Tight Plot to the Rescue

I've read some mediocre - okay, one was godawful - best! selling! books. Cover to cover. What, you say? Has she lost her edge? Marbles gone fishing or what?

The lesson: P-L-O-T

It's king, it's queen, it's everything.

If you had only those two choices: would you rather read a boring, non-moving book (or watch..... film) where nothing much happens, say, other than on 5 or 6 plot points but it has sort of interesting characters or would you choose the book (film) where something's up every 5 or six pages, even though the chars are not to your liking b/c they're underdeveloped (but perhaps you got 20 of them, or perhaps it's a crime mystery with clues popping up left and right) ?

My answer: I've read a novel that sucked. Twentysome chars, idiotic, but stuff happened all the time and I had to know where it went. Best selling romcom.

On the thriller front: I read Patterson's 1st To Die. Idiotic stereotypical female protag, idiotic Women's Murder Club, stoopidola romance. BUT the other half, the serial killer plot, reeled me in just when I was about to return that thing to the library. At around 100+ pages or so.
(Following volumes in that WMC series were co-written with different authors, the collaborator on the latest two is female, I guess.)

And yep, let me point that out since the question came up elsewhere recently:

We only wonder if the writer is male if your female protag sucks. Got that?

We don't have a general prejudice. Some male writers know they can't write convincing females so they write from the male's POV and focus on him and his friends or whatever. Their female main chars (in romcoms, for ince) might not get much screen time/ many pages. That's perfectly fine, it works.

And some just know how to "write women". Love you guys.

Nuff said.