Why are authors long winded?

Cafe Society
1

This is a combination of a mini-rant and a legitimate question. (cafe? imho? mods move it wherever the heck it belongs)

Why are many authors (usually the better ones!) often so long winded? I understand long ago it made it a little more sense in a patron relationship, but it doesn’t in modern times.

One common way (in books I often read) is to use “travel details”.

“They then traversed to _____(insert location usually not on the map). The weather was ____ for ___ days and the moving was very difficult. The landscape was very ______. We then moved on to _____…” ad nauseum with stupefying amounts of detail. Most of these stops will be short. The descriptions will be L-O-N-G. The addition to characterization and plot will be ZILCH.

WHY? (Yes, I’m look at you Prof. Tolkien, but you are far from the sole offender. I recently hit a bad case of “travel details” in Neal Stephenson’s Quicksilver.)

Do they think it adds realism, because it doesn’t. If they just replaced 4 pages of useless infinitely detailed description with “Over the next two weeks we hopped, skipped, and jumped over _____, ____, and ____. It was tough going, but we made it.” No one would complain. No one would feel cheated.

Do they have a rationalization? Do their editors agree?

I love Lord of the Rings, but to just to pick on poor Tolkien again, I think 10-20% of it could be eliminated with 99.9% of the characterization and 99.9% of the plot (including backstory!) completely and totally unchanged.

What’s the deal?

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It’s not a movie. It is realistic - incredibly realistic - a bit too realistic for your tastes. Reality is dull.

3

Tolkien, Melville, and Victor Hugo were authors who were more into their style than into the story (though they had good stories if you cared enough to press on through.)

Some authors are like that, others aren’t. It’s not a universal affliction.

(And probably the above three authors could cut more than 80% of their descriptive text without affecting the story or characterization. The frickin Hunchback of Notre Dame doesn’t even start until page 20.)

4

Sometimes, and I’m not coming up with any examples here, what seems like useless description can mean a lot in terms of symbolism or foreshadowing, even if it’s not strictly necessary to the plot or characterization.

Isabel Allende, one of my favorite authors, can be incredibly desciptive in the most beautiful ways. To someone not interested in things like symbolism and motifs, however, it might seem useless and unecessary. But for a deeper understanding of the text, it’s crucial.

Can’t speak for Tolkien, as I never managed to get more than a few pages into The Hobbit.

5

Painting the scene. If a journey is meant to be tedious for the characters, the right kind of long-winded descriptive text can put that across well, a lot like music or composition can affect the viewing of a film.

Might I suggest you look at Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast trilogy for an astonishing amount of text that takes an achingly long time to get to the point, if there even is one.

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The answer is… because some authors like to write that way, and some readers like to read that kind of thing. Many of the ‘great’ novelists of the past were writing in a different era, when people had fewer leisure options and those who could enjoy reading were glad of the detail and shading in the story because this prolonged the pleasure. Plot and character are part of literary writing, but not the whole. There is also room for style, literary voice and attention to circumstantial detail.

The fact that much of this detail can be sacrificed without detriment to the development of the story is neither here nor there, because ‘telling the story’ is only part of the author’s aim. The author chooses what he wants to write, and readers choose what they want to read. If you prefer writers who ‘get to the point’ more succinctly, then those are the writers you will choose. Other people have other tastes.

A good example of what the OP refers to is ‘Trilby’ by George du Maurier. The ‘story’, such as it is, could be told in about one tenth the pages in the actual novel.

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It sounds like you only read novels for plot and characterization. Heck, it almost sounds like you suspect that’s the only thing anyone reads novels for. Some of us who love Tolkien love reading The Lord of the Rings because we love spending time in Middle Earth. We want to be able to imagine traveling around in Middle Earth, and the descriptive details help us to do that. To elaborate on this, I’ll quote from a paper I once wrote on LOTR:

The sheer length, and, at least in places, the leisurely pace, of the work are, I am sure, considered a great strength by some readers and a great weakness by others. Tolkien takes his time telling his story. For instance, we are well into the first book before Frodo actually sets out on his quest; and we spend three chapters in Lothlorien, resting up and getting ready to continue onward. … This contributes to the realism of the book: journeys, and life, are often long and drawn out at times, and if we had actually travelled with Frodo, we would have experienced periods of uneventful travel. Tolkien actually does a pretty good job of letting his readers experience the length of the journey without boring them.

