What makes good writing?

[Drkshadow03]

I recently pondered the question: what makes good writing? What makes writing bad?

I am currently reading Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger right now, and I went searching through comments on this board, and noticed Kelby_Lake call the writing abysmal, which was interesting because I've found the writing in the book to be pretty good. Certainly not the greatest prose stylist ever, but effective for telling the story, and even sections of prose that I thought weren't just serviceable writing, but actually examples of good writing.

So I thought I would raise the question. Instead of this just being another "X is overrated" thread or "Y's prose = mediocre or sucks" I would love to see people extrapolate their ideas on the general question (think of it as writing a theory about good and bad writing), and actually quote concrete examples of both good and bad writing, and explain why you think those examples represent good or bad writing.

[Mr Endon]

Well, if you're interested in what people have to say about this, we've recently discussed 'What makes writing bad':

http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showthread.php?t=44668

And a while back there was a thread on 'Great passages of prose', in which I said the following:


I derive great pleasure from short, bare, incisive declarative sentences: 'The sun shone, having no alternative, on the nothing new' (opening sentence of Murphy).

This is still my opinion. For me, good writing is scarce, unembellished, unpretentious. Also, to hell with causality! And to hell with 'uncanny coincidences'! My favourite kind of writing is that which is aware of the futility of trying to convey an orderliness, be it internal or external, that is essentially, most of the time, inexistent.

[catatonic]

Grand sweeping statements such as "All happy families are alike but an unhappy family is unhappy in its own fashion" make for bad writing.

By contrast Tolstoy has this some pages later which is superb: "The old curly birch trees in the gardens, their branches all laden with snow, looked as though they had been freshly decked in sacred vestments."

[Mr Endon]

Grand sweeping statements such as "All happy families are alike but an unhappy family is unhappy in its own fashion" make for bad writing.

Not a fan of Oscar Wilde then, I presume? ;)

[catatonic]

I like his comment about Niagra Falls, "I'd be more impressed if it flowed upwards', but that's about it.

[tbarnes]

it's all a matter of preference.

some authors are always very succinct and by the book while other authors will riff for page upon page completely disregarding any traditional approaches. neither is better than the other in my opinion. every reader looks for something different when they approach a piece of work.

[kelby_lake]

I like his comment about Niagra Falls, "I'd be more impressed if it flowed upwards', but that's about it.

I love The Importance of Earnest but couldn't get through The Picture of Dorian Grey- too much dry wit.

Good writing should be lyrical without being self-indulgent. I should not have to search 20 lines to find the 1 that actually has any relevance. It should seem as if what I am reading about is dreadfully important and sound human.

I didn't like 'The Time Traveller's Wife' as a book because to pull off a narrative that jumps around all over the place, it has to be a fairly short book, and the prose must have a proper sort of style. The first line of the book was quite nice but the rest, what I read of it, gave me no indication that I needed to read on. What I'd read was okay but there was no incentive for any more and considering that the story is so sad, what consolation is there to read onwards? The prose read like this: 'X happened. Then Y happened. X was nice'. In another context that could work but it isn't going to make me want to read hundreds of pages of it.

[Drkshadow03]

I love The Importance of Earnest but couldn't get through The Picture of Dorian Grey- too much dry wit.

Good writing should be lyrical without being self-indulgent. I should not have to search 20 lines to find the 1 that actually has any relevance. It should seem as if what I am reading about is dreadfully important and sound human.

I didn't like 'The Time Traveller's Wife' as a book because to pull off a narrative that jumps around all over the place, it has to be a fairly short book, and the prose must have a proper sort of style. The first line of the book was quite nice but the rest, what I read of it, gave me no indication that I needed to read on. What I'd read was okay but there was no incentive for any more and considering that the story is so sad, what consolation is there to read onwards? The prose read like this: 'X happened. Then Y happened. X was nice'. In another context that could work but it isn't going to make me want to read hundreds of pages of it.

See, I can understand someone complaining about the length of the book (I'm a bit suspicious of this myself) and I agree that there is this feeling that I could walk away from the book right now, a hundred pages in and lose nothing. Yet, that doesn't necessarily make it abysmal writing, in my opinion. The book, in fact, contains some really nice imagery at times. I really love this description of the Museum for example:

"Here all of nature was captured, labeled, arranged, according to a logic that seemed as timeless as if ordered by G-d, perhaps a G-d who had mislaid the original paperwork on the Creation and had requested the Field Museum staff to help Him out and keep track of it all. For my five-year-old self, who could derive rapture from a single butterfly, to walk through the Field Museum was to walk through Eden and see all that passed there."

And this imagery about the library:

"I have never been in the Newberry Library before, and now that I’ve gotten past the dark, foreboding entrance I am excited. I have a sort of Christmas-morning sense of the library as a big box full of beautiful books.”

Christmas-morning sense is a really nice phrase. And I like the imagery of an academic library seeming foreboding.

I think it is because I've participated in many genre writing workshops that I have totally different sense of abysmal writing. The Eye of Argon = Abysmal writing.

Link to the Eye of Argon (http://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/susan/sf/eyeargon/eyeargon.htm).

[stlukesguild]

I recently pondered the question: what makes good writing? What makes writing bad?

Grand sweeping statements such as "All happy families are alike but an unhappy family is unhappy in its own fashion" make for bad writing.

Good writing should be lyrical without being self-indulgent.

There's really no formula for good or bad writing, is there? If there were, we'd all be churning out literary masterpieces rather than posting on a web discussion board. I could argue that grand sweeping statements such as "Grand sweeping statements such as, All happy families are alike, but an unhappy family is unhappy in its own fashion" makes for bad writing," makes for bad criticism.:nod: (A lot of people consider this one of the great opening lines, by the way.) It all comes down to an individual basis. What works for one writer may be comically bad in the hands of another. Hemingway and Calvino and Borges are masters of a stripped-down prose that is perfectly suited to their aims. Proust, on the other hand, can write the most sensuous and lush sentences that run on for over a page and still hold you. Lawrence Sterne, to look at another style altogether, can employ examples of some of the worst writing ever intentionally with the most comic result (Read the contract between Tristan's mother and father). Personally I don't think we can define good or bad writing except on an individual basis because it seems that "rules" in art are something that artists continually break. We state "good prose should do this" or "good painting should do that" and we immediately discover any number of exemplary exceptions to the rule... which is why I hate using the word "should" is speaking of art. I'm glad for the variety. I personally love sweeping prose of Proust... but I wouldn't want everyone to write like that. I love Wagner and Bruckner... but sometimes I just prefer the simplicity of Erik Satie... or the Stanley Brothers.:banana:

[Barbarous]

Lawrence Sterne, to look at another style altogether, can employ examples of some of the worst writing ever intentionally with the most comic result (Read the contract between Tristan's mother and father).

This is where I disagree. Sterne is a brilliant writer with much versatility, obviously. The writing in Tristram Shandy isn't even horribly written. Hilarious, of course, but the language is at times poetic and philosophical, once ignores the fact that by volume three, the 'protagonist' has yet to be born.

But once I tell you what I consider good writing, you'll understand my case a bit more. Well-written writing for me contains something Joyce coined in Finnegans Wake 'two thinks at a time', which is self-evident (or I would hope so...) and goes for both Joyce himself and Shakespeare, and maybe even Sterne.

[LMK]

Writing is an author's expression and outlet. However he or she chooses to deliver that is up to the author.

However, if the author is writing to be read that is an entirely different matter. It then becomes not about the writer's choice of delivery alone, but the audience that is being written for must be taken into account.

Audiences differ, but there are groups of readers that prefer certain aspects. Some want a story, some want a message, and some want to escape. Some want simple sentences that convey the content, others want the writing itself to be the show case; flowery prose, fresh approaches to imagery. And then there is genre to consider.

Some prefer long descriptive passages that describe each scintilla of detail in the setting, while others crave dialogue that sounds like a conversation that might really take place.

So many choices, so many styles, so many readers, but in the end only three stories to be told; man vs. man, man vs. himself (some include this in the former), man vs. nature (God is included in this). [As an aside, the word man is inclusive of woMAN]

What makes good writing? In my opinion all it takes is an audience who enjoys reading the work.

~L

[LitNetIsGreat]

What makes good writing? In my opinion all it takes is an audience who enjoys reading the work.

~L

Well then by that definition Dan Brown is a good writer. I don't buy that at all.

I agree strongly with Stlukes position, there can be no definition of what constitutes "good writing", for do try and do so only weakens the art. It weakens the art because it attempts to place rules or formulas on what makes good writing and clearly that is ridiculous.

Of course if we are talking about mere communication, as you would find in say a leaflet or a notice of some sort, then we can start to define what is good writing. We can then talk about the clarity of expression, simple sentences and word choice and so on. But to attempt to do so for literature is pure folly.

[kelby_lake]

Well, how do we explain why any of the writers we admire are good writers then? Of course the styles vary but what is a good style?

[LitNetIsGreat]

Well, how do we explain why any of the writers we admire are good writers then? Of course the styles vary but what is a good style?

We don't need to explain anything. Good writing speaks for itself.

[JCamilo]

And obviously, it can not be just the capacity to put out nice sentences. Or just being able to follow a narrative (this is the most easy thing in the world), but to convey their ideas in the way the writting style is suited (As Stlukes basically said), also to conform with the ambitions of the work.
Cervantes was awfull while writing poems, just bellow average writing plays. The same vocabulary and constructions were in his Don Quixote and it is a masterpiece. Dostoievisky is not a great writer if we agree with Nabokov, because his writing is not stylized, not like Tolstoi, but they are perfectly suited for his prose.
I would look for Chekhov (who said that writing is easy, hard is hiding what one wants to tell) and his little pieces, often about mundane things and written with a prose style that few poets could match.

[LMK]

Well then by that definition Dan Brown is a good writer. I don't buy that at all.

But you see, you don't have to buy it, that's the whole point. There are many others who do!

I could argue that Dan Brown is a good writer, in that after reading each of his four books (albeit years ago), I enjoyed each and every one of them. Do I compare him to Dickens? No, I do not. But they are apples and oranges apart.

[Drkshadow03]

We don't need to explain anything. Good writing speaks for itself.

And yet still so much disagreement on LitNet whether certain writers are good writers or not considering good writing speaks for itself . . .

[LMK]

We don't need to explain anything. Good writing speaks for itself.

If it is speaking for itself, there is no need to read it then is there?

OK, a bit snarky, but it's a matter of opinion, and it is up to each to determine what is good or what is not good.

I do not rely on critiques or professors of literary study to determine what is good or not. I can find my way around both a library and a bookstore and decide that on my own.

[JCamilo]

But you see, you don't have to buy it, that's the whole point. There are many others who do!

I could argue that Dan Brown is a good writer, in that after reading each of his four books (albeit years ago), I enjoyed each and every one of them. Do I compare him to Dickens? No, I do not. But they are apples and oranges apart.

I am sure Neely does not buy the logic that leads to think that Dan Brown is a good writer. People enjoy crap things. That simple. There is a crap music for the first kiss, there is a crap book that was our first book, there is the crap movie that you had to watch with your wife, there is the crap restaurant that you went with friends 15 years ago. Just that simple, no human being is demanding every single minute of his life, there is always a momment of relaxing or in Liebniz logic, the evil that justifies the good in the world.
Most people in the world does not have the necessary knowledge to define (imagine explain) what is a good book (or movie, or music, or dance) just what they most like, which is what you do. You decided what is good for you, but good writing is something more universal.

[LMK]

Some of the opinions remind me of some self-proclaimed gastronomical afficianado calling someone a cretin because they do not care for caviar on toast points.

To each his/her own.

[JCamilo]

See, the problem is that the question is not "What you like most". You do not have to buy good writing either, nobody is telling you should. You just have to accept that in a heat day, a cold beer may be wonderful, even if there is better beers in the world.

[catatonic]

[COLOR="DarkRed"]
I could argue that grand sweeping statements such as "Grand sweeping statements such as, All happy families are alike, but an unhappy family is unhappy in its own fashion" makes for bad writing," makes for bad criticism.:nod: (A lot of people consider this one of the great opening lines, by the way.) I personally love sweeping prose of Proust... but I wouldn't want everyone to write like that.

Gush about them all you want but even great writers aren't immune to patches of bad writing.

