When I was younger, one of the authors I used to read was a well-known best-seller. I now see that her style tended to be what I now refer to as 'formula writing', which essentially means that her books tended to follow the same pattern. The protagonist was often a beautiful, perfect woman who had money, usually a super attractive spouse, perfect children, and, well, you get the idea. Needless to say, it was difficult to feel sorry for that character when something difficult came around the corner.
I grew tired of reading these predictable books but I was left with one powerful lesson: make your characters relatable. Show their insecurities, their weaknesses, air their dirty laundry, and embarrassing moments. Make the reader see that they are far from perfect and demonstrate their struggles. One of the reasons why I didn't continue reading the specific author mentioned ☝🏻is because I didn't care about her characters because they were unrelatable and somewhat vacant.
In essence, this author taught me what not to do as a writer. Since that time, I've read other books that were predictable, couldn't hold my interest, had terrible dialogue or characters reacting in such a way that didn't make sense for their situations and I made a mental note not to do these things. I saw it as a lesson.
Don't get me wrong. I've made mistakes too and I'm sure there's an author somewhere who's read one of my books and perhaps saw things that they wouldn't do in their own writing. And that's fine. I'm always trying to learn more, to do better and I believe that's an important part of my evolution as a writer. That's how I learn and create my own, unique style. Being open to learning is an important part of being an artist.
Although it's important (and terrific!) to have role models that we admire and want to learn from, don't forget to also pay attention to those who actually inspire the opposite feelings. Sometimes we gather some of the most valuable lessons from the most unexpected source.
