prose


Random quote of the day:

“One can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one’s own personality. Good prose is like a windowpane.”

—George Orwell, “Why I Write”

 windowpane4WP@@@

 

Disclaimer:  The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.

 

Jim Van Pelt wrote an interesting post today. Take a paragraph of writing—your own or a master like Fitzgerald—and arrange it like a poem. Immediately, the vibrancy (or lack thereof) of the writing pops out in ways it doesn’t when arranged as a paragraph.

I decided to try this with the opening of my novel Shivery Bones. Here’s the original, which I’d previously thought decent-enough:

Jolene’s earthquake passed through her midsection, rolled along her limbs, then off into the grass beneath her toes to make the ground shake. She fell, gasping with pain and surprise as the temblor radiated out from her and across the yard, the ground splitting like an overripe peach. The leaves of the trees along the high wall shook as if attacked by nerves, swaying and groaning. The wave crested inside Jolene, her personal shaking stopped. The earth and trees stilled a moment later, and the ground healed itself, closing as if no trembling had ever occurred.

However, when I arranged it as a poem, the dead parts really jumped out at me. It didn’t have life or flow, I thought:

Jolene’s earthquake
passed through her midsection,
rolled along her limbs,
then off into the grass
beneath her toes to make
the ground shake. She fell,
gasping with pain and surprise
as the temblor radiated out
from her and across the yard,
the ground splitting
like an overripe peach.
The leaves of the trees
along the high wall shook
as if attacked by nerves,
swaying and groaning.
The wave crested inside Jolene,
her personal shaking stopped.
The earth and trees stilled
a moment later, and the ground
healed itself, closing as if
no trembling had ever occurred.

******************************

Immediately, the tweaking began:

Jolene’s earthquake
rolled through her midsection,
vibrated along her limbs,
sloughing off into the grass
beneath her toes, the ground
beneath an echo of her own shaking.
She fell, gasping with pain
and surprise as the temblor
radiated from her and
across the yard, the earth
splitting like an overripe peach.
The leaves of the trees along
the high wall quivered as from an attack
of nerves, swaying and groaning.
The wave crested inside Jolene,
her personal quaking done.
The earth and trees stilled,
the ground healed itself,
closing as if no trembling
had ever occurred.

I don’t think this is a perfect paragraph by any means, but I do think it’s an improved one. It might be worth trying this techniques for openings and other troublesome passages:

Jolene’s earthquake rolled through her midsection, vibrated along her limbs, sloughing off into the grass beneath her toes, the ground beneath an echo of her own shaking. She fell, gasping with pain and surprise as the temblor radiated from her and across the yard, the earth splitting like an overripe peach. The leaves of the trees along the high wall quivered as from an attack of nerves, swaying and groaning. The wave crested inside Jolene, her personal quaking done. The earth and trees stilled, the ground healed itself, closing as if no trembling had ever occurred.

So, what is the difference for you between lush prose and overwritten prose?

I’m not asking to be a smart aleck or because I have an ax to grind (I don’t), I’m genuinely curious what the breaking point is for any of you who would care to comment.

I know that one person’s lush is another’s overwritten and vice versa, so some of it is a matter of taste, but I’d still like to hear your thoughts on this if you’re willing.

For myself, yeah, I do sometimes hit a wall with some lush prose where I want very badly for the author to tone it down several notches. Usually for me it involves the use of a lot of two dollar words when simpler ones would flow better, but it can also involve a great deal of artery-clogging images piled one on top of another. Still, other people lap that kind of thing up like cream—arteries be damned.

There probably isn’t a consensus. But, please, discuss…

Here’s the entire excerpt for today’s quote.  I liked it so much I thought you might like to see it in full.  The letter was quoted in Raymond Chandler Speaking.

May 25, 1957
To: Helga Greene
…To accept a mediocre form and make something like literature out of it is in itself rather an accomplishment.  They tell me—I don’t say this on my own information—that hundreds of writers today are making some sort of living from the mystery story because I made it respectable and even dignified.  But, hell, what else can you do when you write?  You do the best you can in any medium.  I was lucky, and it seems that my luck inspired others.  Steinbeck and I agreed that we should like the writer who is to be remembered and honoured after we were gone to be some unknown, perhaps far better than either of us, who did not have the luck—or perhaps the drive.  Any decent writer who thinks of himself occasionally as an artist would far rather be forgotten so that someone better might be remembered.  We are not always nice people, but essentially we have an ideal that transcends ourselves…There are, of course, cheap and venal writers, but a real writer always at the bottom of his heart, when he runs across something good, makes a silent prayer that “this guy may be better than I am”.  Any man who can write a page of living prose adds something to our life, and the man who can, as I can, is surely the last to resent someone who can do it even better.  An artist cannot deny art, nor would he want to.  A lover cannot deny love.  If you believe in an ideal, you don’t own it—it owns you, and you certainly don’t want to freeze it at your own level for mercenary reasons.

Random quote of the day:

“Any man who can write a page of living prose adds something to our life, and the man who can, as I can, is surely the last to resent someone who can do it even better.  An artist cannot deny art, nor would he want to.  A lover cannot deny love.”

—Raymond Chandler, letter to Helga Greene, May 25, 1957

Disclaimer:  The views expressed in this random quote of the day do not necessarily reflect the views of the poster, her immediate family, Siegfried and Roy, Leonard Maltin, or the Mormon Tabernacle Choir. They do, however, sometimes reflect the views of the Cottingley Fairies.