There is a great deal of detailed description, of the scenery and all the people, places, and things the characters encounter in the course of their quest, which is key to part of the appeal of the book, an appeal similar to that of reading novels set in real but exotic locales, historical novels, travel books, and some science fiction: in reading, we get to enter a new world, travel through or immerse ourselves in a different land from the one we inhabit in our daily lives. We read or reread Tolkien in order to visit or revisit Middle Earth. Beginning the story is like setting out on the Road, which will sweep us along to who-knows-where.

LOTR could be condensed or rewritten to be much shorter by leaving out much of this detail, in such a way as to keep some of the book’s appeal, while totally eliminating the rest of it. (In fact, maybe this has been done with some of the LOTR imitations: Tolkien rewritten with less scenery, less talk, more action.)

With that said about Tolkien, however, I would agree that there are authors who are indeed too long-winded, and whose work would be improved with fewer or briefer descriptinve passages.

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Charles Freakin’ Dickens!

No wonder A Christmas Carol is his most popular work!

Other than ACC, I’ve only read Great Expectations and A Tale of Two Cities- hated the first few chapters of both. Thoroughly enjoyed the books by the time I was finished, but not enough to tackle the hurdles of beginning other Dickens books.

9

Ditto what others have said. Mood, tone, and all sorts of other qualities in a story can be important. Sometimes moreso even than plot.

Not a novel, but Lawrence of Arabia, one of my favorite movies, is full of scenes that do not further plot or character, but only mood. It’s analogous, I think, to LoTR in that respect.

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Vladimir Nabokov wrote an entire short story to piss off readers who skip over the descriptive bits. It says so right in the story. I wish I could remember what collection you’re likely to find it in. The point being, some writers write long-windedly because that is expressing their style and vision, and if you don’t like it, you’re probably better off seeking authors whose styles gel better with your tastes.

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There were over 14,000 non-genre novels published last year alone. I bet you can find one to your tastes and leave the others to those with different tastes.

Really, the others have said it well. Some people like to live in the world that the author creates. Some readers love to immerse themselves in sensory details. Some readers find that minute descriptions fill in the world where their imaginations may not stretch. Some love authors for their choice of words.

And some authors try for these pleasures and fail.

If you find one, toss it aside and that leaves… over 14,000 non-genre novels published last year alone. Plus the genre novels. Plus everything that has ever been published in history.

Quite a bit, actually.

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That’s pretty much it, yes.

Not all novels are high-concept. Lord of the Rings is not just about a couple of provincial lads who found some jewelry. Their story is a culmination of thousands of years of history. Everything there is present for a reason.

Let’s take Aragorn. In short form, Aragorn is the lost king of Gondor. He is going to go back to rule. But why is this important? Isn’t the Steward running things reasonably well considering his country’s a war zone? Why is it important that he’s king?

It’s important Aragorn is king because a million bazillion years ago a man fell in love with, essentially, an immortal demigoddess. From their line came the line of kings of men, and those men rather literally had a divine right to rulership. Through pride and infighting these people were split apart and scattered – and not least in this conflict, thousands of years before the main story, was Sauron, playing on all their faults and imperfections. Shoot forward a few centuries. In a war with Sauron and his forces the king dies, and while his son takes his place, that son is struck down by the same pride and imperfections that have always dogged all his people. The instrument of that pride falls into the hands of a group of people who have no great history, no shining heroes, just humility and industry, back in the land that these reduced men once ruled.

And the rulers are still there. They rule nothing, but they serve their people still through a sense of nobless oblige – the pride of their ancestors took the kingdoms of Eriador to ruin. They still care for the people of these lands and protect them from the dangers of the world outside, trying to keep safe a kingdom without kings.

Description answers the question “why”. You can have a story with no more depth than ‘a couple of country bumpkins save the world by sacrificing a McGuffin’ and it can be a fine story. It’s not Lord of the Rings, though; there’s a lot more there.

Look at it like this. You can make a wonderful filet of fish with a little lemon juice, some salt, and a grill. You can also take that fish and make very elaborate sushi. To appreciate that fish you don’t NEED to surround it with lots of things; sometimes the single item stands by itself. Some people will throw seven hundred kinds of spices that clash with each other, masking the taste of the fish and making it worse. Some people will take just the right amount of this, that, and the other, combining it all to make something far more complex than a squirt of lemon juice can accomplish. Neither the grilled fish nor the sushi is objectively better than the other. They’re just two different ways of preparation.

