Thursday 20 September 2012

On the Vital Importance of Semicolons . . . Or Not

Plot over prose? Or prose over plot? A bit of both? Neither?

What on earth am I talking about?

Only the greatest writing-related hangup I have ever encountered. 

There's nothing worse than having a really spectacular idea for a story, and then having no idea how best to stylistically do justice to its awesomeness. There are simply so many things to consider; your audience, the narrative style, the undertones or messages in the story, the general tone of the story itself. While most of us can agree on the necessity of good spelling and grammar, use of language in a book is a whole new ambiguity.

Of course, I don't mean to say that pretty prose of any sort is ever a true substitute for an actual narrative - however abstractly you interpret the word. The book has to have a purpose; whether it be to illustrate the futility of human thought through multiple inter-locking fragments of complex human thought, or to amuse us with the story of the platypus who achieved superhuman intelligence and rose to the rank of Royal Blackboard Scrubber for the Queen of Norway. 

So the real question here is this: how important is the quality of language in a story? I am reading a couple of Young Adult novels at the moment, and I am infinitely enjoying one more than the other because its use of language is much more sophisticated and imaginatively stimulating. Both have similarities story-wise, but the authors' use of language makes them as disparate as dragons and doorknobs.

It's also a great matter of personal opinion.

I, for example, am a great advocate of powerful, evocative language - and perhaps a little too liberal in its use. I am capable of ploughing through even the most incredibly slow, introspective sort of plot if the use of prose is inventive and intriguing. I don't even draw the line at serious digressions into tangled streams of consciousness, provided the language remains interesting and continues to hold my interest. Even better if it sends me off on philosophical mental deviations of my own (though I could perhaps do without serious brain-bork, thank you Mr William Faulkner).

On the other hand, my brother couldn't care less for wonderful use of language. What he wants is a good story, engaging characters, and plenty of exciting twists to entertain his over-active teenage brain. He is more than happy to overlook clumsier phraseology if the story itself continues to engage him. 

As an example, he was reading a book over the summer for his English class, which he detested because nothing really happened, but I absolutely adored for its stunningly abstract writing style. 

On the other hand, despite being a die-hard admirer of fine prose, I'm also a huge fan of Bernard Cornwell's novels, many of which use incredibly basic language, but nevertheless keep me pinned to the page as surely as if his grumpy Saxon warlord was gripping me by the hair and using me as a substitute for his shield in a battle. The aforementioned brother also came up to me once and declared he simply couldn't get through a chapter of a different school book because the action was made so boring by the way the book was written.

For the more detail-oriented among us, there is the eternal question of how long an author should spend polishing the language of a manuscript before considering it suitable for publication. Chasing commas around a document for hours at a time is no fun, I can tell you that. But I do like to think it's a little less important in my rollicking sword-and-sorcery fantasy romp, where I can interest the readers more in the exploits of my misadventurous hero, than in the Personal Statement that will be ruthlessly shredded by the eagle-eyed academics of university admissions departments.

It seems that we just can't win. I've even managed to confuse myself several times just by re-reading this post.

But what about you, my friends? How important is writing style to you, as a reader and / or a writer? Do you spend as much time perfecting your use of language as you do on your plot during editing? Why is that? 

Leave me a comment and let me know!

~ Charley R

26 comments:

  1. I'm a bit of both. The writing style has to interest me, and then I'll read through the most boring and cliche plot ever. On the flip side, if the plot's great (like Lord of the Rings) and the narrative doesn't grab me, I'll yawn and take over a month to read it. I'm biiig fan of an interesting narrative, but I'm not good with more classic styles. (Dear me, this comment is probably more confusing than you thought your post was--it wasn't, by the way.)

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    1. Haha, no worries, I understand what you mean - and I'd say that's probably a good thing if you're someone who likes exploring literature. Even books with the most boring concepts can have awesome literary styles.

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  2. For me personally, the characters are infinitely important. You can bash me with bad prose and a terrible plot, but if I'm completely bewitched by the characters, I'll stick it through. Second to that, is probably the plot. I DON'T have a clue how to put together words in an thought-provoking, ingenious style (and goodness knows I'm useless at grammar!), so I rely on my characters to pack the punch. (Hopefully one day they will live up to my expectations) :P And great post by the way. Not confusing!

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    1. Now THAT's interesting - but don't you find bad writing will make it harder to engage with the characters? Odds are they'll be poorly portrayed and uninteresting if the writer doesn't have a good grasp of even the most basic style. Or maybe that's just me being judgemental, haha!

      Thank you! :)

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    2. Actually, yes, that makes sense. See I can't actually *name* a book where the characters are good but the writing sucks. ;)

      Hay, now I was wondering (warning: random question coming up!) Banned Book Week is coming up (sept 30th to oct 6th if my memory serves me correct), and we're celebrating it over at our blog. Thinking of doing some fun stuff, because, well, books are awesome! So I was wondering, how would you feel about doing a guest post for us? Centering around "banned books", hopefully. Anyway, if you're interested, shoot me an email, notebooksisters(at)gmail(dot)com. If not, that's cool too! :D No angry minions will chase you down. I swear. ;)

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    3. One email, coming right up.

      Many hugs for you, you lovely person. 8D

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  3. A thought has suddenly struck me - looks at how close world is to word - just the insertion of one letter makes all the difference. But I digress.

