Search options (Page 30 of 30)

The thought occurred to me today that the examples were from and for simple non-fiction declaratory writing and not creative writing.

Off- topic to this, but relevant, is the criticism of Common Core Language curriculum being dumbed down to only include reading and writing manuals and bureaucratic regulations, and "literature" stripped away.

Ponder this from Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray:

From the corner of the divan of Persian saddle-bags on
which he was lying, smoking, as was his custom, innumerable
cigarettes, Lord Henry Wotton could just catch the gleam
of the honey-sweet and honey-coloured blossoms of a laburnum,
whose tremulous branches seemed hardly able to bear
the burden of a beauty so flamelike as theirs; and now and
then the fantastic shadows of birds in flight flitted across the
long tussore-silk curtains that were stretched in front of the
huge window, producing a kind of momentary Japanese effect,
and making him think of those pallid, jade-faced painters
of Tokyo who, through the medium of an art that is necessarily
immobile, seek to convey the sense of swiftness and
motion.

and

The Importance of Being Earnest:

"In matters of grave importance, style, not sincerity is the vital thing"

Which author is that?
Like the use of passive-verb sentences leading to boring narration -- but only for some readers, not including myself -- I think there must be something about unmarked change in POV that is confusing/annoying to me, and I wonder if  the reason I cannot get into Romance is  the tendency to swirl POV around . . . and the fact Romance is chick lit. On the other hand, for the male audience, some contemporary Sci-fi does something similar, or that it may be combined with stripping stories completely of any narration at any POV.

At the other end is the POV 100% in 1st-person of an acting character in the novel. That does not work for me, too.  In the Romance genre, but in old-fashioned style, I, more or less accidentally, read I Capture the Castle by Dodie Smith (The Hundred and One Dalmatians) and enjoyed the end-of-the-Edwardian-Era (Downton Abbey sort) with a stiff upper lip attitude and happy ending except for my willing suspension of disbelief was stretched when Cassandra just happened to be hidden under the staircase when she overheard perhaps the most important plot twist of the story.

I reckon I simply prefer to read omniscient narration even if it is old-fashioned and against the contemporary style of show-don't-tell. However, I satirized that same omniscient narrator (and thereby destroying the illusion it creates and incur wrath in editorial opinion) by having him introduce himself:

I fancy I am a recalcitrant chef. I am not so a chef as inclined to give the remunerative diner what is his due. Instead of serving meat cooked to perfection, I will more likely serve a different kind of meat, not cooked, namely, the ephemeral meat of the soul. Such a disobedient cook as I will perchance meet his diner's yawns and droopy-eyed countenance with snobbish disdain.

I think unnecessary words would be cut under the old rule of the "wordy sentence," but also under the principle to which I hold (which I know is not for everyone, writer and reader) no word should be cut if it does add information, and the sentence may, in fact, be enhanced by expanding the sentence.  I believe these rules for shorter sentences, un-sticky sentences, and adverb-less phrases are too restrictive and lessen the quality of what we call literary fiction.

He begins his article with:

"As a reader, you can usually recognize a sticky sentence when you have to go back and reread an unclear passage to understand it."

and I think that is wrong.  A sentence that causes one to go back and re-read it may be one containing complex words, phrases, and structure representing complex concepts.  That is a good thing if used wisely. The glue words in a sticky sentence are words like [very, many, somewhat, slightly] and adverbs. I have also read that such glue words are simply passed over by readers (more likely IMO). How can they be both inhibitors and throwaways?   The old rule of proper word choice that subsumes the rule against the wordy sentence applies. "The food was somewhat tasteless" has a different meaning and purpose than "The food was tasteless" even if so subtle, a typical reader will not see the difference, and I believe if that difference is important to the author to convey, he will have to use more words or an additional sentence to spell out the difference, assuming all readers are prone to skimming rather than reading, and indeed it may be better to drop "somewhat" but not under this idea of the sticky sentence.

[update: I will concede that any author has his mind stuck in using certain "glue" words and phrases in a routine way.  Looking over some of my work, I appear to like "very" when its use is rarely necessary.]

Thank you. Tackling a difficult tax problem does not mix well with creative writing. As to rules on grammar and style, most are sensible in a consensus over a couple centuries of English-language evolution, but this new-to-me one to avoid -ly adverbs must have come from some studies with test groups on readability -- much like the "too long sentence" prohibition. I also wish there to be an option in grammar/style checkers to ignore any quoted dialogue because those rules are different. I have enough trouble writing down to include realistic dialogue, and I struggle to figure out how to use and then spell commonly mispronounced words, regional dialects, onomatopoeia, and the last words of a dying man struggling to breathe or the sort of dopey utterances said during sex, for example.

Why skip over? Obviously, if the author bungles the crafting of a complex sentence, and that could be by placing a single punctuation mark in the wrong place, or complicates the complex sentence even more by using ten-dollar words, the sentence loses its effect to compel the reader to pay attention to something that is itself complex, but in that complexity there is intended a strident call: "Pay attention; slow down; I have something important to say." Even if not well crafted, or the work is saturated with them (making the reading a tedious project) , long sentences serve the purpose of conveying a very important databank of information for understanding the story. When a reader skips over a long sentence or paragraph, he misses the "point" of the story that may be contained in just a few words within that complex sentence or paragraph --- the complexity being the setting of the context of those important words. I think such complexity, if held to a reasonable level, that is to say: not tedious, makes the difference between the style for writing to entertain, as base as the level to which the author believes his mass-market reader will sink, and the style for writing literary fiction.