writing with teeth
I was out surfing last night (haha, on the web), and wandered past an LJ comm focused on discussions of grammar and style for writers. Yeah, they're very rare, I know. I'm not going to specify which one it was, because I was almost instantly turned off the comm by an earnest post promoting Elmore Leonard’s advice for writers.
My guess is that the ( Read more... )
My guess is that the ( Read more... )
My husband (definitely a pre-med chem major, not an archy major who considered double majoring in either English or philosophy) has a writing style that would make Hemingway seem florid. It's laconic to the point of seeming curt or rude. I can come up with sentences more tangled than the most verbose of the Victorians, or (OMG!) Cicero, if I am not very careful. I just happen to come from a family of academics, and some of them speak naturally in paragraphs.
When my husband was finishing up his residency and applying for jobs out in the "real world" he wrote up his cover letter, and had me read it. It was vital that it be good. His ability to land the jobs we wanted for him could well depend on it. I told him he couldn't possibly send it out like that, it was too curt. It was rude. I offered a rewrite. He couldn't possibly send that out, it was too... much of a muchness. Too ornate. He took it away and rewrote it. Rude again. I rewrote. Flowery again. He rewrote. After several rounds, we had a letter we could both agree was neither rude nor an escapee from a Victorian epistolary novel. He sent it out, and every one of the places that he sent it to told him that his cover letter was one of the best written they'd ever gotten.
Can you imagine if Elmore Leonard had written The Lord of the Rings? Nobody, ever, would get past the third page, let alone want to read the whole thing. It is that sense of the lovingly polished word, placed just so, to allow it to sparkle and build the texture of the whole that is an important part of the pleasure of reading Tolkien.
My question for the folks posting over on that forum would be this: How can it ever be appropriate to adopt one writing style? It seems to me that different works, different genres, different goals and aims, not to mention different moods and audiences, require different styles. Prose is not poetry, some tales need Hemingway, others need Dickens. An author's work can be as distinctive as fingerprints, but gifted practitioners can also be stylistic chameleons. What matters is that the reader be moved, entertained, educated, or what have you, that the sense be transmitted, and that this be done without too much of the readers attention being drawn away into the form instead of the meaning.
Did I mention that sometimes I can get a bit verbose? I think I might have.
Shutting up now...
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When short, white B. Baggins announced that he'd be hosting a swanky birthday shindig, all the citizens of Hobbbiton gossiped about it. Hell, the little bastard was old -- one-hundred-and-eleven years old -- and it was rumored that he (Bilbo) had an orgy with a group of even shorter, whiter guys sixty years earlier.
gifted practitioners can also be stylistic chameleons
Agreed; when reading about characters making planetfall, I want a couple prosy, adjective-filled sentences describing what makes the world unique/beautiful/wondrous.
When reading about a fist-fight, I want clean, short sentences that convey action efficiently.
When reading about characters sharing a special moment, I want to know about every clench of the jaw, restrained sigh, averted gaze, and wistful smile.
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Here's a somewhat variant thought on that.
You see, I ended up writing a lot of action sequences (that's what I call them, anyway; not action scenes, but sequences). This continues to startle me, as do many things about this whole writing business; I keep getting told that Action is Hard. (Also, Dialogue Is Hard. And, apparently, Plot Is Hard. And Characters.)
Anyway.
I was given, more or less as a shining orb of Truth, the information that Long Complex Sentences Are Bad. Especially in action scenes. And that I must work very very hard to overcome my dreadful tendency thereunto.
I re-read my work with this admonition in mind, and I did keep it in mind as I proceeded. But I kept running into a peculiar thing. That bit about action sequences. At the time, I was just writing MacGyver, and when he gets busy, more than one thing is happening. Events are set up to move in related sets. Short, choppy sentences were not the best way to tell that part of the story: I had more complex stuff going on, and I needed sentences that captured the interrelationships of the components of the action.
I did, and do, use shorter sentences as part of the mix; the whole thing works better if there's a rhythm that includes variety. Longer sentences and shorter sentences together; string-of-activity-leading to local focus, Pow!, new-string-of-activity starting up, building up, shorter bit for tight focus, longer bit to assemble more of the scene, Boom!, longer bit describing impact of pyrotechnics, shorter bit as people fall over. Somewhere, very far away, a bird began to sing. And they all lived happily ever after.
When reading action, I've noticed that if it's all short sentences, it goes very staccato; okay for short bits, but if it goes too long, the author is playing 'Chopsticks'.
Actually, I think I've probably been subconsciously influenced by the pacing of action scenes on film. (I think very filmicly when I write.) (That is so a word.) And here too, I have a very strong bias: when a scene is all fast short cuts and explosions, I find it hard to follow and annoying to watch. I want the visuals to tell me a more sophisticated story, with some longer 'sentences' in the mix.
Not that I'm, you know, biased or anything. But my action heroes all have brains (yes, including Jack now; and especially including Sam and Daniel and Teal'c). They're thinking as well as fighting. So, not just short sentences.
*climbs off soapbox* On a related subject, your first sentence of LotR as written by Uncle Elmore nearly made me cough up a lung laughing.
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The resulting subject-verb, subject-verb staccato for 300 words worked much better and helped the pacing. Because sh!t was going down fast and jamming zats, P-90s and MP7s down with MY LITERCHURE LET ME SHOW U IT hurt the story.
And yes, I do agree that a varied balance of style assists the clarity & rhythm of the story. I think we both corroborated each other's points.
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