How do I become a better writer?

[Delirium]

Someone earlier in the thread was talking about reading to improve your writing. While I assume that this is different from reading from leisure, what exactly do you mean by that, if someone doesn't mind elaborating? I assume it's more in-depth analysis wise but you don't have to go breaking down every sentence right? What's the mindset going into that?

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IMO it's a question of reading with a semi-conscious eye towards why you like or dislike certain things. If you find yourself reading something and think 'that was a beautiful paragraph' then stop for a moment and think about what worked in it. You don't have to set out to break down every sentence (though you can, if it's a bit of writing you really like and have read before) but it's about training yourself to notice your own enjoyment and become maybe a bit more of an active participant in that experience.

Basically it's 'stop and smell the roses' but for words. You don't stop and smell every rose, but if you stumble across a patch of them that appeal to you then stop and enjoy them and think about why you're enjoying them. Be an active reader rather than a passive consumer. Make notes in the margins if you're that kind of person. Highlight sentences that appeal to you on your e-reader of choice.

And then go back to your own writing and rip them all off.

 

[Arden]

FWIW, I have yet to meet an aspiring novelist who actually cares about getting better who didn't abandon the whole "imitation is the greatest compliment" approach sooner rather than later. Wanting to grow as a writer and develop your own style that expresses your sensibilities is part of why you'd care about improving to begin with. It's the training wheels of the literary world.

 

[Ophelia]

FWIW, I have yet to meet an aspiring novelist who actually cares about getting better who didn't abandon the whole "imitation is the greatest compliment" approach sooner rather than later. Wanting to grow as a writer and develop your own style that expresses your sensibilities is part of why you'd care about improving to begin with. It's the training wheels of the literary world.

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Much like how a great chef must taste other's food, a great writer must read other's work. The twists and turns and innovations that both bring to what was originally presented is where the artistry is. (This is to agree with you.)

 

[Arden]

Much like how a great chef must taste other's food, a great writer must read other's work. The twists and turns and innovations that both bring to what was originally presented is where the artistry is. (This is to agree with you.)

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I once read a quote by Picasso on that particular subject that went to the general sentiment of "the reason my art looks like it does because I have already mastered every existing technique and style and find them all unsatisfying as they are. If you want to break the "rules" you were taught, you have to first know what you are breaking them for." I don't remember the actual wording - it was probably a lot snappier - but that was more-or-less the idea he expressed.

 

[Ablative Id]

Wanted to share this article:
Angela Carter and the "So Fucking What?" Approach to Writing

Angela Carter and the "So Fucking What?" Approach to Writing

Recommending The Bloody Chamber for your October reading pile

countercraft.substack.com

And ask if this is good or bad?

I remember how, that night, I lay awake in the wagon-lit in a tender, delicious ecstasy of excitement, my burning cheek pressed against the impeccable linen of the pillow and the pounding of my heart mimicking that of the great pistons ceaselessly thrusting the train that bore me through the night, away from Paris, away from girlhood, away from the white, enclosed quietude of my mother's apartment, into the unguessable country of marriage.

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Edit: also this:

It is a northern country; they have cold weather, they have cold hearts.

Cold; tempest; wild beasts in the forest. It is a hard life. Their houses are built of logs, dark and smoky within. There will be a crude icon of the virgin behind a guttering candle, the leg of a pig hung up to cure, a string of drying mushrooms. A bed, a stool, a table. Harsh, brief, poor lives.

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[Arden]

"Why try to write well? Just write hot garbage instead, there are people who will buy it anyway" is certainly a take. The only thing I'd do with a novel written like that would be to laugh at it and then throw it into the nearest bin.

 

[Ablative Id]

It goes against most everything I've learned. Except, as a descriptive passage, the text reflects the subject.

Bloody Chamber's long sentence structure mimics the long train and the flow of consciousness, and the text points that out with "pounding of my heart mimicking that of the great pistons".

The Werewolf (edited in later, sorry) does the same. It is "Harsh, brief," like the life it describes.

Are you not entertained?

Makes me rethink my style.

 

[Arden]

Are you not entertained?

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No, in fact, I am not. I would not eat a charcoal briquette drenched in grease on the basis that someone deigned to call it "a steak." The fact that someone would try to sell it as one would not make me rethink my entire idea of cooking, it just makes me despair at how gullible people can be. Why try hard to be a good writer when you can just fail at it and decide to put all that effort into convincing people that writing good prose never mattered at all?

Using bad style intentionally does not make it any less bad style. If you willfully choose write something that reminds me of nothing so much as The Eye of Argon, then all you've demonstrated is that you approach art in the same way a lawyer chasing after an ambulance approaches basic human decency.

 

[Ablative Id]

For the sake of completeness and comparison, The Eye of Argon, popularly consider the worst fantasy novella ever:

A fuzzy form bounded to his hairy chest, burying its talons in his flesh while gnashing toward his throat with its grinding white teeth;its sour, fetid breath scortching the sqirming barbarians dilating nostrils. Grignr grappled with the lashing flexor muscles of the repugnant body of a garganuan brownhided rat, striving to hold its razor teeth from his juicy jugular, as its beady grey organs of sight glazed into the flaring emeralds of its prey.

