Flowery?

When you reach 50 posts you can submit a piece of work to the Share Your Work forum and you'll be able to get better feedback on your writing there.
For now I would say it seems that you are using a lot of words that don't need to be there and your sentences could perhaps be more concise. I wouldn't use the term flowery but it doesn't flow naturally when you read it.

Perhaps you would like suggestions on how to avoid flowery writing?

eilish said:

"In all likelihood, Josh was sure, had he skipped going altogether Andrew would have recollected his usual calm demeanor and been much more cordial upon their next meeting. And perhaps if Josh had not chosen to take that route and not pushed the perpetually creaky front door open things would have gone differently. However on that particular day his conscious couldn't bare for him to not go. So things did not go differently. He proceeded to push open the brightly painted blue door and hoped to high hell that the cheerfulness it exuded was not some ironic contrast with the gale he might meet on the other side.

It was, but we'll get to that later. For now, Josh crossed into the threshold of his older brother's house."

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To me, this style sounds like a period novel told by a female narrator. This is how novels like Jane Austen's would sound, but it isn't typically how contemporary YA fiction sounds. Without knowing more about the story, I can't say if this is a problem in itself, but I would say the language is "flowery."

Mandiloo322 said:

To me, this style sounds like a period novel told by a female narrator. This is how novels like Jane Austen's would sound, but it isn't typically how contemporary YA fiction sounds. Without knowing more about the story, I can't say if this is a problem in itself, but I would say the language is "flowery."

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Exactly my thought. The voice is antique, which can work in certain scenarios, but not if it's regular YA contemporary.

eilish said:

"In all likelihood, Josh was sure that if he hadn't gone he skipped goingaltogether Andrew would have recollected his usual calm demeanor and been much more cordial polite upon their next meeting later. And perhaps maybe if Josh had not chosen to take that route and not pushed the perpetually creaky front door open things would have gone differently. However on that particular day his conscious couldn't bare for him to not to go. So things did not go differently. He proceeded to pushed open the brightly painted blue door and hoped to high hell that the cheerfulness it exuded was not some ironic contrast with the gale he might meet on the other side a storm wasn't on the other side.

It was, but we'll get to that later. (Inserting the narrator in this way was is also an old style that's not used very much now). For now, Josh crossed into the threshold of entered his older brother's house."

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These are some suggestions on how to make the story read more naturally. It seems your natural style is to be wordier, so this may cause a lot of work for you. A good trick is to read it out loud to yourself to hear how it sounds. (Writers are doomed to talk to themselves anyway, either acting out characters' scenes or reading the scenes later on). Generally writers agree that using the fewest words to convey the most meaning is the way to go, but that's easier said than done, and everyone has a unique style/voice.

Also keep in mind that if your protagonist is male, it sounds odd for his life to be narrated by a feminine voice.

I hope this helps! Once you have 50 posts feel free to submit longer sections in "Share Your Work" for better critiques.

eilish said:

My writing style itself doesn't really fit into the YA contemporary niche, but that's the genre I write, I'm struggling to find a compromise between the two. Advice?

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For a basic compromise, I would just concentrate on keeping your sentences simpler and shorter, and keeping your vocabulary more current and casual. (i.e. "polite" vs. "cordial")

Haha, that happens to me too! I can't let myself write anything for a few days after reading classics.

Good luck!

eilish said:

My writing style itself doesn't really fit into the YA contemporary niche, but that's the genre I write, I'm struggling to find a compromise between the two. Advice?

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Read, read, read your genre. Absorb the pacing, style, and language, letting it blend with your own.

You don't have to imitate the dominant style to the letter, and you shouldn't relinquish your own personal style, but this definitely reads as too verbose for contemp YA.

It's not that it's "flowery"--it's that it takes a whole paragraph for a character to go through a door, and the narration doesn't do much to develop character or paint a scene or any of the other things narration should do. It's just Josh speculating about stuff in a vague way with a hint of foreshadowing. I didn't find it compelling, so the verbosity came across as tedious.

Verbosity isn't necessarily a bad thing. Sometimes that's a writer's style. It just needs to also be compelling.

Don't get caught in the trap of oversimplifying, either.

I've gotten a few suggestions for line edits by amateurs who proposed some god awful changes to what I had in place. They didn't like that I'd use a grown-up word to communicate something succintly, and their suggestions sometimes meant stretching a sentence out to what the above poster describes as "verbose."

You have to know the appropriate middle ground when it comes to this kind of feedback. Usually when something comes off as "too purple" in YA, it's because you spent too much time describing something unimportant. Busting out the occasional fancy word is fine, in my opinion, as long as it's relevant.

YA readers aren't going to condemn you if they learn a new word or five.

Also keep in mind that if your protagonist is male, it sounds odd for his life to be narrated by a feminine voice.

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I am containing violent thoughts against you right now. Don't even start that bollocks.

