I’ve never been published, but I do write a bit, and I’m a slow writer because I agonise frequently over which words to choose. It’s quite frustrating, but for me, there’s no other choice. I have to choose the right words, because if I don’t then I can’t be happy with the finished product, and if I’m not happy, what’s the point? To me, the only thing worse than not being published is putting a book out with my name on it that I’m not 100% proud of. I’ve resigned myself to the fact that this impediment will probably forever prevent me from publishing a full-length novel, but that’s honestly better than the alternative.
That’s almost a tautology - again, aside from some very specific cases where taking you out of the moment is the actual point, if it’s noticeable in it’s own right, it is, by definition, wrong and out of place.
To make an analogy - a scenery-chewing ham stands out in his own right, where a skilled and nuanced actor will be a part of the movie. Scenery-chewing hams certainly have their place, but if I cast Brian Blessed in a straight take on Hamlet, and had him BRIAN BLESSED it up, that would be the wrong choice.
But you gotta admit that it would be AWESOME! That’s the difference between quality and crap. Casting a generic bad actor as Hamlet is crap. Casting Blessed, who is a good actor who knows when to use his holy Blessedness to its greatest effect and when to dial it back or even be conventional, in a production that was an homage to the preposterous overacting of previous centuries (do you really think that Edwin Booth or Edmund Kean wouldn’t sound ridiculous today?), could be art.
A poor analogy.
If an author uses the wrong word, he or she can run the risk of taking the reader completely out of the work. When an author uses the right word, I know I stay in the story. When an author uses the wrong word, my mind says, “Well, if you don’t care enough to want to keep me engaged, I guess I’ll go see what’s on TV.”
For example, I wrote a novel that takes place in ancient Judea, around the year 1100 BCE. I tried my hardest to only use phrases and concepts that were common in that day. I could not say, “He paused for a second”, because the concept of a second had not been invented, yet. I truly feel that had I used that phrase, it would have raised the smallest, niggling doubt in the reader’s mind that I knew anything at all about the time period.
I was so obsessed with not being anachronistic that I wrote a Word macro to extract a copy of all the unique words in my manuscript, and if I questioned a word (such as “second”), I searched the manuscript to make sure it was being used in manner consistent with the world I was creating.
As a writer, it is my job to try to keep you engaged. After all, you are investing your time in reading my material; I feel I should honor that investment and make it worth your while.
Excellent approach! Seconded and admired.
There is a recent translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy, where the verse has Dante being turned back in the shadowy valley by…a force field.
Oops. Very, very wrong. That was the point I set that book aside and turned to a different translation.
Here’s an example of a writer using just the right word. This is from a review by someone called Crevette of a book called Night Travels of the Elven Vampire.
“So that makes Alaric an alien vampire werewolf psychic writer. Got that? Good. That way you won’t get confuzzled when he becomes a pirate.”
For their readers who can appreciate it.
Nice!
So, the deck was dirty? And they had brooms? I thought they used mops on ships.
See what happens - I don’t think sweep worked there. - though I know it is correct in a sense.
That’s a nice tool for that kind of thing. My novel begins in 1966, and I had to be careful not to use stuff like Velcro without checking if it existed then (it did.) having lived in 1966 is a big help, though.
I now do searches for “it,” “was,” “were,” and some others, since looking at these words one at a time forces me to consider of they can be eliminated for something stronger. Also, looking for one issue at a time works better than looking for all at once.
The biggest benefit to me is being able to look at a column from ten years ago and say to myself that I nailed it. And it is depressing if I didn’t.
I couldn’t disagree with this more. When I’m engrossed in a book, especially a particularly engaging novel, I want to read every word, to absorb and savor the effort that a good author has put into his work. If I’m really enjoying it, sometimes I even slow down toward the end in order to be able to keep reading longer.
So I guess it’s for people like me that authors agonize over every sentence.
Ah, Wheelz, yes, it is for you. Writers and editors have your type of reader in mind when they write… or edit.