[LitNetIsGreat]

I could argue that Dan Brown is a good writer, in that after reading each of his four books (albeit years ago), I enjoyed each and every one of them. Do I compare him to Dickens? No, I do not. But they are apples and oranges apart.

I'm not a fan of Dickens but he could write, he was a great writer. Dan Brown on the other hand is not. Whether you enjoyed them or not (or that they are enjoyed by millions) is entirely irrelevant.


And yet still so much disagreement on LitNet whether certain writers are good writers or not considering good writing speaks for itself . . .

Good writing does speak for itself, it is just that some people don't listen or don't yet have the ability to.


but it's a matter of opinion, and it is up to each to determine what is good or what is not good.
I am personally getting tired of all this sort of thing, no offence. Opinion plays a part, but you should still be able to stand back and appreciate good writing free from personal opinion. As I say, Dickens does little for me, but I can still appreciate him as a fine writer, there is a difference. I don't buy all this opinion rules business. Some people are better judges than others.


I do not rely on critiques or professors of literary study to determine what is good or not. I can find my way around both a library and a bookstore and decide that on my own.

I do listen to critiques or professors of literary study because they have more experience than me, but this doesn't weaken me as an individual thinker. I am not so aloof to think that my literary judgement is better than someone who is more, or better educated than me, and may have spend 50 years reading literature. I am 31.

I can't understand why experts in the field of literature are so attacked. If I was to embark upon a new career and I blankly criticised an expert in the field I would be laughed at. I am not a blind follower. I have a mind, and certainly can think for myself, but I am not so arrogant as to think that I can't learn from others.

Personal opinion is different from the ability to stand back from the text and judge it from a more criticial viewpoint. Why can't people see this?

[catatonic]

I love The Importance of Earnest but couldn't get through The Picture of Dorian Grey- too much dry wit.

Good writing should be lyrical without being self-indulgent. I should not have to search 20 lines to find the 1 that actually has any relevance. It should seem as if what I am reading about is dreadfully important and sound human.


What I have read by Wilde I remember as being very witty and clever. But I guess the wit and the cleverness weren't good enough reasons for me to continue reading the rest of his stuff.

[Paulclem]

"But our waking life, and our growing years, were for the most part spent in the kitchen, and until we married, or ran away, it was the common room we shared. Here we lived and fed in a family fug, not minding the little space, trod on each other like birds in a hole, elbowed our ways without spite, all talking at once or silent at once, or crying against each other, but never I think feeling overcrowded, being as separate as notes in a scale." (from Cider with Rose)

I like Laurie Lee's writing. He' a poet also, and it shows in his prose which is full of interesting descriptions and images. You never feel that the story is being held by his lush descriptions of nature and the world around him, but it is interwoven into the text, even as the story moves forward.

[LitNetIsGreat]

What I have read by Wilde I remember as being very witty and clever. But I guess the wit and the cleverness weren't good enough reasons for me to continue reading the rest of his stuff.

That's a shame because Wilde was a damn good writer, though he has always had his critics. He's actually quite an old personal favourite of mine, a big personal favourite actually, though I can still appreciate his little loveable faults.

[catatonic]

That's a shame because Wilde was a damn good writer, though he has always had his critics. He's actually quite an old personal favourite of mine, a big personal favourite actually, though I can still appreciate his little loveable faults.

Your endorsement is noted. Whether I'll act on it remains to be seen.

[LitNetIsGreat]

Your endorsement is noted. Whether I'll act on it remains to be seen.

Hmm, try reading The Happy Prince and other Tales if you do act upon my words. You can read The Happy Prince here:
http://www.online-literature.com/wilde/177/

The collection represents a good introduction into Wilde's work of which the natural development is The Importance of Being Earnest and The Picture of Dorian Gray.

For verse you could look at "Requiescat":
http://www.online-literature.com/wilde/2238/ and of course "The Ballad of Reading Gaol".

As for his essays you should read "The Soul of Man Under Socialism" and a reading of De Profundis (http://www.online-literature.com/wilde/1306/) is quite important, not to mention extremely touching.

Also when (if) you have read all of these and more, it also gives you a better position in which to effectively criticise Wilde from, as opposed to some vague distant memory of his cleverness and wit.

[Drkshadow03]

Good writing does speak for itself, it is just that some people don't listen or don't yet have the ability to.

.
I am personally getting tired of all this sort of thing, no offence. Opinion plays a part, but you should still be able to stand back and appreciate good writing free from personal opinion. As I say, Dickens does little for me, but I can still appreciate him as a fine writer, there is a difference. I don't buy all this opinion rules business. Some people are better judges than others.

I do listen to critiques or professors of literary study because they have more experience than me, but this doesn't weaken me as an individual thinker. I am not so aloof to think that my literary judgement is better than someone who is more, or better educated than me, and may have spend 50 years reading literature. I am 31.

I can't understand why experts in the field of literature are so attacked. If I was to embark upon a new career and I blankly criticised an expert in the field I would be laughed at. I am not a blind follower. I have a mind, and certainly can think for myself, but I am not so arrogant as to think that I can't learn from others.

Personal opinion is different from the ability to stand back from the text and judge it from a more criticial viewpoint. Why can't people see this?

Because the study of literature by its very nature is to some degree subjective, unlike most sciences. The nature of the fields are entirely different. This is basically why in academia people in the sciences love to make fun of people from the Humanities. You might be getting sick of those comments, but it doesn't make them any less factual.

I read scholarship from professors in literature and in other fields all the time, either to give me grounding in a new area and get myself up to speed on the debate, to discuss aesthetic techniques of a particular writer, or to simply hear a different point-of-view or another perspective.

A "critical viewpoint" is really just a synonym for "educated opinion." I'm not disagreeing that an educated opinion is worth a bit more than an average opinion, but an educated opinion at the end of the day is still an opinion. It's just an opinion informed by years of intense study of novels, poetry, or dramas usually within the same time period (giving them a very good idea of what novels are good in a particular time period), and plenty of research of other educated opinions.

Also, there is the problem that educated opinions do not always see eye to eye. The study of literature is essentially one long endless debate without an end (who should be part of the Canon? What is the worth of Stephen King? What is the best theory for understanding literature? What defines good writing? Was Shakespeare a racist? What is the right interpretation of The Great Gatsby? Is there such a thing as a right interpretation?). If you want a field that is mostly hard facts, you're going into the wrong field, my friend.

The problem with comments such as people just don't have the ability yet, but if they only studied harder they would obviously get to join the sanctified ranks of elitism club™ since they would naturally see things my way and understand that Shakespeare, Faulkner = omnipotence, while Rowling and Brown = teh suck, is that someone can have as much experience as you, read just as many critical works, have the same aptitude, and still come to different conclusions about who is worth reading, who is worth dropping, what is bad literature, what is good, etc.

So it's great to listen to professors, but the real point for listening to professors is to listen to the wider debate, and eventually to weigh the evidence each side provides and then take sides.

[stlukesguild]

SLG (quote)- Lawrence Sterne, to look at another style altogether, can employ examples of some of the worst writing ever intentionally with the most comic result (Read the contract between Tristan's mother and father).

This is where I disagree. Sterne is a brilliant writer with much versatility, obviously. The writing in Tristram Shandy isn't even horribly written.

By what standard would the following be seen as good prose by any stretch of the imagination?

And this Indenture further witnesseth, That the said Walter Shandy, merchant, in consideration of the said intended marriage to be had, and, by God's blessing, to be well and truly solemnized and consummated between the said Walter Shandy and Elizabeth Mollineux aforesaid, and divers other good and valuable causes and considerations him thereunto specially moving,—doth grant, covenant, condescend, consent, conclude, bargain, and fully agree to and with John Dixon, and James Turner, Esqrs. the above-named Trustees, &c. &c.—to wit,—That in case it should hereafter so fall out, chance, happen, or otherwise come to pass,—That the said Walter Shandy, merchant, shall have left off business before the time or times, that the said Elizabeth Mollineux shall, according to the course of nature, or otherwise, have left off bearing and bringing forth children;—and that, in consequence of the said Walter Shandy having so left off business, he shall in despight, and against the free-will, consent, and good-liking of the said Elizabeth Mollineux,—make a departure from the city of London, in order to retire to, and dwell upon, his estate at Shandy Hall, in the county of..., or at any other country-seat, castle, hall, mansion-house, messuage or grainge-house, now purchased, or hereafter to be purchased, or upon any part or parcel thereof:—That then, and as often as the said Elizabeth Mollineux shall happen to be enceint with child or children severally and lawfully begot, or to be begotten, upon the body of the said Elizabeth Mollineux, during her said coverture,—he the said Walter Shandy shall, at his own proper cost and charges, and out of his own proper monies, upon good and reasonable notice, which is hereby agreed to be within six weeks of her the said Elizabeth Mollineux's full reckoning, or time of supposed and computed delivery,—pay, or cause to be paid, the sum of one hundred and twenty pounds of good and lawful money, to John Dixon, and James Turner, Esqrs. or assigns,—upon Trust and confidence, and for and unto the use and uses, intent, end, and purpose following:—That is to say,—That the said sum of one hundred and twenty pounds shall be paid into the hands of the said Elizabeth Mollineux, or to be otherwise applied by them the said Trustees, for the well and truly hiring of one coach, with able and sufficient horses, to carry and convey the body of the said Elizabeth Mollineux, and the child or children which she shall be then and there enceint and pregnant with,—unto the city of London; and for the further paying and defraying of all other incidental costs, charges, and expences whatsoever,—in and about, and for, and relating to, her said intended delivery and lying-in, in the said city or suburbs thereof. And that the said Elizabeth Mollineux shall and may, from time to time, and at all such time and times as are here covenanted and agreed upon,—peaceably and quietly hire the said coach and horses, and have free ingress, egress, and regress throughout her journey, in and from the said coach, according to the tenor, true intent, and meaning of these presents, without any let, suit, trouble, disturbance, molestation, discharge, hinderance, forfeiture, eviction, vexation, interruption, or incumbrance whatsoever.—And that it shall moreover be lawful to and for the said Elizabeth Mollineux, from time to time, and as oft or often as she shall well and truly be advanced in her said pregnancy, to the time heretofore stipulated and agreed upon,—to live and reside in such place or places, and in such family or families, and with such relations, friends, and other persons within the said city of London, as she at her own will and pleasure, notwithstanding her present coverture, and as if she was a femme sole and unmarried,—shall think fit.—And this Indenture further witnesseth, That for the more effectually carrying of the said covenant into execution, the said Walter Shandy, merchant, doth hereby grant, bargain, sell, release, and confirm unto the said John Dixon, and James Turner, Esqrs. their heirs, executors, and assigns, in their actual possession now being, by virtue of an indenture of bargain and sale for a year to them the said John Dixon, and James Turner, Esqrs. by him the said Walter Shandy, merchant, thereof made; which said bargain and sale for a year, bears date the day next before the date of these presents, and by force and virtue of the statute for transferring of uses into possession,—All that the manor and lordship of Shandy, in the county of..., with all the rights, members, and appurtenances thereof; and all and every the messuages, houses, buildings, barns, stables, orchards, gardens, backsides, tofts, crofts, garths, cottages, lands, meadows, feedings, pastures, marshes, commons, woods, underwoods, drains, fisheries, waters, and water-courses;—together with all rents, reversions, services, annuities, fee-farms, knights fees, views of frankpledge, escheats, reliefs, mines, quarries, goods and chattels of felons and fugitives, felons of themselves, and put in exigent, deodands, free warrens, and all other royalties and seigniories, rights and jurisdictions, privileges and hereditaments whatsoever.—And also the advowson, donation, presentation, and free disposition of the rectory or parsonage of Shandy aforesaid, and all and every the tenths, tythes, glebe-lands.'—

This is undoubtedly some of the worst prose ever put to paper... but with an obvious comic and satirical intent. Certainly the whole of Tristan Shandy is not written in this manner (nor did I suggest as much)... and I fully agree that he is a brilliant writer... at turns quite eloquent and poetic. Without a doubt the book is one of my favorites... but it illustrates the fact that what amounts to good or bad prose is greatly tied to the context and the intent of the writer.

[LMK]

Neely, your opinion is so noted. {Opinion being the operative word in the sentence.}

It is not up to you to tell me or anyone who is and who is not a good or a great writer, it is up to each and every reader.

Aye, there's the rub!

[stlukesguild]

if the author is writing to be read that is an entirely different matter. It then becomes not about the writer's choice of delivery alone, but the audience that is being written for must be taken into account...