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Due to his high succeptibility following the siezure, the priest was transformed into a raving maniac bent soley upon reaking vengeance. With lips curled and quivering, a crust of foam dripping from them, the acolyte drew a long, wicked looking jewel hilted scimitar from his silver girdle and fled through the aperature in the ceiling uttering a faintly perceptible ceremonial jibberish.

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Source: TVTropes. Note there was no auto-spellcheck in the 70's.

Angela Carter wrote in the 60's. Maybe it's an era thing?

 

[Arden]

Angela Carter wrote in the 60's. Maybe it's an era thing?

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Nabokov's Lolita (now there's a masterpiece of lyrical, but well-flowing prose) was written in 1955 and sounds nothing like either of these, so if it's period-typical, it's probably so in the sense of being typical for writing of that era that is just not very good.

 

[Ablative Id]

Just read Angela Carter's "The Company of Wolves". Published in The Bloody Chamber and Other Stories, 1979.

It's a fairy tale tribute with a modern (for the time) moral. Style is flowing with repetitions of certain phrases, like "The wolf is carnivore incarnate" leading to an opening like this:

One beast and only one howls in the woods by night.
The wolf is carnivore incarnate and he's as cunning as he is ferocious; once he's had a taste of
flesh then nothing else will do.
At night, the eyes of wolves shine like candle flames, yellowish, reddish, but that is because the
pupils of their eyes fatten on darkness and catch the light from your lantern to flash it back to you – red
for danger; if a wolf's eyes reflect only moonlight, then they gleam a cold and unnatural green, a
mineral, a piercing colour. If the benighted traveller spies those luminous, terrible sequins stitched
suddenly on the black thickets, then he knows he must run, if fear has not struck him stock-still.
But those eyes are all you will be able to glimpse of the forest assassins as they cluster invisibly
round your smell of meat as you go through the wood unwisely late. They will be like shadows, they
will be like wraiths, grey members of a congregation of nightmare; hark! his long, wavering howl . . . an
aria of fear made audible.
The wolfsong is the sound of the rending you will suffer, in itself a murdering.

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There's about 2 pages of this, and anecdotes of werewolf stories (never using the word werewolf). This establishes the theme, which is some men are wolves and that's dangerous.

And it's a little boring, hard to get through. The style is florid, breathless, sensational.

Sentence structure has variety, if you're into that type of thing.

Page 3 (the 50% mark), introduces Red Riding Hood and the other theme, which is sex, adding it to the previous theme, so it's sexual danger.

This caught my attention and now I'm hooked.

Children do not stay young for long in this savage country. There are no toys for them to play
with so they work hard and grow wise but this one, so pretty and the youngest of her family, a little
late-comer, had been indulged by her mother and the grandmother who'd knitted her the red shawl
that, today, has the ominous if brilliant look of blood on snow; her breasts have just begun to swell; her
hair is like lint, so fair it hardly makes a shadow on her pale forehead; her cheeks are an emblematic
scarlet and white and she has just started her woman's bleeding, the clock inside her that will strike,
henceforward, once a month.
She stands and moves within the invisible pentacle of her own virginity. She is an unbroken
egg; she is a sealed vessel; she has inside her a magic space the entrance to which is shut tight with a
plug of membrane; she is a closed system; she does not know how to shiver. She has her knife and she
is afraid of nothing.

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Theme's established, plot started, the suspension builds, a familiar story unfolding with detail. We get to Granny's house and this kick ass couplet:

We keep the wolves outside by living well.
He rapped upon the panels with his hairy knuckles.

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That's where the build up pays off. The juxtaposition evokes fear with simplicity. Ideas have been placed in my head and triggered. Suddenly this is the best story ever.

And so on.

This story is studied in schools, but I ain't here to write an essay. Just making notes to figure out what good writing is.

Conclusion:

Without context the style is shit. Pick a paragraph and it probably fails any modern line-by-line criteria.

With context, it's got depth and complexity and meaning. The subject elevates it and the style becomes appropriate.

Lesson learned. Don't judge without context. Also, be bold and holistic in writing. Also also, this is how to write fanfic.

The Company of Wolves is about 6 pages long and a recommended read.

Excuse the mess. Figured it better to share than not.

What's your thoughts?

 

[Arden]

What's your thoughts?

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It's better than the other one. Mildly. "Her hair is like lint."



What an incredible mental image. Truly, I feel like my mind has been painted upon by Michelangelo himself.

Look, I am going to be honest with you: without reading both of these novels myself, my take on them is going to be limited. Based on everything you have shown me so far, though? I get the impression of someone who could've been better than she was, but didn't care to try. There are hints of someone who cares about writing in there, the occasional turn of phrase that makes me think "talent," but by and large? It reeks of laziness.

 

[Ablative Id]

Thanks for the honesty. I had the same thought, and looked twice at the same line.

But when I got to the end, I re-contextualized everything before. Now I want to be generous in interpretation.

lint (noun)
1)
a : a soft fleecy material made from linen usually by scraping
b : fuzz consisting especially of fine ravelings and short fibers of yarn and fabric
2
: a fibrous coat of thick convoluted hairs borne by cotton seeds that yields the cotton staple

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I think the author alluded to definition 1 a: "a soft fleecy material". There's also a rhythm or something to it.

