on becoming a better writer
Jan. 7th, 2009 08:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dbskylerSometimes you read a fic and you just know from the very first paragraph (or even the very first sentence) that the author is a good writer.
The good writers are the ones who can write anything -- a drabble, a ficlet, a plotline you detest -- and you just think, "Wow, that's well-written." The type of authors who could be professional writers (and some of them might just be). I know that I am not one of those authors. I hope I am not one of the authors where the opposite is true, where you can tell from the beginning that the writing isn't very good (although sometimes I enjoy their stories also if the plot is interesting, which it often is, and the poor quality of the writing isn't too distracting). I don't think I am, though. I think I am one of the vast middle-of-the-road majority.
Because it's always good to strive for improvement, I've been trying to figure out the difference between the good writing and the bad writing, and curiously it's not an easy thing to do. The bad writing just kind of stands out as being bad, for no one particular reason. Yes, sometimes you can point to bad characterizations, or cringey dialogue, but sometimes it just doesn't . . . quite . . . flow. For one reason or another. It's lumpy to read, if that makes any sense.
The good writing wraps you in its world and just carries you along. One thing I've noticed is it often is descriptive, and my own writing is almost devoid of descriptions. I just don't put them in, or if I do they are very sketchy. It's not one of my strengths.
So, as I am working on this first chapter of my current fic, I was going through it and trying to improve it by putting in little descriptive passages, and in general attempting to emulate the better-written fics. And in some places I think it works, and in other places I groaned and took it right back out again. And what I've finallly realized is, it's not all just about technique. I also have to write in my own way, using my own style ("author voice" I believe it's called), and if I push too hard to change in a certain direction then I risk losing whatever merit my style originally had. That's not to say that it can't be improved, or that I shouldn't keep trying. But I think it has to be more of an organic improvement rather than copying things that other people have done.
Which leaves me sort of back where I started, getting better at writing by doing more of it and trying to be reflective as I go along. But maybe that's not such a bad thing.
Even Salieri had a hit or two.
The good writers are the ones who can write anything -- a drabble, a ficlet, a plotline you detest -- and you just think, "Wow, that's well-written." The type of authors who could be professional writers (and some of them might just be). I know that I am not one of those authors. I hope I am not one of the authors where the opposite is true, where you can tell from the beginning that the writing isn't very good (although sometimes I enjoy their stories also if the plot is interesting, which it often is, and the poor quality of the writing isn't too distracting). I don't think I am, though. I think I am one of the vast middle-of-the-road majority.
Because it's always good to strive for improvement, I've been trying to figure out the difference between the good writing and the bad writing, and curiously it's not an easy thing to do. The bad writing just kind of stands out as being bad, for no one particular reason. Yes, sometimes you can point to bad characterizations, or cringey dialogue, but sometimes it just doesn't . . . quite . . . flow. For one reason or another. It's lumpy to read, if that makes any sense.
The good writing wraps you in its world and just carries you along. One thing I've noticed is it often is descriptive, and my own writing is almost devoid of descriptions. I just don't put them in, or if I do they are very sketchy. It's not one of my strengths.
So, as I am working on this first chapter of my current fic, I was going through it and trying to improve it by putting in little descriptive passages, and in general attempting to emulate the better-written fics. And in some places I think it works, and in other places I groaned and took it right back out again. And what I've finallly realized is, it's not all just about technique. I also have to write in my own way, using my own style ("author voice" I believe it's called), and if I push too hard to change in a certain direction then I risk losing whatever merit my style originally had. That's not to say that it can't be improved, or that I shouldn't keep trying. But I think it has to be more of an organic improvement rather than copying things that other people have done.
Which leaves me sort of back where I started, getting better at writing by doing more of it and trying to be reflective as I go along. But maybe that's not such a bad thing.
Even Salieri had a hit or two.
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(no subject)
Date: 2011-04-05 08:58 pm (UTC)Perfect sense! (I think it might be kind of what bothers me about Tennyson - he had a really good eye for description and a good ear for turns of phrase, but when it came to cobbling them together and feeling the rhythm of the whole, he was a bit off. "Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough gleams that untravelled world whose margin fades forever and forever when I move" - it's a beautiful line, well structured logically, and a beautiful image, but you can't SAY it. Not without taking a really deep breath first. There's no good place to pause.)
(The same goes for Oliver Wendell Holmes, not rhythmically but in his imagery - lines like "shut thee from heaven with a dome more vast" just trigger a slightly out-of-sync mental image, like that (Christian) hymn that ends with the rather strange line "Let Thy goodness, like a fetter, bind my wandering heart to thee.")
(Um, that was a very long "I agree with this statement"... *g*)
(no subject)
Date: 2011-04-05 09:05 pm (UTC)'One thing I've noticed is it often is descriptive, and my own writing is almost devoid of descriptions. I just don't put them in, or if I do they are very sketchy. It's not one of my strengths.'
I've noticed that with my writing too. It's way easier for me to write an all-dialogue drabble than a descriptive paragraph. (However, in my case I'm not at all sure it's part of my natural style; L.M. Montgomery convinced tiny!me that more than a bit of description was A Bad Thing - and it is an easy thing to sound really corny doing - so I never practiced it at all. Probably I should.)
(no subject)
Date: 2011-04-06 02:33 am (UTC)