What makes good writing? In my opinion all it takes is an audience who enjoys reading the work.

Certainly, there are times at which the writer considers the audience and it may influence the writing to a given extent... but when this crosses a certain point so that the actual writing suffers for the sake of winning the audience... well that would appear to be pandering to me and have little to do with ART. I concur with Neely's assertion that the most inane writing might be considered good writing by your definition which suggests that all that is necessary is an appreciative audience.

I think that writing style is far more influenced by the author's personal preferences... and intentions. The matter-of-fact prose of Kafka, for example, is perfectly suited to his intention; it dresses the absurd and the impossible in an everyday garb (just the facts ma'am) where another writer might have chosen a more florid, sensuous style.

[stlukesguild]

Well, how do we explain why any of the writers we admire are good writers then? Of course the styles vary but what is a good style?

You explain it on an individual basis. If I draw form my own area of expertise, the visual arts, I might offer an example. If I were asked to speak to the strengths of Michelangelo I would address his mastery of drawing, anatomy, physiology, perspective, his innovative use of expressive distortions and expressive gestures, his brilliant colors, etc... Monet exhibits none of these abilities save the masterful use of color. Picasso is still another game altogether. In order to compare figures as different as Michelangelo and Picasso we look at just how innovative each artist is within his milieu; we look at the depth of the work; we look at the breadth and the scale of the work. The same undoubtedly applies to writing.

Shakespeare is admittedly not the greatest inventor of narratives. His tales are almost all based in earlier narratives. He, however, is masterful at drawing out the personal dramas... the psychology behind motives... He is equally masterful in the creation of characters and in character development. Add to this a sensuous, Baroque poetic language without peer and then look at the scale of his output...or of works that are unquestionably masterful works and we begin to arrive at some sort of consensus as to his merits. Kafka, (who we've been discussing recently so I'll just use him as an example) is something altogether different. His prose is rather matter-of-fact... clean and concise and to the point. There is almost no character development, no development of setting, but his narratives are quite original... surprising or unexpected. In spite of the lack of florid, descriptive language he is able to create an atmosphere of helplessness... as the most absurd situations methodically unfold.

[stlukesguild]

I could argue that Dan Brown is a good writer, in that after reading each of his four books (albeit years ago), I enjoyed each and every one of them. Do I compare him to Dickens? No, I do not. But they are apples and oranges apart.

You could certainly suggest that you liked them, but you could not successfully argue that they are examples of good writing. As for the apples and oranges analogy... more like apples and cow pies.:nod:

[stlukesguild]

I do not rely on critiques or professors of literary study to determine what is good or not. I can find my way around both a library and a bookstore and decide that on my own.

Oh... I didn't know we had the arbiter of what is or is not good right here at LitNet.:rolleyes:

Might I suggest that YOU do not decide what is good or bad. YOU decide what you like or dislike.

[LMK]

if the author is writing to be read that is an entirely different matter. It then becomes not about the writer's choice of delivery alone, but the audience that is being written for must be taken into account...

What makes good writing? In my opinion all it takes is an audience who enjoys reading the work.

Certainly, there are times at which the writer considers the audience and it may influence the writing to a given extent... but when this crosses a certain point so that the actual writing suffers for the sake of winning the audience... well that would appear to be pandering to me and have little to do with ART. I concur with Neely's assertion that the most inane writing might be considered good writing by your definition which suggests that all that is necessary is an appreciative audience.

I think that writing style is far more influenced by the author's personal preferences... and intentions. The matter-of-fact prose of Kafka, for example, is perfectly suited to his intention; it dresses the absurd and the impossible in an everyday garb (just the facts ma'am) where another writer might have chosen a more florid, sensuous style.

Which is why I made a distinction between an author writing because an author writes and writing to be read. If an author expects or desires a readership then there needs be some audience in mind to which the author writes.

The end is the same in my opinion, good writing is in the eye of the beholder.

~L

[Drkshadow03]

The end is the same in my opinion, good writing is in the eye of the beholder.

~L

To a degree, but experience and education in literature matters too. I mean take the original example in the post where Kelby_Lake called the writing in the The Time Traveler's Wife abysmal (in a different thread (http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showpost.php?p=754116&postcount=16)). Now sure she is entitled to her opinion, but clearly most people don't think the writing in The Time Traveler's Wife is abysmal. Not just bad, but extremely bad.

Take the Eye of Aragon story that I linked to in an earlier post:

"The weather beaten trail wound ahead into the dust racked climes of the barren land which dominates large portions of the Norgolian empire. Age worn hoof prints smothered by the sifting sands of time shone dully against the dust splattered crust of earth."

Now clearly this is abysmal writing. The wordiness distracts from developing any concrete imagery of the scene unfolding. The verb choices are poor (dust can splatter?). It feels like the writer was trying to jam in as many verbs and adjectives as possible. We don't have a character to focus the narrative yet or can discern any real reason for starting with this description, it feels haphazard, meaning there is no real focus. The whole thing is off-putting, and to make it worse it is the opening, which fails to bring us into the narrative (the basic purpose for an opening).

Compare that to the so-called abysmal writing of Time Traveler:

“I ponder my double. He’s curled up, hedgehog style, facing away from me, evidently asleep. I envy him. He is me, but I’m not him, yet. He has been through five years of a life that’s still mysterious to me, still coiled tightly waiting to spring out and bite. Of course, whatever pleasures are to be had, he’s had them; for me they wait like a box of unpoked chocolates.”

In this scene, a future self has just journeyed back to the past and arrived at his apartment, now sleeping on his bed. He is at the beginning of his relationship with his future wife and is pondering his future self. The writing makes sense for the narrative content (its about a guy experiencing and re-experiencing portions of his life through time travel and how it affects his relationship with his wife). It deals with themes of free will and determinism, which is reflected here as he introspectively ponders a future self. The author oscillates between short and long sentences for effect, so there is variation in technique, short staccato sentences for unimportant visual descriptions, longer more poignant sentences for the truly introspective parts. The writing is prettier than The Eye of Aragon example, it flows, and has a certain elegance (especially in comparison). The only thing I don't like in this sentence is the word, "unpoked." It seems wrong to me for some reason.

The thing is if you've read a lot of abysmal writing, you get a better sense of what is abysmal, what is bad, what is serviceable, what is average, what is not bad, what is above average, what is good, what is excellent. In other words, it comes with education and reading a lot, including a lot of really bad stuff, most of which I have read in writing workshops. So a lot of it comes down to experience. So opinion matters certainly, but so does reading widely (which can be achieved by education).

[LMK]

I do not rely on critiques or professors of literary study to determine what is good or not. I can find my way around both a library and a bookstore and decide that on my own.

Oh... I didn't know we had the arbiter of what is or is not good right here at LitNet.:rolleyes:

Perhaps you read what has not been written, sarcasm doe not become you or this discussion. I am the arbiter only of what I write and what I read. I can discern both what I like and what I do not care for, but I also can make a judgement of what is good writing and not-so-good writing. Yes, I can do this. Who else?

I should rely solely upon someone else to tell me? Where did they come into that information? Where they born with the knowledge of good and bad writing or did they read and learn for themselves?

And really rolling your eyes? That is less becoming that the sarcasm.


Might I suggest that YOU do not decide what is good or bad. YOU decide what you like or dislike.

You may suggest anything you like, but I DO decide what I think is good or bad, in addition to that I decide what I like and dislike...cool, huh? Yep, I get to do both.

But, hey, so do you!

~L

[mortalterror]

Good texts that attempt to answer that question:
Longinus' On the Sublime (http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/17957)
Longinus' work attempts to articulate that character which makes words and phrases elevated beyond the norm.
Demetrius' On Style (http://classicpersuasion.org/pw/demetrius/index.htm)
Demetrius' book considers everything from the length of sentences to what he considers the different styles: the styles of compression, expansion, and that style intermediate between the two.
Aristotle's Rhetoric (http://www2.iastate.edu/~honeyl/Rhetoric/)
Aristotle focuses on the type of work created, the audience, place, setting, and purpose the work is meant to achieve.
Cicero's De Oratore (http://books.google.com/books?id=vjM6scB-SLEC&pg=PP4&dq=cicero+de+oratore#v=onepage&q=&f=false)
Cicero is more concerned about what an author should know, what his character should be like, and the difference between practical application and the ideal model.
Quintilian's Institutes of Oratory (http://honeyl.public.iastate.edu/quintilian/index.html)
Quintillian was more ambitious in his work than the others and seeks to instruct a writer in all the things he would need to know from the cradle to the grave in order to excel. He is most concerned with the ways that a person's writing may be improved.
De Copia of Erasmus (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copia:_Foundations_of_the_Abundant_Style)
Erasmus' Copia is a textbook about medieval writing theory. It includes all kinds of interesting comments and even sentences written different ways to show their various effects.
Lucian's The Way to Write History (http://www.sacred-texts.com/cla/luc/wl2/wl210.htm)
This short article was the last thing I read which made me think "Wow, that's good writing." It is intelligent, amusing, and displays all of the wit and charm it encourages in other texts.
Horace's Ars Poetica (http://www.poetryintranslation.com/PITBR/Latin/HoraceArsPoetica.htm)
A nice discussion of writing in poetic form.
One could also learn a thing or two by studying the Alexandrian Canon of Attic Orators. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attic_orators)

[mayneverhave]

Take the Eye of Aragon story that I linked to in an earlier post:

"The weather beaten trail wound ahead into the dust racked climes of the barren land which dominates large portions of the Norgolian empire. Age worn hoof prints smothered by the sifting sands of time shone dully against the dust splattered crust of earth."

Now clearly this is abysmal writing. The wordiness distracts from developing any concrete imagery of the scene unfolding. The verb choices are poor (dust can splatter?). It feels like the writer was trying to jam in as many verbs and adjectives as possible. We don't have a character to focus the narrative yet or can discern any real reason for starting with this description, it feels haphazard, meaning there is no real focus. The whole thing is off-putting, and to make it worse it is the opening, which fails to bring us into the narrative (the basic purpose for an opening).

This is a good example, and brings up the idea of precision - using only the words necessary to convey a thought. Not only are the sentences of this excerpt awkward, they're superfulous. The "sifting sands of time" is both a dreadful cliche and is basically doing the same work in the meaning of the sentence as the "age worn hoof prints." Spilling on unnecessary words is not an issue of subjective personal preference: "Oh, I prefer my novels to beat me over the head with cliched metaphors". The fact that the paragraph just sounds ugly, perhaps, is my own opinion - though one shared by others.

The writing should fit the point. I have no special ties to the bourgeois style employed by Kafka, but as Stluke points out, it works incredibly well with the absurdist themes that the author is reaching for. The best example of the style matching the theme is Dante, whose style in the Comedy ranges from the ugliness of the Gargoyle cantos to the divine exhilaration of the Empryean. Along with this shift in style is the shift away from physical metaphor, that is the attempt at describing the unearthly by analogy to the earthly, to skirting the realm of speechlessness. Niether of these methods is inherently good, they just fit Dante's great theme in pinpoint ways.

As for my example of great prose; I have often come back to read this passage from Coetzee's Waiting for the Barbarians:


Sometimes, on a good morning, I am enabled to live again all the strength and switness of my manhood. Like a wraith I glide from brake to brake. Shod in boots that have soaked in thirty years of grease, I wade through icy water. Over my coat I wear my huge old bearskin. Rime forms on my beard but my fingers are warm in their mittens. My eyes are sharp, my hearing is keen, I sniff the air like a hound, I feel pure exhilaration.

Simply on the level of rhythm, this passage is remarkable for its ability to connect the reader aurally with the flowing movements of the hunt. Using short, terse sentences, Coetzee is amazingly able to summon up the scene of the old Magistrate creeping from fern to fern with the vitality of a Hemingway protagonist.

[stlukesguild]

I should solely upon someone else to tell me? Where did they come into that information? Where they born with the knowledge of good and bad writing or did they read and learn for themselves?

