(no subject)
I am in some ways a huge snob about what I'm willing to bother with reading. Not to deny that I am a reading addict and will read the back of the cereal box if that's all there is. But given a choice, I have priorities.
And I have friends who are snobs about what they read also, but have entirely different criteria. Different from me and differing among themselves. (Between themselves?)
For me, it's all about ideas. Ideas and characters; I like fiction in part because ideas stick better in my mind when they have some context to fit in, and stories have that. Also in part because so many things are more easily shown than explained. And, primarily, because stories are fun.
But they're not fun to me unless I'm learning something from them.
And I care far more about this than about style. I'd rather read an obviuosly flawed work with even one interesting idea in it than any beautifully crafted bit of empty fluff. Not all things beautifully crafted are empty fluff, I know better than that. But what I remember a story for is what tools it gave me for thinking about the world, and if there was any actual art to its writing that was a nice bonus, but a shallow or awkward story touring an interesting frame of reference is fine with me.
Not that I care nothing for style, there are authors whose style as well as vision I love. But I don't know which of them would be considered "good writers"... and of course opinions do vary about what constitutes good writing.
And I find myself both wondering "what is this thing called good writing of which they speak? How can I learn to recognize this thing and learn how to not give badly written things to my friends who notice, just because they have charmed me with some luscious idea?", and also thinking "No, spare me from understanding this thing, lest the badly written vehicles of lovely ideas become distatsefull to me and the ideas lost to me."
And then another tells me I sould bloody welll learn because I want to write so it would probably be a good idea to learn what it means to write well...
(On the gripping hand)
And I have friends who are snobs about what they read also, but have entirely different criteria. Different from me and differing among themselves. (Between themselves?)
For me, it's all about ideas. Ideas and characters; I like fiction in part because ideas stick better in my mind when they have some context to fit in, and stories have that. Also in part because so many things are more easily shown than explained. And, primarily, because stories are fun.
But they're not fun to me unless I'm learning something from them.
And I care far more about this than about style. I'd rather read an obviuosly flawed work with even one interesting idea in it than any beautifully crafted bit of empty fluff. Not all things beautifully crafted are empty fluff, I know better than that. But what I remember a story for is what tools it gave me for thinking about the world, and if there was any actual art to its writing that was a nice bonus, but a shallow or awkward story touring an interesting frame of reference is fine with me.
Not that I care nothing for style, there are authors whose style as well as vision I love. But I don't know which of them would be considered "good writers"... and of course opinions do vary about what constitutes good writing.
And I find myself both wondering "what is this thing called good writing of which they speak? How can I learn to recognize this thing and learn how to not give badly written things to my friends who notice, just because they have charmed me with some luscious idea?", and also thinking "No, spare me from understanding this thing, lest the badly written vehicles of lovely ideas become distatsefull to me and the ideas lost to me."
And then another tells me I sould bloody welll learn because I want to write so it would probably be a good idea to learn what it means to write well...
(On the gripping hand)