A pocketful of prose

[stillsostrange]

What is up with fickle story language?

My writing has improved pretty drastically over the last several years. FT had a few shiny sentences, but Dreams was better. Then I looked back at the beginning of Dreams after I'd been working on it a few months are realized it sucked, and tried to retrofit some shiny into it. Then after Dreams I wrote some short stories whose prose blew Dreams out of the water. Crepuscule was rather shiny (imho), and Prayers is the prettiest thing I've ever written. (If only it would make with the plotty goodness.)

So there seems to be a forward trend.

Except as I work on the G,G & M thing, the prose has traveled back in time to the beginning of Dreams--very simplistic and unshiny. We could perhaps use "transparent" as a euphamism for "sucky and bland".

Argh, I say. Argh. Plot should not come at the cost of prettiness, darn it.

Comments

[everyonesakitty.livejournal.com]

dude. I have the same thoughts. *le sigh* This last novel, I gave up trying to be pretty and put plot ahead of pretty words, and eventually the plot got good enough to support some pretty words, but much of the novel is merely functional. The few pretty words were a long time coming; I spent 8 months working with all plot and no pretty. I think the final product is probably not as elegant because of it. Next project, I'm going back to pretty before plot and see if I can inject some sparkle into the prose. There's got to be some way to use the prosy writer in me as I figure out the plot. *furrows brow*

[ultharkitty.livejournal.com]

Too right. But sometimes it does. Bleugh.

But hey, an upwards trend is good.

[stillnotbored.livejournal.com]

Do not stress.

Different stories demand different language. Some are all poetry and pretty words. Others need plainer, understated language to drive home the plot and emotion.

Get the story down, get the characters set, the emotions in place and the plot threads woven together. You can go back and make it prettier later.

Repeat after me, first drafts can suck all the big pointy rocks they want. Finish the draft. First drafts can suck....