Considering the ability you have to skip over the salient points that others have all made here, perhaps it would be best if you relied solely upon somebody else.:D No one here has suggested that you must love whatever has been deemed by the academic literary elite as great and hate whatever they deem trash. Neely, Drkshadow03, and I have all admitted that all opinions in art are still but opinions. This has been stated, however, conditionally. Some opinions are better informed... more experienced... perhaps even more discerning or acutely observant than others. What has been stated is that there is a difference between stating "Dan Brown is a good writer" or "Tolstoy can't write for crap" (a statement of fact which begs proof as it goes against the common opinion) and stating "I really like Dan Brown" or "In my opinion Tolstoy is overrated" (clearly worded as opinion). No one has suggested that you let the "experts" do all your thinking for you. I believe Neely made that expressly clear. Where we have disagreed is with your suggestion that a work of art can be called "good" or "bad" solely on the basis that you... or someone likes it.

[mortalterror]

If I may be so bold, I would like to speak of openings, and the difference between the good and the bad. I do not pretend to be an expert myself, but will draw my examples from men many acknowledge to be expert, and so make my point in that way.

It has often occurred to me as I read that a great author structures his writing the way that a great general plans his battles or a grandmaster orders his game of chess. What I mean is that all openings have certain things in common, similar materials, similar positions, and similar goals. An excellent strategist will not move one piece at a time haphazardly according to changing conditions, but does everything with a particular aim in mind. It is all of one piece. In regards to the opening, one must ask oneself, how can I array my pieces and strike the most effective posture in order to achieve my ultimate goal. In short, an opening is always looking toward the endgame.

Now, what I am proposing is a teleological or goal oriented aesthetic, that seeks to organize rules or guidelines, as opposed to a relativistic, inspiration based aesthetic where anything goes. I am not saying that inspiration, creativity, and originality have no place in art. However, I am suggesting that they operate according to established rules of use, and that their effects can be predicted.

For my part, I believe that good literature arises out of conflict, and that the sooner the conflict within the text arises the better for storytelling purposes. The faster you can establish characters, setting, and conflict, the better chance you have of holding your audience's attention. Take this example from Virgil's Aeneid:

Arms, and the man I sing, who, forc'd by fate,
And haughty Juno's unrelenting hate,
Expell'd and exil'd, left the Trojan shore.
Long labors, both by sea and land, he bore,
And in the doubtful war, before he won
The Latian realm, and built the destin'd town;
His banish'd gods restor'd to rites divine,
And settled sure succession in his line,
From whence the race of Alban fathers come,
And the long glories of majestic Rome.
O Muse! the causes and the crimes relate;
What goddess was provok'd, and whence her hate;
For what offense the Queen of Heav'n began
To persecute so brave, so just a man;
Involv'd his anxious life in endless cares,
Expos'd to wants, and hurried into wars!
Can heav'nly minds such high resentment show,
Or exercise their spite in human woe?
Aeneid Dryden translation

Right off the bat, he tells us what the story is about, what it's themes are, where it's set, who the main protagonist and antagonists are, where the story ends up, why we should care, addresses particular and universal issues, and by his invoking of heavenly powers sets the narrator in a pious and sympathetic light. Not bad for a couple of lines. Contrast this with the beginning of Keats' Hyperion:

DEEP in the shady sadness of a vale
Far sunken from the healthy breath of morn,
Far from the fiery noon, and eve’s one star,
Sat gray-hair’d Saturn, quiet as a stone,
Still as the silence round about his lair;
Forest on forest hung about his head
Like cloud on cloud. No stir of air was there,
Not so much life as on a summer’s day
Robs not one light seed from the feather’d grass,
But where the dead leaf fell, there did it rest.
A stream went voiceless by, still deadened more
By reason of his fallen divinity
Spreading a shade: the Naiad ’mid her reeds
Press’d her cold finger closer to her lips.

Presumably, he's here to talk about Hyperion and the Titanomachia but his heart isn't in it and he really feels more comfortable writing about nature. Don't just compare this epic opening to The Aeneid. Compare it to any of the several dozen successful epics which take Homer and Virgil for models (http://www.online-literature.com/forums/showpost.php?p=614830&postcount=7).

That is one way, admittedly the most effective way, to begin a work of epic poetry; but how are we to begin other forms such as drama? I believe, and hopefully others will concur, that Shakespeare offers an abundance of tidy examples.

O for a Muse of fire, that would ascend
The brightest heaven of invention,
A kingdom for a stage, princes to act
And monarchs to behold the swelling scene!
Then should the warlike Harry, like himself,
Assume the port of Mars; and at his heels,
Leash'd in like hounds, should famine, sword and fire
Crouch for employment. But pardon, and gentles all,
The flat unraised spirits that have dared
On this unworthy scaffold to bring forth
So great an object: can this cockpit hold
The vasty fields of France? or may we cram
Within this wooden O the very casques
That did affright the air at Agincourt?

This vaguely epic prologue to Henry V is one way to go. It adequately tells the audience that it will be telling a war story about King Harry V and his victory over France at Agincourt. But I think he has better stuff. If one is to use a prologue model one can do better with Romeo and Juliet:

Two households, both alike in dignity,
In fair Verona, where we lay our scene,
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny,
Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.
From forth the fatal loins of these two foes
A pair of star-cross'd lovers take their life;
Whole misadventured piteous overthrows
Do with their death bury their parents' strife.

And from there breaks out a terrific fight in the first scene. The play does not waste time. But Shakespeare has better beginning's still:

Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
And all the clouds that lour'd upon our house
In the deep bosom of the ocean buried.
Now are our brows bound with victorious wreaths;
...
And therefore, since I cannot prove a lover,
To entertain these fair well-spoken days,
I am determined to prove a villain
And hate the idle pleasures of these days.
Plots have I laid, inductions dangerous,
By drunken prophecies, libels and dreams,
To set my brother Clarence and the king
In deadly hate the one against the other:

There you have the title character introduce himself, make a sketch of his character, his motivations, explains the conflict, and the overall action of the play. It's a far cry from how Shakespeare opens Julius Caesar. That play starts sans prologue with a bunch of street people who aren't important to the story. There's a lot of bawdy jesting to get the audience's attention but the conflict and the point are buried half way through the first scene:

Wherefore rejoice? What conquest brings he home?
What tributaries follow him to Rome,
To grace in captive bonds his chariot-wheels?
You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things!
O you hard hearts, you cruel men of Rome,
Knew you not Pompey?

This is a pale paraphrase from the beginning of Lucan's Pharsalia (http://omacl.org/Pharsalia/book1.html), broaches the old wound, but has yet to get to the new conflicts between Caesar and the Senate, Brutus and Caesar, Cassius and Antony, etc which the play will eventually be about.

Enough of drama. How should one begin a work of prose? Dickens and Tolstoy offer delightful examples:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way-

Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

Look at the balance of the clauses, the antithesis of the words, the way they clash and harmonize. Dickens story will be about a time period and the events therein, Tolstoy is going to tell us a story about families. The first sentence encapsulates the entire book.

Returning to my chess analogy, the player at the start of his game has pawns, rooks, knights, bishops, kings, and queens. The writer has characters, settings, events, or descriptions and there is always the question about which to put forward first. There is no right answer to this question, just as there is no correct opening in chess. But there are examples we can learn from, and strategies for whatever type of game we wish to play.

Should we start at the beginning as most do? Or should we start in medias res as Homer does? Do we start at the end and work backward as Sophocles did with Oedipus Rex? Shall we be linear as Don Quixote or non-linear as Catch-22, Slaughterhouse-Five, or Pulp Fiction? Should we be episodic, or maintain the classical unities? As my post is getting quite long I shall reserve those questions as well as points of style for a later occasion.

[JCamilo]

ok, the openings are somewhat special. They open the texts after all. Many texts however are hardly the opening, since they are put togtheger years after the original wrting. Of course, the opening is premiditate, when we think about Camoes, but really...
a few good sentences does not make a good writing, Wuthering Heights begining is not a big deal...

[billl]

One effect I enjoy is the mirroring of motion in prose. It might sometimes seem a simple, cliched, or overdone thing--it's definitely something a budding writer could get carried away with, lean on like a crutch. (Is this an example?)

But the gestures among men in a Hemingway moment, step by loaded step. The lilt and randomness of children entering a scene. And this, one of my favorite passages (but it works much better after a few paragraphs of great, but typically accounted, writing from this guy):

MARK TWAIN
CHAPTER 8, ROUGHING IT



In a small way we were the same sort of simpletons as those who climb unnecessarily the perilous peaks of Mont Blanc and the Matterhorn, and derive no pleasure from it except the reflection that it isn't a common experience. But once in a while one of those parties trips and comes darting down the long mountain-crags in a sitting posture, making the crusted snow smoke behind him, flitting from bench to bench, and from terrace to terrace, jarring the earth where he strikes, and still glancing and flitting on again, sticking an iceberg into himself every now and then, and tearing his clothes, snatching at things to save himself, taking hold of trees and fetching them along with him, roots and all, starting little rocks now and then, then big boulders, then acres of ice and snow and patches of forest, gathering and still gathering as he goes, adding and still adding to his massed and sweeping grandeur as he nears a three thousand-foot precipice, till at last he waves his hat magnificently and rides into eternity on the back of a raging and tossing avalanche!


Looking at it now, I don't like the exclamation point at the end, but that's maybe how they liked it back in those days, works fine in context I think.

[LMK]

[Considering the ability you have to skip over the salient points that others have all made here, perhaps it would be best if you relied solely upon somebody else.

The presumption in the above remark is that the 'points' you or others have made are the ones that are important to address; again an opinion.

That is not to say that there is anything wrong with that, you are free to bring up any point you choose to discuss and others who feel that the position has merit, or who simply have something to say on the point made, are free to comment on it. Perhaps, for me, it is all conjecture not points of proof that one must address with approval by some higher literary court before posting one’s own thoughts on the matter and sticking to those.



Where we have disagreed is with your suggestion that a work of art can be called "good" or "bad" solely on the basis that you... or someone likes it.

Again, that is your opinion and you all are entitled to it. I disagree. Far be it from me to put myself in a position to say what specifically is good or bad, so I will put on my tap shoes and dance ever so delicately around it.

I might argue that the art created by Claese Oldenburg, Andy Warhol, and Jackson Pollock, George Segal, Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dali are not in the category of good art. Would a completely restored Pieta be art? It is a matter of opinion ultimately. While Frederic Remington clearly, to me, produced good art, but not of my taste at all, I don't care for it, yet I appreciate the talent, style and execution. I can do that with liturature as well.


Therefore, my response remains, that what makes good writing is a reader who thinks the writing is good; even if the only reader is the author him/her self or the writer’s grandchild.

I could argue Stephen King is a good writer, it is unfortunate that he writes material I don't much care to read, but that speaks to content and genre, not whether or not the man can write, similar perhaps to my remarks about Remington's sculptures.

~L

[LitNetIsGreat]

Because the study of literature by its very nature is to some degree subjective, unlike most sciences. The nature of the fields are entirely different.

Of course they are.


This is basically why in academia people in the sciences love to make fun of people from the Humanities. You might be getting sick of those comments, but it doesn't make them any less factual.

I'm getting sick of the idea that "good writing lies in the eye of the beholder" sort of nonsense. Different opinions help make art thrive as a vibrant subject and that is good and encouraged; but when people continually think that if they enjoyed something it automatically qualifies the writing as something of good quality, it just becomes silly, and after a while annoying.


A "critical viewpoint" is really just a synonym for "educated opinion." I'm not disagreeing that an educated opinion is worth a bit more than an average opinion, but an educated opinion at the end of the day is still an opinion. It's just an opinion informed by years of intense study of novels, poetry, or dramas usually within the same time period (giving them a very good idea of what novels are good in a particular time period), and plenty of research of other educated opinions.

Also, there is the problem that educated opinions do not always see eye to eye.

Again, that is not a problem to me, that is good. Difference of opinion will always occur because we are different people who connect to different things.


The study of literature is essentially one long endless debate without an end (who should be part of the Canon? What is the worth of Stephen King? What is the best theory for understanding literature? What defines good writing? Was Shakespeare a racist? What is the right interpretation of The Great Gatsby? Is there such a thing as a right interpretation?). If you want a field that is mostly hard facts, you're going into the wrong field, my friend.

I am certainly not in the wrong field and have never claimed to want hard facts. Actually quite the opposite. I am always arguing for the opening of interpretation for the individual reader, always, your comments here are well off the mark and wildly inaccurate. How many times have I said that literature is not a science? How many times have I encouraged those struggling with homework to support their own thinking? Though of course you can't be expected to remember what I write in other threads, and indeed why should you?


