R. L. Stine

[Anonymous No.18674396]

>300+ books written
>400 million+ copies sold
Does /lit/ kneel?

[Tripcodes lower confusion No.18674417]

>>18674396
The Haunted mask...

[Anonymous No.18674421]

i kneel, but i haven't read any of them

however, i did listen to bailey read them on goosedrunks (just look up goosedrunks on youtube if you want to know)

[Anonymous No.18674427]

>>18674396
Loved this series as a kid, shame that he’s a jew though

[Anonymous No.18674479]

>>18674396
Uk covers were great.

[Anonymous No.18674493]

>>18674396
Churning out dross doesn't make me want to kneel

[Anonymous No.18674516]

>>18674427
>>>/pol/

[Anonymous No.18674544]

>>18674427
>its a juice
Why even care

[Anonymous No.18674545]

>>18674479
Damn that’s nice

[Anonymous No.18676285]

I've been weirdly tempted to read the ones I could never get as a kid.
But I realized I'm gonna be 30 next month and this shit was made for 8 year olds.

[Anonymous No.18676298]

>>18674427
kek

[Anonymous No.18676306]

>>18674396

[Anonymous No.18676391]

>>18674545
>>18674479
3D texture on the slime on the cover too.

[Anonymous No.18676399]

>>18674427
Based
>>18674516
Cringe

[Anonymous No.18676425]

>>18674396
He would be nothing without his cover artist
Goosebumps is first and foremost a collection of postcards, then books

[Anonymous No.18676448]

>>18676285
They're great for learning another language. The wording and sentence structure is very simple, and the plots are entertaining enough to keep you hooked.

[Anonymous No.18677894]

>>18676425
An interesting take

[Anonymous No.18677920]

is he some sort kooky halloween kid friendly stephan king or something? it's the first time i ever heard this guy mentioned on a public forum.

[Anonymous No.18677937]

>>18677920
He wrote a lot of books and it always stood out in school libraries as a kid because of how much room they took up on a shelf and how interesting the covers looked. Same as animorphs

[Anonymous No.18677941]

>>18674396
So the masses like his books? Well I hear [some jewed hollywood supergoy blockbuster] was the most watched movie in history by most people, it surely must be good, I better be good goy and kneel

[Anonymous No.18677960]

>>18677941
The 'masses' like the series because they were read as a child during the last period of childhood innocence and magic (90s and early 00s).

[Anonymous No.18677965]

>>18674396
Physically, Goosebumps books are great-smell, feel, cover pic, etc. the pictures are iconic. This series helped me to get into reading and have fun with it on my own

[Anonymous No.18677970]

>>18677960
I feel sorry for those kids

[Anonymous No.18677973]

does anyone outside of the usa know of him even?

[Anonymous No.18677978]

>>18677970
>he never sat in a goodwill/second hand store reading through the pile of goosebumps books
ngmi

[Anonymous No.18677982]

>>18677978
I was never poor

[Anonymous No.18677983]

>>18674396
A real champion

[Anonymous No.18678020]

>>18677983
Wow, he is literally me

[Anonymous No.18679200]

Take the knee, /lit/

[Anonymous No.18679248]

>>18677982
nor was I but antique hunting was a trend my mother followed

[Anonymous No.18679267]

>>18674396
Horrorland was my all time favorite as a kid. Granted it was the only book I willingly read at the time.

[Anonymous No.18679273]

>>18674396
I didn't read fag books when I was a kid but the video games were lit af

[Anonymous No.18680735]

>>18679248
Or she was just poor

[Anonymous No.18680777]

even as a kid I knew these books were bad. The cover has always been the best thing about them. The stories themselves are lazy ripoffs of old b-movies and twilight zone episodes, their paper-thin premises streeeeeeeeetched even thinner by agonizingly long first acts where the reader waits for the kids to discover the premise on the cover, idiotic cliffhangers at the end of each chapter (my favorite is a chapter ending with a character going blind, and the next chapter announcing no, it was just a cat that jumped on his face), and the ending is usually completely forgettable, even if there's a twist.

If the covers were in black and white and the art was more cartoonish I think this franchise never would have kicked off.

[Anonymous No.18680983]

>>18676306
based

[Anonymous No.18681029]

>>18680777
Disagree. Most of them are bad (hilariously so), but there are a few that stand out (either Stine cared enough to try or they weren't written by him). Tim Jacobus is responsible for the series cultural persistence, though - can't really deny that.

[Anonymous No.18681049]

>>18676448
That’s actually a good idea, cheers

[Anonymous No.18681134]

>>18678020
Am I the only one to notice that RL Stine browses /lit/?

[ΠΑΣ No.18681195]

>>18676425
Hmh, to a degree yes.