    Words can hinder me, but what it was about Frank Herbert's Dune that cause my brian to only be able to take it in small pieces while I devoured Lord of the Ring in quick time, I don't know. Not having either book with me, I can't go looking to see why.

    I also never finished Catch-22 because I lost the plot.

    And yet, despite the overwheming urge to take a red editing pen to it, I did finally finish Brisingr by Christopher Paolini.

    I remember reading Queen of Sorcery, book 2 of David Eddings Belgarad series and hating the characters (boy was Polgara annoying and the boy - a whinny brat...) yet when I read the whole series in order I loved it.

    And what does all this mena? It means perceptions change as you grow and experience more of life, by living, writing or reading, however it happens it does. (And someday I'll try reading Catch-22, just to see if I can finish it now that I'm no longer a teen).

    I don't pay much attention to the spelling or grammar - how can I when they are my own weak points. Of course, too many run on sentences or confusing ones, and I'll probably stop if the the world and characters don't really appeal to me. There's a reason I'm a sci-fi Fantasey gril. After all why escape into a book if you're only going to be plopped right back into this messed up world. At least, that was probably my subconscious reasoning back when I was a teen. Now I'm expending my genres - but character's who blatantly lie to themselves and others knowing full well that's what they are doing - like a sopa oprah - I still can't stand them. *grin*

    As to semi colons, an issue you never address ( :P~ ), I use them when others do not... probably my technical writing training. :}

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    1. I like semicolons - I do actually use them a lot in my work, and on occasion in blog posts, but because they're so specific I don't like to misuse them.

      Great response there - kinda puts my post to shame, doesn't it? I'm too short-lived to have done much growing up yet xD

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  4. I've been thinking about this a lot. Personally, I get great plots but need to work heavily on style. Other people, such as Christopher Paolini, have great, vivid styles and no plot. The only reason he was able to get his stories off the ground is because he had a good style and copied Star Wars. Then he tried to go out on his own for the last book and lost his readership. His style is great, and you can tell he's worked on it. He can tell a story-- he just doesn't have a story to tell.
    I think that both are important, but it's better to be born with the ability to craft a great story than the ability to tell one. You can learn to make your prose ring-- it's harder to learn to make original stories.

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    1. A very good point. Though admittedly I'm the other way around - my prose isn't always great, but I like to think that if I got it right the ideas would be awesome. *sigh* We can't win, can we? xD

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    2. We can't. We're guaranteed to fail. Better just give up now and save the world a few more self-published junk books.

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    3. And set fire to ourselves and fling ourselves into the oblivion of space while we're at it. Oh, and maybe steal all the jammy dodgers in the world and take them with us.

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    4. Since we're both immortal, you propose that we spend a lifetime floating in limbo without air, light or water, flaming (which needs air or gas anyway to survive, so I don't know how you expect us to manage that for longer than a few minutes), with only biscuits to eat? I don't know who ran off with your mind, but I think it was a bad decision on their part.

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    5. My mind has been absent since the day I came into existence. I seem to have managed fine without it just far, save for a poor ability to infer sarcasm by text.

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    6. I assume sarcasm anyway. It's one of the benefits of being slightly arrogant-- you can't take an insult seriously.

      But seriously, I think I might know who did run off with your brain... There was a BT-16 spider droid who took you for a B'omarr Monk.

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    7. Thank you. This droid will be hunted down and annihilated without further ado. And to prevent any convincing distractions by convenient bearded jedi, I shall go myself.

      Run away little spider . . . I've got a rolled up newspaper the likes of which you'll never see again . . .

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    8. But... you're going to annihilate your brain at the same time? Wouldn't that be just slightly undesirable?

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    9. Why would I annihilate my brain in the process? You, sir, are clearly confused.

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    10. But... the spider droid is carrying your brain, and you're set on destroying the droid. Destroying one destroys the other, by extension. QED.

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    11. I am rather good at retrieving wanted items from things I am about to destroy. Once I have my brain reclaimed, the spider is toast.

      Make sense?

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    12. Not quite... Who's going to eat the spider toast?

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    13. I . . . don't know. Would you like to?

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  5. I was worried you were going to start knocking semi-colons. I love semi-colons.

    Personally, I'm a plot over language person. Up to a point. If I can't get into the plot because of the language, I won't try.

    I heard it described like this: the story and characters are the painting, and the writing is the glass in the frame. If it's dirty, no one can see the painting and it ruins it. If it's too elaborately engraved, you can't see the painting either.

    That's how I feel about it, too. Simply but WELL written, rather than elaborately described. I'm not a big one for things that are incredibly wordy. I do make exceptions, but as a general rule that's my policy.

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    1. Don't worry - I am a great lover of that wonderful piece of grammar too. I'm as likely to knock it as am likely to knock over the Elgin Marbles. Excluding personal clumsiness, that is.

      A fair point there - I find that attractive prose can really help a book along, though, which is why I spend so much time agonising over my own. I read far too many books that use high, complex language it seems. Gah. Curse you, pretty prose!

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    2. I think I read too much YA fic, which is the complete opposite - lots of simple language. Obviously, that's not always true, but as a general rule...

      (This also explains a lot. You look at my writing and it's like SCREW DESCRIPTION LET'S HAVE STORY and then there's you and it's like ALL OF THE PRETTY WORDS. Ehehe.)

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    3. Eyyyyyup! Opposites attract, it seems *gigglefits*

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