The problem with comments such as people just don't have the ability yet, but if they only studied harder they would obviously get to join the sanctified ranks of elitism club™ since they would naturally see things my way and understand that Shakespeare, Faulkner = omnipotence, while Rowling and Brown = teh suck, is that someone can have as much experience as you, read just as many critical works, have the same aptitude, and still come to different conclusions about who is worth reading, who is worth dropping, what is bad literature, what is good, etc.

Again, of course that is part of what keeps literature fresh and appealing, opinion, but informed opinion is better than uninformed opinion. It has nothing to do with seeing from the same "elitist" position (I wondered when that word would come up). For Christ sake at least people should read the material that they are actually criticising, and read it properly before attacking something amateurishly: "I couldn't get into Madam Bovary, it was boring, Flaubert is overated" Jesus.

[JCamilo]

I can see LMK going to a music show and arguing with the musician that was a great show while the musician explained how he played very badly, doing several mistakes and how the sound was funcitioning correctly... "It is my opinion!"...

[kelby_lake]

Compare that to the so-called abysmal writing of Time Traveler:

“I ponder my double. He’s curled up, hedgehog style, facing away from me, evidently asleep. I envy him. He is me, but I’m not him, yet. He has been through five years of a life that’s still mysterious to me, still coiled tightly waiting to spring out and bite. Of course, whatever pleasures are to be had, he’s had them; for me they wait like a box of unpoked chocolates.”


Okay, abysmal's harsh. Let's just say relatively dull and unmemorable. And I agree on the 'unpoked'. Although what I find wierd about that sentence- men don't really eat chocolates, at least not boxes, so why would he use it as a simile? It sounds like a woman on a diet.

Take the Eye of Aragon story that I linked to in an earlier post:



The main thing that annoys me about it is that they haven't used hyphens. It should be:
"The weather-beaten trail wound ahead into the dust-racked climes of the barren land which dominates large portions of the Norgolian empire. Age-worn hoof-prints smothered by the sifting sands of time shone dully against the dust-splattered crust of earth."
Of course it's pretty nonsensical, with the shiny hoofprints and what not but it's not too purple prosy. In 'The Escape', the writer (Adam Thirlwell) described a bruise as 'like a Riviera sunset,the backdrop to a promenade bordered with palm trees, illuminating the night...(it goes on for a bit after that). If it's done quirkly or to be satirical I don't mind but it often isn't.

Good writing sticks in your head- when you're reading it it seems like that is the only way x could be phrased. It sounds important.

[Paulclem]

men don't really eat chocolates, at least not boxes

You're making assumptions.

The main thing that annoys me about it is that they haven't used hyphens.

Apparently, hyphens are going out of fashion.

[Lynne50]

Okay, abysmal's harsh. Let's just say relatively dull and unmemorable. And I agree on the 'unpoked'. Although what I find wierd about that sentence- men don't really eat chocolates, at least not boxes, so why would he use it as a simile? It sounds like a woman on a diet.

Take the Eye of Aragon story that I linked to in an earlier post:


[Quote
The main thing that annoys me about it is that they haven't used hyphens. It should be:
"The weather-beaten trail wound ahead into the dust-racked climes of the barren land which dominates large portions of the Norgolian empire. Age-worn hoof-prints smothered by the sifting sands of time shone dully against the dust-splattered crust of earth."]Quote
Of course it's pretty nonsensical, with the shiny hoofprints and what not but it's not too purple prosy. In 'The Escape', the writer (Adam Thirlwell) described a bruise as 'like a Riviera sunset,the backdrop to a promenade bordered with palm trees, illuminating the night...(it goes on for a bit after that). If it's done quirkly or to be satirical I don't mind but it often isn't.

Good writing sticks in your head- when you're reading it it seems like that is the only way x could be phrased. It sounds important.


I'm having some difficulty finding the rules for hyphens. I went online ( or should that be on-line) and found much conflicting info. I understand that if you have two adjectives that follow a noun, to avoid confusion, you should hyphenate. ie. well-known actor. or American-football player.This is called a compound modifier. But why do you need hyphens with just one adjective ie. age-worn or age-old. The info stated that when two words are put together and a new meaning is generated then it should be hyphenated, but I don't see that as the case for hoof-prints. These are two nouns that are compounded to make a new word, same as butterfly, sidewalk, doghouse,etc.
I consulted my new Merriam-Webster dictionary,(copyright 2008), just bought it last night, and the word hoofprint is not hyphenated. At first I thought it was, because in the dictionary it is listed like this, hoof.print ( That period should be in the middle between words.) But after I got my magnifying glass out, I realized it is not a hyphen but a dot just showing the division between words. I then looked up age-old and the dictionary clearly shows a hyphen between those two words.
If hoofprint was hyphenated why wouldn't we do the same for footprint, handprint, toeprint, etc.:) Some of the online info also states that if you're unsure of a hyphen to omit it, but your best bet is to consult a dictionary.
I am not an expert in this field, so I would like anyone who has more knowledge on this subject to weigh in. Thanks

[Paulclem]

It was something I read a couple of years ago - I think it was Bill Bryson's Mother Tongue. In it I think he was referring to style guides for newspapers - British ones. They are definately being used less as you have pointed out Lynne50.

[stlukesguild]

My understanding has been that if the two words are commonly employed together so as they essentially form a commonly recognized compound word (such as fingerprint) then no hyphen is necessitated. If the combination is less common, then the hyphen is needed. Of course who decides when the work is common enough. I generally go by the built-in on-line spell-check (hows that for some hyphens?:nod:) which highlights a word if it is not listed in the program's dictionary. Of course I use a lot of words that aren't in the dictionary... so who's to know? You can then add to the confusion with the differences in rules between American, British, and other English-speaking nations.

[Janine]

I looked the word up in my college dictionary, and all the words appear with bullets (dot) between them - designating the breaks in the syllables. I also looked the word up online and it is usually not hyphenated; more times than not, hoofprint appears as one word. I think in your dictionary, Lynne, the dot is merely to break up the syllables. I will do as you suggest St.Lukes - put it into spell checks. That should reveal something.

Back again - one program separated the words and didn't hyphenate it; other apparently it can be either way, but no hyphen.

[Paulclem]

I think Bryson's stance was one of sense. A word like re-energised, (off the top of my head), benefits from the hyphen as it splits the two vowels. A word like hoofprint seems obvious without it.

Luckily in the UK, we don't have a body that decides what rules are acceptable and what rules are not. So the language is gradually undergoing constant changes. It's quite fascinating.

10 or perhaps 15 years ago, you would never hear the suffix -able on words except specific ones like laudable = words accepted within the convention. Nowadays in the UK you can have all kinds of constructs with -able eg do-able, saleable, winable... There was an advert on the TV using plasticine puppets and real people talking and one chap used "do-able". It seems as though since then the suffix has taken off and is tacked onto lots of words. I like the democracy of it. No-one owns it, it just grows organically, boldly going where no language has gone before, despite the old rules.

[kelby_lake]

men don't really eat chocolates, at least not boxes

You're making assumptions.

The main thing that annoys me about it is that they haven't used hyphens.

Apparently, hyphens are going out of fashion.

Hyphens are cool :)

And men don't really eat boxes of chocolates. Yeah, they might eat some from a shared one, but on the whole they are targeted more to females. When I brought in a box of chocolates for work experience, luckily the men picked all the gross ones like toffee pennies and fingers and whatnot, leaving me to eat the fondants :) :)

[Paulclem]

And men don't really eat boxes of chocolates. Yeah, they might eat some from a shared one, but on the whole they are targeted more to females. When I brought in a box of chocolates for work experience, luckily the men picked all the gross ones like toffee pennies and fingers and whatnot, leaving me to eat the fondants

I do! Or rather did - I've given up choc because of the flab.

[kelby_lake]

And men don't really eat boxes of chocolates. Yeah, they might eat some from a shared one, but on the whole they are targeted more to females. When I brought in a box of chocolates for work experience, luckily the men picked all the gross ones like toffee pennies and fingers and whatnot, leaving me to eat the fondants

I do! Or rather did - I've given up choc because of the flab.

What sort?

[Drkshadow03]

What sort?

Dark chocolate, truffles, those boxes with chocolates stuffed with all sorts of unknown stuff (usually as a present). Guys eat chocolates. I had no problem with the metaphor, but the word choice.

I wrote up my review/thoughts on The Time Traveler's Wife on the blog (http://beyondassumptions.wordpress.com/2009/08/06/booklist-2009-37-the-time-travelers-wife-by-audrey-niffenegger/). There is an interesting discussion I am having with someone from another book blog who links to her own review. she and apparently others felt like you did about the book and its writing; you might want to check it out.

[Paulclem]

What sort?

Every and any sort Kelby. I have a stuff-my-face personality for chocolate.

[La Pluma]

When it comes to what words or ideas might move a person we all have our subjective preferences and tastes, thus good writing is as undefined as "real beauty." For what a boring world it would be if everyone wrote as descriptively as Tolstoy or Tolkien, as feisty as Mitchell or as fluid and simplistic as McCourt?

With that said, I believe there is a problem with the publishing industry that seeks not passionate writing but the "reliable marketability" of writing-- those who can churn out formulated re-runs of classical tales already told.

It is impossible for a writer to not be influenced by established ideas in other works, for all we have nothing but the sum total of our own subjective experiences (in this case the sum total of our subjective reading experiences), but to intentionally publish works for their marketability has watered down great writing...

Here is a great article by Harold Bloom discussing the matter:

HAROLD BLOOM
Dumbing down American readers

By Harold Bloom, 9/24/2003

THE DECISION to give the National Book Foundation's annual award for "distinguished contribution" to Stephen King is extraordinary, another low in the shocking process of dumbing down our cultural life. I've described King in the past as a writer of penny dreadfuls, but perhaps even that is too kind. He shares nothing with Edgar Allan Poe. What he is is an immensely inadequate writer on a sentence-by-sentence, paragraph-by-paragraph, book-by-book basis. The publishing industry has stooped terribly low to bestow on King a lifetime award that has previously gone to the novelists Saul Bellow and Philip Roth and to playwright Arthur Miller. By awarding it to King they recognize nothing but the commercial value of his books, which sell in the millions but do little more for humanity than keep the publishing world afloat. If this is going to be the criterion in the future, then perhaps next year the committee should give its award for distinguished contribution to Danielle Steel, and surely the Nobel Prize for literature should go to J.K. Rowling.

What's happening is part of a phenomenon I wrote about a couple of years ago when I was asked to comment on Rowling. I went to the Yale University bookstore and bought and read a copy of "Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone." I suffered a great deal in the process. The writing was dreadful; the book was terrible. As I read, I noticed that every time a character went for a walk, the author wrote instead that the character "stretched his legs." I began marking on the back of an envelope every time that phrase was repeated. I stopped only after I had marked the envelope several dozen times. I was incredulous. Rowling's mind is so governed by cliches and dead metaphors that she has no other style of writing.

But when I wrote that in a newspaper, I was denounced. I was told that children would now read only J.K. Rowling, and I was asked whether that wasn't, after all, better than reading nothing at all? If Rowling was what it took to make them pick up a book, wasn't that a good thing?

It is not. "Harry Potter" will not lead our children on to Kipling's "Just So Stories" or his "Jungle Book." It will not lead them to Thurber's "Thirteen Clocks" or Kenneth Grahame's "Wind in the Willows" or Lewis Carroll's "Alice."

Later I read a lavish, loving review of Harry Potter by the same Stephen King. He wrote something to the effect of, "If these kids are reading Harry Potter at 11 or 12, then when they get older they will go on to read Stephen King." And he was quite right. He was not being ironic. When you read "Harry Potter" you are, in fact, trained to read Stephen King.

Our society and our literature and our culture are being dumbed down, and the causes are very complex. I'm 73 years old. In a lifetime of teaching English, I've seen the study of literature debased. There's very little authentic study of the humanities remaining. My research assistant came to me two years ago saying she'd been in a seminar in which the teacher spent two hours saying that Walt Whitman was a racist. This isn't even good nonsense. It's insufferable.

I began as a scholar of the romantic poets. In the 1950s and early 1960s, it was understood that the great English romantic poets were Percy Bysshe Shelley, William Wordsworth, Lord Byron, John Keats, William Blake, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. But today they are Felicia Hemans, Charlotte Smith, Mary Tighe, Laetitia Landon, and others who just can't write. A fourth-rate playwright like Aphra Behn is being taught instead of Shakespeare in many curriculums across the country.

