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HIJK posted:Every time we talk about style someone just recommends The Elements of Style and then the conversation collapses. No one wants to talk about the tiny author foibles, or how different people have different sentence construction habits, or the kind of plot elements different authors gravitate to. 
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Aug 30, 2017 02:36
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| # ? May 9, 2024 17:51 |
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"Read Hemingway."
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Aug 30, 2017 02:44
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For example: I use a lot of commas to use sub clauses that extend sentences past their due date. I also tend to use the word "tend" and other similar weasel words because I "prefer" to "imply" "concepts" instead of outright stating facts or certainties. I also have wordy sentences as opposed to short and simple declarations. This is useful to pad college essays but it's a chore to read in prose. I also use "I" a lot.
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Aug 30, 2017 03:02
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HIJK posted:For example: I use a lot of commas to use sub clauses that extend sentences past their due date. I also tend to use the word "tend" and other similar weasel words because I "prefer" to "imply" "concepts" instead of outright stating facts or certainties. I also have wordy sentences as opposed to short and simple declarations. This is useful to pad college essays but it's a chore to read in prose. Yeah it's tricky because all of those things I'd call out as flaws, while acknowledging that they can be a feature of excellent prose. And talking about it in the abstract isn't always that helpful so you tend to land on truisms like 'removing unnecessary words makes prose better' whcih is as the dock implies is a straight route to Ernest H. Personally I tend to over metaphor - when I have a sweet rear end image or simile I need to go back and pare down the language around it so it lands properly. I like to make my movement verbs as vivid as reasonably possible to create excitement and movement in the prose. I sometimes have a particular mode of speaking in my head when writing (e.g. old kiwi guy, and vaguely east european person) and I think I assume that the reader can hear that voice too, which isn't a given. I like a well chosen adverb for all I rag on them. Ultimately style 'rules' are there to follow until you choose not to, at which point you doff them like a smoke-blackened frock coat.
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Aug 30, 2017 03:57
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I was talking with a fellow writer last month about style and prose, and we got in an interesting discussion concerning how in some cases, more descriptive language (as long as it's precise and not totally superfluous) can actually make prose "flow" faster for a reader. I can't remember the exact book my friend used as an example (I think it was a horror novel), but he was basically pointing out how some book was pretty sparse in descriptive language until a really tense and fast-moving scene, where subtly amping up the sensory details increased how "fast" the scene felt while actually being quite a bit longer than you'd think while reading it. Wish I could remember what he used as an example.
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Aug 30, 2017 04:10
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thank you for the advice. i agree i am probably overthinking things especially as i haven't yet put pen to paper and once i start to get some words down hopefully things will flow more organically i didn't mean to start a whole debate about genre fiction its just to me most genre fiction is written in a generic style though i don't mean this in a derogatory manner (a lot of literary fiction is written this way too). i was hoping to use style as a means of complementing and reinforcing the themes discussed in my novel in such a way that maybe a painter would use a certain style of brushwork to create their work. i think writing a genre novel in a dense or abstract style would be a bad choice if your primary aim to to tell a story
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Aug 30, 2017 07:05
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I guess I'm just a simple country writer without any of that fancy city book lernin' on account of I don't quite get what you mean there. Can you give me a more concrete example?
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Aug 30, 2017 16:49
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Yes, please describe in detail the generic style that straddles mystery, science fiction, fantasy, romance, and any other genres included in genre fiction.
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Aug 30, 2017 18:26
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ketchup vs catsup posted:Yes, please describe in detail the generic style that straddles mystery, science fiction, fantasy, romance, and any other genres included in genre fiction. its got nouns and verbs hosed up, imo
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Aug 30, 2017 18:42
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anime was right posted:its got nouns and verbs if literary fiction has transcended nouns and verbs I gotta read more of it
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Aug 30, 2017 18:44
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it's just all articles, adjectives, adverbs and prepositions now. "A happily, cheery polkadotted around. Red, blue. The godly ghostly underneath." -a famous book, probably
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Aug 30, 2017 18:49
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ketchup vs catsup posted:Yes, please describe in detail the generic style that straddles mystery, science fiction, fantasy, romance, and any other genres included in genre fiction. literary fiction is a genre just like all those other genres you listed. in fact none of them are really genres at all, they're more like marketing terms
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Aug 30, 2017 18:53
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when i say generic style i mean in the usual descriptive narrative sense. sentences and paragraphs are used to describe the action, what things look like, character motivations and emotions. the text creates a space for the action to take place and then describes it. but the emotional response of the reader is always drawn from what the text is describing. i was hoping to write the text in such a way that the text itself could help illicit that emotional response to give an example: krasznahorkai's the melancholy of resistance deals with an apocalyptic scenario that puts the novels characters in dangerous situations beyond their control. the build up is slow but unrelenting and krasznahorkai's prose is written in a similarly brutal and unrelenting stream of consciousness style. like the events in the novel, the text has a continuous momentum with sentences that run for pages and paragraphs for entire chapters helping to instill a sense of panic and paranoia as the reader is not given any chance to stop or slow down or even pause for breath being dragged along by text and left just as helpless and vulnerable to malicious forces as the characters themselves it's not my intention to write something so obviously dense and obtuse, but i at least wanted to attempt to recreate the effect somewhat
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Aug 30, 2017 19:31
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Yeah, the thing you're describing is just like good writing, which isn't something that's specific to literary fiction. There is a lot of poorly written genre fiction, but there is plenty of well-written genre fiction too. Anyway my advice there is still the same, style is something to worry about once you're going back and editing your drafts so don't let it be the thing that stops you from putting words on the page.
