# Precision > stylistic considerations



## Patrick (Jun 19, 2016)

There's a lot of literary prose today that focuses, imo, too heavily on being "muscular" or "poetic". I believe in a style that transcends these categories, and if precision were a style, then it's the one I'd subscribe to. 

What exactly do I mean? Sentences should match their subjects. A simple expression is fitting for a simple subject; a poetic expression is fitting for a more complex, moody subject. Some writers are constantly straining to be poetic or to be muscular, as though somehow if one writes like this and doesn't stop to decorate the prose and uses lots of _ands _without punctuation and then leans back and puffs on a cigar then they will be a writer of serious masculine prose regardless of whether or not it fits the subject (inconsistent metaphor is the absolute worst offender). On the other hand, describing even the most mundane things in ornate terms is counterproductive because it does't allow the more significant imagery in the prose to stand out; in either case, the prose becomes a wash of words that's designed to flood a critical ear. If you were to analyse the prose blow by blow, at the level of each sentence, you'd realise the author either doesn't have a sharp enough mind or isn't rigorously analysing their own sentences because critics continue to fawn over their work anyway. I believe the latter to be the case.

remember, there are no rules in this, but the guiding principles of logic and observation will improve anybody's writing. You do not become a better writer by using fewer or more words. You do not become a better writer by writing "muscular" or "poetic" prose. It is my belief that the best writing is rigorous, capable of beautiful sentences and imagery, but also capable of a plain, stark turn of phrase where appropriate, and prohibits nothing, no matter how taboo. It might sound ridiculous (because it is, but true nonetheless), but action tends to be taboo in literary circles, but not, say, paedophilia. It's perhaps the other way around in "genre" fiction (everything is "genre" by the way).

There's so much trash (trash is such a good American word) advice on writing style, none of which addresses logic or observation, on the internet that this thread just had to be made.


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## midnightpoet (Jun 19, 2016)

I agree; it's an exaggeration, but 300 pages of woolgathering/contemplating mysteries of the universe does not interest me.  As mainly a mystery/suspense writer, I prefer action.  Elmore Leonard said "try to leave out the parts readers tend to skip." Still, I would encourage writers to write the way they want to write it.  Style is a personal thing, sometimes you have to put a lot of words on paper (or screen) to figure what your style is. Don't be afraid to be different, but don't do it just to be different.  Do it because it feels right for you - but clarity is important, and if you use logic and observation your writing should improve.


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## oenanthe (Jun 19, 2016)

I don't know what to tell you.

I write the way I write. I don't *strain* to make my voice something that it's not. That's foolishness, IMO. I take into consideration the appropriate voice for the narrator, the appropriate voices for the characters, but even with all those considerations the work and its words are distinctly mine. 

I mean, what's the point of writing if you're not expressing yourself? If you're contorting yourself to fit into a prose that isn't your own for any reason besides your own learning and skill improvement and the pure fun of the pastiche, then what are you doing? How is it genuine?

And don't get me wrong, ducks. I LOVE pastiche. but even when I'm summoning the spirit of a writer and a world gone into the forever, it's still my words, my style, my voice at the core and on its skin. Style is what you can't help doing, and that's the point.


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## Patrick (Jun 19, 2016)

oenanthe said:


> I don't know what to tell you.
> 
> I write the way I write. I don't *strain* to make my voice something that it's not. That's foolishness, IMO. I take into consideration the appropriate voice for the narrator, the appropriate voices for the characters, but even with all those considerations the work and its words are distinctly mine.
> 
> ...



The point is that precision is much more important than an individual style. You can't just say: I like to write poetic prose, so I use the freedom of prose to write bad poetry that is, essentially, pretentious. The pretension stems from straining to be a "prose stylist", rather than poetic prose itself. There are a number of subjects we will all cover in our fiction that simply don't lend themselves to the evocative or the muscular.


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## oenanthe (Jun 19, 2016)

okay I think I get you.

but I also think that if you're being true to your natural voice, part of that is also being true to your natural stories. 