Recently I spoke at the funeral of my old friend Thomas M. Green of Yale, perhaps the most distinguished scholar of Renaissance literature of his generation. I said, "I fear that something of great value has ended forever."

Today there are four living American novelists I know of who are still at work and who deserve our praise. Thomas Pynchon is still writing. My friend Philip Roth, who will now share this "distinguished contribution" award with Stephen King, is a great comedian and would no doubt find something funny to say about it. There's Cormac McCarthy, whose novel "Blood Meridian" is worthy of Herman Melville's "Moby-Dick," and Don DeLillo, whose "Underworld" is a great book.

Instead, this year's award goes to King. It's a terrible mistake.

Harold Bloom is a professor at Yale University and author of "The Western Canon." He wrote this column for the Los Angeles Times.
© Copyright 2003 Globe Newspaper Company.

http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2003/09/24/dumbing_down_american_readers/

[Veho]

Personally, I have to disagree with Harold Bloom. The Harry Potter books started my love for reading when I was 12. I'd picked up the odd Jaqueline Wilson book and such beforehand, but it was Harry Potter that captivated me and really introduced me to the wonders of fiction. I have no interest in reading a Stephen King novel. Maybe I am the exception, but I doubt it; I'm not a very exceptional person.

I'm currently reading The Man in the High Castle, and the way Dick writes the dialogue between the characters is very unusual, I've never come across that kind of writing style before. I thought it was a mistake in my edition, at first.

[Paulclem]

Oh no! Not Bloom on Potter again!

[Drkshadow03]

I've described King in the past as a writer of penny dreadfuls, but perhaps even that is too kind.



Eh, I am not a fan of this article, not so much because he takes swipes at King and Rowling, but for the quote I left highlighted.

So originally he thought King wrote penny dreadfuls, implying that he was decent for that type of fiction, but now he is reevaluating him as inferior to even those? And what is the reason for this reevaluation, did he suddenly decide to re-read all his novels in preparation for the award? Nope. King won an award that Bloom thinks he didn't deserve so naturally it's okay to completely change your mind about the merits of a writer as a sign of protest, talk about lacking integrity as a critic. Basically, this line shows him reacting like a five year old petulant child would, and after that it is hard to take him entirely seriously on anything else he had to say. At least for me.

[JCamilo]

Really, would you not take his seriously because he reevalued King from a cheap writer to something less kind, which means exactly taking in account the effect of King being reckognized as more than that? The article is all about King occuping a space that should be of others, as much Bloom is too bitter, how his complains about writers getting reckonigtion when they shouldn't would be changed by it? He is grumbling old fool, but I would still pay attention to him talking about Proust.

[islandclimber]

ahhh, another interesting idea for a thread that has disintegrated into an argument about the difference between like and dislike, as opposed to good and bad..

of course it just seems commonsense that liking or disliking something has nothing to do with whether it is good or bad.. I could read a Tom Clancy novel and say, wow that was a crazy, entertaining story, but was it well written? no. and yes this is just my opinion, but one could just critically analyze that mediocre text they have enjoyed, and realize that is poorly written, look for cheap literary techniques (red herrings, deus ex machina, etc), overuse of cliches, excessive adverbs, continuity mistakes (I remember reading a Tom Clancy novel in a series when I was 11 or 12, and somehow two books down the line Bill Clinton had now been a past president, even though the president in the previous books was not in fact Mr Clinton.. that's just sloppy)... DrkShadow gave a great example of really poor writing earlier in the thread from that "eye of aragorn" was it? I haven't read all that much really bad genre fiction so I really cannot give examples of that kind of abysmally bad writing.. I think one of the problems here is that some of us are taking what is just maybe mediocre/not good or even half-decent writing, and suggesting it is abysmal, whereas there is really much much worse out there.. DrkShadow has made this point before if I remember correctly in one of the other threads that discussed these issues.. so I guess it is all relative to what you have read.. If the worst writing I have bothered to take a look at is Rowling or Brown, or Clancy, etc. then I am probably going to call them abysmal writers, even though there may be much worse out there.. but maybe I don't think that stuff that stuff is worth even being discussed.. anyways it is all subjective, but there are some ways to look at writing critically and determine whether it is good or bad writing.. where it gets more difficult is middle of the road writing that shouldn't really be called terrible, but also shouldn't be called good, and that's where I believe most of the debate occurs...

I read an article about the original idea for this thread not too long ago, and I'll try to find the link and post it :)

[mortalterror]

so I guess it is all relative to what you have read.. If the worst writing I have bothered to take a look at is Rowling or Brown, or Clancy, etc. then I am probably going to call them abysmal writers, even though there may be much worse out there..
After I finished the last of Shakespeare's plays I remember thinking that I was in a wider world, but the mountains were smaller. Reading really good writing raises the bar of your expectations the same way that reading really bad writing lowers them. Reading one way makes your desires easier to satisfy, the other raises the threshold of your satisfaction level.

[LitNetIsGreat]

After I finished the last of Shakespeare's plays I remember thinking that I was in a wider world, but the mountains were smaller. Reading really good writing raises the bar of your expectations the same way that reading really bad writing lowers them. Reading one way makes your desires easier to satisfy, the other raises the threshold of your satisfaction level.

Yes. After you have tasted fine writing, and the philosophy behind it, you simply can't read anything that is poorly written, well I can't anyway. Reading bad writing from extracts can be really funny, and to add to that a sense of wonder at how they ever got to print in the first place! But to sit down, and to choose to read one for pleasure, for me, is quite out of the question.

[Jozanny]

In general terms, I think what makes good writing is a sense that the author is engaged, cares about his or her characters, has a sense of craft, and offers the reader a unique outlook. This doesn't cover everything of course, since an author like Kafka defies these expectations, and I never really took to his work. What interferes with my ability to engage with Kafka is the parochial guilt without its normative Semitic rationale, which is not to say I do not appreciate that he broke the mold, but I don't consider him to be the modernist genuis that most others do, because he gets lost in the ambiguity of his allegory, and I mean, so what? Everyman appeared on the scene long before Kafka had to conceal the closed system of ethnic entitlement and replace moral guilt attributable to doctrine with moral guilt attributable to the rise of autocratic regulation. But I can appreciate Sterne, who almost does some of the same things, because there is a human element to Sterne's comic voice. Sterne brings us into his world; Kafka, and his lesser imitators, alienates us from the worldview he creates, and I'd rather be in an author's world than asked to be agitated by it. That's me. Proust is not without humor, but it is the humor of affection for memory and impossibly recaptured past, rather than absurdist farce, coupled with restrained pathos, which also moves me. Faulkner, Kis, perhaps Eco in his better moments, definitely Lampedusa. Doris Lessing, and Byatt embody some of these qualities. John Gardner. Grass. This is just the kind of writing I like best. Realism that challenges with subversion. Attention to detail suggestive of motifs. Characters that matter to their creators, such as James excels at doing.

[mortalterror]

Yes. After you have tasted fine writing, and the philosophy behind it, you simply can't read anything that is poorly written, well I can't anyway. Reading bad writing from extracts can be really funny, and to add to that a sense of wonder at how they ever got to print in the first place! But to sit down, and to choose to read one for pleasure, for me, is quite out of the question.
You misunderstand. I am not making a judgement but an observation. In the former case the appetites are easier to satisfy, while the latter type of reader has more difficulty satisfying his desires.

I do not actually believe that one type of reader is more satisfied by his reading matter than another. In point of fact, my cravings are harder to satisfy since I've begun reading more difficult types of literature. But my goals have also changed. If a man's sole and only reason for reading is pleasure, he can do no better than Dan Brown, J.K. Rowling, and Stephen King. But if he has other appetites, other aims, other purposes, such as the attainment of self-respect, pride, vanity, honor, to name a few, then this subject matter will not satisfy those goals and he remains unfulfilled.

I say again, if a man is motivated to attain happiness as his primary priority, then the easiest way to achieve this aim is to train himself to be well satisfied with what is easily within his reach. There is nothing wrong with reading James Patterson, unless one's goals extend beyond the purely hedonistic.

When we speak of widely read people, we speak of those who have read high and low. Their palate admits of a large range of diverse tastes. This is different from the narrow reader who seeks to become increasingly sensitive to fewer and fewer sensations. The narrow reader may either become dull to a low register of taste or a high register, like those people who enjoy sweet or sour dishes. In contrast, the widely read reader is ever expanding his sense of taste to include new works.

Ideally, the widely read reader is much like our first man who forever reads James Patterson with unending contentment. But he has surpassed the first man who has taught himself to be happy with less, and learned to be enamored of all....And yet, as I sit here it occurs to me that there is one other type of reader who reads widely and that is the reader who is less mature than the first one. The second type is constantly seeking new horizons because he finds no contentment whatever he reads. The search itself is his release.

Of course, strictly speaking, very few readers fall into only one category.

[LitNetIsGreat]

You misunderstand. I am not making a judgement but an observation. In the former case the appetites are easier to satisfy, while the latter type of reader has more difficulty satisfying his desires.

I do not actually believe that one type of reader is more satisfied by his reading matter than another. In point of fact, my cravings are harder to satisfy since I've begun reading more difficult types of literature. But my goals have also changed. If a man's sole and only reason for reading is pleasure, he can do no better than Dan Brown, J.K. Rowling, and Stephen King. But if he has other appetites, other aims, other purposes, such as the attainment of self-respect, pride, vanity, honor, to name a few, then this subject matter will not satisfy those goals and he remains unfulfilled.

I say again, if a man is motivated to attain happiness as his primary priority, then the easiest way to achieve this aim is to train himself to be well satisfied with what is easily within his reach. There is nothing wrong with reading James Patterson, unless one's goals extend beyond the purely hedonistic.

When we speak of widely read people, we speak of those who have read high and low. Their palate admits of a large range of diverse tastes. This is different from the narrow reader who seeks to become increasingly sensitive to fewer and fewer sensations. The narrow reader may either become dull to a low register of taste or a high register, like those people who enjoy sweet or sour dishes. In contrast, the widely read reader is ever expanding his sense of taste to include new works.

Ideally, the widely read reader is much like our first man who forever reads James Patterson with unending contentment. But he has surpassed the first man who has taught himself to be happy with less, and learned to be enamored of all....And yet, as I sit here it occurs to me that there is one other type of reader who reads widely and that is the reader who is less mature than the first one. The second type is constantly seeking new horizons because he finds no contentment whatever he reads. The search itself is his release.

Of course, strictly speaking, very few readers fall into only one category.

No I didn't misunderstand you. I realise that there are different types of reader who gain pleasure from whatever they read. My wife's grandmother has read the same type of story all her life, the poor female underdog who ends up rich and happy, usually set in Victorian England or in the bleak North somewhere, yet she loves her books as much as me.

It's just that personally, after reading a fair amount (though of course that is only a tiny fragment of what is on offer) I simply cannot palette bad writing. I cannot be satisfied, and cannot find pleasure in reading trash or mediocre texts on any level.

It's not just a question of goals, although that does play a part. It also a question of the natural development as a reader, wanting more and more from the books we read, the search for more and more, though this doesn't happen to everyone, like my wife's grandmother for example, bless her, but literature for some can be a drug.

* As an aside: she is disgusted in me that I can read the same book more than once. She can't understand how I can do this because I know what's going to happen in the end! :redface:

[Drkshadow03]

I think there is some conflation going on between thematic depth and aesthetics (quality of prose). I would separate three major elements of writing:

1) thematics (a word I am making up for this conversation)

2) aesthetics

3) Story-telling.

A writer can be a good story-teller, but not necessarily be aesthetically impressive on a prose level or have much to say that is worth taking away from his work. Similarly, a work might be an interesting story and have interesting themes worth discussing, but might not have very interesting prose. Likewise, a work of fiction can have beautiful writing, but not be a very good or interesting story, or really have much significance (usually anything that appears in The New Yorker -- I'm kidding, sort of).

For example, Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End is a good entertaining story, and has a lot of interesting ideas about the nature of art, the importance of differences in developing human meaning, the way history buttresses our fears, transcendence versus knowledge (would it be better to be a thousand times more intelligent and never be able to become one with G-d so to speak or would it be better to be able to join G-d and never be as intelligent as the aliens in the book), the fear that our own place as top dog in the universe will be unseated if intelligent life should exist outside our planet, etc. The book provides tons of fodder for discussing large philosophical ideas that are an inherent part of the story, and therefore it's not hard to see why it is considered a Sci-fi classic and why it has been included in many Middle School Summer reading lists. There is a certain thematic depth to the story. However, the prose of the work is extremely bland:


Before she flew to the launch site, Helena Lyakhov always went through the same ritual. She was not the only cosmonaut who did so, though few ever talked about it.

