"Style is largely a technical matter appreciated by specialists"

[nineweaving]

Oh man, is this annoying:

"4. Remember that nobody agrees on what a beautiful prose style is and most readers either can't recognize 'good writing' or don't value it that much. Believe me, I wish this were otherwise, and I do urge all readers to polish their prose and avoid clichés. However, I've seen as many books ruined by too much emphasis on

Comments

[herooftheage]

I could go on, but I'll stop there unless the populace clamors for more.

Hopefully, they won't.

[nineweaving]

They do, Oscar, they do. It's pathetic.

Nine

[sovay]

Yes, and Anne Enright advises, " Write whatever way you like." Which means you can ignore the advice that annoys you!

P.S. I totally go to see movies for the photography. So does anyone who appreciates David Lean, Powell and Pressburger, Gregg Toland . . .

[nineweaving]

1 The first 12 years are the worst.

2 The way to write a book is to actually write a book. A pen is useful, typing is also good. Keep putting words on the page.

Sense!

Photography? Of course it matters.

Nine

[teenybuffalo]

The thing is that all advice on writing annoys me, so I never feel obliged to listen to any of it. It can't help but consist of generalizations, which is rather less helpful than turning to a fortune cookie for advice on my social life.

Oh wait. I read that article in the Grauniad. I take it back, there's one generalization that I find very helpful indeed. It's the bit with Neil Gaiman saying, "Write." (I think it was Neil.)

Pity nobody told Peter Jackson that nobody goes to see movies for the lighting. He could have lit the LOTR movies with sodium floodlights, highway flares and an Indiglo watch.

[nineweaving]

One or two of them, I think, said "Write." The other useful one is "Rules? What rules?"

There are cinematographers who could light the right scene with an Indiglo watch, and make it heartstoppingly perfect. It's all in knowing one's craft.

Nine

[greygirlbeast]

I'd say something, but I think I'm too dumbfounded, and, besides, whatever I say would probably be exceedingly...stylized.

[nineweaving]

Blackly elegant and damning, I would guess.

Writers of this sort of anti-intellectual cheerleading always claim Shakespeare for their side. Just because he was truly popular 400 years ago they want to flaunt him as a populist icon. How many people now read Shakespeare as a beach book? How often is he sold in airports?

Nine

[madrobins]

Oh, pul-ease. The audience may not understand how crucial the photography, or sound, or set-dressing was to their enjoyment of a film. They may not understand why the weight of one word or another changes the heft and impact of a sentence. That doesn't mean that these things aren't important.

I don't look for breathtaking sentences. I don't much care for writing where breathtaking sentences are all there is. But a breathtaking sentence in the service of story and world is...breathtaking.

[nineweaving]

Hear hear. It's not a ranking but a synergy. The best books draw on everything the author has to give.

There seems to be a fashion now for praising genre just because of its supposed undemandingness. This piece; the Grossman one; the lady I stood next to at the Rowling speech at Harvard. "Oh, I love reading fantasy," she burbled. "You don't have to think!"

*headdesk*

Nine

[negothick]

There may indeed be a link to Grossman: According to Miller's bio, "She is the author of 'The Magician's Book: A Skeptic's Adventures in Narnia'"

From its description, it's Grossman's "The Magicians" told as memoir.

And another thing. . .

[negothick]

Oh no, Philip Pullman actually uses the Dreaded Analogy, according to Miller. “Novelists like James Joyce and Vladimir Nabokov, he told me, write books in which ‘a lot of the interest . . . is in the surface of the prose [but] my main interest is in the things that you can see through the window of the prose.’” (p. 264-thanks to Amazon’s look inside)

Got style?

[islenskr]

I always thought the style was what mattered. I mean, I don't read a certain popular author who has written about the Holy Grail and the Louvre due to style. I do read, oh, say, *you* because I like your style. People write in the style of Jane Austen for a reason. And just for the record, I am a non-writer. It's something at which I fail completely.

And no, I never listen to music for the notes. I listen to it because it's what everyone else is doing. Duh.

Re: Got style?

[nineweaving]

Thank you. Words are what books are made of. Style is substance.

Nine