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Aug 30, 2017 19:50
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crabrock posted:it's just all articles, adjectives, adverbs and prepositions now. Jesus Christ, somebody get this man a Nobel Prize for Style fridge corn posted:it's not my intention to write something so obviously dense and obtuse then maybe reconsider your posting style hahahahahahah Extremely good jokes aside, I do see your point. I think it's fair to say that you do come across less experimental prose in genre than you do in 'literary' fiction, but only because people have a tendency to put anything that seems experimental in the literary bucket even if it has elements that would put it under genre. For example, some people think of The Metamorphosis as literary fiction, but it's still a story about a man turning into a bug. A lot of this stuff comes down to both the perspective of the reader and the perspective of the current generation in the publishing community. FormerPoster fucked around with this message at 19:56 on Aug 30, 2017 |
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Aug 30, 2017 19:52
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Yeah, I was wondering how Lovecraft's style, love it or hate it, was generic. You don't develop a style without writing. Even the breakneck, breathless, stream-of-consciousness style you referenced wasn't pulled out of thin air. The guy practiced and honed that, likely through multiple drafts. Stop making excuses and get writing.
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Aug 30, 2017 19:58
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crabrock posted:it's just all articles, adjectives, adverbs and prepositions now. this is the most literary of fiction.
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Aug 30, 2017 20:08
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CantDecideOnAName posted:get writing.
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Aug 30, 2017 20:12
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thanks for the replies. i am eager to get writing its just difficult now cuz i don't even own a computer atm, we're in the middle of moving house and everything got completely hosed up and im stuck at my aunts place with my things all packed away in boxes for god knows how long. its frustrating 😤
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Aug 30, 2017 20:23
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See what you can do with the back of a receipt. Surprisingly versatile those little receipts.
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Aug 30, 2017 20:25
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There's a lot of back-to-school stuff on sale. Go pick up a notebook from the dollar store for cheap.
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Aug 30, 2017 20:35
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I've written about six or seven short (3-6k word, hard to tell for sure) stories in notebooks. I think it's actually valuable to try that every once in a while. Sometimes the restrictions of writing stuff out by hand will slow you down enough that it'll change how you think through prose as you're writing it.
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Aug 30, 2017 20:37
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I wrote the first few pages of my first book on a pad of paper from the office. I've also typed out chapters on my phone. Neither method is exactly fun, but both are better than not writing at all.
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Aug 30, 2017 20:39
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I've typed many-a-page on my phone's note function before. Technically a computer!
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Aug 30, 2017 20:39
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there are professional writers that type slower than you use a phone
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Aug 30, 2017 20:41
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Carve your stylistic magnum opus into the side of a historic building using a swiss army knife. Or don't, just don't use not having a computer as an excuse not to write. There is literally nothing that is as helpful as writing. Speaking as someone who has had false-starts on multiple books, I'm finally just forcing myself to finish a novel and not give a poo poo about quality or prose or structure and it's kind of amazing. Painful, I admit, but I can literally see my writing improving over time. Not to mention I'm learning what questions to ask myself, and being more aware of how published writers approach the problems I'm having.
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Aug 30, 2017 20:47
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I mean if I didn't have a computer I wouldn't be able to write, but that's more of a physical thing. Hypotonia and rheumatoid arthritis for the win!
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Aug 30, 2017 20:49
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I write nearly all my first drafts by hand, including 40+ short stories and 1.5 novels so far. Writing by hand has the added benefit of providing a natural editing step as I type up my notes.
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Aug 30, 2017 21:43
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I don't tend to write stories by hand because I press too hard with the pen/cil and my hand cramps up, but I will write notes. I carry around a notebook explicitly for this purpose. It's really handy for when I take a walk to clear my head and come up with some interesting idea or thoughts I want to pursue later in my writing or stories.
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Aug 30, 2017 22:09
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okay i started scribbling things in a notebook. this is fun
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Aug 30, 2017 22:43
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Started writing the second book And oh God it's going to be so much longer than the first book Oh God
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Sep 1, 2017 01:43
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you all write like shitass balls and one day your novels will float out to sea and be lost
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Sep 2, 2017 12:22
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the old ceremony posted:you all write like shitass balls and one day your novels will float out to sea and be lost In that case I will lend you my "shift," "spacebar," and "period" keys since they'll be wasted on me and surely you are in need of them.
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Sep 2, 2017 14:18
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the old ceremony posted:you all write like shitass balls and one day your novels will float out to sea and be lost Hell, that's honestly better than I was expecting.
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Sep 2, 2017 18:21
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the old ceremony posted:you all write like shitass balls and one day your novels will float out to sea and be lost so what you're saying is that I'm going to finish several novels
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Sep 2, 2017 19:27
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neongrey posted:so what you're saying is that I'm going to finish several novels ...and have a very creative marketing team.
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Sep 2, 2017 20:45
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Lost stories are better than the ones you can actively read anyways Anything could happen in a lost story More mythic that way
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Sep 2, 2017 20:48
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Burkion posted:Lost stories are better than the ones you can actively read anyways Anything can happen in a story that's written like shitass balls
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Sep 2, 2017 21:12
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Balls so big my rear end shittin on em
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Sep 2, 2017 21:16
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| # ? May 9, 2024 17:51 |
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Oh my God my second book is going to be so long loving Christ I'm 30 pages in and I haven't even reached sentence five of my five page outline I am so excited let's go
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Sep 2, 2017 21:23
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