Like don't ever expect me to write an international thriller. That's not me, and it's not where my stories go. But I do like mysteries. I'm never going to write an epic fantasy about a plucky farmgirl who becomes a queen, but I might write--you know what, redacted, that idea is awesome and i'm gonna keep it to myself. 

and I think my style would be WEIRD in a military sci fi, and a wrong fit for splattery gore. and -- oh jinkies! -- I don't want to write that stuff. I could tuck into a space opera with epic space battles, or a psychological horror or supernatural horror that is covered in blood. both fit my interests and inclinations. both would be at home with my style.

you know? I think that there's value in exploring different styles. Sure, try for muscled. Try for poetic. see what is natural, what flows, what excites, experiment. I think experimentation is vital to the improvement of the serious writer, just like never ever believing you've learned what you need to know.


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## Non Serviam (Jun 19, 2016)

I'd say be clear and succinct ---- I think concise is more important than precise.


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## Patrick (Jun 19, 2016)

Non Serviam said:


> I'd say be clear and succinct ---- I think concise is more important than precise.



Concision is very important, but it isn't as important as precision. The more concise rendering is not always the best. If it were, this principle would be taken to absurdity, as in the case of the famous six-word story: "For sale: baby shoes, never worn." What's missing? precision. Who owned the shoes? How did the baby die? All of the stuff readers actually care about isn't present. The sentence itself is intriguing, but practically worthless for the purposes of a novel. If concision were king, we'd only write haiku.


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## voltigeur (Jun 19, 2016)

I really hate the "either, or" advice given to new writers. Or what is literary or not. 

I feel very strongly that voice is something a writer needs to find and it needs to be his or hers. Any advice given should only help guide that journey not dictate what the end product is going to be. 

In my first two years I was extremely detailed and followed the style of the books I liked. Most fiction I read and was familiar with was written in the 70's early 80's when people had this weird thing called an attention span. Reading a book was a chance to slow down and soak in a story. 

So I was so detailed my writing dragged and I spent a lot of word count to not say much. 

The next step was too stark a "just the facts ma'am" approach and the replies stopped coming because my beta readers weren't reading. I was writing about things and no one cared about characters or even the machinery. 

My personal pendulum finally started settling into something between those two extremes. I put more detail than the younger readers want. And not as much as the really hard core reader wants _all_ the aviation electronic and weapons details. But my mentors are telling me that overall I am writing to my expanded market. Enough details so the hard core enthusiast will buy and read the book. Not so much that the average reader would be overwhelmed. 

Anyway my main point is I had too take that journey and no amount of "this is good", "that's always bad" crap advice helps. 

When I try to help a new writer I sometimes give advice that doesn't work for me but has worked for others. I still suggest things I have tried. If some piece of advice doesn't work: then that step is done let's see what the next one is. 

My point is that each writer has to find their voice. That voice will be a function of personality, genre, audience, and inspiration.


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## Jeko (Jun 19, 2016)

> too heavily on being "muscular" or "poetic". I believe in a style that  transcends these categories, and if precision were a style, then it's  the one I'd subscribe to.



Precision is the 'poetic'. The opposite is the prosaic. Just as Pound said of poetry, we in prose aim to not use any word that does not reveal something. We just have more room in prose to grow the discourse because we have a different pace and rhythm to work with. So this distinction between 'poetic' and 'simple' expressions misses the point of poetry. Poetry is about reduction, distillation. Prose is where the discourse is usually extended for some purpose that poetry is not suited for. As poetic narrative predated prose, prose got its 'precision' from the art of precise narrative in poetry before it.

So something like:

_The apparition of these faces in the crowd:
Petals on a wet, black bough._

is what you're calling 'precision'. The above is a whole poem, Pound's poem, 'In a Station of the Metro'. It has no verbs, no metre, no identification of perspective, because all these things are superfluous to what Pound is writing for.

I think what you're talking about when you say 'poetic' is 'philosophical' - the kind of waffle you can't put in a toaster.


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## Patrick (Jun 19, 2016)

Cadence said:


> Precision is the 'poetic'. The opposite is the prosaic. Just as Pound said of poetry, we in prose aim to not use any word that does not reveal something. We just have more room in prose to grow the discourse because we have a different pace and rhythm to work with. So this distinction between 'poetic' and 'simple' expressions misses the point of poetry. Poetry is about reduction, distillation. Prose is where the discourse is usually extended for some purpose that poetry is not suited for. As poetic narrative predated prose, prose got its 'precision' from the art of precise narrative in poetry before it.
> 
> So something like:
> 
> ...



Philosophic prose is important. I am certainly not criticising it. I am also not criticising muscular or poetic prose. My point is that precision is more important than how poetic or muscular the prose sounds.