[Anonymous No.18681222]

>>18680777
Many books had interesting-looking covers, but didn't do nearly as well as he did. The reason for his success was

1. Output. He wrote so much that someone was bound to check out at least one of his books.

2. Non-serial stand-alone book releases. You could start at any point in the Goosebumps or Fear Street books and not be lost.

3. Short books. They could be read in one sitting, or in about 2 days. They were fast-paced stories and not very long. For kids barely getting into reading (especially non-illustrated books), this is an important first step, and gives a feeling of accomplishment, that motivates many to read more.

4. Good writing. Of course it isn't good in retrospect...because it is meant for kids, and looking back on it, the writing may seem too simple or kind of tacky. But consider that this was a grown man who was writing for kids. It's difficult to balance out the simpleness of the language while making sure you're not insulting their intelligence or condescending to them. The books needed to be scary, but of course not **too** scary. RL Stine is a master at this particular craft.

5. The cover art was good, but I always found many of them as kind of lame. The one about the Mutant super hero for example, had a pretty awful cover. I read it anyways, because I knew it would be good. Plenty of book covers were bad or mediocre, yet were very good.

/thread

you're just jealous that he wrote a lot of books and had a lot of success. You should get to writing, anon. Maybe you'll write some books that are 1/10th as popular.

[Anonymous No.18681459]

>>18676425
redpilled

[Anonymous No.18681702]

>>18674396
did he write even a single good book?

[Anonymous No.18681816]

>>18681702
>You Can't Scare Me!
>How I Learned to Fly
>The Haunted School

[Anonymous No.18681839]

>>18681222
For once someone on this forum was not an idiot or a dick. Ten thousand Internets to you good sir.

[Anonymous No.18681853]

>>18674421
I don't want to know. Thank you.

[Anonymous No.18681919]

>>18674396
Many books few pages. I remember that I read two books in a day when I was twelve.

[Anonymous No.18682399]

>>18674396
I read a ton of these from 2nd to about 5th grade.

Still have a box full of them somewhere. These books were the big stepping stone from having books with no pictures read to me, to reading on my own. After these I started reading stuff like hatchet, the hobbit, and Narnia

People who never read them as a kid won't ever understand people's love for them

[Anonymous No.18682419]

>>18676425
I agree with this. The covers were iconic. In fact, I used to chose Goosebumps to read based off the cover

[Anonymous No.18682913]

>>18674396
I wish I could go back and read these as a kid. If I read them now, I think I worry my nostalgia would be killed by bad writing

[Anonymous No.18684270]

>>18676425
this

[Anonymous No.18684419]

>>18676425
probably true, a few years ago I read a comic book he wrote and it was dreadful

[Anonymous No.18684425]

>>18680777
lucky trips of truth

[Anonymous No.18684454]

>>18674396
I hold him in the same esteem I do writters who shit out harlequin romance novel every years

[Anonymous No.18684495]

>>18681222
None of those things you listed make a good book, except good writing, and Goosebumps doesn't have that. Output? Seriously? There's some autist who output a 10,000 page Super Smash Brothers fan fiction. Why isn't he successful? Non-serial, stand alone? You can start at any point in the series because the stories are all so formulaic they all start the same exact way: with a boy/girl moving to a new neighborhood and getting into a platonic relationship with someone. You can start anywhere, but when you try to move onto another book you feel like you've already read the first act before. Good writing?
>"His hand trembling, his mouth hanging open in disbelief, Greg goggled at the photo."
>My tongue was the size of a salami and hanging down to the floor just like Elvis's.
>But when he finally saw the three tomatoes spinning around in midair a few feet in front of him, his eyes bugged out and his face turned as red as the tomatoes!

>You should get to writing, anon. Maybe you'll write some books that are 1/10th as popular.
I don't write middle school or YA fiction. So what I do is not only more difficult to write but also 100x more difficult to sell to an agent.

[Anonymous No.18684673]

>>18684495
jealous lol

[Anonymous No.18684686]

>>18674479
If this book was a person I would fuck it with the sensitivity required of banging a lithe, twee hipster who loves cats, typewriters, sunshine and forests. Then I would take an overexposed photo of our intertwined post-coitus naked bodies whilst we wear bunny masks and straight into the wank bank it'd go. Though I must say, this book if it were an IRL person would be like Lee Holloway, all presumed innocence but in fact kinky as hell.

[Anonymous No.18685124]

I'm surprised no one has mentioned the fact that he doesn't write all of his books. Many of them are ghostwritten. Look it up.

[Anonymous No.18685130]

>>18685124
That makes sense. There were multiple released every year which is suspicious

[Anonymous No.18685158]

>>18681702
>beast front the east