Well, it’s not so much that those of us who read similarly to aceplace57 don’t read the words on the page, but rather that they’re kind of like guidelines to the mental movie in our heads. I read the words and the sentences, but I don’t really put a lot of thought or anything into the actual skill of creating those sentences, save for the way that they keep the mental reels moving.
To me, the ultimate writing sin is to be so turgid and god-awful in your prose that the mental film either never gets started, or the film keeps breaking. They’re the books where you pause, and think “WTF does that mean?” or “Wait… where are they again?” or my (least) favorite, writers who describe things in such nauseating detail that the story just lags and drags. I mean, if there’s no reason to describe the house as being on a suburban cul-de-sac with red bricks, 2 stories, a neatly manicured lawn with 2 alder trees and a 2 car garage, with filigreed trim and painted a dark shade of tan, then don’t do it. A simple description of it being a suburban house with a nice lawn would do if there’s no compelling reason to describe the rest of that crap, now or for later in the story.
I tried to describe this to a friend, a erstwhile writer of young adult books, but I think the fact that I’m not a literature wonk, I’m not an English minor, and that I’m not a writer caused him to ignore me. But his writing kind was just like I describe- pages of descriptions of people and things that could have been taken care of in a sentence or two without any harm to the actual story. It didn’t matter that the house was one story, or that it had hawthorne bushes, or that it had brown shingles. Not one bit.
I don’t know whether to grin, weep, fall upon my sword, or…look for a way to rephrase it!
“Sweep” as a term for clearing an area of enemy combatants has a long and rich literary tradition. It was even the basis for the name of a weapon, an automatic shotgun called the “Street Sweeper.”
This is, of course, the danger of using figurative or poetic language for effect.
(I recently used the word “careered” for “sped incautiously, weaving and tilting” and one of my readers took signal objection. It was a “definition two” moment.)
One of my favorite quotes in regards to writing comes from George Orwell: “Good prose is like a windowpane.” He was talking about making complex ideas simple and clear through words, but I think it applies to descriptions as well. When a good writer writes, it’s as if they’re watching a film in their heads that no one else can see but them, and they have to record it to the best of their abilities. When the reader reads, the writer (or at least the very descriptive writers you’re talking about) wants the reader’s personal mental movie to be as close to what the writer is imagining as is humanly possible. Details help establish the world they’re crafting - if only things important to the plot were described, then there would never be any imagery or mood. Maybe the peeling, dirty siding on the house and the dying lawn littered with bottles tell the reader that the character has financial struggles or isn’t home often - or that they’re not too concerned with appearances and what the neighbors think. Some details can communicate personality and emotions so subtly that the reader doesn’t even register them consciously - but on some level, they affect how you feel about the characters in the book.
Still, you have a point. With lots of books I’ve read, five paragraphs into the chapter I’ll forget who’s walking into the weathered house with an aged pathway of brick leading up to the twisted cast iron stair handles, scratched with age, that speak of the many times the off white spring loaded door has screeched open, etc, etc, etc. It’s important, but tricky, to balance plot with description.
Well, there is often a difference made between “clear glass” prose and “stained glass” prose. Clear glass prose doesn’t call attention to itself, focusing on the story and characters. Stained glass uses metaphor and poetic language, so that part of the enjoyment of reading is appreciating how things are expressed. Neither is right or wrong, depending on the context.
In science fiction, clear glass is far more common, but there are stained glass writers like Cordwainer Smith whose prose is as much a part of the story as anything else. What I’m reading today in SF short stories is definitely a movement toward stained glass.
To me, only writers with years of experience can write in such a way that I forget that I’m reading and seem to be scanning. Elmore Leonard is one example; he never gets between me and the story he’s telling. I can’t remember the title of the book that’s an opposite example, I think it was one by Christopher Rice (Anne Rice’s son). It was like reading something by a college sophomore who had access to a thesaurus. “Simple” writing isn’t.
ETA: Damn, **RealityChuck ** and **Octarine **said part of what I was trying to say, but said it sooner and better.
nm
I think that’s well said. Overly showy prose is a bad thing, but it’s not a bad thing if I stop after a particular passage and think “that’s great writing.” It may technically take me out of the story, but it’s not any kind of failure.