I actually agree with you that this is the case sometimes, but I don't think it's a problem with rules. If you've been around this board for a while, you know that some people are against prologues, unhappy endings, first person present tense, profanity etc and simply won't read books that have them. These aren't even rules, but it doesn't matter. Even a preference or an opinion can be wrongly generalized or taken to extremes.
That's possibly true. Everything can be over-generalised. Still, I think anything prefaced with a "don't X" when you first encounter the idea (especially if you have to look up the X) has a headstart. Not sure, and not a very strong point anyway. Still...
But good teachers and writers know that rules have limits and they say so. For instance, in On Writing Well, William Zinsser says that 'Most adverbs are unnecessary'. He never says 'Don't use adverbs'. One of the examples he gives is 'Don't tell us that the radio blared loudly; "blare" connotes loudness. [...] Don't use adverbs unless they do necessary work. Spare us the news that the winning athlete grinned widely.' How can you disagree with it?
Well, if I put "blared loudly" and plain "blared" side by side, I imagine a higher degree of noise in the former. Are you familiar with
Grice's mxims? It's a concept from pragmatics that states that people interpret words as if they have meaning. (Ironically, they're formulated as rules. Lol.) In any case, the result is that "loudly" in "blared loudly" has the implication of "blared more loudly than you'd expect your avarage blare to blare". That is: it's not redundant but introduces degree. Of course, whether that is the case has to be determined in context; and even if it could express degree it might not be relevant to express degree.
Second, it could function as emphasis, in much the same way that people sometimes repeat words. A variation of this is "foreshadowing" on the sentence level: "Loudly the trumpets blared."
A combination of degree and emphasis could result in a "crescendo effect", simulating emotional escalation: "The trumpets blared. Loudly. Very Loudly. Very, very loudly." (The trumpets don't get louder; the narrator keeps correcting him/herself.)
Then there's sentence rhythm, where emphasis is not warranted by itself, but way the sound flows an extra word inserted for, say, breathing space might be warranted. ("Blared" is a stressed syllable, and so it "loud", so that there's a small pause in between. It's a rising-falling structure: /-\ A bit like that.)
The thing is: when people talk about "necessary" they almost always judge information value only. But that's a very stripped down writing style. Many writers use words also for effect (be it degree, emphasis or rhythm).
As I say, it's not so much about disagreeing with it, as it's about a "reduced picture". In what context does Zinsser say this? I wouldn't object if this was part of a topic like, say, "information control". How do you make sure you're avoiding redundancies? How do you get the most out of the least words? Then you'd get a list of examples: adjectives, adverbs, linking verbs, auxiliary verbs, articles... Basically, you first disuss the difference between words that provide function and words that provide content, and then you talk about how to reduce the ratio of function:content words. You make sure that there is no absolute point of "noise control". You can never say how much is too much. Then you discuss the problem of too view function words (no breathing space, image overload, more demanding sentence parsing because of too little cues...). Next you go on to reference: Does every content word give unique information? Are you repeating a point with multiple words? This is where adverbs come in as prime offenders, together with adjectives. But then you go on to less obvious stuff, as verb-noun relations and expectations: "to saddle a horse" where "horse" is usually already expected by the time you say "saddle", so there might be an opportunity to reduce explicit concepts ("He saddled his horse, Jersey..." vs. "He saddled Jersey..." vs. "He saddled his giant spider, Jersey..."). And so on. (I can't even answer a simple question without rambling, can I?)
On the other hand, if the point comes up in a discussion on adverbs it misrepresents the picture. The redundancy is not the fault of the adverb. Yet you hear: "adverb" and "unnecessary" in close proximity, and instead of wanting to learn to use them effectively, you'll want to try to use them as little as possible. The former allows you more elbow room, I think, psychologically (but it may overwhelm more timid writers with too much responsibility all at once), though in the end both may lead to similar routs.
I personally think that any way you phrase an observation that allows the writer to experiment and exert their own judgement is more fun, makes for better motivation, more confidence, and ultimately a richer writing environment, because it encourages variety over conformity. It doesn't mean that anything goes, but - ideally - it would engender curiosity about what others have come up with.
Not a number comparison, however well-meaning. I mean I heard things like "one adverb per page" as a helpful rule of thumb. But the rule doesn't hit all writers the same way. Some people's "natural style" may be more adverb intensive than other people's style. That's not a bad thing, necessarily.
