Writing for the Reader of Today

I don't know if you're in the minority, but it's the style I most enjoy and it's the style I write in. I still enjoy books that have more details, but I've noticed I'm more likely to put them down several times rather than read them in a sitting or two. The last three books I read very quickly were The Deathly Hallows (Rowling), Lean Mean Thirteen (Evanovich), and Goblin Hero (from our own jchines). Fast reads with great characters, plot, and in the latter two, excellent humor.

No. Sounds good to me. I've been told time and time again that my writing style is sparse, and I say, good. Because so is my reading style.

And, as a sixteen-year-old, so is my world.

JJ Cooper said:

I just can't do the long-winded explain in detail kinda books anymore.

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I never cared for Tom Clancy's novels simply because he WAS long-winded and explained everything in painful detail. I've always found that boring. I could care less how a F14 Tomcat's engine worked. Just tell me the story.

I don't think it has anything to do with readers then putting up with a slower lifestyle and now wanting things quick and NOW.

I admit to skimming over long sections of description. I like enough to feel the scene and see the characters. I want my own imagination to fill in the blanks. So I write the same way. I usually have to go back to a first draft and do more with description, I tend to completely skip it in first drafts.

I'm drawn to stories that really move along. It doesn't have to be all wham-bam action to interest me, but I want SOMETHING to happen. I'm easily bored with long scenes of contemplation.

It's a reason I love reading short fiction, there can be no wasted words, especially in flash.

Personally, I'm a fan of Robert Parker's style in his Spenser novels. Quick, clean and just enough description to set up the scene.

I'm all over the map. At heart I'm a lit-fic enthusiast, and I love immersing myself in the descriptive language of Faulkner, Nabokov, and others. If they want to write a sentence that goes on for 30 pages (like Faulkner did!), I'm there.

But there's the other side of me that devours YA and children's books and, well, short books. I'm a great admirer of writers who can tell a story economically and still have me thinking about it weeks or months after I closed the book. (Heck, there are short-shorts I read years ago that I still think about on a near-daily basis.) Working on my novel takes up a lot of time, so when I go to the library or bookstore to pick up some new reads, I tend to gravitate toward novels that get their story out in less than 300 pages. That way, I have a much better chance of finishing that novel before I have to take it back to the library.

Plus, economy's what I shoot for in my own writing. My YA novel will top out around 60K words. Besides that, I write short fiction and personal essays.

As long as it's a good story I'll read anything, but reading pages of words which strike me as poured out for the sake of dragging every detail into the scene, or purple prose that fills the writer's soul with pleasure, is not my cup of tea.

I stressed the 'me' in the previous sentence, and thank goodness we are all different. It may well be that what I regard as wordy prose is another's preferred fare - and should we differ, I wish him well.

My basic attitude is - Clarity is King, and simplicity is often the key to clarity.

For me - Tolkein? Yes/No. Forrester? - Yes.

Clancy

Shadow_Ferret said:

I never cared for Tom Clancy's novels simply because he WAS long-winded and explained everything in painful detail. I've always found that boring. I could care less how a F14 Tomcat's engine worked. Just tell me the story.

I don't think it has anything to do with readers then putting up with a slower lifestyle and now wanting things quick and NOW.

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Really....nothing at all is worse than Clancy. I think I read a few random pages back in the 80s. No matter where you went in the book you got the same incredible crap:

Major Petroslak "("Jackie-Petro" to his enemies who were his only friends)" Lenin-Marshallmaloplanman was the kind of man at whom no one could look for long without saying "ick" which side of him is supposed to be on top?

Okay...that was not quite it, but that is the effect if not the style. There was a kind of "character-sketch" for every single person, place or thing in the story.

There is a market for everything, many different writing styles, and story always comes first. There's a huge market for fast-paced stories with spare prose.

Personally, I like to mix and match. I enjoy writing drama with languid pace and lush language. I also like to write fast-paced thrills. Whatever the mood strikes and I figure I can find markets for either.

JJ, are you saying that you don't want to know the details, such as: an eighteen year old stoic Native American doesn't bother to wipe a burning cinder from his hand. Why doesn't he? He grew up under a tradition where he had to fight a half dozen of his peers all at once if he showed signs of being a mamma's boy.

You would want to use your imagination to know why he can be more annoyed to be around idiots than concerned with cigarette cinders burning his flesh? I guess it could work, but you wouldn't clearly understand why he so adamantly refuses the love of another main character.

In movie scripts, you have to limit your words. But for me, novels allow you to truly build a character.

I understand not wanting to know the exact hues of the roses and the way the sunlight cast their shadows (for more than a sentence or two), but you really don't want the background information that will make you understand the characters? You'd really rather use your imagination?

And Bufty, I understand now that you mention purple prose: it can be difficult to let go of some beautifully written sentences that may not thrill the reader.

My difficulty is that I feel that I've woven the perfect recipe to complete an experience and now people are suggesting I play Jenga and start removing blocks of it, expecting the tower not to tumble down. Sure. I can remove a few pegs, but then the work isn't as strong as it was.

SoccerMom: the reason I've never skimmed is I'm afraid I'll miss some important tidbit. And that would take away from the full experience. I don't write long description, but I do write long thoughts. Like a shy artist's thoughts on the shy Goth sitting across from her at her lunch table. I get wordy with the colors she uses to describe his eyes and whatnot, but that is romance.

