I’m angry.
I just finished reading an article from the Wall Street Journal by a columnist whom I admire and respect. Her articles are usually fresh, engaging in the best way, and provide a nice perspective that usually contradicts–yet inspires–my views on publishing, writing, and the world of books.
The thing is, this article didn’t really contradict my own opinions–at least not overtly.
The part of the article that “ruffled my feathers” was the tone.
Before I go any further, here’s the article: What Makes Bad Writing – WSJ.com, by Cynthia Crossen. Check it out, read it, and develop your own opinions before reading this post any further.
Done?
Okay, great. Now that we’re all on the same page, I’ll start the rant.
Crossen opens with a quote:
My book club had a lively discussion last month about the difference between good and bad writing. Can you elucidate?
—P.P., Cleveland
Ah, wonderful, I think, we’re going to get satirical (as an aside: I love satire and sarcasm a little too much, and “elucidate” means to “clarify,” “make lucid,” etc.).
The bulk of the actual post is fine–actually, it’s quite good. About the level of quality reporting I’d expect from Crossen–she is, after all, a staff writer for WSJ; she should be a fantastic writer.
Mainly, the article is about the subjectivity of “good” and “bad” when it comes to books, or writing, to be broad. Generally I agree with the premise–these are certainly subjective labels, ones which we tend to take for granted in most instances. So far, so good, Crossen.
She continues by bemoaning some ridiculous uses of the English language, found in–not surprisingly–some fiction on the left side of the “trash/quality spectrum” (notice my own subjectivity coming out here?). I agree with her main point that extends throughout the article: we, as writers, should be as succinct and to-the-point as possible. She even quotes the oft-cited Strunk and White’s “Omit needless words” rule.
I agree–actually, though the practice of the method is considerably more challenging, most writers do as well–brevity and lucidity are much more refreshing to our readers than clunky, overwritten prose.
The problem
Here’s where our opinions begin to waver: toward the end of the article, Crossen writes:
“Some readers, and I know a few of them, don’t care how a story is written as long as it’s comprehensible and keeps them turning pages—”The Da Vinci Code,” for example, or “Twilight” or “Fifty Shades of Grey.”
Careful, Crossen–you’re getting awful close to becoming condescending. To which “readers,” of whom you know a few, are you referring?
Me?
I sure do like a good ‘ol com-pre-hens-ible story that keeps me a’turnin’ them pages–
Well, it’s much better that way than the opposite: a “story” that’s so dense with word-vomit and incomprehensible dribble that I have no idea what the you-know-what’s going on.
I took AP English (so what?)
I’ve been in the trenches of “British Literature 2201,” or “AP (Advanced Placement) English 4,” or whatever title gives us that false sense of “smartness.” I’ve been that kid forced to wade through Dickens (yeah, I said it. FORCED.) while trying to decipher Pip’s dialogue with Jaggers. Or Piggy. Or whatever. Finny DIES?!?
The Heart of What? This is insane… Who’s Eyre?
The truth is–if you want subjectivity–I don’t like that stuff at all, so to me, it’s not “good.”
If it doesn’t explain to me, in my particular vernacular dialect of my spoken tongue (plus a few passes for being old), exactly what’s going on in the story, I’m out.
Period, end-of-story, done.
I’m. Out.
Enough about literature.
I’ll assume the subject of my rant’s focus was referring to an overuse of words, not a mixup between antiquation and fourth-grade-English-level writing.
Fine, Dickens, you win this round. But let’s get back to the battle at hand.
Crossen goes on to state (part of the last quote):
“The Da Vinci Code,” for example, or “Twilight” or “Fifty Shades of Grey.”
Okay, fine, aside from the fact that Mr. Brown was literally the reason I started reading “grown up” books in the first place (after a decade-long rail against literature in general–thanks American public school system for allowing me to be “gifted”), I kinda get the Twilight and Fifty Shades references.
If I’d read those two (satire coming–hold on!) wonderful masterpieces of literary note, I may have written rants against those as well. I didn’t though, so I must take everyone else’s word for it and assume that they’re… great.
So, even though I’d like to agree that these three examples probably aren’t the best examples of “literature” (the kind that makes you want to push your glasses up your nose with your middle finger, into that squishy spot between your eyeballs. While drinking tea.), I don’t like how she lumps the examples in with the aforementioned “some readers.”
These “some readers” seem to be people an awful lot like me–people who enjoy a good story. “Some readers” like knowing what’s going on–without needing a thesaurus, a bearded sweater-vest sporting literature professors, or a nerdy stuck-up Honors kid explaining that “A Separate Peace” is really a metaphorical title for something-something-World War II-something and you spelled “seperate” wrong.
