Bad Writer vs Simple Writer
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Bad writing is generally worse than simple writing. Unless the simple writing is simply bad.
EDIT: I don't think there's a problem if you write simply. See: Hemmingway. But you should be doing so because that's what you prefer, and not because that's the only style you're capable of writing.
EDIT: I don't think there's a problem if you write simply. See: Hemmingway. But you should be doing so because that's what you prefer, and not because that's the only style you're capable of writing.
Bad writing is where the writer fails to put the intended image into the reader's mind for whatever reason.
Simple writing puts the intended image into the reader's mind, but doesn't use a lot of complicated means to do so.
You keep things simple. Good for you.
No idea what you mean by simple, but Clarity is king and simplicity is the key to clarity.
No idea what you mean by simple, but Clarity is king and simplicity is the key to clarity.
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Well, if you saw a horse in a field, you might write:
1) A horse grazed in the field.
or
2) There was a horse it was in a field and then it ate some grass and then it stopped eating the grass and it was still in the field
One of these is probably not good writing and I think we'd agree as to which one.
(Unless you are secretly Cormac McCarthy.)
You'd have to get that from the horse's mannerisms, I suppose. You couldn't just tell it. It would twitch its hoof in that certain way only aspiring accountants have.
Good writing is being able to describe horses from the inside.
Bad writing is bad it is not good people don't like to read bad writing even if it is simple and you don't needs no dictionaries for it and simple not hard if it is bad writing said the girl happily with a laughing smile!
It's not either/or.
It's not either/or.
You have to take the time to listen to the horse.
You can't spend all day riding a girl and not wonder about her hopes and dreams between smacking her on the backside with a riding crop.
Simple can mean several things including, but I'm sure not limited to, straightforward prose, characters we can understand very well, non-convoluted plots, etc.
Bad can be any of a huge range of things: flat characters, cliches, stereotypes, confusingly complex prose, plots with no flow, etc. I'm inspired by Gilead, so I'll take a crack at some examples.
1. Margaret walked into the room. It was pretty bare, the only thing that stood out the hideous zebra-print couch that Mrs. Barnes sat on.
or
2. Margaret got into the room. When Margaret got into the room, there wasn't a lot of stuff. But the stuff that Margaret saw was: a coffee table with lots of magazines like Cosmo and stuff on it, a statue of the Buddha, and a couch which had a print. The print was a zebra one. Aggie Barnes, Zack's neighbor's aunt, was on the couch.
Bad can be any of a huge range of things: flat characters, cliches, stereotypes, confusingly complex prose, plots with no flow, etc. I'm inspired by Gilead, so I'll take a crack at some examples.
1. Margaret walked into the room. It was pretty bare, the only thing that stood out the hideous zebra-print couch that Mrs. Barnes sat on.
or
2. Margaret got into the room. When Margaret got into the room, there wasn't a lot of stuff. But the stuff that Margaret saw was: a coffee table with lots of magazines like Cosmo and stuff on it, a statue of the Buddha, and a couch which had a print. The print was a zebra one. Aggie Barnes, Zack's neighbor's aunt, was on the couch.
WHY ARE WE INSIDE A HORSE?
(Awesomely, or distressingly, enough, my WIP includes a scene wherein a dead horse goes to Ikea. It's probably the best book ever with such a scene.)
(Awesomely, or distressingly, enough, my WIP includes a scene wherein a dead horse goes to Ikea. It's probably the best book ever with such a scene.)
The horse was a dapple gray and dined on bystanders who asked too many questions.
Also, I did consider including the colour of the horse at first, but I was worried the thread might get diverted into an argument about either the use of adjectives or the correct terminology for identifying colours of horse.
I see now how silly I was.
A historian, a physical scientist, and a statistician were riding on a train together to a new country.
When they arrived in the new land, the historian looked out the window and saw a brown horse grazing and proclaimed, "Wow, the horses in this country are brown!" having only seen black and gray horses all his life.
The scientist said, "No, we have discovered that horses exist in this country, and one of them is brown."
The statistician replies, "Gentlemen, we have observed that at least one horse exists in this country, at least one side of which is brown."
The horse says, "I prefer to call myself auburn with chestnut highlights, myself."
When they arrived in the new land, the historian looked out the window and saw a brown horse grazing and proclaimed, "Wow, the horses in this country are brown!" having only seen black and gray horses all his life.
The scientist said, "No, we have discovered that horses exist in this country, and one of them is brown."
The statistician replies, "Gentlemen, we have observed that at least one horse exists in this country, at least one side of which is brown."
The horse says, "I prefer to call myself auburn with chestnut highlights, myself."
Paul
Banned
And if it's that horse from The Brothers Grimm, it's bloated and knock kneed, and has spiders up its nose. It also eats small children.
Wait . . . are we still talking about horses?
Wait . . . are we still talking about horses?
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Ron was a bacteria. He was a bacteria and he was damn good at it. He lived in a horse, a dun with a dorsal stripe, and this black lines on its legs, it was a Norwegian Fjord and it was just tall enough not to be a pony, which is 14.3 hands. And the horse had this thing called a cecum and Ron lived in it, which is an organ. Eventually Ron bacterizing the hay and things would create poop. Forty pounds of excrement a day, that was the quota, and by Jesus and Ahura Mazda and Bacxtror the Beetle Lord, Ron and all the other bacteria were all over that business.
Ron looked in the mirror. He was wiggly and circular sometimes, and greenish and brown, and he had eyes like a penetrating moon forest on a distant planet made of sparkles and glowworms.
(Etc)
I love you.
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