Suspension of Disbelief: Mistakes in the Editing

Part of being a good writer is making your story and characters believable. From what I could tell, there was/is a huge part of the population that has trouble with the way Meyer wrote her vampires: real vampires don't sparkle. Frankly, I have no problem with that, likely because I have no history of vampire knowledge. It isn't a genre I read, so her world was fine for me. I read it for the characters--I fell in love with Edward. Twilight has fewer "goofs" for me than "Shades," but I find "Shades" a better read on the whole. Neither author is a very good writer when it comes to technical skill--Meyer really needs to stop announcing publicly that she has an English degree--her writing shows a lack of technical knowledge and frankly, where the hell was her editor? My biggest problem with it, being an English major myself, was her word usage. "Till" is not a substitute for "until." She uses that word repeatedly--I know it is slang, but at least write it correctly: 'Til. And she has Edward saying it at the same time she has him being well educated and from another era. So it's there, but it's annoying. She also has problems with sentence structure and proper grammar. "Firstly" isn't correct, it's "first of all" and then "secondly," and she clearly missed that lesson and her editor allowed her to seem really uneducated. It's just embarassing for an English major. And people will ignore that and say "what's the big deal, we knew what she meant." The big deal is that it's wrong. And it's that attitude that it's perfectly OK to not know your own mother tongue that has the US behind other developed countries. The Chinese, the Japanese, the Germans (all who have economies that are booming right now) all know their own languages well and use them properly. Accepting the incorrect is part of our problem. We just don't care anymore or have any standards. There are fewer instances in "Twilight" that make one say: "really? that just doesn't seem like it would happen that way." The few I can think of are her crappy computer, the moment following blood typing when she just walks away and Edward keeps her with him by force, and the vampires in gym class. I will get to the computers later. The sheer antagonism coming from Bella when Edward tries to give her a ride home was a little off for me. We know she likes him and I understand it was to show how she doesn't like to be taken care of, but being so angry about a ride home from the boy you're supposed to like? It just didn't seem to me that she'd act that way--or that a girl with a crush would act that way. The way it's written...she invites him to the beach trip and then just starts walking off to her car--no goodbye, no wondering if she'll see him later--really? It wasn't behavior that seemed plausible for a girl that really liked him. Computers and our Authors Their age shows in their writing when they discuss computers. It was a little more believable to read that Bella has a crap computer back in the mid-00's. Wireless, cable, and DSL were still luxuries not the norm, but you could tell that Meyer had to really sell us on the idea that Bella's computer was such a shit box. She almost over-sold it. I think even in a small town the Police Chief would have a quality computer and internet connection. EL James really cocked it up when she wrote about Ana and the laptop. I'm sorry but no English major graduating top of her class in 2011 uses the computers at the lab and borrows her room mate's laptop. I'd believe her having the crappy one of Bella's as a hand me down from Kate before I'd believe she didn't have one at all. Total mistake and the editor should have mentioned that. The girl has a job and pays nothing for rent--she can afford a cheap, used lap top. And Kate being so wealthy giving her clothes all the time? Kate would have kicked down a used family lap top or desk top. And they would have had a desk top in the home too. While lap tops are great, I think a desk top would have been in the apartment of two English majors. I graduated college in 1992--I had a computer and so did my roommate. Sorry but in 2011 every student does. Having Ana with a cell phone that texts? Please. And not having an email? She had an email. Even if she only had a school email. I'm an alumni and can still have an email account from my college 20 years later, so that was just ridiculous. No student in 2011 is without a free hotmail account or gmail account. That was just something no one would believe. I understand that James wanted the MacBook to be a big deal and a great gift, but it wasn't written in a believable way. I also think the Blackberry comes down to her being British. No one who gifts MacBooks and iPads is gifting a Blackberry. You're also getting and iPhone. For a man who has a garage full of just Audis and a closet full of the same shirt--he's picking a brand and sticking to it. I just started reading book 3 again, 50 Shades Freed, and found a glaring error. The discussion about the pre-nup at the beginning had Kate at the table over-hearing the shouting match between Christian and Carrick. Everyone but Ethan appeared to be there. Later in the book, when Ana and Kate go out for drinks, Ana mentions how Carrick wanted a pre-nup and the way it's written it's as if Kate had never heard this information before. Yes she had, she was there when it happened. Just a mistake--forgetting who is where and when and again, something an editor is supposed to catch. I also questioned their honeymoon mode of transport. Why did they take his private plane TO Europe, yet took British Airways home? He has gone out of his way to brag and boast about his plane, offering it to her when she flew to Georgia, taking it to New York when he went on a business trip, yet as the owner and head of his own company, he wasn't able to schedule his own plane to take them home? It dropped them off in London and then left back for the US? Hey, if you are going to write about it, have it make sense.