It was already dark when she left the Administration Building and walked past the pine trees, until she came to the famous statue. The sky was crystal clear, and a brilliant full moon had just risen. Automatically, Helena's eyes focused on the Mare Imbrium, and her mind went back to the weeks of training at Armstrong Base--now better known as Little Mars.

I remember one of my Clarion teachers during the Clarion Science Fiction Writing Workshop tell us, "not to have Tolstoy envy. Just because you can't write like Tolstoy doesn't mean what you're writing isn't worthwhile." This is good advice for any aspiring artist. The point isn't to write bad prose and feel proud about it, but as an artist to try and reach the best of your own writing abilities and stick to your own artistic vision, even if you realize you're not going to be the next Shakespeare.

Like I've said before, Literature is a spectrum from the absolutely abysmal to the awe-inspiring. Just because I've read a lot of awe-inspiring works doesn't mean I cannot appreciate good or above average works still.

[stlukesguild]

In general terms, I think what makes good writing is a sense that the author is engaged, cares about his or her characters, has a sense of craft, and offers the reader a unique outlook. This doesn't cover everything of course, since an author like Kafka defies these expectations, and I never really took to his work. What interferes with my ability to engage with Kafka is the parochial guilt without its normative Semitic rationale, which is not to say I do not appreciate that he broke the mold, but I don't consider him to be the modernist genuis that most others do, because he gets lost in the ambiguity of his allegory, and I mean, so what? Everyman appeared on the scene long before Kafka had to conceal the closed system of ethnic entitlement and replace moral guilt attributable to doctrine with moral guilt attributable to the rise of autocratic regulation. But I can appreciate Sterne, who almost does some of the same things, because there is a human element to Sterne's comic voice. Sterne brings us into his world; Kafka, and his lesser imitators, alienates us from the worldview he creates, and I'd rather be in an author's world than asked to be agitated by it. That's me. Proust is not without humor, but it is the humor of affection for memory and impossibly recaptured past, rather than absurdist farce, coupled with restrained pathos, which also moves me. Faulkner, Kis, perhaps Eco in his better moments, definitely Lampedusa. Doris Lessing, and Byatt embody some of these qualities. John Gardner. Grass. This is just the kind of writing I like best. Realism that challenges with subversion. Attention to detail suggestive of motifs. Characters that matter to their creators, such as James excels at doing.

The problem I have with this argument, JoZ, is that it assumes that the invention of powerful characters and character development is a necessity to good writing. Certainly, that may be your preference... and I don't undermine the element of character and character development. Surely, such is one of the key strengths of Shakespeare. But character is simply one element of many including narrative, setting, atmosphere, language, symbolism, etc... I don't read Kafka or Borges or Ovid's Metamorphoses, or a great deal of poetry with the expectation of being deeply engaged with the characters. Michelangelo's super-human beings and Cezanne's apples (I was going to say Van Gogh's shoes... but seriously, every object or aspect of the still life is so imbued with human feeling in Van Gogh that the simple shoes ARE characters) do not engage me with the individuality and seemingly real personality of the characters that one sense in Rembrandt... yet they grab me in other ways altogether.

[Paulclem]

Characters that matter to their creators - Jozanny

I'm not sure that you can gauge this from a book. How do you know that a character matters? Isn't it more the plausibilty of the character in the fictional world they inhabit? How the character fits into, or doesn't fit into the setting, plot etc?

I know that when reading a book you have to accept the character as a person interacting in the fiction you are accepting. So how does that show the author cares? Can we say the Hardy cares about Tess, or am I being too literal in my reading of cares?

[Jozanny]

I think there is some conflation going on between thematic depth and aesthetics (quality of prose). I would separate three major elements of writing:

1) thematics (a word I am making up for this conversation)

2) aesthetics

3) Story-telling.

Well Drk, I'd argue that merely posing the question makes it impossible to leave aesthetics out of it. I am also not sure that plot/story telling can stand as independent criteria, as someone like Proust arguably has little in the way of plot to offer.

luke jumped on it first, that there is no hard and fast recipe to what makes writing good or less good, but I will add that I make the same demands on the middlebrow writers as the higher brow: For someone who basically detests his narrative voice, I have read far too much of Stephen King, but even here, Carrie meets the criteria I listed above, as well as a few others, though most of King is trash fantasy, imo.

My middlebrow standards are pretty close to my high realism and modernism standards, and little of contemporary fiction, when I do get to the library to sample it, gets past those standards.

luke: I said those were what my tastes catered to, I believe. I singled out Kafka as a contrast to those tastes-- but yes, if we are going to argue the point, and I include Paul in this, I don't think good writing can be sustained on powerful imagery alone, or exposition alone. Blake's methodology has its limits.

Paul: As a published writer, I know something about when your characters start to live, and take over the story (or poem) for you--and I know that Henry James did not create his feminine heroines with Flaubert's coldness, or Maupassant's harshness. I have often been accused, sometimes to my surprise, of being hard on my protagonists myself. But the reality of characterization is there or it isn't, and you tend to know if they have the author's sympathy or not.

[JCamilo]

I do not think it can separated either. Storytelling is only useful for narratives and it is not the only form of writing. Some of what is considered patters of storytelling (unity of form, methodology or even coherence) are break by some of great books. From Iliad to Kafka's Castle.
I would never separete aesthetics, because it is what will make a writing good, the perfect combination between intention and execution. The economy of language of a haiku is not proper in an epic, so, while it must be fun to try, writing an epic using several linked haikus will probally not be one or another. Shakespeare vocabulary would be probally a mistake if used by GUimaraes Rosa. I would say it is also a matter of voice, the voice must combine with the text.

[Paulclem]

I know something about when your characters start to live,

I can appreciate that from the writer's side of a book, but that is not what I meant. How do I, as a reader know that a writer cares, and does it make any difference?

Does a writer care about all the characters in a book, or only the main ones?

[kelby_lake]

Yes. After you have tasted fine writing, and the philosophy behind it, you simply can't read anything that is poorly written, well I can't anyway. Reading bad writing from extracts can be really funny, and to add to that a sense of wonder at how they ever got to print in the first place! But to sit down, and to choose to read one for pleasure, for me, is quite out of the question.

I found it really hard to get into any modern books after reading solely Dickens and Russian novels and all that stuff.

[Jozanny]

I know something about when your characters start to live,

I can appreciate that from the writer's side of a book, but that is not what I meant. How do I, as a reader know that a writer cares, and does it make any difference?

Not the easiest question to answer, but Henry James will tell you how he cares about his *idea* when he is consumed by it; he approaches his work like a master painter or builder, but even when it isn't spelled out, like in Tolstoy's Anna Karina--Levin can be seen as a heroic stand in for Tolstoy's holier than thou philosophy, and I cannot imagine that he did not struggle with Anna's suffering, or Vronsky getting what he paid for in pursuit of his sexual desire.


Does a writer care about all the characters in a book, or only the main ones?

Perhaps you'll decide that, since the writer already completed the work.

[Paulclem]

[Not the easiest question to answer, but Henry James will tell you how he cares about his *idea* when he is consumed by it; he approaches his work like a master painter or builder, but even when it isn't spelled out, like in Tolstoy's Anna Karina--Levin can be seen as a heroic stand in for Tolstoy's holier than thou philosophy, and I cannot imagine that he did not struggle with Anna's suffering, or Vronsky getting what he paid for in pursuit of his sexual desire.


I agree it's difficult, which is why I asked you to elaborate. Your Tolstoy example - are the characters merely cyphers for for what Tolstoy wished to portray in a story? You suggest that Levin is Tolstoy - so the care aspect there is for his own values etc. As for care for Anna, I can't see where that comes in. Written as a realistic person, is her role not to suffer the effects of the characters and environments around her, so that they can be experienced/ reflected upon etc by the reader? I merely ask because I think it's an interesting question Jozanny, and I'm interested in your answer.

[kelby_lake]

Does a writer care about all the characters in a book, or only the main ones?

The mark of a bad book is that the writer solely cares about one character, two at a stretch. It's really off-putting.

[Paulclem]

The mark of a bad book is that the writer solely cares about one character, two at a stretch. It's really off-putting.

We were discussing what "cares" means in terms of the reader. How can a reader know that an author cares about the character? Jozanny has written about the writer's side - which I can see, but the problem remains as to how a reader can tell.

With background knowledge - to use Jozanny's example - Tolstoy clearly identifies with Levin, who embodies some of Tolstoy's attitudes. You could argue that Tolstoy therefore cares about what is embodied, though whether he cares about the character depends upon how closely he identifies with Levin. He might just see the character as a vehicle for his ideas, though I think this unlikely. As for other writers, how do we know that they care at all? Does Hardy care about Tess?

[stlukesguild]

Well fleshed out characters with whom we may empathize... or who simply strike us as infinitely real... may be one element of strong writing... but again, not the only element nor an essential one. I would point out that a vast majority of poetry survives without the need for such... unless we imagine the poet himself/herself as the character as Byron or Pessoa give us. I am also having difficulty with the notion of how we are to know whether the artist "cares" about a given character... beyond caring that such an invention works within the narrative as a whole. Does Cezanne "care" about each of his apples? Does Mozart "care" about a specific musical figure or phrase within his clarinet quintet? Does Shakespeare "care" about Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern? I suppose... in the sense that each brings a new element into the work of art that must be dealt with. I also concur that we might assume that the artist cares about a given "character" when this character embodies an idea near and dear to that of the creator.

[JCamilo]

It is also saying that every character in a play is necessarily a deep psychological study or just a place for a main character to express himself. Besides Quixote and Sancho, all other characters are there to reflect the duo. They are not special except as part of the story, a plot theme, and will everyone say Dom Quixote represents bad writting?
That is like comparing Moliere and Shakespeare. Neither are bad writers, but the way they give importance to the characters is different.

[kelby_lake]

It's not necessary that the writer holds a fond love for every character in the book but if they only concentrate on one character, you start to wonder whether it's just dull musing.

The writer has to 'care' that they write good characters, characters with a purpose. If they are there to say something about the main character, they are still important.

[Paulclem]

The writer has to 'care' that they write good characters, characters with a purpose. If they are there to say something about the main character, they are still important.

I see this, but is care for the characters what is meant? Care for writing good characters is different. I concur with Stluke where she says:

I am also having difficulty with the notion of how we are to know whether the artist "cares" about a given character... beyond caring that such an invention works within the narrative as a whole.

I wanted to explore this idea because I have heard it before and I considered it to be meaningless, but it is best to check it out through discussion.

[kelby_lake]

I think you can tell if a writer doesn't care about the character at all, because the character will be weak.
If Cezanne didn't care about his apples, why would he bother painting them? He doesn't have to marry them or passionately loathe them.

[Paulclem]

I think you can tell if a writer doesn't care about the character at all, because the character will be weak.

If a character is weak, then isn't that poor writing? I don't see where the care comes in.

[JCamilo]

As far he claimed, Nabokov only cared for Lolita. HH was descipitable. Yet, it is a perfect character and fine example of good writing. The word care may be misused, but I can see an overzealous writer destroying a character because he shelters the character from any negative aspect of personality or misfortune.

[Paulclem]

I think using the word care in describing a writer's attitude to their characters needs clarification to mean anything. We can find out the author's declared attitude, and of course there may be care in the writing, but lots of authors write as a job, or to present ideas or philosophy or interesting stories. Interesting discussion.

[JBI]

Well fleshed out characters with whom we may empathize... or who simply strike us as infinitely real... may be one element of strong writing... but again, not the only element nor an essential one. I would point out that a vast majority of poetry survives without the need for such... unless we imagine the poet himself/herself as the character as Byron or Pessoa give us. I am also having difficulty with the notion of how we are to know whether the artist "cares" about a given character... beyond caring that such an invention works within the narrative as a whole. Does Cezanne "care" about each of his apples? Does Mozart "care" about a specific musical figure or phrase within his clarinet quintet? Does Shakespeare "care" about Rosenkrantz and Guildenstern? I suppose... in the sense that each brings a new element into the work of art that must be dealt with. I also concur that we might assume that the artist cares about a given "character" when this character embodies an idea near and dear to that of the creator.

