quote:
But I sometimes suspect that in writing there is not much that is more beautiful than a sentence that gets the story across. I recall that once we had a couple of stories that tied for first place in a major contest. I was asked to break the tie. I mentioned to the critic Algis Budrys that I was in a bit of a quandary. The stories were so evenly matched, there wasn't much difference. Algis asked, "Which is the easiest to follow?" I answered, "Story number 1." He then lamented, "You know, few people recognize the genius required to tell a story simply."
Ex:
Employee hereby agrees to waive and irrevocably and unconditionally fully release, acquit, and forever discharge fro many liablity any of the Released Parties for any and all claims, demands, losses, liabilities, promises, and causes of action or similar rights of any nature or type whatsoever (known and unknown) . . . (It continues on like this for 4 lines) arising out of or relating in any way to your employment by, association with, and cessation of employment with the Corporation. THIS IS A GENERAL RELEASE
AND if that weren't enought there is a whole page long paragraph to define what "claims" are.
In my defense, that's not my release but it's a pretty common one I see in employment matters.
It also may be why I am told to add description in the non-legal writing. I'm so sick to death of people who want to say the same thing 20 times with 40 different words.
Or are we simply speaking about prose here?
After all if you simply tell a story doesn't that imply that you manage to tell it some way--any way? That's what that means to me anyway. It might include throwing in every adjective, adverb and saidism in the book.
While I think telling it simply means something different. Again, it means something different to me, anyway. To me that means to tell it transparently.
Both might mean something different to other people though.
I do admire simplicity of telling.
Edit: In that section that Kathleen quoted, Dave was talking about prose, at any rate. He subtitled that section "the power of words."
He followed that paragraph with this one:
quote:
Sometimes when I'm tempted to wax eloquent in a sentence, or when I've got a sentence that is a little convoluted, I recall that bit of advice.
[This message has been edited by JeanneT (edited July 22, 2008).]
He also used this quote to illustrate the point:
quote:
The author Mark Twain said that the difference between choosing just the right word for a sentence and choosing one that is almost right is the difference between "lightning" and a "lightning bug."
It's also why I used the release language as an example of when trying to cover everything possible leads to less than simple and clear language. I'll spend 5 minutes reading a one page release of claims to turn to the client and say, "It means you won't sue them for anything that happened before today." Simple.
Convey the information in the clearest and crispest terms you can use.
quote:
That seems to hold true in many different things. My husband who is a computer programmer often complains about programmers that use fifteen lines of code to write something that could be done in three. I think it definetly holds true with writers. The purpose of writing is to communicate.
satate,
As a software engineer, I can speak to that. Code is just another language, and the true engineer writes code that is long enough to be clear, and short enough to be elegant; just as a good author does.
The danger lies in the extremes: It's just as evil to write a program (or a book) that is packed so tightly it's difficult to grasp, as it is to write something so long and devoid of content that it could be used as a political speech.
-G
"In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit," is a great first line.
But so is, "Gormenghast, that is, the main massing of the original stone, taken by itself would have displayed a certain ponderous architectural quality were it possible to have ignored the circumfusion of those mean dwellings that swarmed like an epidemic around its outer walls."
Sometimes it's fun to use ornate words.
I'm blanking out on examples (we had a champagne toast to a coworker who's getting married this afternoon) but there are many ways of saying the same thing. Some ways are more eloquent than others. Or the rhythm might work better with a certain sentence construction, even if there are simpler alternatives. A creature emerging from, say HP Lovecraft's sea is going to be written very differently than a creature emerging from the sea in Hemmingway, or Jane Austen. In each case, the story is tied to how it's told, what word choices, what sentence structures, what rhythm is used.
He pointed out that this was he thought about when presented in his own writing with overly complex sentences.
I guess you just have to read it to get his point, Annepin.
He didn't say to use the simplest word possible but to use the RIGHT word. Using the right word allows for simplicity which I equate with elegance.
Simplicity or transparancy of style will be different for me than for you because we each bring our own voice to our work. But if I have the right word I don't need five sentences to get across my idea.
[This message has been edited by JeanneT (edited July 22, 2008).]
quote:
"Which is the easiest to follow?"
Or to use terms I've heard AJ use in teaching a writing workshop: which words convey the story in the writer's head most effectively on paper so it is recreated most clearly in the reader's head?
To me, the whole point of a critique is to help a writer get the manuscript to accomplish this effective conveying of the story from the writer's mind to the mind of the reader.
I find a lot of sf is like that these days. The author expects me to do some of his work for him.
