>using adjectives or adverbs
>using a metaphor or a figure of speech
>using long or unusual words instead of everyday English
>using anything other than ',he said.' in a dialogue
>not a window pane
Why is /lit/ and most of what /lit/ likes so fucking purple?
why bother using words at all tbqhwy
>>7932067
best prose uses only words that are necessary. The fewer words, the better.
>>7932075
You should shut the fuck up then, that would be some great prose
I like Hemingway.
>>7932084
>>7932065
The punctuation in this pinchpenny pretending at poignant parody is it's own punchline.
Purple prose is it's own purpose plotfag.
>>7932193
Why don't you go and write a poem?
>>7932065
Purple prose is a description misused by most of the braindead retards who talk about it. It's purple if there's no good reason for it. Like Blood Meridian. That's 100% pretentious corncob wankery with absolutely no substance behind it.
>>7932075
>nice opinion
>>7932442
>i'm different, i have a good reason
keep telling that to yourself.
The perfection of style is to be clear without being mean. The clearest style is that which uses only current or proper words; at the same time it is mean- witness the poetry of Cleophon and of Sthenelus. That diction, on the other hand, is lofty and raised above the commonplace which employs unusual words. By unusual, I mean strange (or rare) words, metaphorical, lengthened- anything, in short, that differs from the normal idiom. Yet a style wholly composed of such words is either a riddle or a jargon; a riddle, if it consists of metaphors; a jargon, if it consists of strange (or rare) words. For the essence of a riddle is to express true facts under impossible combinations. Now this cannot be done by any arrangement of ordinary words, but by the use of metaphor it can. Such is the riddle: 'A man I saw who on another man had glued the bronze by aid of fire,' and others of the same kind. A diction that is made up of strange (or rare) terms is a jargon. A certain infusion, therefore, of these elements is necessary to style; for the strange (or rare) word, the metaphorical, the ornamental, and the other kinds above mentioned, will raise it above the commonplace and mean, while the use of proper words will make it perspicuous. But nothing contributes more to produce a cleanness of diction that is remote from commonness than the lengthening, contraction, and alteration of words. For by deviating in exceptional cases from the normal idiom, the language will gain distinction; while, at the same time, the partial conformity with usage will give perspicuity.
—Aristotle
Why d'our desicions on discourse aggravate þee so? Why with such bile, such resentment þou wastes þy might and moment in strife 'gainst þose having a good time? 'tis it, let us say, because þou bes of þe locus paired with Gomorrah? Bes þou afraid of mockery, of being branded useless and wasteful, how þen bes þou unlike þe bird that sings o'clock, þat cares for eggs not his own? Or does þou þink þou could evade rot, by making þy þoughts quick to the grasp, and þy person famed by its service to þose who don't love þee? Away wiþ þy disgusting theses, þou would be archon! Seducers such as þee only shame a muse by calling her name!
>>7932075
Literally the most uneducated post of all-time.
>>7932569
8/10 would read again (pronounced as "a-gayn")
>>7932442
THIS POSTER HAD SEX WITH A GIRL OF ELEVEN AND ALSO A GOAT
>>7934289
This is why you will never get published.
>>7932065
Because the people that post in /crit/ threads are mostly amaeturs who are trying to improve.
People that know not to do these things generally know not to ask for /lit/'s opinion on their work and instead seek the opinions of people they respect.
>>7932520
So what you're saying is that you're a braindead retard. Good to know.
>>7935340
i post in crit threads mostly to draw out the pseuds t b h
If it fits the narration, dialect of the speaker, period, personality, anything else there's no reason not to use adverbs, non-commonplace words, metaphors.
This is some Intermediate Creative Writing course shit.
Rules like this are meant to stand for people who have little talent, just starting or are fitting their style to a university press's template. Let your characters speak however they need to, if saying obscure astrological map lingo is their thing, that concretizes their personality. Depending on the narrator adverbs are also fine when used correctly.
>>7936745
this, i dont really understand people who try to place arbitrary blocks on language use when the best writers make words their bitches
>>7932088
Me too, what's your favourite Hemmingway quote? Mine's "Oh god I'm such a fucking hack, today I'm gonna do it!"
>>7936745
There is a difference between speech, voice in first person and description. I agree that those things are no problem in the first to, but if you are describing things in overly flowery words it just distracts from the story. Write poems if you want to do that.
>>7936755
the best writers find precise, concrete words and don't have to describe a thing with 3 adjectives.
>>7936986
If a story is just about plot to you then you have no business writing anything.
>>7937004
That's a very banal and restrictive way of looking at language and storytelling.
>>7936986
I didn't say to only write in thesaurus vocabulary words, but that these rules are arbitrary because narration, speech and character all are a case by case basis. These things don't automatically take away from any speaker, it should be organic, every word should fit the speaker.