These “some readers” like to sit down, open a book, and be engrossed in the story–a concept that for whatever reason seems to have been lost to some “literary geniuses.”
Even still, that’s not Crossen’s fault.
She didn’t write that stuff. When I get to heaven, I’ll have a few words with Dickens (who’ll no doubt be hanging with Clancy) and the Bronte sisters. Hemingway’s cool; we tight.
Instead, my beef with Crossen’s article is her last paragraph, led by the last sentence of the preceding one (reprinted here for context):
Responding to a question about “Twilight” on a Yahoo Answers page, a reader wrote, “I never quit reading a book because I think the style of writing is bad. It may not be bad, just different from what I’m used to. Focus on the story more than the writing style.”
I sometimes wish I could do that so I could enjoy the occasional airport book. Unfortunately, I feel as the mystery writer Dorothy L. Sayers did: “The most intricate plot ever woven will never carry bad writing,” she wrote in “Style in Crime Stories—Why Good Writing Pays.” “But good writing will often carry a thin plot, and really inspired writing will carry almost anything.”
Wait. WHAT now?
Let’s take this in stride.
First, “I sometimes wish I could [focus on the story more than the writing style] so I could enjoy the occasional airport book.”
So, you wish you were a little more like “some reader?”
A little more like little ‘ol Southern me?
A guy who’s been force-fed so much literary crap that even if he believed there was an “educational counterpart to the historic relevance of these works,” he wouldn’t be able to understand it?
And what, by the way, is an “airport book?”
Don’t tell me–Fifty Shades, Twilight, Harry Potter, Da Vinci, etc.?
It’s funny–when I started writing novels, my dream was to write a book that would be sold in the airport bookstores of the world. Not just the big ones, either–the spinning-kiosk-style book holders, featuring the latest crimes, mysteries, and thrillers.
Hell, I almost cried when someone told me The Golden Crystal (my first novel) was akin to “National Treasure meets Da Vinci Code.”
I’m writing for those of us out there who are able to laugh at ridiculously-long sentences, overwritten dialogue, and generally “bad” writing styles, and still be able to spot a damn good plot line that captivates us to no end.
My last rant.
I know this one isn’t Ms. Crosser’s fault, but a commenter on the article mentioned something I want to squash right now, officially:
“What a great (and well-written) article. As far as a reader’s ability to ignore bad writing in order to enjoy a good plot, It’s like a great singer singing bad material vs. a bad singer singing brilliant material. Hard to say which is more bearable. I guess I’d rather hear Joe Cocker sing The Pina Colada Song than Celine Dion scream “I Will Always Love You.”
No, sir, you are wrong. I’m sorry to pee in your snocone, but “a reader’s ability to ignore bad writing in order to enjoy a good plot” is nothing like “a great singer singing bad material vs. a bad singer singing brilliant material.”
Sorry–can’t agree with you on this one. A reader’s ability to ignore bad writing has nothing to do with the writer. But a great singer singing bad material still leaves out the subjective party–the listener. Right?
It’s the listener’s (reader’s) job to discern “good” from “bad,” not the singer’s (in a book’s case “the voice of the audiobook” seems a fitting example). The singer’s job is to sing what’s on the page.
I do want to be the best writer I can be, but even that connotes subjectivity–the best to me can’t be the best to everyone. I guess I’ll just have to be okay with what I got.
And, in my upcoming novel, if you’re expecting an archetypal hero who has a coming-of-age journey to discover his inner manhood through numerous encounters and a plethora of large words, there might be too many heads getting blown off for you to enjoy it.
My bad.
Update on this post: Crossen’s latest article on WSJ is called “Snubbing the Book Snobs,” and is a really funny read when taken side-by-side with her referenced post here.
This reminds me of a debate I had with other aspiring authors over the prose in YA.
But I agree with you: Having non-“brilliant” prose doesn’t mean a story is bad. A novel with average prose but an entertaining story can still be considered a fantastic book.
Now, there’s the argument about whatever “Twilight” really has a good story to make up to its iffy prose, but that’s a can of worms not worth opening. What does matter, however, is the fact that millions of readers enjoy Twilight, and that’s one virtue the novel deserves.
Besides the fact that “brilliant” is very subjective anyway, you’re right: not being “brilliant” doesn’t make something bad. While many literary experts would probably argue that prose that doesn’t make you think is “bad,” I tend to think that prose that gives me the exact answers–what’s going on, what’s happened, etc.–and forcing me to do the “soul-searching” by drawing out my emotions through the contexts, is “brilliant.”
Two very different worlds, and two very different opinions.