It boils down to good and bad writing. Poetry is not in and of itself inherently precise; when rendered in prose it is often obscure.

Good poetic expression is precise. It can be simple or complex, but it will always be precise. The reason a lot of contemporary literary fiction comes across as obscure is because it's trying too hard to convert everything into poetic expression. The same is true of its antithesis, which I call a muscular style, because it's deliberately devoid of "flowery" language. Both, when taken to extremes, lead to affectation.


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## bdcharles (Jun 20, 2016)

Patrick said:


> There's a lot of literary prose today that focuses, imo, too heavily on being "muscular" or "poetic". I believe in a style that transcends these categories, and if precision were a style, then it's the one I'd subscribe to.
> 
> What exactly do I mean? Sentences should match their subjects. A simple expression is fitting for a simple subject; a poetic expression is fitting for a more complex, moody subject. Some writers are constantly straining to be poetic or to be muscular, as though somehow if one writes like this and doesn't stop to decorate the prose and uses lots of _ands _without punctuation and then leans back and puffs on a cigar then they will be a writer of serious masculine prose regardless of whether or not it fits the subject (inconsistent metaphor is the absolute worst offender).
> 
> ...



Very well put, all of the above. "Decorate the prose" made me laugh because it used to describe the way I wrote (I can hear some wit in my head  saying: "it still does!") Anyway, I am a believer in using the right tool for  the job. If your job is to depict incisive dialogue or sudden action then I think a few  muscular words can work but they must be the correct ones; finding those is often a challenge. If you want to invoke  in the readers mind a lush world perceived by the mind of a smart and observant character, then I imagine longer sentences, festooned with colourful imagery and snaking through the text like a Burmese python, might be more apt. I tell myself: know your situation, know the pace of your situation, and write to it. Equal care must be taken over both.

Often I see writers going for the impactful style with what I think of as a choppy sentence structure. it suggests tension. Action. Fear. No verbs. But any more than one or two of those in a single shot and I feel like I'm stuck in traffic. I want the writer to change up a gear very shortly thereafter. With the longer structures, it is easy to get lost in a maze of _and_ and _as_ and whatnot; semi-colons lend an aura of gravitas but everyone knows they're really just lexical ketchup, and there seems to me to be a bit of a technique in making those longer ones work, requiring the writer to cover alot of related ground in sufficient variety so that the reader doesn't think they are just waffling on. Subtlety, sensitivity, observation, intelligence - have these as our watchwords.


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## EmmaSohan (Jun 20, 2016)

Can you explain what you mean by muscular and poetic? Is this muscular?



> Ihave entered high school with the wrong hair, the wrong clothes, thewrong attitude. And I don't have anyone to sit with.



To me, there are so many choices for style. First person present is, to me, an invitation to write narration influenced by what the main character is feeling.


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## bdcharles (Jun 20, 2016)

If you're asking me, I would say that muscular prose is just that: strong, packs a punch, tells you everything you need to know, is able to carry a good bit of story in few words. Done well, it's great. Every word is perfect, and perfectly memorable, like a music riff or motif, and it is never overcooked. Done badly it's anaemic and beige, and that's where problems set in: not so much with the muscularity of the prose but with botched attempts at it.

As for your example, to me, it's not bad, it's perfectly serviceable, but it doesn't bash me in the face. Try changing the "have" in the second sentence to "need" and see how the character morphs into something new. Try changing it to "want" and watch the character evolve again.


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## Terry D (Jun 21, 2016)

Precision in writing, to me, means every sentence having a purpose, and the author choosing the best words to accomplish that purpose.  But, of course, every decision we make as writers should be based on that same criteria; what's the best POV, the best tense, the best style to use to accomplish the purpose of this story (sorry Emma, but tense is not style). Melville is no less precise than Robert B. Parker. Shakespeare no more precise than Twain. Don't fall into the trap of thinking that your writing voice determines your style any more than your singing voice (good or bad) determines the song you would choose to sing. My shower walls -- and, thankfully, no one else -- have heard everything from Black Sabbath to Handel, just as my computer keyboard has been hammered with styles from lean to purple.

If we don't experiment, we don't grow. I don't know what a 'muscular' style is, but I like the thought because it's going to have to carry the weight of an entire world.


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## Kyle R (Jun 22, 2016)

Cool topic!

To me, "good prose" is simply prose that engages the reader. Whether it's poetic or stark (or something else entirely), as long as the reader feels pulled along to keep reading, the prose is doing its job well.

For some readers this means prose that's lush and rhythmic. For others, the more invisible the prose, the better.

Me? I prefer prose that's clean, crisp, and mostly plain (perhaps with a _pinch_ of flair). Too dramatic or stylish, though, and I find it distracting. In the worst-case scenario, I find the writer is using empty flourishes to compensate for a lackluster story.

Write great characters. Put them in compelling situations. Use your prose to inject all of this directly into the reader's head. Make the process enjoyable, sure! Help it go down smooth. But don't concern yourself so much with the _words_ that you lose sight the forest through the trees. :encouragement:


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## Jeko (Jun 22, 2016)

Patrick said:
			
		

> My point is that precision is more important than how poetic or muscular the prose sounds.



My point remains that prose that 'sounds poetic' will have to be precise, because proper poetry is all about precision, as poets have laid down over the ages. It'll just sound faux-poetic if it is imprecise.

Pound denounced the reverse of what we're talking about here: he noted that just because something is good in prose, doesn't mean you can chop it into iambs and it'll make good poetry. Likewise the other way round. The failure of many prose writers in trying to write 'poetic' is that they do _not _end up sounding poetic. If they did, we'd have proper prose-poetry.


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## Patrick (Jun 22, 2016)

Cadence said:


> My point remains that prose that 'sounds poetic' will have to be precise, because proper poetry is all about precision, as poets have laid down over the ages. It'll just sound faux-poetic if it is imprecise.
> 
> Pound denounced the reverse of what we're talking about here: he noted that just because something is good in prose, doesn't mean you can chop it into iambs and it'll make good poetry. Likewise the other way round. The failure of many prose writers in trying to write 'poetic' is that they do _not _end up sounding poetic. If they did, we'd have proper prose-poetry.



So do you think that precision and poetry are interchangeable terms? I don't. As much as I enjoy poetry, poetry is no more inherently precise than prose. Poetry can be vague, obscure, and inaccessible, as can prose.

Something can be poetic regardless of whether it's good or bad. Let's not put poetry on a pedestal.


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## Jigawatt (Jun 22, 2016)

_Kill your darlings_, or so our murderous gurus say. Great advice, I suppose. But how to do it? Shoot them in the head with double-aught buckshot? _Kaboom! Your dead!_ How about gagged and bound and buried alive? _Ha Ha Ha buried aliiiiive!_ To the nasties, the darlings drunk with modifiers, let’s bind with chains and toss into the lake and listen to the gurgling screams as they sink to the bottom. _Ha Ha Ha, Choke on swamp water, my darling!_ But the pretty ones, the slutty verbosities with curvy punctuation, to these we grant immunity for a servitude of sexual pleasure. _Ooh, give it to me, baby._ Yes, our pretty, little darlings must pay.


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## J Anfinson (Jun 22, 2016)

I appreciate both plain muscular and poetic writing, but to me there needs to be a good balance. Paragraphs upon paragraphs of poetic phrases to describe the flowers and the trees mostly just makes my eyes glaze over and I'll skip along until I see the story pick back up. In truth I prefer the odd powerful poetic description over constant immersion. Makes it stand out better, methinks.


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## LeeC (Jun 23, 2016)

J Anfinson said:


> I appreciate both plain muscular and poetic writing, but to me there needs to be a good balance. Paragraphs upon paragraphs of poetic phrases to describe the flowers and the trees mostly just makes my eyes glaze over and I'll skip along until I see the story pick back up. In truth I prefer the odd powerful poetic description over constant immersion. Makes it stand out better, methinks.


Jake has nailed much of the gist of it.

1) Does it improve the story and the reading experience? That is, does it help the reader's mind's eye, and maybe even nudge the reader to use their brain more. Every word counts, and those words the reader would see the same story without are superfluous. The choice of the right words is also important here.

2) Is it integrated in the flow of the storyline to maintain an appropriate pace? (a major failing)

3) What audience is targeted? Readers range from pea-brains to astute, serious readers that don't need visual accompaniment. 


Note that all the considerations involve how the reader might perceive the story. Too many writers, especially new/younger writers can't shake the ME perspective, and try to impress. [Older writers aren't necessarily smarter, but more unaccomplished ones have dropped out.] The point to me is to involve the reader in the story, not get in their face with, "Hey, I wrote that." 

Of course, there's nothing wrong with writing for oneself ;-) There is also the poetic story where the reader might enjoy the pleasure of the flow of words, and the storyline is more a thread to move the words along, but there are fewer writers yet that can pull such off. 

I'm not great at this, but I am very sensitive to these considerations, because the only reason I write is I believe I have something meaningful to say. After a good many years of fact-based papers I realized only the choir was listening, so I'm trying to break through to the hundredth monkey (the reader that will make for a critical mass).*Save**Save*​


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## Patrick (Jun 23, 2016)

LeeC said:


> Jake has nailed much of the gist of it.
> 
> 1) Does it improve the story and the reading experience? That is, does it help the reader's mind's eye, and maybe even nudge the reader to use their brain more. Every word counts, and those words the reader would see the same story without are superfluous. The choice of the right words is also important here.
> 
> ...



Above all else, it's important to put aside the idea you have something to say to the world. Nobody cares what you have to say, until you tell them a great story with great characters. And then you have to realise that no single writer is everyone's cup of tea. Most people criticise Joyce and can't read his work, including my own father, but he's the most outstanding novelist I've read. The fact people don't like him has nothing to do with Joyce's merits as a writers. As a reader, I had to really struggle with Joyce before I could start to get to grips with what made him so excellent, because excellence comes out of difficulty. While Joyce often discourages people with his complexity, he excites me because he shows me what's possible with the novel.

It's important to understand the "contract"  between writer and reader doesn't state you'll give them an easy read, only that the book you write will be a good one. They might just have to work to enjoy it, and the very best ones always demand that you put some work in. When i sit down to write, the reader gets zero consideration. My writing is a dictatorship, not a democracy, and the story, craft and characters are the things I consider. It takes many years as a writer of fiction to develop the skill and courage to walk up to and behead the watchful dragons that are your potential readership. Why is this so? Because any writer with some experience knows you can't promise to please everyone, but you can promise quality of writing that will please some, but you never actually know who those people are in the writing process, because readers don't actually know, beyond which genres they prefer, what they're going to like before they read it.


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## LeeC (Jun 23, 2016)

Patrick said:


> Above all else, it's important to put aside the idea you have something to say to the world. Nobody cares what you have to say, until you tell them a great story with great characters. ...


Ummm ... maybe a mixed message, some good points following a seemingly human bubble mindset. I say that because exceptional and successful writing that has meaningful value is what I and others strive for, and others have excelled in accomplishing. 

I don't care for fanciful human bubble stories, like say zombies, romance, faith based, and other fanciful (to me) writing. There is certainly a place for entertainment only writing, but that to the exclusion of realistic, meaningful writing has gotten humankind to the point where there's a perfect storm on the horizon. The leading front of which we're beginning to see in the consequences of our human bubble proclivities. We ballyhoo our superior intelligence, and contradict it with our behavior. 

Prominent examples of exceptional, realistic, meaningful eco-lit (writing that tries to break through the human bubble mindset while at the same time being entertaining) are E. B. White's Charlotte's Web; Aldo Leopold's A Sand County Almanac; Duncan Morrison's Hope or High Water; and many, many more. The latter two are of course are non-fiction, but what came off the top of my head as being entertaining. To balance it more I might add Todd Strasser's The Beast of Cretacea [YA maybe, haven't read]; Kelvin Christopher James's books [very good]; Claudia Casper's The Mercy Journals; and even throw in Daniel Quinn's Ishmael. 

I'm not advocating such to the exclusion of exceptional writing like V. S. Naipaul's Miguel Street, or Kathryn Stockett's The Help. Books like these not only have high entertainment value, but also help us understand ourselves. I would also add lesser known books like Oliver Buckle's A Read For The Train as being quality reading. To the contrary, books that accomplish neither of the above, to me, promote the dumbing down of human consciousness. Having something to say, when presented in an interesting and entertaining way, adds considerably to the value of one's writing. Even someone with writing skills has less of a chance of standing out from the crowd, when they follow the footsteps of other frivolous writers. 

So you might see why the first sentence of the quote is misleading to me, doing a disservice to writing. I would agree with it if it had been phrased, "Whether a writer believes they have something meaningful to say or not, the point of writing is to tell an engrossing story."  The first sentence together with the second may be saying that, but presented the way it is distracts ;-) We all have our perspectives, and for me such is caring for the world my grandson will have to get by in.

