Date Posted:15:19:38 09/05/01 Wed Author: Adilbrand Subject: Re: The Art of Writing In reply to:
Mark van Dyk
's message, "Re: The Art of Writing" on 11:40:23 09/05/01 Wed
First of all, I think that just because you prefer one style over another does not necessarily mean that the preferred style is more artful than the other.
...which is more artful? There really is no determining factor outside of your own head. You may prefer one over the other, however.
Which is why I referred to my preferred method as "Art" with quotes around it... hopefully to indicate my own sense of the artistic, and not some sort of objective view of one being actually more artistic than another.
Also, my use of the word "art" hearkens back to an older use of the word that implies a certain level of skill. Certainly it takes more skill to evoke a mental image of a white chicken than to simply say that the chicken is white.
I find a lot of modern writers tend to be too direct for my tastes.
I do not speak in this way, so why should I write in this way?
In teaching writing at IBC, one of the things I teach my students is NOT to write as they speak. Most of the books I have read on writing warn against writing as one speaks. Most people are hideously vague when speaking, using body language, tone of voice, and other cues to provide additional meaning to their words; these non-verbal cues are unavailable to the writer. It is not falsehood or pretentiousness to write in a manner that is more precise, more evocative than the spoken dialect.
I think I am safe in presuming that I am not alone in wishing to see a modern author or two continue in the older style of prose writing; I just wonder why there are no authors who still write in that quaint style. One would think that there would be one or two who would resurrect the method.
BTW, in regards to your "absurd" example, I much prefered the latter description of the chicken.
Here is my own absurd example of how it is not pretentious to write in a manner unlike how one speaks - did Dr. Seuss speak in rhyme? Does any poet speak as he writes?