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I’m not.

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MMV. I remember when my college Dickens class read Bleak House. Some thought the first chapter was pointless; some (myself included) thought it was the best thing in the book.

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Nabokov is about the only author I can read even when he is being long-winded. But when he’s not being long-winded he’s amazing. If all of his stuff had been as much of a pageturner as Lolita he’d be even more of my favorite author than he already is.

Then again, I don’t think Tolkein is particularly overly verbose, at least not with regards to description versus plot. He could have chopped off some bits from LOTR (especially the journey from Amon Hen to Mount Doom – that takes up nearly 2 [of Tolkein’s original] books IIRC – far too long.) But the parts he leaves in are not overly-long for what they accomplish.

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Heh. As soon as saw the thread title, I suspected Neal Stephenson was going to be taken to task. He does tend to wax a bit prolix.

But, here are my thoughts.

Some “tedious” travel descriptions are intended to ground you in the period. We take travel pretty much for granted, but back in the day, even ten or twenty miles was a major undertaking, to say nothing of trips across continents. * Yet people undertook these trips, accepting the hardship. * For example, when Daniel Waterhouse gets co-opted to travel to England to settle the dispute between Newton and Leibniz, it’s a major big deal for a 60-something year old scholar. He’s fully expecting not to live long enough to return.

Character development: When you see how people face the hardships of the voyage, you get insights into their character.

Showing off: Sometimes, as in Stephenson’s case, you do get the feeling that they’re showing off a bit. They did a bunch of research and by gum, you darned well better appreciate it. (To moderate this viewpoint, I also get the feeling that Stephenson finds a lot of the incidental detail to be fascinating.)

And heck, sometimes interesting stuff happens on the way…
But I have a lot of sympathy for the OP. It seems that particularly in fantasy novels, the whole darned story * is * the trip. After a while, you get tired of reading about people building campfires.

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Because the journey is as important as the destination.

Authors like Tolkien and Stephenson aren’t great writers just because they tell interesting stories. They’re great writers because they have a command of the language that makes reading them a joy regardless of what they’re writing about. A great author doesn’t skip over the boring parts of his story, he makes the boring parts interesting. Stephenson’s Baroque Cycle certainly lived up to its name, but I wouldn’t have sacrificed a single line from it. Every page had something in that made me smile, or think, or just think, “Damn, that was clever.” His books are an amazing example of the craft of writing, and that made them significant in a way wholly apart from the mundane details of what happened and to whom.

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Well, with the exception of Ludorvic, I understand most of what you all had to say. I suppose I am too much of a to-the-point kind of guy and lover of brevity to understand that some people (crazy as they may be) actually like all that stuff.

It would be interesting to know how many people see it each way along with possible differences in gender, education, etc. However, that sounds like a poll too nebulous and difficult to take.

Anyway, thanks for the responses.

Oh, and don’t get me wrong about Stephenson, I actually enjoy a lot of his slowness because it feels like I am actually learning something in his long rabbit trails. It is when I feel like I am not learning anything that I get bored.

I do wonder though, if many of these old classic books were published today, would editors take a red pen to them? If many of these long classics were never written and some guy today came up and threw it at a publisher, would they publish it as is? Would they still be as popular and seen as a modern classic?

19

This:

“They then traversed to _____(insert location usually not on the map). The weather was ____ for ___ days and the moving was very difficult. The landscape was very ______. We then moved on to _____…”

If properly done, gives the reader a sense of “being there”.

This:
“Over the next two weeks we hopped, skipped, and jumped over _____, ____, and ____. It was tough going, but we made it.”
Adds nothing to the reader’s enjoyment of the tale.
No one would complain. No one would feel cheated.

Not many would enjoy it either. One of the greatest compliments an author can receive is “Reading it made me feel like I was there”. The short-cut method leaves one feeling like he just read a newspaper article. That’s not why most people read fiction.

20

I love detail and description, most of the time. In The Dragonbone Chair, when Simon leaves the Hayholt and wanders the woods for days, lost, cold and hungry, I suffered along with him. Same thing in Stone of Farewell when he kept trying to leave the Sithi refuge.

Some authors (Robin Hobb in The Liveship Traders trilogy, for one) repeat plot points and motivation, maybe thinking that readers won’t remember from one chapter to the next why so-and-so doesn’t like so-and-so.

I do think that fantasy has more padding. We fantasy readers love big fat books that go on forever. :slight_smile: