Hi Chinspinner, She is more contented than she's been for awhile and she is in an improved mood due to some good things that happened that night. She's basically been alone since she arrived and is a very introverted person, (not a complainer, whiner, etc.) but I'll have to find better ways to convey that. It's really hard to post a snippet of something and extrapolate anything from it, LOL. I didn't mean to imply that she had an eating 'disorder', but simply a lack of appetite. However, Mckk is also right that wolfing food isn't consistent with that, so I'll be reworking it again anyhow.
No ChickenFreak, you're right. It has to be either cut or embellished to make it more meaningful. I had planned to rewrite the chapter to incorporate a lot of the suggestions I got, and the comments here are right on the money.
Hi Mckk. Thanks a lot for putting the time into such a detailed analysis. I put comments in the text above to make the responses more clear.
Have you thought of writing as an omniscient narrator? esp if your character is a very factual person, which may make her a bit too distant if she were the sole observer. Factual is ok but then you have to place her in situations that makes it clear to the reader how things are without the character stating it. I think with your style of writing, very likely it would be less suitable for critique in snippets because as I said, very factual writing and using those facts to convey contrasts and meaning takes time to establish, recurring little details and thought patterns for the reader to slowly pick it up. That means for someone to critique the true effectiveness of your story, they would need to read at least several chapters. Give Henning Mankell a try. He is very minimalist and factual too. Very clean writing but his characters are fantastically human and Mankell is a highly successful author. See if what he's doing is what you are going for and if yes, maybe learn from it. Lawrence Block is another very good crime writer with very clean, simple writing and powerful characters. Again not a lot of detail in his narrative. See if it works for you. I am now curious about your essay voice. I wonder if there are elements in there you could use to your advantage. I think you probably just don't know how to really use your strengths in fiction yet. People tend to say fiction should be colourful and fast but that's not always the case. Care to post a snippet of how your essays sound?
Hi Mckk, Thanks for the input. And I guess I could think about changing narrative style, though that would involve some major restructuring, LOL. As to the essay stuff--yes. I can put a snippet here of something I had published in an anthology a few years ago. It had to do with the concept of flow in learning (as originally introduced by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi). It's a paragraph or two from the middle of an educational essay. -A final comparison of flow's relationship to Nature is this: Dormant periods occur at varying intervals in the lives of children and adults. Analogous to spring's renewal of life after winter, the bursts of energy we experience often occur after modes of hibernation. Conversely, sustained periods of inactivity can be followed by days, weeks and months of no visible activity whatsoever. This is a critical period in which the brain rests in order to prepare itself for the next intellectual surge. These phases are vital to the conservation of energy and ensure absorption of material that is learned. Inactivity in this case serves as an incubative state. Contrary to conditions that support creative flow, environments maintaining rigid schedules give no allowance for the principle of dormancy. With manipulation, the rhythm of learning gets corrupted, effectively cutting off the ability of flow to maintain itself. Yup. Very formal, LOL
@aikoaiko I think they're dead wrong. To put it succinctly. And having read a wide variety of genres, it's clear that the style expected in each can vary significantly. What works nicely for a crime story would not work for a literary piece, or high fantasy, or sci-fi, or romance, or for whatever you're writing. Frankly, I think there's a big problem today with writing being about what is considered "publishable" by alleged experts instead of about creating a quality piece of work. IMO, that's part of the reason quality work is becoming rarer and rarer; publishers may be as willing as ever to publish it, but writers are too afraid or just too obsessed with "success" to create it. Anyway, if this crit group isn't for you, and it sounds like it's not, maybe you should try to find another. They should definitely not be making your own work unrecognizable to you, or changing your voice. If you're at the point where you don't want to write anymore...well, that's as red a flag as you can get, isn't it? Now, all that having been said, it is important to pare down (truly) irrelevant, unnecessary detail. But it sounds like you're aware of that. I would try to find crit partners with a much more balanced approach, though. If people aren't used to reading your particular genre, or especially if they don't even have much exposure to it, they'll try to mutate your work into a style that suits their own genre. But that's like trying to turn apples into oranges, and finding fault when they don't measure up. Someone mentioned "perfect," but a work should only strive for the kind of perfection it's aiming for. Even then, I don't know if anyone fully achieves that, even among literary giants.
I've seen the discussions concerning the amount of detail and description in writing. I had a look at the beginnings of some books by Louise Erdrich and Toni Morrison. I found that they don't have flowery prose, and their descriptions are not all that detailed. I haven't seen much of the OP's writing, so I cannot say anything about that. EDIT: I tried looking at some modern Mills & Boon, What the Lady Wants by Jennifer Crusie. Even that's not very flowery and the description is not that detailed.
It's your story, and you should tell it the way you want. At the same time, there's no point in submitting work for critique if you don't at least consider the suggestions being given. And based on that tiny excerpt, I'm inclined to agree with the critter. Your chapter kind of fizzled out, which isn't generally desirable. Is it possible that you're not struggling so much with detail itself, but rather with a show vs tell issue and/or a pacing issue? Those were big problems for me when I started writing, and strangely, one of the ways that it exhibited itself for me was that I felt compelled to mention what characters were eating and when they went to sleep and woke up. Sound familiar? I'd say that a good scene generally has a main idea. If the eating and going to sleep contribute significantly to your main idea, then you should leave them in. But if they don't, then I agree with your critter. If you're planning to submit this to a publisher or agent, you're going to have to come up with a summary or synopsis of the MS. It may be worth while to try to come up with that summary now. You can use it as a way to figure out what's important to each scene, and once you have that, you can work out what might just be getting in the way of your story.
I think this is a very important thread that we can take further. Speaking from my personal point of view I find it unattractive to read through text that has too much detail. And I don't like reading things that have too much detail and scene setting before the story really gets going. There are others that like the detail, e.g. somebody (sorry, too lazy to check who) didn't mind my rewriting of a paragraph of Jane Eyre to add what I considered to be too much detail. What I would like to see are examples of classic texts or modern professional writers who include very large amounts of detail about scenes and people, and delay the story getting going before paragraphs of detail. I've looked up the books of the authors mentioned in the OP of this thread, and there isn't so much detail. I"ve looked at other books said to be detailed, e.g. Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, and didn't find so much detail. I've just re-read parts of Hemingway's 'The Old Man and the Sea', and I don't find so much detail. Paragraphs two and three (three is basically one line) give a physical description of the 'Old Man', but it is quite brief. It only really talks about the skin of his face and his hands, the blotches of 'benevolent skin cancer', and the scars on his hands. It doesn't mention what he was wearing, it doesn't mention anything about the appearance of the boy. It doesn't mention what the boat looked like, or the port. It's pretty much straight into story, a bit of description/detail, and then into dialogue which continues to carry the story forward. EDIT: Something that I think important (given my biases and personal preferences) is that the description in TOMatS only describes part of the subject of the story. It lets us imagine the rest. Not everything has to be described. Can someone please guide me to authors/books who start their story with description only? And where the amount of description that we often see in first drafts in the workshop here? And authors who describe everything about their characters? This is not a rhetorical challenge, I really want to learn from skilful authors who use different styles. EDIT: I found an article in a newspaper about purple prose, and it said that Laurence Durrell was the hero of those who like purple prose. I looked up one of his novels (two really, published together, but I can only see the start of one in 'look inside'), 'The Revolt of Aphrodite'. The scene is set with a number of drunk men wearing black business suits. We aren't told much more about them, but an effective metaphor 'ravens of ill-omen' tells us about them. We don't know much else about them, there is very little description of the place where they are eating. Etc. Then it goes on to describe the MC's background. About his parents: 'My parents I hardly remember. They hid themselves behind brightly coloured foreign stamps.' Brilliant line, IMHO. Again IMHO a masterful example of how to say an awful lot in a very few words. But, I don't find huge amounts of detail. I'm very confused. I hear about those who love the huge amounts of detail and scene-setting. I can't find it in the writing of well known authors.
Wind in the Willows is a possible example, though it's obviously not an example from a contemporary author. I love the book, but there are parts that I just skip through. I read every word of the bits about food, and very little of the bit about nature and glinting water. One of my favorite chapters is the one where Mole visits his abandoned home: http://www.cleavebooks.co.uk/grol/grahame/wind05.htm
Which bits would you say are most wordy? I don't think I've read TWitW since I was a kid. Which is a lot longer back than it is for many on here. I've had a look at the start which is where the reader has to be seduced. (Checks that TWitW is out of copyright - it is). This is quite wordy. But, it works for me. Even some of the repetition, e.g. that works for me. It reads fluently. I didn't have a feeling of reading through treacle as I sometimes get. I wonder why.
I think that part of it is that it has a feeling of frenetic action, rather than a leisurely sleepy-eyed discussion of the precise shade of green of the grass. And another part is that we can identify with it and feel it.
Hi everyone, Just checking in here after a long time away and see that there were responses to the thread I started. Thank you very much for the input, again, and I agree. I've gotten a lot further along since the day I posted this and have rewritten those chapters many times. I ended up finding another crit group that is fun and much more supportive, and while criticism is certainly encouraged there, rudeness in any form is not, so I feel I have the freedom to make mistakes. Thanks again for the help.