Then again though,there is almost always one, if not more speakers in a poem - traditionally one, but then again, one can achieve the sort of dialogism in Elliot's Wasteland, or the sort of dramatic exchanges in dialog-form.

There is always a speaker though, even if the actual speaker doesn't make it into the text by name - in that sense, we are always reading the subjectivity of some person or culture, even if that person is merely a tradition:

Guan-guan go the ospreys ,
On the islet in the river .
The modest , retiring , virtuous , young lady : --
For our prince a good mate she .

Here long , there short , is the duckweed ,
To the left , to the right , borne about by the current .
The modest , retiring , virtuous , young lady : --
Waking and sleeping , he sought her .
He sought her and found her not ,
And waking and sleeping he thought about her .
Long he thought ; oh ! long and anxiously ;
On his side , on his back , he turned , and back again .

Here long , there short , is the duckweed ;
On the left , on the right , we gather it .
The modest , retiring , virtuous , young lady : --
With lutes , small and large , let us give her friendly welcome .
Here long , there short , is the duckweed ;
On the left , on the right , we cook and present it .
The modest , retiring , virtuous , young lady : --
With bells and drums let us show our delight in her

From the Book of Odes, http://etext.lib.virginia.edu/chinese/shijing/AnoShih.html Tr. James Legge (hence why it is so dreadfully translated) 1898

So, ultimately, a poem like that, can, for centuries, a) be taken as the expression of a culture as speaker, namely the people of Zhou and b) be interpreted and applied as a political expression, as all of The Book of Odes's poems were.

In that sense, how can one outside of the context of the speaker as character read the poem, assuming it is indeed, a politically motivated text? We can easily read, for instance, Pound's In a Station of the Metro as a political poem, or at least a poem with socio-cultural implications, yet this one, so removed, what can we make of it? How can we interpret it without giving shape to the speaker as some sort of character?


So, why not apply that to character in general - what is character outside of a society? And, can we say societies are shaped by similar traits, in addition to different ones? Could we not, for instance, interpret characters, relate to characters, love, hate, admire, pity, and cherish characters differently, based on cultural conditions?

Could we say, for instance, that we like Hamlet, but he doesn't function well when read from a different perspective, or, how doeas Virgil, in the Aeneid conceptualize Arete, and how does it effect the understanding, and realism of the character, in contrast to Homer's concept of Arete in the Iliad? Certainly the self-centered fight over Arete between Agamemnon and Achilles seems childish, and stupid in the eyes of the Roman's vision, yet in the Greek vision, it is seen as heroic - the fight between them over Briseis would be interpreted differently, with both being at fault, for example, for putting the fate of the entire campaign in jeopardy over a woman. Modern readers in turn, could say that the actual fight over a war bride is disgusting, immoral, and downright revolting (with great cause), and neither have any sort of idealistic traits - both are self centered, egotistical rapists.

The actual concept of character though, alters too. I can probably relate better to a culture I can understand, than one that is distant - how does that effect the reading, and, in turn, how do the so called "universals" that is, pretty damn gruesome stuff, as well as a few good things that are familiar to almost all cultures effect the quality of writing? Are we to say that only universals matter? wouldn't that cut into specific things though - you'd need, for instance, to get rid of half of Shakespeare's as culture-specific in that case.


On the other hand though, I can see how King Lear, for instance, can transform over cultures pretty well. I think Kurosawa proved as much, though he altered quite a bit. Whereas, I cannot see Jane Austen working the exact same way outside of that context - perhaps then, the novel is more bound to culture than other forms?

Drama seems to change, especially older plays, as the setting, props, and costumes weren't written in, and neither were the stage directions (we've got one, by tradition, in Midsummer Night's Dream, the actor playing Thisbe is, by tradition, to be unable to unsheathe Pyramus' sword, so instead stabs himself with the scabbard) but even that is minimal - the actual transitional quality is facilitated by ambiguity more than anything else, but does that necessarily make things better? Is Zola the worse for putting in so much detail? What about now once temperaments have been debunked? Can we still appreciate Therese Raquin?

In general, I think poetry probably works the best against time - Shakespeare seems to have thought so too. Drama probably second, and essays, especially meditative ones, rather than anecdotal ones, work very well as well. Novels don't hold time well at all.

So, in a sense, I agree that good characters can make good writing, but I hardly agree that they necessitate that, or that good characters are really universal.

But yeah, there is always a character there, so I would think it probably is essential to have at least a strong one in writing well.

[Jozanny]

I think we may be abusing the word *care* to some degree. To me, one hallmark of great writing is that the characters live on for me. This is no easy feat, but I can give a few examples: Huckleberry Finn, Isabel Archer, Proust's Swann, Joyce's Stephen. I want the author to make me *care* enough about the ontological reality of those they create.

Right now I have my nose wagging in Wilkie Collin's WIW, and not having an easy reread, but his narrators, like Walter Hartright, are there to serve a function more than actually participate in their own dramatic arc, and Pesca seems more a caricature of an Italian expatriate than not--but Collins isn't James, and WIW is more carried by the pace and the plot of the story than by germane pyschological depth, pointing to what Drk posted earlier about the story itself carrying most of the weight.

[jrfunkenstein]

This abbreviated quote from Swift's 'Gulliver's Travels' is my favorite in the entire English language, for sheer elegance of prose and summation of humanity. From the King of Brobdingnag's assessment of the human race;

"...As for yourself," continued the king, " who have spent the greatest part of your life in travelling, I am well disposed to hope you may hitherto have escaped many vices of your country. But, by what I have gathered from your own relation, and the answers I have with much pain wringed and extorted from you, I cannot but conclude the bulk of your natives to be the most pernicious race of little odious vermin that Nature ever
suffered to crawl upon the surface of the earth."

THAT my friends, is pure genius.

[Paulclem]

I think we may be abusing the word *care* to some degree. To me, one hallmark of great writing is that the characters live on for me. This is no easy feat, but I can give a few examples: Huckleberry Finn, Isabel Archer, Proust's Swann, Joyce's Stephen. I want the author to make me *care* enough about the ontological reality of those they create.

I agree with this. I used to read a lot of pulp horror in my early teens, but as I matured a bit as a reader I recognised those character cyphers that are forever turning up in such writing, as well as the repetitive plots and gore shock. It frankly became boring because the characters weren't interesting. They didn't seem authentic? and I didn't care.

[kelby_lake]

I think we may be abusing the word *care* to some degree. To me, one hallmark of great writing is that the characters live on for me. This is no easy feat, but I can give a few examples: Huckleberry Finn, Isabel Archer, Proust's Swann, Joyce's Stephen. I want the author to make me *care* enough about the ontological reality of those they create.

Definitely. If every writer wrote about Johnny the lovely boy who comes round for tea, it'd be pretty boring.

[Paulclem]

There is always a speaker though, even if the actual speaker doesn't make it into the text by name - in that sense, we are always reading the subjectivity of some person or culture, even if that person is merely a tradition:

I think this is an intersting point JBI, and crucial to understanding some poems such as Levertov's "What were they like".

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/what-were-they-like/

There seems to be an assumed convention about the speaker/ narrator of the poem, but often itis open to interpretation.

[NickAdams]

Doesn't caring have more to do with the reader than the author?

If you're looking for the standard for good writing, then the conventions that have endured is your tool of measurement.

[LMK]

If you're looking for the standard for good writing, then the conventions that have endured is your tool of measurement.

If you will, please elaborate on your meaning of enduring conventions referred to in your post.

Thanks,
~L

[Paulclem]

Doesn't caring have more to do with the reader than the author?

Yes that's what we were on about. We were discussing whether a reader could tell whether a witer cared about the characters.

[promtbr]

I agree strongly with Stlukes position, there can be no definition of what constitutes "good writing", for do try and do so only weakens the art. It weakens the art because it attempts to place rules or formulas on what makes good writing and clearly that is ridiculous.


And that should wrap up a thread that has a ridiculous (sorry, not meant as a personal attack on the op) premise for a question. If you approach art with a pre-judgement, a personal axiom of what constitutes "good" and "bad" you are down to the level of arguing tastes...(and we know how productive that is)

---

[Mathor]

And that should wrap up a thread that has a ridiculous (sorry, not meant as a personal attack on the op) premise for a question. If you approach art with a pre-judgement, a personal axiom of what constitutes "good" and "bad" you are down to the level of arguing tastes...(and we know how productive that is)

---

I'm glad people are starting to make some sense on here. The whole point of art is that it is limitless. People attempting to classify what is and is not art or what is and is not good ruins art in general. It infers that although we love authors, painters, musicians who wrote without limitations, that we should improperly follow their example and create limitations in our world. It is easier to explain when there is only one kind of good art, but it leaves out the other million kinds of good art that a human being could not even fathom, and might only exist in the heads of a select few. Things that have yet to come out on the page. That's the beauty of all literature.

[kelby_lake]

"But our waking life, and our growing years, were for the most part spent in the kitchen, and until we married, or ran away, it was the common room we shared. Here we lived and fed in a family fug, not minding the little space, trod on each other like birds in a hole, elbowed our ways without spite, all talking at once or silent at once, or crying against each other, but never I think feeling overcrowded, being as separate as notes in a scale." (from Cider with Rose)

I like Laurie Lee's writing. He' a poet also, and it shows in his prose which is full of interesting descriptions and images. You never feel that the story is being held by his lush descriptions of nature and the world around him, but it is interwoven into the text, even as the story moves forward.

I've seen a play of Cider with Rosie, which was really good

[Paulclem]

I've seen a play of Cider with Rosie, which was really good

Yes I can believe it. He had an interesting life travelling and then writing about it. Lyrical and funny.

[Jozanny]

And that should wrap up a thread that has a ridiculous (sorry, not meant as a personal attack on the op) premise for a question. If you approach art with a pre-judgement, a personal axiom of what constitutes "good" and "bad" you are down to the level of arguing tastes...(and we know how productive that is)

---

This sentiment is too harsh, in my estimation. As a professional freelancer, there are things that can be said about good writing, divorced or inclusive of specific examples. Neely may use Wilde for guidance, and I may use realists and modernists and the rules of journalism, and Drk may be more interested in genre differences, and luke uses sensory techniques of visual and auditory imagery, given his strength in the fine arts--but good writing always shares attributes worth teaching and discussing.

[McGrain]

And that should wrap up a thread that has a ridiculous (sorry, not meant as a personal attack on the op) premise for a question. If you approach art with a pre-judgement, a personal axiom of what constitutes "good" and "bad" you are down to the level of arguing tastes...(and we know how productive that is)

---

I dunno my friend. Writing stripped to it's technically objective structure is not longer art, and appraising art as it appeals to the emotions is always going to be subjective...good writing might very well be where you find it. Though I agree that this is not a satisfying answer.

[blazeofglory]

Of course a piece of writing suffused with ideas and well styled can be good writing but no writing can be good if there is no something deep. Content and style both must go side by side.

[Steven Hunley]

Good writing is evocative, compelling, and most of all clear.

[kelbel3abh]

Writing is an author's expression and outlet. However he or she chooses to deliver that is up to the author.

However, if the author is writing to be read that is an entirely different matter. It then becomes not about the writer's choice of delivery alone, but the audience that is being written for must be taken into account.

Audiences differ, but there are groups of readers that prefer certain aspects. Some want a story, some want a message, and some want to escape. Some want simple sentences that convey the content, others want the writing itself to be the show case; flowery prose, fresh approaches to imagery. And then there is genre to consider.

Some prefer long descriptive passages that describe each scintilla of detail in the setting, while others crave dialogue that sounds like a conversation that might really take place.

So many choices, so many styles, so many readers, but in the end only three stories to be told; man vs. man, man vs. himself (some include this in the former), man vs. nature (God is included in this). [As an aside, the word man is inclusive of woMAN]

What makes good writing? In my opinion all it takes is an audience who enjoys reading the work.

~L

God, I love this...this is so perceptive!

[Griffith]

Talent. Discussion is finished. The topic can be locked.

[Madame X]

That’s kind of like saying that ‘a good dog behaves well’ though, isn’t it?

[dfloyd]

And while most of his works are not for me, I thoroughly enjoyed Stephen King's On Writing. A good book for the beginner or the seasoned writer who is letting his pedanticism show.