Same goes for poetry except the words/style/usage in poetry, every word should count to do multiple things, but words in poetry have to interact with each other in regards to the speaker, the context of the poem and the phonetics of the words. Prose you can hone in on how words interact with who is speaking it/what they're speaking about, poems the words have to do that while also speaking to each other.
Don't set up arbitrary rules for yourself like these. No not every speaker should speak in obscure dictionary finds, every sentence a narrator shouldn't rely on adverbs. If you start relying on these through all your characters and narration, your work will suffer, but if you use these as reinforcement for your characters, speakers, narrators, anything else, then it will help as long as it fits the character. An IRS worker having an internal monologue should include tax language because that's realistic, a mechanic will know a medley of tools/pieces, a curious narrator will speak through metaphors and off the cuff observations. Don't worry so much about these rules as much as you should about creating believable voices that use these tactics unconsciously. You should never look at a sentence and say it needs an adverb or metaphor, it should be engrained in the speaker and come through organically every time. Once you come to rely on these conventions they become distracting, but their usage in general is not.
>>7937004
>A legion of horribles, hundreds in number, half naked or clad in costumes attic or biblical or wardrobed out of a fevered dream with the skins of animals and silk finery and pieces of uniform still tracked with the blood of prior owners, coats of slain dragoons, frogged and braided cavalry jackets, one in a stovepipe hat and one with an umbrella and one in white stockings and a bloodstained wedding veil and some in headgear or cranefeathers or rawhide helmets that bore the horns of bull or buffalo and one in a pigeontailed coat worn backwards and otherwise naked and one in the armor of a Spanish conquistador, the breastplate and pauldrons deeply dented with old blows of mace or sabre done in another country by men whose very bones were dust and many with their braids spliced up with the hair of other beasts until they trailed upon the ground and their horses' ears and tails worked with bits of brightly colored cloth and one whose horse's whole head was painted crimson red and all the horsemen's faces gaudy and grotesque with daubings like a company of mounted clowns, death hilarious, all howling in a barbarous tongue and riding down upon them like a horde from a hell more horrible yet than the brimstone land of Christian reckoning, screeching and yammering and clothed in smoke like those vaporous beings in regions beyond right knowing where the eye wanders and the lip jerks and drools.
>Oh my god, said the sergeant.
>>7937037
>entertainment
Well spooked, mein property.
>>7937004
>>7937029
I'm >>7937034 and >>7936745
I also agree that there is no need for precision or concision in literature, if that is a byproduct of whoever your speaker is, then that's great you've found the voice for a speaker.
Great writers can also use multiple adjectives, which leans more on the prose poetry side as long as it's doing a lot of things (which makes it much more difficult to nail): establishing either context or personality of the speaker, progressing thought/plot (there doesn't have to be plot necessarily in prose poetry by any means) and establishing a web of how the words flow into each other. "The snot-green sea" for example.
>>7937034
Of course it's not this extreme. I'm exaggerating here. You can break those rules, but you have to do it consciously and for a reason.
>>7937061
I want to extend on this:
Beauty exists only because of contrast. If you use simple, everyday language that doesn't distract in most of your story, the paragraphs where you don't become much more powerful.
>>7937074
>that doesn't distract
Who's being distracted? Why should words distract you in a written medium? Do you have ADHD?
>>7937061
>>7937074
I'm >>7937045
I think we're arguing for a lot of the same points. Once again these rules should be followed by people who can't use them appropriately, have shown little talent in writing or are just starting. Once you can rid yourself of habits like relying on these things, then you can focus on the voices and include these without ever second-guessing it. I still think that no one should really follow these rules, a lot of writing is realizing where you fall short so going through the motions of making mistakes will only provide for better writing later on.
>>7937110
Intelligent people can read without looking at individual words or letters. It's a question of interpreting information auditive/verbal or visual/spatial. If you read like this, words can distract.
In some languages, like German, the written word is a phonetically representation of spoken language. In others, like Chinese, words represent meaning, not sounds.
The great thing about English is that it's mix of both. The word 'queue' isn't simply the letter 'q'.
Words can be voiced in your head, or not. You can write a sentence in dialect or in a specific voice or you can be neutral and leave it open for interpretation.
The problem for writers is that they can either make a sentence sound good, using beautiful, flowery language, adjectives, etc., or "look" (It's hard to describe what i mean, but there is no better word) good, using simple, precise language.
Only truly great writers can do both, and find words that are precise, but also beautiful.
The reason why /lit/ is so fucking purple is because a lot of people here focus only on how a sentence sounds.
>>7932067
I like you
>>7932065
Using 'He said,' or 'She said', has always been one of my biggest anxieties though, I'm always struggling on trying to find ways without having to use those more than a couple times every few pages. Is there a way I can get over this? Any tips?
