, making the true flaw stupidity, no matter how smart he tries to make them. These “flaws” often never really come up in the story at all.  To distinguish himself from other authors who make their main characters into Mary Sues, he makes several of the supporting characters Mary Sues as well, so long as they aren’t bad guys.

Bad guys, of course, are people who commit “bad crimes.”  You see, to James Patterson, there are two types of crimes.there are the cool crimes that mark one as a rebel and the bad crimes that mark one as the spawn of Satan.  Being a hitman, for example, is a good crime.  Disagreeing with the protagonists is a bad crime.  A character from a James Patterson book cannot pick one of the following: disagreeing with the protagonists, committing incest, destroying the environment, killing people that the protagonists know (there’s a big distinction here), raping, kidnapping, controlling people’s minds, imprisoning innocents that the protagonists know (again, a big distinction), or stealing money from a tip jar.  No, if you do one of those things, it will soon be revealed that you actually do most of them.  What, did you think that criminals don’t actually commit every single crime they can think of?  Ha!  They sure do in James Patterson books!

Also, I think it might be possible that James Patterson spends his entire life watching old cartoons and reading political propaganda from the first two world wars, because finding a character who isn’t a stereotype is extremely hard.  People from other countries act exactly how second graders think they act.  Sometimes, he tries to keep up with the times a bit by using some recent stereotypes.  As soon as the angsty teen became super-popular, Fang from the Maximum Ride series did some — ha, ha — character development.  Fang’s real superpower is the ability to transform into Edward. 

Oh, and by the way, in case you were wondering, James Patterson does not know anything about character development.  In the Maximum Ride, Daniel X, and Witch and Wizard series, as well as in the book Toys, the characters do not develop; their magic powers and cool gadgets do.  In many of his standalone books, as well as in the Women’s Murder Club series (I have not read Alex Cross), his characters also do not develop, but they do not have cool technology or magic to create the illusion.  Often, as in the books Kill Me if You Can and First to Die, the illusion is achieved by having the amount of information known about a major character develop while the actual character stays flat and stagnant.  If the characters from the ends of James Patterson’s books met up with their past selves in the beginnings of the books, they would be completing each others’ sentences.

You could say that James Patterson portrays women well, in that the female characters have as great a number of personalities as the male characters do (hint: startlingly few).  Gender often has no effect on character, which is almost a point in his favor.  Look closely, however, at the physical descriptions of the female characters.  They all, without exception, are shown as gorgeous.  The males can be ugly so long as they take part in “bad crimes,” but the females are all stunning.  Because, really, who would want an ugly lady messing up James Patterson’s “perfect” universes? 

When a man (usually handsome unless it’s a bad guy) and a woman develop special feelings for each other, they create a little baby subplot that usually grows up to take over the story.  I’m only going to focus on characterization here, so let’s talk about how the man and the woman express their love.  If it’s not one of “his” YA books, they express it by having sex every five minutes, on the five minutes.  During the times when they aren’t having sex, they are complaining about how their partner isn’t there because they are horny.  If you’ll notice, since he can’t include sex, the YA books are full of complaining.  Any possible other romantic gesture turns into sex within around a page.  I have not seen any instances of homosexuality in his books, but I have not read them all, so I’ll just go with saying that homosexuals are vastly underrepresented.  Every romantic couple in all of James Patterson’s books has the exact same procedure.  Their thoughts are pretty much identical across books, with only the names changing.  It turns out, in Patterworld, that there is only one type of relationship ever.  Not even bad guys get to have any other type of relationship.  If the SINGLE GOOD TYPE OF RELATIONSHIP  fizzes out, the character can acquire a lover and start another SINGLE GOOD TYPE OF RELATIONSHIP that is suspiciously like the first one for the reason that every Patterelationship is suspiciously like every other one.

Ever wonder why James Patterson books almost always have coauthors?  Sure, there are a few with just Patterson’s name, but many of them have another, smaller name taking up space on the cover as well.  James Patterson himself has said that the division of work involves the coauthor writing the first draft and Patterson writing everything else.  Maybe you think differently, but in my view, if somebody else thinks of the story and writes the entire first draft, what you’re doing is only heavy editing.  The problem is compounded by the fact that his books with coauthors read little better than first drafts anyways. 

One day, while fooling around with his keyboard, James Patterson discovered italics.  Thus a monster was born.  Patterson subscribes to the belief that if the important things aren’t italicized, nobody will read them.  Any monster or murderer or “surprising” plot twist that James Patterson thinks is cool will get the italics treatment.  Sometimes, the placement of italics seems to be completely random.  If you look closely, however, you’ll find a slight pattern in that he tends to use italics whenever he’s enamored with a part of his own description.  It gets very annoying.

When he forgets about italics, his other friend, the exclamation point, is always ready to supply the unnecessary emphasis!  No Pattersentence is complete without one!  Sometimes (read: often), when he feels that he needs to lay on the emphasis especially thick, he mixes the two!  This gives the impression that an excited Billy Mays is the narrator!

James Patterson firmly believes that he is funny.  He also believes that when his characters are in a joking mood, they are funny as well.  These are false beliefs.  The kindest thing Patterson could do would be to put a warning before one of his characters is about to tell a joke.  Heck, he should put a warning before any of his characters even finds something funny!  James Patterson is the type to laugh about how the word “debriefed” sounds like somebody having their briefs taken away.  That’s in one of his YA books.  Believe it or not, his humor actually gets worse in his adult books.  

tl;dr: your eight-year-old little brother could write better than James Patterson.

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