style
Rllgthunder said:
It makes me wonder if there are writers who abandon their initial style, which could be fresh and untested, out of fear that their writing is not of the same caliber of, say, their favorite author.
With the new avenues of E-publishing opening up will this begin to change writing as a whole, as agents and publishers begin to see readers reacting in a manner that goes against the status quo?
Agents and editors are not going to see readers reacting in a manner that goes against the status quo because there is no such thing as the status quo.
Ths makes it sound like you believe readers have never had the chance to compare tell and show, of that there's something "fresh and untested" about not using show, or that unpoiublished writers have some natural style that hasn't been tested. There isn't. Both tell and show, and every variation thereof, have been around for centuries, and readers have simply, over and over and over, preferred show to tell. Pretty much any style you can imagine has been tried and tested repeatedly. Those readers like stick around, and those readers don't like fall by the wayside.
All good novels have some amount of tell in them, there are always places where show works best, and always places where tell works best, but, seriously, why would anyone want to read tell in action scenes, or in any other place when show simply works far better for readers?
Show isn't the way publishers arbitrarily decided novels should be written, and certainly the way novels are written because readers haven't had the chance to read tell more than anyone wishes.
Writing primarily in show is what publishers want because centuries of experimentation prove beyond doubt that it's what the vast majority of readers want. Likewise, tell is not something fresh and untested, it's something that has also been in use for centuries, and something readers have show through their buying habits that they don't want.
E-publishing isn't doing very well, and those instances where it does work comes when the writer gives the reader what the reader wants, which nearly always means writing that uses far more show than tell.
If there is any such thing as "fresh and untested," I haven't seen it. It's all been done before. Over and over and over. And in all honesty, many new writers need to get over the notion that style is why some writers sell well and others can't get published. It's true enough that many new writers simply can't write well, but this aside, style should be the easy part, and arguing about style is like arguing about whether writers should use English or Hieroglyphics. New writers worry about style when readers have shown repeatedly what style they want. They want a fair amount of show in any action scene, and they want fairly simple, competent writing.
Readers want a good story, and they want that story filled with good characters who speak good dialogue. Of course show works better than tell in most parts of a novel. Of course readers prefer show over tell in most parts of a novel. But what readers really want is a good story that has good flow and that is filled with good characters who speak good dialogue. When a writer fails to sell, and has any sort of competent style at all, the reason he fails is because he isn't giving the reader a good story, filled with good characters who speak good dialogue.
This is the hard part of writing, and the part very few manage to do.