>>7936787
>>7937795
Just use them. I know it looks repetitive, when reading it consciously, but people wont realy read those words. They will skip them and don't voice them in their head.
>>7937795
Just read a book and actively pay attention to how they do it.
>>7937814
Even when I put adjectives in them? I'll give it a shot. Thanks for the /adv/ice.
>>7937822
No, that's the point. That's why you shouldn't use anything else (except 'asked' maybe).
People will read only the dialogue and get meaning of 'he said' or 'Joe said', unconsciously.
As soon as you write 'he said softly' or 'he whispered' or something like that, they will actually read those words. This will disrupt the natural pace of their reading.
>>7937845
Whoa, I never thought about it like that. Thanks, again.
>>7937845
I forgot to say, there are always exceptions. Sometime you want to disrupt the dialogue.
>>7932065
Beauty and aesthetics, which are unknown to you Tao, because of your autism.
>>7937845
There are other ways to do dialogue. You can just cut out attributions altogether, or use the space for internal monologues instead of simple attributions. If it's a simple back and forth between two people you don't really need attributions.
>>7937891
That would only work in dialogue between only two people or very specific cases. As soon as you have more than two speakers, readers will get confused.
>>7937822
You shouldn't put adjectives in, the dialogue itself should be descriptive enough, this goes for exclamation points, font and caps lock too.
>>7937905
That's true but the voices of your characters should work well enough, see The Recognitions or my novel for example.
>>7937918
Exactly. It's not as hard as you think. Most contemporary stuff and the way people are taught to write it just coddles readers to the point of absurdity.
>>7937909
The only problem i always have is whispering. I can write a response without writing 'he answered', i can write a question without 'he asked' or shouting without 'he shouted', but i can never write whispering without 'he whispered'.
>>7937960
I agree. I think I'd recommend anyone who is writing a dialogue heavy scene to try to work without using attributes at all and see if you've nailed the personality types of your characters. You might have to show it to someone to see if it's coherent for them though.
>>7937968
My advice for that is to set-up that exchange so that the only possibility for the characters to speak to each other would be through a whisper. A really silent setting, around someone who can't hear them, if they're positioned really close to the other character etc. If you only use it a few times, it's no big deal and draws attention to it, which it might have to, but it'd be a lot more impressive if you position the characters so they can only be whispering to each other without no explicit telling of that.
>>7937999
correction so i don't sound like an idiot
without any*
without no would work better if i was a hick trying to give my 2 cents about writing on 4chan.
>>7932065
nah
>>7937991
In a scene, would you either always use attributes or none at all, or is it OK to mix it up.
>>7932442
the style matches the content
it would be purple if it didnt, and it does, so it isnt.
>>7932065
Because, most of the time, purple prose better expresses a thought than simple English. And the books that /lit/ likes are usually idea heavy, not plot heavy.
>>7938040
If you can't express your idea in language a 12 year old could understand, try harder. Go back and rewrite your idea, you haven't phrased your idea good enough.
>>7938059
Reductionist anti-intellectual populist horseshit. Kindly jump off the nearest bridge, thanks.
>>7938093
Pretentious pseudo-intellectual bullshit. Kindly go slit your wrists in a bath while listening to some classic music.
>>7938017
I'd say mixing it up might be disorienting, I think one here and there might be said. I never use attributes, mainly to work on my voicing in the drafting process, I'd consider adding in attributes if a publisher told me to, but I'd also try to make a case for it/revise to make it better. I think in the novel I have thats mostly dialogue based I've only used "said" a few times and it was usually the first time a character speaks so I only use it to denote their way of speaking that will go on unattributed.
*I'm not a poster who would usually talk about "their novel" but this seems like the time to pepper in my own experience with writing.
Can answer any other questions also.
>>7932084
>>7932075
Rekt.
>>7932442
>no good reason for it
>I don't like Blood Meridian
>corncob meme
>therefore no good reason for it
Quality posting, shithead
>>7938179
Yeppy Corn Yey, you tortilla fucker.
>>7935340
But what if we don't know anybody whose opinion on writing we respect?
What if nobody we know reads except one guy whose taste is totally fucking undiscerning, one guy who only reads classical Greek and modern French literature, and one guy who actually has good taste but could never comment objectively on my work because if it was actually good he'd shrivel into a little ball of envious rage because both of us secretly believe that we're the real writer and the other one is just a dilettante who will never produce anything of substance?
What then, huh?
>>7938197
Hi Joe.
>>7938197
Well in that case you might just want to kill yourself. Or him? It's your choice.
>>7935339
Your thoughts:
>S-Shut up! You're mean! Nobody likes a meanie! Leave me alone! You smell bad!
>>7937968
Anon1 leaned in close to Anon2's ear.
"You're a faggot."
"No, you."
