What is good writing?

[!diom]

This topic always bothers me. I'm very self-critical about what I type in these boxes. To remedy this, I'm looking for some perspective.

What's a good, general approach to tastefully departing from prescriptive grammar? I find "correct grammar" to be confounding, insincere, and out of style. I also think that many styles of expression that deviate from it are better equipped for expressing certain types of ideas, and some are certainly more aesthetic.

How about punctuation and such? I like to use hyphens for many purposes - I think they should have a broader range of applications. And what about other characters (@#$%^*-=+{[}]|\/<>)?

There's probably a lot more that should be mentioned here, so I'll come back to it later.

For now, feel free to educate me on what you like to see in other people's posts.

[aphemix]

I like tone and meaning to be conveyed effectively, or at least effectively enough for me to fill in the blanks with my imagination. Aside from that, I'm not particularly picky.

[md5fungi]

Writing is a complicated thing.

Personal story:

I wrote creatively since I was in kindergarten, and up through elementary school, junior high, and high school I was generally considered by my instructors and peers to be a "good" writer. My writing was lauded especially in the first two years of high school, and I considered writing (well, at least, creative writing) to be my greatest strength. My poems and short stories fared well when I entered them in competitions or exposed them on the internet.

It must have been my senior year in high school when I had the epiphany that the majority of my creative writing was pretentious, emotional drivel through the scope of insincere surrealism. I don't know what people liked it about it; it was self-indulgent and flamboyant. From then on I started changing how I wrote creatively, it was all more blunt and tangible and unimpressive (which was a good thing, because it wasn't self-aggrandizing).

Well long story short,

Result = Myself becoming quite pleased with my writing, everyone else... not so much. A lot of my inspiration came from beat writers like Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg. Eventually, I got frustrated; if I was writing for myself why did it irk me that everyone that loved my writing now was disgusted by it? I thought I had achieved clarity; some words that people considered elegant could be considered as meaningless as curse words, so I didn't see the harm in using more of the latter.

All in all, I gave up on writing creatively (either that or I'm on a really long hiatus).

It's fucking confusing.

[aphemix]

I should add that I only read posts made by people with trophies next to their names.

[walfin]

It must have been my senior year in high school when I had the epiphany that the majority of my creative writing was pretentious, emotional drivel through the scope of insincere surrealism. I don't know what people liked it about it; it was self-indulgent and flamboyant.

Well it sounds like you do know what people like about it; you just don't like what they like.

[Robotron]

I would never presume to tell anyone else how they should write, I can only say that when writing creatively, my technique (I think) is to attempt to create situations that cannot be imagined visually, and/or to attempt to include as much coherent formal complexity in obfuscating a thought as possible.

[aphemix]

to attempt to create situations that cannot be imagined visually, and/or to attempt to include as much coherent formal complexity in obfuscating a thought as possible.so you're confusing, and boring? Is that what you're saying?

I imagined the meaning of your post visually, btw.

[carbon cold]

Writing well is, essentially, the same as speaking well - only that much harder, for lack of real tone to carry your meaning.

Post wise? I don't care. Be literate.

Creative writing? Now, that's a much, much longer story. Essentially, it comes down to.. feeling. I know that won't make much sense, but it's not more complicated than that. I've seen beautiful technical writers spin wonderful fantasies that were dead and soulless - thus: utterly lackluster.

All the beautiful words in the world won't create a new one without a voice of character. Depth.

[Robotron]

I imagined the meaning of your post visually, btw.

What did it look like?

[aphemix]

like synesthesia. What else?

edit: apparently the spelling "synaesthesia" is deprecated? Depreciated? Defecation? Fuck this language.

[Ptah]

I'm very self-critical about what I type in these boxes.

As am I. :ph34r:


What's a good, general approach to tastefully departing from prescriptive grammar? I find "correct grammar" to be confounding, insincere, and out of style. I also think that many styles of expression that deviate from it are better equipped for expressing certain types of ideas, and some are certainly more aesthetic.

I have a pragmatic view on this: to the extent it "works", it's not bad (perhaps it's even good) despite whatever prescriptive grammar has to say about it. To "work" in this context is to convey a concept clearly/unambiguously. However, to achieve this some knowledge/application of the commonly held descriptive grammar is necessary, as I see it, as to "convey" means to go from A to B over a medium that connects them both, and in this case we have (some generally shared rules of) language as that medium (for better or worse).


For now, feel free to educate me on what you like to see in other people's posts.

For the most part, I concern myself more with what was expressed as against how it was expressed. However, the latter can certainly influence (work for or against) the interpretation/clarity of the former, and so to the extent a particular form of expression facilitates the object being expressed, I "like" it, I suppose?

[Mercurial]

To me, good fiction is remembering another life. Clunky, or overly stylized writing turns that memory from a flow into a shape that one can purchase at Ikea for $19.99.

[!diom]

What's all this nonsense about fiction? It should be clear to everyone that I was talking about writing within the context of the forum.

Was it not clear? Was it ambiguous? Did you not read?

[md5fungi]

I don't know how to read.

No, I think I might have used this thread like a tampon for my personal writing problems.

Sorry. Won't happen again. :(

[Mercurial]

What's all this nonsense about fiction? It should be clear to everyone that I was talking about writing within the context of the forum.

Was it not clear? Was it ambiguous? Did you not read?

Oh, that. :blush: Sorry about the mental drift.

Minor typos don't bother me, but a complete lack of attention to grammar rules or usage of pure colloquial language is about as irritating as a table saw cutting masonite. Just remember that if you use more than 9 'm's in a sentence, a meteor will crash into Michigan next Monday.

[carbon cold]

What's all this nonsense about fiction? It should be clear to everyone that I was talking about writing within the context of the forum.

Was it not clear? Was it ambiguous? Did you not read?

If you look, there's quite a few members here who submit a lot of fiction work. Although I think I took my cue from someone posting above me to mention it.

[!diom]

there's quite a few members here who submit a lot of fiction work

No sane person would read that stuff.

[sandwich]

No, I think I might have used this thread like a tampon for my personal writing problems.

Sorry. Won't happen again. :(

Also, never use that analogy again. That's gross.