Peace bro  


"_If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance that we can solve them._"  ~  Isaac Asimov*Save**Save*​


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## Jeko (Jun 23, 2016)

Patrick said:
			
		

> So do you think that precision and poetry are interchangeable terms?



As far as the quality of poetry is concerned, yes. The poets over the last few centuries have taught me that much. Remember that we always told our narratives in poetry for a long time before prose became a legitimized art form in the critical and public eye.

I'm not putting it on a pedestal. If your prose is imprecise and 'sounds poetic', it can only be sounding like bad poetry or false poetry, and the great poets would argue that something in poetic form that sounds like that shouldn't even be considered poetic itself. Poetry is far more than a matter of formal qualities.

Prose poetry is it's own thing, and arguing that the practice of it would tend to involve a lack of precision is erroneous. If your prose _does _end up sounding truly poetic, it would have to have been precise. That's my only important argument here.


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## Patrick (Jun 23, 2016)

LeeC said:


> Ummm ... maybe a mixed message, some good points following a seemingly human bubble mindset. I say that because exceptional and successful writing that has meaningful value is what I and others strive for, and others have excelled in accomplishing.
> 
> I don't care for fanciful human bubble stories, like say zombies, romance, faith based, and other fanciful (to me) writing. There is certainly a place for entertainment only writing, but that to the exclusion of realistic, meaningful writing has gotten humankind to the point where there's a perfect storm on the horizon. The leading front of which we're beginning to see in the consequences of our human bubble proclivities. We ballyhoo our superior intelligence, and contradict it with our behavior.
> 
> ...



Honestly, the vast majority of people don't pick up a novel to be lectured on what they ought to be doing with their lives to stave off the next crisis; they get enough of that through pretty much every media outlet. What people want is an escape in a fictional setting where the writer is not their annoying schoolmaster, but at times a gentle, humorous, exciting, and wise narrator who remains largely unseen. And what's awesome about someone like Joyce is that you see he, a sort of hyper-realist, understood this better than anyone, and that's why his Ulysses is both hyper-realist and a fantastical fantasia. You never get Joyce's views on just about anything in Ulysses, not even through Stephen Dedalus, his autobiographical younger self, to whom Joyce remains the older, wiser and more modest author.

Certainly it isn't true that genre fiction is "human bubble" writing and frivolous or fanciful. Literary fiction (I write it) belongs to genre fiction. Without understanding that, you cant even approach the novel from a literary standpoint. What I said was that you must put this idea of having something to tell the world aside, not that whatever it is you have to say won't come through in the prose. The difference between good fiction and polemic is that the subconscious is very much involved in the writing of poetry and prose, and we often write to find out what we're thinking opposed to writing what it is we're thinking. The intention is never to beat people over the head with a perspective, however, so the advice to set to one side this idea of having something monumentally important to say is in fact helpful.



Cadence said:


> As far as the quality of poetry is concerned, yes. The poets over the last few centuries have taught me that much. Remember that we always told our narratives in poetry for a long time before prose became a legitimized art form in the critical and public eye.



Cadence, this is a category error. Precision may well be a quality of good poetry (I in fact wouldn't argue with you), but it is not synonymous with poetry; if it were, then we couldn't have precise prose, and we know that precision is in fact a quality of good prose just as it is of good poetry.



> I'm not putting it on a pedestal. If your prose is imprecise and 'sounds poetic', it can only be sounding like bad poetry or false poetry, and the great poets would argue that something in poetic form that sounds like that shouldn't even be considered poetic itself. Poetry is far more than a matter of formal qualities.



You can write prose that is poetic and imprecise. An example would be describing food stains on a table cloth as Virgin Islands. Just completely inappropriate metaphor. 



> Prose poetry is it's own thing, and arguing that the practice of it would tend to involve a lack of precision is erroneous. If your prose _does _end up sounding truly poetic, it would have to have been precise. That's my only important argument here.



You've missed the point, or you're trying to twist it into something I haven't said. There's nothing inherently wrong with poetic prose or muscular prose, or any other style you want to mention. What's primary to good writing is precision. Yes, good poetic prose is precise.


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## Tettsuo (Jun 24, 2016)

Patrick said:


> Above all else, it's important to put aside the idea you have something to say to the world. Nobody cares what you have to say, until you tell them a great story with great characters.


Every book I've read that stuck with me were books that had something meaningful to say.  All of the others... utterly forgetful.