It is purple and indulgent. But lazy? Not sure.

Bad? ... On balance, maybe yes. But if you offer something good, you can get away with bad.

 

[Arden]

Bad? ... On balance, maybe yes. But if you offer something good, you can get away with bad.

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To a degree. Now, I will be honest: I take pleasure in praising writers for what they do well, and she did do some things well.

She does not know how to shiver. She has her knife and she is afraid of nothing.

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This is a line to build a damn paragraph on and I respect it for that.

"The dead do not know fear. In the eyes of the wolf, she saw her death, and so she was dead. The dead do not know fear, and so she did not know fear. What she knew was her knife, and she knew it, and there she stood. And she did not know fear."

You can make something from this that is not some... weird, hamhanded, ridiculous simile about virginity that revolves around her being plugged up like a potato stuffed inside of an exhaust pipe.

 

[Ablative Id]

You can make something from this that is not some... weird, hamhanded, ridiculous simile about virginity that revolves around her being plugged up like a potato stuffed inside of an exhaust pipe.

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It caught my attention. It's deliberately ridiculous and more symbolic than anything. Someone on reddit/menwritingwomen defends it perfectly:

Angela Carter does a lot of things like this when discussing sexuality to bring out shock and disgust to make her point get across better. She's a heavily feminist writer, especially with her fairy tale adaptations, so this is hard to see as anything but purposely symbolic of how men/the wolf will see her from now on, and how that puts her in danger. It's gross to read, but in context it feels pretty effective at what it's going for.

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https://www.reddit.com/r/menwritingwomen/comments/xizcbk/idk_if_this_fits_was_written_by_a_woman_maybe_im/

Spoiler: in the end she tames the big bad wolf by not being afraid of sex.

(Incidentally, I don't want to argue the moral of the story because squick. But it sure was interesting to read.)

 

[Arden]

It caught my attention. It's deliberately ridiculous and more symbolic than anything. Someone on reddit/menwritingwomen defends it perfectly:

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Feminism, to speak entirely personally, is a non-argument to me, because the thought of thinking of women as anything less than my equal has literally never occurred to me. I just didn't grow up that way. If it's not worth reading without the socio-political aspect, it isn't worth reading at all. I would've been more interested in what you thought of my own prose take on the concept.

 

[Ablative Id]

I would've been more interested in what you thought of my own prose take on the concept.

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Okay, if you won't be offended, I'll workshop it.

"The dead do not know fear. In the eyes of the wolf, she saw her death, and so she was dead. The dead do not know fear, and so she did not know fear. What she knew was her knife, and she knew it, and there she stood. And she did not know fear."

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Spoiler: workshop

It would grab my attention if it was dropped in a more normal prose story. So it can work as is.

But it's wordy and repetitive. The use of "fear" is a direct emotion, and I usually consider it better to use physical symptoms instead of naming emotions.

Let's break it down:

"The dead do not know fear."
Powerful opening.

"In the eyes of the wolf, she saw her death, and so she was dead."
Strong follow up. Clear meaning: she is afraid, so she will die.

"The dead do not know fear, and so she did not know fear."
Muddled? The implications are that she is dead, or she feels dead. Must be the latter, but I've had to pause for thought and that's bad flow.

"What she knew was her knife, and she knew it, and there she stood."
Feels off. I think anything after knife could be cut without losing meaning. Were they included to parallel the second line's structure? If so, it could be much more parallel.
"and she knew it" might indicate a deeper defiance that gives the character more agency or display interiority, but I don't know, so I'm inclined to cut and let the reader fill in.

"And she did not know fear."
Strong finish, reflecting the opening.

To workshop it, first thing I'd do is reduce the repetition by removing "and" while tweaking other words. Keep some repetition for effect.

"The dead do not know fear. In the eyes of the wolf, she saw her death, and so she died. The dead do not know fear. What she knew was her knife. So she did not know fear."

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Slightly more concise, direct, and cleaner. Loses rhythm.

But let's replace "fear" with "shiver". And while writing it, I saw opportunity to parallel, so I did.

"The dead do not shiver. In the eyes of the wolf, she saw her death, and so she died. The dead do not shiver. What she knew was her knife, so there she stood, and did not shiver."

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I considered, hitting the reader over the head with the metaphor. And why not use present tense. I like present tense.

"The dead do not shiver. In the eyes of the wolf, she sees her death, and so she dies. The dead do not shiver. What she knows is her knife. So there she stands, still as the dead, and does not shiver."

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And I guess... Adjusted 2: Electric Boogaloo is better? It's got a better parallel structure, and no clunky addition. And so I stop.

Result:

"The dead do not shiver. In the eyes of the wolf, she saw her death, and so she died. The dead do not shiver. What she knew was her knife, so there she stood, and did not shiver."

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But if the paragraph was included alongside this:

She does not know how to shiver. She has her knife and she is afraid of nothing.

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I would consider any reiteration redundant.

So that's what I think.