All four authors cited are ones whose work I've read and enjoyed. My parents are big Alex Cross fans, and during one school break sometime over the last few years I plowed through that series. I read a number of Picoult's books this past summer while I twitchily waited for Breaking Dawn to come out. I was a Harry Potter devotee from early on, from the time that I originally received Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone as an Easter gift in seventh grade (so early in the craze that Chamber of Secrets hadn't even been published in America) to the midnight release of Deathly Hallows. And my enjoyment of Twilight is well-documented. None of the four is the kind of writer who's going to win a Pulitzer Prize. (Nor is King, for that matter.) I'm not a big enough fan of Patterson or Picoult to mount a coherent defense of their work, but I have very clear opinions about why I think both Rowling and Meyer are good writers, and what that means to me.
I can be a critical reader (like, copy-editing people's work without being asked to critical) but I'm not the kind of reader who places a lot of emphasis on technical quality. Obviously, grammar is important, but I don't know that I find it absolutely vital in narrative fiction that is centered in storytelling. Both Meyer and Rowling have strengths and weaknesses as writers, but to me, the fact that those strengths are being expressed through words makes them good writers. As a reader, I think that Rowling is an unparalleled plotter. She knows how to pace her stories expertly, and deftly built seven nail-biting climaxes. Conversely, I think that this is one of Meyer's weakest areas. Her pacing can be somewhat schizophrenic, with chapters and chapters devoted to action taking place over a few days, then significant time jumps that get glossed over. I'm interested to see what Chris Weitz and Melissa Rosenberg do with the bogged-down middle section of New Moon in adapting the story for the film.
What then, in my opinion, is Meyer's strength? Contrary to King's assertion about those readers who enjoy Twilight, not everyone who loves the books is thrilled by the swoony descriptions of Edward's icy skin. To me, Meyer's characters live and breathe on the page, distinct and vibrant personalities. Both Meyer and Rowling imagined fictional universes filled with a number of characters, and while I don't doubt that each character is clear to their creator, Meyer can communicate who they are to the reader in a way that Rowling does not. After Deathly Hallows, there was an interview with Rowling where she discussed the decision to kill Fred rather than George, saying something to the effect of Fred being the more lighthearted of the two. This surprised me, since nearly a decade of reading and re-reading the books had never revealed any substantive difference between the two to me. The run-up to the release of the film version of Half-Blood Prince has also made me realize that Ginny is still kind of a non-person to me, character-wise. The last few Potter films have diverged dramatically from the books, largely because the story can be formed around the plot and characters can appear extraneous or unimportant in the bigger picture.
Additionally, (and Stephen King would probably find this totally sacrilegious) I think Meyer's skill in writing is similar to that of Brian Wilson. Both understand how to vocalize emotions the way that a teenager does. Sometimes I find Bella unbelievably annoying, but I also find her voice totally authentic as a teenager, and am positive that if I went back to my journals from high school I would find similarly embarrassing odes to whatever guy I had a crush on at the time. This is something that I don't think Rowling has ever done well - Order of the Phoenix remains one of my least favorite of the Harry Potter books due to Harry's constant immature whining. He never seemed authentically teenaged to me in that scenario, just like a petulant child.
Some of my favorite authors are wordsmiths, some are storytellers. To me, they're all good writers, all for different reasons. I hope that as I continue to write, and look ahead to my thesis and dissertation, that I, too, can find a voice and play to my own strengths, writing as well as I know how and not trying to be a writer I'm not.
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