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matrilI've been focusing on improving my writing to the point of obsession lately, reading blog after blog by agents or authors or editors about common mistakes with beginning writing, what works and what doesn't, why one submission was accepted while another was passed by....and hopefully it will achieve the eventual purpose of making me a Published Writer.
But in the meantime, I've made a few interesting observations. I've come to conclude that there are really just two general categories of bad prose. There are variations, of course, but essentially it is either: 1. Prose that sounds like it was written by a ten-year-old; or 2. Prose that is trying very, very hard to sound like it wasn't written by a ten-year-old.
Let me demonstrate. #1 sounds something like this:
"That cat is fat," said Mary. Because she was very angry.
"No he isn't," said Fred. And he got sad.
"Yes it is," said Mary.
They were sitting at a table. Mary was wearing a red dress. Fred wore glasses.
And here's the same scene, through the frightfully purple lens of #2:
Mary, awash in seething waves of fury as scarlet as the hue of her silken dress, fixed her steely eyes upon the man whose face she so abhorred. "That cat," she breathed, like the fog that seeps from the harbor at night, "is fat."
Across the table that separated them as though a yawning gulf, Fred's pitiable visage bore the look of one who had been mortally betrayed. He choked out his retort, his orbs peering mournfully through the glasses that adorned his sagging face. "No." In wild anguish he cried, "He isn't!"
"Yes," Mary averred in tones of greatest contempt. "It is."
Good prose presumably falls somewhere in the middle. Or maybe somewhere else entirely. ;)
But in the meantime, I've made a few interesting observations. I've come to conclude that there are really just two general categories of bad prose. There are variations, of course, but essentially it is either: 1. Prose that sounds like it was written by a ten-year-old; or 2. Prose that is trying very, very hard to sound like it wasn't written by a ten-year-old.
Let me demonstrate. #1 sounds something like this:
"That cat is fat," said Mary. Because she was very angry.
"No he isn't," said Fred. And he got sad.
"Yes it is," said Mary.
They were sitting at a table. Mary was wearing a red dress. Fred wore glasses.
And here's the same scene, through the frightfully purple lens of #2:
Mary, awash in seething waves of fury as scarlet as the hue of her silken dress, fixed her steely eyes upon the man whose face she so abhorred. "That cat," she breathed, like the fog that seeps from the harbor at night, "is fat."
Across the table that separated them as though a yawning gulf, Fred's pitiable visage bore the look of one who had been mortally betrayed. He choked out his retort, his orbs peering mournfully through the glasses that adorned his sagging face. "No." In wild anguish he cried, "He isn't!"
"Yes," Mary averred in tones of greatest contempt. "It is."
Good prose presumably falls somewhere in the middle. Or maybe somewhere else entirely. ;)
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Date: 2009-03-03 03:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2009-03-03 02:49 pm (UTC)