I think Twilight has a decent enough story, though that’s only coming from watching the movies–but you’re right: so many people like it, you have to wonder if that’s society’s interpretation of “good” writing (nothing wrong with that at all, just eye-opening if it’s true).
Prose aside, Twilight is an absolutely horrible example. I’ve read the mere first half of the first book, but the prose isn’t even really the problem, if anything twilight just makes me worry about people’s abilities to think for themselves. First we have Bella Swan, how is pretty much a self insert character, all she is a clutz and a bit awkward, and anyone who’s been a month into puberty can pretty much relate. Any other description? Not really. Next we have this lovely pretty much greek sex god character thing, who could be doing something more productive but nope he’s going to love this girl… Ok…….. a bit odd but whatever.
Then we have girl become incapable of living without him, become submissive and do everything he says, and pretty much become his slave. Hey Bella, you can’t see any of your friends, do anything by yourself, talk to anyone, because I am too paranoid. Of course whenever she protests, no means yes. If anyone else were to do this, people would be revolted, yet people devour it book by book by book. If you really want an example of this here’s a lovely series of posts from reasoning with vampires a friend of mine dug up a while ago.
http://reasoningwithvampires.tumblr.com/tagged/We%27re-deep-into-the-realm-of-psychological-fuckery. Blah blah blah twilight aside, (and fifty shades of grey aside, it’s twilight on steroids) it’s back to the prose argument.
In my opinion, one should shoot for the best writing possible in adult literature. YA lit and Children’s lit are different, oftentimes the writing is more deliberate and uses some tell to just reduce thought. However I think that in the end literature should do it’s best to show not tell, and though literature that says he is frightened instead of he paled with fear isn’t necessarily horrible, it is hard to argue this it is good writing regardless of how compelling the plot is. Writing mechanics aren’t really different for most literature, unless you’re trying to write for an audience that is brain dead. Though bad writing is I suppose, subjective, writing a certain genre of writing is no excuse for being lazy. Good prose is good prose, and godawful prose is godawful prose, and no matter what you are writing it doesn’t really change. The is no good excuse for Ikea erotica, there is no good excuse for telling instead of showing, it’s still bad prose. Sure I suppose we can argue over how flowery it is, or how thick it is, but in the end I believe good prose has few features that are mandatory. Unless you are embarking to make writing that is the likes of House on Mangos street (Which does a lovely job of being directly between prose and verse) writing to an extent can be evaluated on a subjective scale. To me the notion that certain writing can have worse prose than others baffles me, airplane books is a label applied to books with seemingly subpar prose, it is not the sort of thing you aim for, or should be aiming for. To me wanting to write an airplane book, is somewhat akin to deciding that at the olympics, you are just going to be happy if you hit the target in an archery competition, as opposed to attempting to actually win.Though I don’t doubt that books can be enjoyed with prose that isn’t to be envied, I believe the overall quality should be good, and the aim should not be to be subpar, regardless of genre.
When you click on the link, go to the URL bar, add a period to the end, and reload.
I’m also quite sick of waving around Twilight as an example. The prose can be tolerable, from what I remember of the first book. What made me decide to abandon the series was the creepy relationship that isn’t shown to be creepy at all. It’s a serious problem.
Yeah, I’m sick of the Twilight example and I fear it might have more to do with the “Harry Potter coattails” + “ridiculous marketing budget” strategy of making it big than making it on its own accord, but I really don’t know.
Your reason for abandoning it seems logical, but I think the main question here is, again, “what makes good or bad prose?”
Of course I check my email a very long time after I write the comment T.T
Writing in a lot of ways is subjective, but one of the main things bad prose does is tell as opposed to show.
For instance, Sophie sat in her seat nervous for her turn at the piano recital. This shows the reader nothing. Sophie is nervous, because she is. Which is just lovely.
On the contrary, we can have Sophie rubbed her sweaty palms together, anxious for her turn.
Now I’m going to admit my examples aren’t the best, but the latter is definitely better than the formal. If you have the first one too often, the writing becomes completely bland and boring.
Another problem that no matter what you do isn’t good is an anvil. An anvil is wear you stop writing for an infodump. For instance.
Bredan comes up to me and we hug. I’d known him since kindergarten and he’d always been a dear friend. In the second grade, people’d rumored he was my boyfriend. This was very ironic as I know wanted….
yadiyadiya. And then by the time we go back to.
“Hi Brendan! What’s up!”
We don’t even remember what the heck just happened.
A much more risque version is Ikea Erotica. Summarised this is where if you took a sex scene and it could be changed to. Brendan put his tab a into my slot b. It was great. Emotions are nice. (unless you want like a detached rape or something but that’s really not the point here)
I could keep going, but there are some things that just MAKE good prose.
