Thing is I think it's very useful to pick at the flaws and weak points in published fiction not just in a 'try not to do this' way or even in terms of like, here's how to work around this, but as a counteragent to perfectionism. A 'this is allowed' kind of thing.
Like. I've got Seanan McGuire in mind rn because Seasonal Fears was perfectly good, but didn't live up to Middlegame, right? McGuire's work as a rule has certain--issues, when it comes to plot. You can't say there isn't a plot, because lots of things reliably happen and they even connect up to one another, though sometimes just via the basic laws of causality. The plots aren't really bad, even.
But there's not much of a plot arc, as a rule. McGuire's tendency is to spend most of the book constructing a scenario and pushing the characters along through it, and then you get to the end and she sort of waves a hand and Problem Over.
This is less of a problem with murder mysteries, where it's basically supposed to work like that, which I assume is why she shoehorns random murderers into places they don't really add much sometimes, and why the 'plot' of Every Heart A Doorway has only a tenuous attachment to the core premise.
Like, the serial killer storyline does ultimately work to deliver some themes about the door situation, but it's also fairly blatantly an excuse plot to give the characters something to do at boarding school that is not school, and heighten tension.
Other techniques she uses to get around the serious risk of anticlimax created by her style include 1) anachronic storytelling (i liked this one but it's stupid hard work) and 2) piling on the foreshadowing with a spade so when the denouement comes, the delivery of exactly what you were expecting arrives as a release of tension and provides a sense of completion. Also 3) the ever-popular give the protagonists something life-threatening to kill at the eleventh hour, which overlaps with 'shove a murderer in there.'
Like this, she has produced probably dozens of highly acclaimed works of published fiction, and is A Good Writer. Which is I think a very salutary lesson to the rest of us: you can be good and successful while being actually kinda mediocre at something people would generally consider a key skill for a novelist.
In fact, being successful probably depends on learning to work around what you're bad at well enough to get by and just finish shit already. It's actually fine. Go ahead.