On another board someone quoted someone else talking about your "first voice". That's how you would sound if you'd write without any preconceptions of how a story
should sound. It sounds counterintuitive, but discovering your first voice is
hard. You have all sorts of pre-conceptions of what makes the writing you enjoy "good", and you don't trust yourself to have that power. That's why we look for external stuff and lap up rules. Ever heard the "rule", sometimes taught in schools, that you should liven up your stories with adjectives and adverbs? I have. Now imagine people believing that (I did, early on). They would use too many adjectives and adverbs, wouldn't they? Now imagine agents and publishers. Suddenly "Don't use adverbs," sounds plausible, doesn't it?
One of my very first writing rules, I was about twelve and discovered it for myself, was this: you must say things in "original" ways. I honestly thought that that's what makes fiction good. I wasn't exectly a brilliant writer before twelve, but at least I didn't spout nonsense like "his footsteps steered towards..." (Ugh!)
I just think that rooting out such misconceptions about writing would be more helpful than countering them with new ones (never mind how much more sophisticated they are). Up to a point, "Liven up your prose with adverbs and adjectives" cancel each other out. But you don't really learn anything in the process - and if you do, you learn that the truth is somewhere in between, which is probably where you would have started out with
without any of these rules. And what would happen if you hit someone with the "Don't use adverbs," rule who happens to use - without ever thinking about it - "just the right amount of adverbs" (subjective; humour me - it's complicated enough)? Wouldn't they overcompensate?
Pretty much everything in writing is a balancing act, as far as I can tell. Present it as such if you can.
Well, here's another monster post and I'm exhausted. I know it's not an easy issue. I appreciate the time you all take reading my posts; I know it can't be easy, since I tend to confuse myself, too, and the topic is pretty confusing to begin with. I hope I did make some sense in my take on Zinsser. If it was an article, I'd let it rest for the night, but do that on a message board and the thread has moved on leaving your effort moot. (Some posts get deleted instead of posted, because a post that overtook me rendered my post moot...)
MetalDog said:
You say you're into literary novels though, yes? I find an awful lot of them unreadable. It's probable that an entirely different set of rules apply when story and character take a distant back seat to theme. I'd be very surprised if there were no rules.
Actually, I'd say I'm into
reading. I've managed to enjoy
Harry Potter as much as, say,
At Swim Two Birds. I didn't enjoy
Pride and Prejudice all that much, though I can appreciate the craft (which is I could tell you how I would have to change to enjoy it). I quite enjoyed
Locke Lamorra, and I love Woolf's
Orlando. What I may have said (I can't remember what I actually posted and what I typed and delted before posting) is that I have an education in literary criticicism. This is different.
When I was at university, I argued both against the division into high culture and low culture, and against the tendency of some postmodernist to treat everything as "text" and ignore all differences. I was mostly interested in reader response criticism, which isn't much about real readers and real response, and more about describing the "implied reader" (term by Wolfgang Iser), which constructs the optimal traits a reader can have to enjoy a particular text. And also "narratology", which is a French and German dominated theory about "narrative" (Stenzel, Genet), which takes off from a phenomenological discussion of how people "construct" texts: that is a sequential analysis of hints of what is narrator, and what is character in a text. These were my favourites, and probably inform most of my theoretical stance.
You'd be very surprised if there were no rules? Rightly so. Rules abound; and every single one has at least one counter rule. They're all either associated with schools of criticism or with writer movements. I don't know if you read genre. In genre we've recently had discussions between "mundane SF" (a group around Geoff Ryman) and Ian McDonald (lone writer), which was a discussion about topics. Another example, probably better known, is the New Weird vs. the Tolkienesque (mostly Mieville, really).
If I put a bit of thought into it, I bet I could place them on a "theory grid". A bit of realism tinged with stream-of-consciousness techniques, a dislike of overt narration, pared down language, focus on content over form... I should be able to come up with something, but I'd rather not. It's a time sink, history was never my strength, and I doubt it's all that relevant. (I think that might actually blend on some level with what NeuroFizz is saying about "current conventions", with the difference that I don't think it's easily theorisable into rules - if that's a difference at all between us, which I'm not sure. I certainly understand that some stuff is harder to market than other stuff; I just think that you're better off writing what you enjoy - because the process is more enjoyable, and - as a side-effect - the product will be better. It's never that simple, though.)