Now the difference between brilliant and good is pretty much completely subjective, but godawful and passable is very doable.
Hey there–
Very interesting thoughts, and thanks for the awesome comment! I actually like the examples, too!
Wow very thorough and in-depth response; thanks for that!
I mostly agree with your points. The problem I’m having is in trying to understand what really constitutes “good” and “bad” prose… I thought those are, by definition, subjective?
Thoughts?
Hi, Nick — I always read your posts, but this is my first comment. And that’s because one of your last paragraphs here (“And, in my upcoming novel …”) had me laughing so hard, I just had to chime in. It’s been quite an interesting year since I jumped back into the writing life. People have their opinions and ideas, and I’m taking it all in for now as I form my own. Thanks for another view on this topic.
Hi Darla–thanks for reading, and for commenting! Hopefully there will be more!
I hope your laughing was good laughter, but everyone’s entitled to their own opinion (again, at the risk of sounding ironic). What are you writing?
BTW, I checked out your blog (www.darlawrites.com, for everyone else). Looks great! I’m subscribing now!
Nick
I think writing is like a good cut of meat. It’s got the right amount of fat marbled in the lean meat to make it juicy and tender. The lean meat is like the mechanics of writing and the fat is like the plotline.
I don’t know a lot of people who want to gnaw on a dry, tasteless hunk of meat. People like a little fat to make it interesting. But a hunk of fat with a strip of meat stuck to it isn’t good for you.
Now, to introduce my sources of possible bias. I firmly believe that you are what you read. I see things like The Da Vinci Code as literary fast food: I can consume it quickly and it’s not impossible to enjoy, but I make sure I balance it out later. That is why in my writing, I work as hard as I can to have both a compelling plot and solid technique, and I’ve been told that the literature I’ve read–and enjoyed, for the most part, but I have to agree with you on Dickens–has helped me immensely in achieving that goal.
Forgive me if I’m misinterpreting your post, but you seem to be aiming for a higher fat content than I feel is healthy. I see nothing wrong with guilty pleasures, but are you implying that it’s fine to make such books a regular part of a literary diet, or simply that such books shouldn’t be immediately dismissed?
Hey Cho!
While there are obviously as many opinions regarding this debate as there are readers and writers, I have to ask:
Since you and I both work to have a compelling plot AND solid technique, could it be that “solid technique” is subjective, depending on what genre we write?
This may not be a perfect analogy, but I hardly think a children’s book would require the same technique as a literary masterpiece. I’m not implying that one requires a technique that’s inferior to the other, but it doesn’t seem like the techniques required for both genres would really compare (outside of using words the reader can understand).
Basically what I’m getting at is this: Dan Brown obviously doesn’t sound like Dickens. I don’t sound like Hawthorne. We can say one side uses “solid technique” and the other doesn’t, but it really seems like BOTH are using solid technique and skill, just a different kind.
Does that make sense?
Thanks for the comment–glad to see you around!
Nick
I define solid technique as the particular balance of beauty and clarity in the prose required for what the work is trying to achieve because the two have to work together. What I call junk food is books where the author didn’t seem to care about that balance’s role in telling the story.
I liken it to movies. Sometimes you want to see an Oscar epic, but sometimes you just want a funny, or action packed, or easy going rom-com. Does this mean the latter films are bad? No, they are just built for specific reasons.
I too like Dan Brown, as so I did the Hunger Games books. Is the writing great? No, but the stories are good. I’m sure my writing isn’t great, but I like to think my storytelling is decent. Will everyone like it? No. But it isn’t always about using the most profound sentence or describing the scene in a delicate manner. It’s about creating something compelling
Oh, and nice rant 🙂
Matthew (Turndog Millionaire)
Hey Matthew!
Thanks for stopping by–you make a good point, and I have to agree. I just get upset when people try to elevate their preference for literature over other genres. I realize it may sound ironic, as I tended to “bash” literature in this post, but I really was going for “bashing” the idea of “bashing” a book because it’s NOT literature…
…if that makes sense.
“Airport books” is a terrible word to describe the book equivalent to a Hollywood Blockbuster. You’re right on: they’re built for specific (and often conflicting) reasons. Who cares?
I can choose not to read what I call “drab” literature, and I usually do. I don’t think that those books are “bad” or poorly written at all, though; on the contrary, we need to keep them around because they’re a part of our culture.
It’s just that I read stuff for entertainment first (i.e. “airport books”), to learn something new second (i.e. nonfiction), and to figure out for myself what the author meant through literary excavation third (i.e. literature). It’s just the way I’m wired, and where I currently am in my life.
Thanks for visiting–talk to you soon!
Nick