Check out John Steinbeck. Try East of Eden - the entire first chapter is description of the setting. It's one of my favorite novels - just have a little patience with it. Or Of Mice and Men - it starts with several paragraphs of description before the characters are introduced. I'm sure if either of these classic texts had been submitted to our Workshop here, most of the critiques would tell the writer to dump the description at the beginning and jump right into the story. I think they'd be missing the point, and they'd be rejecting a Nobel and Pultizer Prize winner based on nothing more than the advice of some hack who wrote a book on writing. Argh.
My favourite is The Grapes of Wrath and it is similarly description rich. It is also relentlessly depressing.
Reading East of Eden, this is very different from many of the workshop posts. There is a lot of description, yes, but it's description of the entire valley, There are a few paragraphs describing the mountains, both the range to the west and the range to the east. Then there are descriptions of streams and rivers. Then it's the floor of the valley, including the narrator's father's back-history. Then we have a description of the topsoil with backstory of the narrator's grandfather. After a short description of plant life, we start reading about the valley drying out, the dust-bowl developing and the workers having to deal with it. Then there's the water cycle over time. Drying out, cattle gnawing on twigs and dying of thirst in some years. I don't think the description excessive, and it reads very well. I think it's safe to say that I'm one of the people who is most likely to discuss too much description and not starting the story in the middle in the workshop (causing your 'Argh'). It's difficult to say what I would have said had I read this not attributed to Steinbeck, but I don't think that East of Eden drags. compared to some workshop posts, there is a lot of description. But, Steinbeck is describing a lot more. It cannot be compared to paragraphs of description of the inside of a single apartment and a single person. The family backstory mixed in means to me that it's not all description. As the paragraphs describe different things (I think that White Fang does this as well), there's a feeling of the narrative moving on, not dwelling on the same thing for too long. I don't think I'd criticise this story (or one written to the same style and same degree of skill) if in the workshop. It doesn't drag because there's so much to discuss that nothing is dwelled on for too long, and I feel that I'm getting good value for money in terms of my time investment to read the background story. There is a copy of Of Mice and Men around here somewhere. But I wake up early, it's 4:50am. If I start clattering around searching for it, waking up the other members of my household, I will be as unpopular as a noisy fart during a meeting of the local poetry society. Using look inside, I only get the preface, nothing of the actual book. Here, it's my partner who is the real fan of Steinbeck. I've seen film and television adaptations, and we'll certainly be seeing the new adaptation of Of Mice and Men. I've been inspired to try and write a Steinbeck style flash fiction, about settlers on an alien planet. I'll see how it goes.
The truth of it is, though, that Steinbeck is an incredibly talented writer. His descriptive prose works because he has the talent to make it work. It is rich and compelling. It is not a list of mundane knick knacks; it is an essential part of the story that tells of the hardships the characters suffer. Someone else who is incredibly proficient at description is Peake. His works are often character-light but description rich, and they are a pleasure to read because it is so deftly handled. But passages of crap, inconsequential description are tedious.
I've written the Steinbeck influenced science fiction flash. I thought of posting it in the workshop, but I'm taking a strategy of submitting stuff and I think this is a reasonable submission (compared to the other things I'm coming up with) for a place that I would really, REALLY, like to publish in. Thanks very much @minstrel for the prompt (even if you didn't mean it to be a prompt.) I feel a bit selfish not posting it in the forum. I've got other stories I wanted to submit there, but I couldn't quite finish any of them to my satisfaction. This new flash is already well ahead of the other stories. It's also very different from anything else I've written recently. There is no dialogue at all.
In one word: SELFISH. You should clearly post all of your hard work on an open forum to destroy any chance of publication. It would be rude not to!
The more I read about critiquing, the more I think I'm not good at it. I'm not at all sure I can separate "I don't like this because it's not my personal preference" to "I don't like this because it doesn't work." I think I will stick to SPAG suggestions!
I'm thinking the same, but I'm trying to learn more about writing in general, and the different styles of prose that people create. I feel that the progress I've made in the last few days has been useful, but this is not the sort of thing where very significant progress can be made in a few days. I'm curious to know if others on this forum agree with the advice here: http://www.writing-world.com/fiction/mistakes.shtml and here: http://www.writing-world.com/fiction/fivemistakes.shtml The author of these pages, Moira Allen, appears to have very similar preferences to myself concerning prose. Either that, or these are generally applicable guidelines that we can use when critiquing.
I think it is important anyway. If you do not enjoy something say so. The final edit rests with the author.
I agree with Chinspinner. I preface almost all of my critiques with something along the lines of "This is based on my personal taste" or whatever, and then I let rip.