May I ask, OP, why you are writing contemporary YA when it isn't suited to your voice?

Maybe you could help not just eilish out, but a lot of other writers too, but explaining a bit more of what 'YA voice' is? Is it a certain style? What doesn't fit in?

Spy_on_the_Inside said:

Maybe you could help not just eilish out, but a lot of other writers too, but explaining a bit more of what 'YA voice' is? Is it a certain style? What doesn't fit in?

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Excuse me?

That was actually a genuine question. I really want to know why Eilish chose YA when he or she could write a book in another genre that would be better suited to his or her voice.

As for your comment, maybe you should think before you jump on someone. Especially someone who has been here for a while. As opposed to someone who's been here for 5 mins.

Yeesh!

For the op:

I don't find it 'antique' or dated so much as confusing. When I read Austen, sure her sentences are long and complex but I can follow her chain of thought without difficulty.

This writing, for me, is confusing. I had to stop reading after a few words, go back and sort of re-orient myself. You also have made either a few misspellings or very poor word choices.

SYW is the place for you to go, imo.

mirandashell said:

As for your comment, maybe you should think before you jump on someone. Especially someone who has been here for a while. As opposed to someone who's been here for 5 mins.

Yeesh!

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But that was an actual question. I really do want to know what makes YA language different from language found in a book gear towards an older audience. Is it style? Is it word choice? Is it even sentence structure and topic? I feel like these things would be very useful to know (even if rather selfishly for my own writing, more than for the community as a whole).

I thought you put forth an interesting point about langauge styles in YA and I was hoping to know more specifics. And the question wasn't just directed at you. A lot of people are commenting on how language fits into YA, and I was hoping maybe to start a dialogue on what those could be.

Sigh... 'Tis so hard to imply tone of voice in forums, I am finding. Not just here, but forums I have been a part of for years.

Ok, I accept you didn't jump on me. I'm sorry I snarled.

And yes, we all have times when the tone of our post doesn't come out as we meant.

But that is up to us to take care of what we say as writers. If you had aimed your post at everyone in a general way, it wouldn't have looked like it was directed at me.

Anyway, none of this is helping the OP.

I don't know how to make a voice more suitable for YA. I neither read nor write it. I just asked why the OP is, imo, making life hard for themselves. For me, the voice is more suited to a literary work.

@Miranda for the sake of your sanity, you should try to assume the tone of a post is neutral unless it's overtly aggressive. Spy's question was pretty benign.

@OP this passage has some fundamental issues. I think whether or not it's flowery should be the least of your concerns right now. Definitely work on getting fifty posts, but also be sure to read the other critiques in SYW. I've seen (and critiqued) similar styles over there.

Ok, I'm walking away now....

eilish said:

My writing style itself doesn't really fit into the YA contemporary niche, but that's the genre I write, I'm struggling to find a compromise between the two. Advice?

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Take a look at your own posts on the forum. Your natural chatting-to-forum-people tone doesn't sound like the Victorian era. Contemporary writing is something you can already do, because you're doing it right here.

Spy_on_the_Inside said:

But that was an actual question. I really do want to know what makes YA language different from language found in a book gear towards an older audience. Is it style? Is it word choice? Is it even sentence structure and topic? I feel like these things would be very useful to know (even if rather selfishly for my own writing, more than for the community as a whole).

I thought you put forth an interesting point about langauge styles in YA and I was hoping to know more specifics. And the question wasn't just directed at you. A lot of people are commenting on how language fits into YA, and I was hoping maybe to start a dialogue on what those could be.

Sigh... 'Tis so hard to imply tone of voice in forums, I am finding. Not just here, but forums I have been a part of for years.

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It's not just about the voice not suiting contemporary YA, it also wouldn't suit contemporary Adult - unless of course the adult was someone who wished they lived in a different era and narrated his life as such.

YA has many different voices depending on genre and the characters that populate the story. If it's historical it might sound a bit like the OP's post did, if it's contemporary it tends to read the way contemporary people communicate. But that's not all, if say the OP was creating a timetravel book and one of the characters was from the past traveling to our world and the story was told from his POV, well then of course it would sound old fashioned. Just as if a contemporary person time traveled to the past would result in a more contemporary voice in an old fashioned world.

There is so much more to writing than just writing however you feel like it. But if you want to write with a certain voice, then you might want to choose the right genre to suit that voice. So if your preference is to write with a more old fashioned voice, then why not write historical instead of contemporary?

Also, I agree with jaksen. The bigger problem with the OP's post isn't as much the old fashioned writing in a contemporary setting, it's just it's not put together that well. It's confusing. And not in a "Well I can't understand more florid language" way (I read plenty of classic lit, and do enjoy mimicking those writing styles myself on occasion - heck even just in day to day to speech). The paragraph just isn't as well put together as it could be.

At any rate, I'm with the others who wonder why the OP doesn't just write a historical work?