I have something to say.  I want my stories to stick to people.  I want people to understand me through my words.

 You can write forgettable stories if that's your desire.  I'll choose another way.


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## voltigeur (Jun 24, 2016)

> Honestly, the vast majority of people don't pick up a novel to be lectured on what they ought to be doing with their lives to stave off the next crisis; they get enough of that through pretty much every media outlet



The real trick is to lecture to them in a way that they don't know they have ben lectured to. How do you think Historical fiction teaches history without it being the boring crap of memorization and the mythical bull shit force fed you by a high school propagandist. 

Good fiction uses a  character's plight to illustrate an issue and give the reader understanding and empathy on a instinctual level. If it is done right the reader doesn't know an idea was put in their head. 

If you don't have anything to say then why write? And why should I assume people aren't interested in what I have to say? 

You look at politicians and you really think I'm not qualified to put forth an opinion? That's insulting.


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## Patrick (Jun 24, 2016)

Tettsuo said:


> Every book I've read that stuck with me were books that had something meaningful to say.  All of the others... utterly forgetful.
> 
> I have something to say.  I want my stories to stick to people.  I want people to understand me through my words.
> 
> You can write forgettable stories if that's your desire.  I'll choose another way.



What's the point of the personal comment? Of course I don't set out to write forgettable stories.

This debate has become a farce, at any rate. Everyone who writes has something to say; that's why nobody cares what _you _or _I _have to say. They want stories and characters, and they get what you have to say by osmosis if you know what you're doing. The problem is, you all got defensive before you stopped to actually think.


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## LeeC (Jun 24, 2016)

voltigeur said:


> The real trick is to lecture to them in a way that they don't know they have ben lectured to. How do you think Historical fiction teaches history without it being the boring crap of memorization and the mythical bull shit force fed you by a high school propagandist.
> 
> Good fiction uses a  character's plight to illustrate an issue and give the reader understanding and empathy on a instinctual level. If it is done right the reader doesn't know an idea was put in their head.
> 
> ...



Very well put, and you're from Texas no less   (no offense intended, just pulling Annie's leg)

Seriously this is what I've been wrestling with for the last four years, how to wrap an interesting enough story around a biocentric thread to hopefully promote better understanding (subtly as you say). Luckily, beyond WF, I've received a fair amount of feedback from readers (another good reason to self publish an ebook). So now I'm in the midst of a significant revised edition effort. 

The point being here, it takes a lot of motivation to stick with a project and try to improve, and believing one has something meaningful to say is a real impetus. I can't imagine going to all the effort of trying to improve writing skills otherwise. I suppose though, that for some writing is a personal pleasure and/or a means of chasing fame and fortune. I wish them God speed.


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## Patrick (Jun 24, 2016)

LeeC said:


> Very well put, and you're from Texas no less   (no offense intended, just pulling Annie's leg)
> 
> Seriously this is what I've been wrestling with for the last four years, how to wrap an interesting enough story around a biocentric thread to hopefully promote better understanding (subtly as you say). Luckily, beyond WF, I've received a fair amount of feedback from readers (another good reason to self publish an ebook). So now I'm in the midst of a significant revised edition effort.
> 
> The point being here, it takes a lot of motivation to stick with a project and try to improve, and believing one has something meaningful to say is a real impetus. I can't imagine going to all the effort of trying to improve writing skills otherwise. I suppose though, that for some writing is a personal pleasure and/or a means of chasing fame and fortune. I wish them God speed.



Yes, Lee, I am much too simple to have anything to say. I'll just stick to me 'umble stories.


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## LeeC (Jun 24, 2016)

Wasn't meant as a personal affront Patrick, sorry if you took it that way. I was responding in general terms to the post quoted, agreeing with the gist of what was said. If I'd seen your response to the other post before posting mine, I would have kept quite so as not to aggravate anyone.


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## Patrick (Jun 24, 2016)

I don't take it as a personal attack; I take a number of these comments as missing the point, and some of them are patronising in the extreme.


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## voltigeur (Jun 24, 2016)

> Very well put, and you're from Texas no less :smile:  (no offense intended, just pulling Annie's leg)



No offence at all Lee. My girlfriend has already forbid me to watch the news with her. My low opinions of Rick Perry, Greg Abbot, Ted Cruze, Tom Delay and of courses the Bushes and Cheney's are well know. 

Anyway I don't want to hi-jack the thread.


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