Elements of Good Writing?
metteharrison talks here about what she sees as good and bad writing, and asks for opinions.
Being braindead from the smoke and smog as well as protracted hours of work, and also being reluctant to carry on at length in other people's space, I thought I'd bring the question here.
We all know what good writing is: we can point at it. We also know that what we consider good writing too often is someone else's definition of bad writing. Freenbean's example of good writing is torturous, wearying and confusing prose to Snacklebag, whose good writing is facile genre cliche to Freenbean.
There are so many different styles, from Joycean hypertext to Crusie's tight, comedic insight, that at least for me good writing is so difficult to pin down beyond "I like that." But one of the things I've been thinking lately is that good writing resonates with experience to the extent that I can believe in its extrapolations--I can accept its depiction of experience that I will never have as true. Further, it offers those Ah moments of insight. It plays with expectations, but honestly.
Bad writing (for me) flings out the candy of easy sentiment. Bad writing is predictable--its pandemonium always reigns, its storms always rage. Characters with hooked noses or eyes close together will always be buffoons or villains. Powerful conflicts are neatly resolved with a Yoda-like aphorism; the heroine wins because suffering makes wishes come true. Crackfic is bad writing with so much energy that coincidences ricochet the plot with accelerating speed between Grand Guignol emotions and razzle-dazzle action. You don't care that the architecture of the story has the grit and glue of a house of cards; when you close the book the wind you make blows it into 52 pickup, but it was fun while it lasted. It won't linger, and draw you back inside, like the good ones do.
Being braindead from the smoke and smog as well as protracted hours of work, and also being reluctant to carry on at length in other people's space, I thought I'd bring the question here.
We all know what good writing is: we can point at it. We also know that what we consider good writing too often is someone else's definition of bad writing. Freenbean's example of good writing is torturous, wearying and confusing prose to Snacklebag, whose good writing is facile genre cliche to Freenbean.
There are so many different styles, from Joycean hypertext to Crusie's tight, comedic insight, that at least for me good writing is so difficult to pin down beyond "I like that." But one of the things I've been thinking lately is that good writing resonates with experience to the extent that I can believe in its extrapolations--I can accept its depiction of experience that I will never have as true. Further, it offers those Ah moments of insight. It plays with expectations, but honestly.
Bad writing (for me) flings out the candy of easy sentiment. Bad writing is predictable--its pandemonium always reigns, its storms always rage. Characters with hooked noses or eyes close together will always be buffoons or villains. Powerful conflicts are neatly resolved with a Yoda-like aphorism; the heroine wins because suffering makes wishes come true. Crackfic is bad writing with so much energy that coincidences ricochet the plot with accelerating speed between Grand Guignol emotions and razzle-dazzle action. You don't care that the architecture of the story has the grit and glue of a house of cards; when you close the book the wind you make blows it into 52 pickup, but it was fun while it lasted. It won't linger, and draw you back inside, like the good ones do.