(no subject)
Sep. 3rd, 2009 01:54 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kippurbirdBooo... hisss.
He didn't like it. *SIGH*
He did say I was talented though. Just not polished. And he did read it. He suggested I work on short stories. *SIGH* I do work on short stories.
*gnaws on him*
He didn't like it. *SIGH*
He did say I was talented though. Just not polished. And he did read it. He suggested I work on short stories. *SIGH* I do work on short stories.
*gnaws on him*
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2009-09-03 09:43 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-03 10:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-03 10:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-03 11:21 pm (UTC)That sucks royally. Sigh. Did he tell you what he thought was unpolished?
no subject
Date: 2009-09-03 11:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-03 11:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-04 02:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-04 06:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-04 09:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-05 02:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-05 04:20 pm (UTC)That's my guess, anyways. I've never read Kippurbird's book so I can't be 100% sure.
no subject
Date: 2009-09-06 05:58 am (UTC)Different mousie here
Date: 2009-09-06 02:20 pm (UTC)Well, to give an example, the book that for me epitomizes flabby prose would be Stephenie Meyer's Twilight.
Overdescription isn't really the problem with it--at least, not as far as I'm concerned. (I'll admit right now that I have a pretty high tolerance for description as long as it's fun to read. I take absolutely no shame in being a visual reader, and writing that isn't descriptive makes me feel cheated.) True, Bella rhapsodizes at some length, a couple of times, over Edward Cullen's perfectly perfect sparkling person. But she's much too self-absorbed (and too Edward-absorbed) to be a good observer of anything or anyone else--just like Stephenie Meyer herself, who thinks regular humans are too banal and mundane to be worth observing. And she's too devoid of a personality to express herself in language with any flavor.
Flabby prose is lackluster, underperforming, insipid. It takes too many words to get the characters from Point A to Point B, and it doesn't give you anything to enjoy along the way. It tends to be repetitive, it lingers over mundane activities that we don't need to see, and it just doesn't "give good weight"--doesn't repay the reader for the trouble of reading it.
Re: Different mousie here
Date: 2009-09-06 07:12 pm (UTC)(p2 - gp) : otd = FBy
wpp
...yeah, I'll buy that.
Re: Different mousie here
Date: 2009-09-07 03:23 am (UTC)I wasn't talking about "purple prose" at all--whatever the hell that means, since there are some people who see an adjective or simile, God forbid, a descriptive paragraph, and they're all "OMGtheUUUUUUUUUUURPLE, it hurtses and BUUUUUURNSES ussss, yess precioussss!!111!elevenfactorial. And what's this? A METAPHOR! KILL IT WITH FIRE!"
It's perfectly possible for prose to be flabby even when totally innocent of anything descriptive, any adornment--when it's so flat and drab and boring that they could use it for floor tile in a hospital basement. All it takes is clumsiness, repetition, and an inability to tell the difference between an action that's necessary and one that's important.
Here's an example that still sticks in my head more a year after I read it: a fanfic in which a character, mundanely enough, happened to pour himself a glass of milk. So help me, the writer thought she needed to tell us that a character who wanted a glass of milk went to the refrigerator, opened the door, took out the carton of milk, poured himself a glass, put the carton back on the shelf, closed the door, and went back to the kitchen table, where he sat down to drink his milk.
Now, all those actions are necessary if you're getting yourself a glass of milk--you can't avoid them. But they're not important when you're writing a story--the reader can infer them, after all, if she has half a brain--and this paragraph was a prime example of what I mean by flabby prose that fails to give good weight.
Re: Different mousie here
Date: 2009-09-07 09:35 am (UTC)Urgh, that really annoys me. I have a friend who's like this and as a result, has pages and pages of story with absolutely no description at all so often we have little to no image of where the characters even are. Well, unless it's describing a character's hair and eye colour and then she goes to lengths to be exact about the shade of aqua or whatever.
I don't get why people hate on metaphors and similies- they really bring a piece of writing to life when they're done well.
Re: Different mousie here
Date: 2009-09-07 02:35 pm (UTC)Re: Different mousie here
Date: 2009-09-07 03:19 pm (UTC)Re: Different mousie here
Date: 2009-09-08 06:10 am (UTC)Also, "show, don't tell" isn't a rule; it's a piece of bad advice that needs to be put to bed with a shovel.
no subject
Date: 2009-09-04 02:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-04 05:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-04 06:08 pm (UTC)I've got two stories out with nothing rejected yet. So, there's hope.
no subject
Date: 2009-09-04 06:11 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-06 01:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-04 11:05 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-04 11:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-09-06 06:14 pm (UTC)Also I'd take a look at your novel and tell you what I think, if you're interested. Was it the one I've read already or a different one?