Satori: I hope when my 500 page crossover hits the market, you will do what you have to do in order to relish the sweet moments. Would it really have to hit the bestseller's list before you grant me a few descriptive pages to set the stage (of their lives up to this point)?

Maestrowork, you say there is a market for everything and that's music to my ears. I hope there's a market of edgy paranormal YA readers who relish a nice long read that draws them into being invested in the character that I want them to know, not just interpret. Too much can be lost in translation. I've written a serious work and am struggling with tempering it to the specifics of the YA market. I hope I have a crossover, really. Like one of my characters, I'm fighting my own demons, trying to come to terms with giving the readers one of the best reads they've ever had. But I think the greatest writers wrote to write well, not to please an audience.

Thanks for the sounding board, guys.

And then I went back to my script and took most of the advice given. Sigh. I cut some purple prose and can see how the reader will get more quickly absorbed into the story. I really shortened the prologue. It will grab the reader more readily. Hmmm....

I'm schizophrenic. All three of me.

satori said:

I'm all over the map. At heart I'm a lit-fic enthusiast, and I love immersing myself in the descriptive language of Faulkner, Nabokov, and others. If they want to write a sentence that goes on for 30 pages (like Faulkner did!), I'm there.

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I'm the same way. I don't mind wordy and long-winded if its done well.

I think you have to have a pretty solid reason for descibing something in great detail for 3 or 4 pages though. It has to really add to the story or the mood in order to work.

My own WIP (first draft) is light on descriptions; I just can justify long-windedness at this point.

I think it's good advice, but has little or nothing to do with "today" -- 'twas always thus.

I once got into D.H. Lawrence quite heavily. The man was a genius. When Anais Nin met him, she finally got to ask the question that had been bugging her, "How can you know what women think?"

His depth was what made his prose great. His writing style almost killed it.

Lawrence would start out telling you there was a grassy valley with a copse of trees in the middle. Fine, I see it. Then he would describe the color and shapes of the leaves. Uh... Then he described the angle at which a branch protruded from a tree, and the way a path wound around the copse, and branched off to the left. Okay, you lost me completely now...

The more detailed the description, the less clearly I saw the scene.

Then I read Earl Thompson (highly recommended). His prose was so vivid, you saw the action unfold before your eyes, as if you were watching a real event. After reading such a passage, I went back and just looked at what he'd done (as opposed to reading it). To my surprise, there was virtually no description whatsoever.

I learned a valuable lesson: If you tell your readers what's there (instead of describing it), they'll see it, because everyone has their own private "photo file" of images in their head. If you describe it in detail, you disallow your readers from using their "file photo," and make them create an image in their mind, which most people aren't good at.

"Death to adjectives and adverbs!!!"

wayndom said:

"Death to adjectives and adverbs!!!"

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Yes! I still use them from time to time, but I cut them out whenever I can. The right noun or verb does wonders on shortening a sentence and reducing an overblown word count. When I start reading TOO many adj and adv in a passage, I know I need to do more rewriting.

Take care -

JJ Cooper said:

The above is something I wrote in SYW regarding a critique. I thought it may be a good topic to discuss in general.

For many years I loved reading from authors such as Tom Clancy and Wilbur Smith. Now its Lee Child and Robert Crais. I just can't do the long-winded explain in detail kinda books anymore. Granted I have a total of about an hour a day to read so I need to get into a book real quick.

I set out from the get go with my WIP to make it fast paced. I don't use too many big words (mainly because I don't know many) and I don't explain everything in exact deatil. I try to leave something to the imagination of my future reader/s.

Am I in the minority here?

JJ

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Are you in the minority? God, I dearly hope so. If not, society is dead, civilization will vanish, and the world is going back to barbarism.

If you have only an hour per day to read, it's because you choose to have only an hour per day to read. I hope to God not many make this choice.

I like to read detail if it is well-written. I am just finishing P.D. James' The Lighthouse - full of descriptives, details, inner revelations, historical forays which may or may not be relevant to solving the crime but which are necessary to developing the characters and plot, you get the picture. It is delicious. I have been trying to make this book last all week - I know I'll finish it today, with regret that it isn't longer and even more detailed.

I like the intricacies - if they are well done. I don't write that way myself - I am so concise that most of my stories end up in the Flash category. But as a reader, I want the traditional classics, the modern classics and today's well-written detailed story.

If I want short-attention span stuff, I'll watch TV.

There is a market for everything (thank you, maestrowork) even Tom Clancy (dreadful after The Hunt for Red October, and even then it was only the story that saved the writing) and that's the good news.

As to kids today needing to use their own imaginations and not having everything spelt out to them - great detail exercises the imagination in an entirely different way from sparse detail. I think catering to this notion of what kids today will want is a mistake for a writer. Tell the story in your best words, your best style, your best way. Readers will find good writing.

For me, it doesn't matter whether it's a long-winded winding prose of breath-taking description, or bare-bone basics word-play. As long as the story captures me, I'll read it.

I confess that I do shy away from any books that are thicker than my head and tend to be attracted to anything around the 400-pg mark or less. Also, I fear any book where the font is compressed to a point where it would take me a good hour to read a page. Still, I do read books like that. Mostly if the story is recommended by someone, or if that first page is so unique I can't put it down then I'll take the time to go through it.

I don't like books that seem like a chore to get through.

Kate Thornton said:

I think catering to this notion of what kids today will want is a mistake for a writer. Tell the story in your best words, your best style, your best way. Readers will find good writing.

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Thanks for the great post.