"[…] my mother replied saying that was pretty much exactly the problem she has with her English..."
[…] my mother replied saying that was pretty much exactly the problem she has with her English majors. They love to talk about character and plot, but they won’t spend any time on craft, structure, or form. These sorts of things are pretty much the “mechanics” of writing, and really aren’t actually that different. This repeated word hammers in emphasis, this sentence with lots of commas sounds breathless, these short sentences create a terse and minimalist aesthetic throughout the novel, etc. This stuff is actually more important than characters and plot, and my mother’s frustration is that her students treat characters as if they were actual people, speculating about their motives outside the novel and creating intricate justifications for their actions, all the while ignoring that they are craft elements themselves. Characters that are nothing but a metaphor are obnoxious, but characters are still crafted elements and they serve a function. They’re part of how the author says whatever it is they are trying to say; unlike humans, they have a purpose.
Talking about character and plot without form rapidly becomes ungrounded and airy, because I’m hearing about people that aren’t real and things that didn’t happen without any grounding in the countless craft and form choices that made all of that junk matter. If plot and character was all that mattered, Wikipedia would be a sufficient replacement for literature. Any description of the effect a game has on the author should come with your explanation of how that happened. What exactly was it about the heartbreaking indie puzzle platformer that made you feel nostalgic? What did Jane Austin do to make you like that dour Mr. Darcy so much? These are not strange or unusual or “academic” questions, they are questions of very basic specificity and clarity in any sort of writing.
”-
Mammon Machine, “Craft and Form”.
a fucking thunderclap.
(via retrogrammartown)
This is possibly the best fiction-writing advice I’ve ever read (aside from “read a lot of frakking books”).
(via otakukeith)
Yes. I notice this all the time when I’m reading student essays; they get so hung up on things like “plot,” that whenever you ask them to analyze a text (discuss things like tone, word choice, etc.) they immediately launch into a summary— they don’t know how to take a text apart and discuss the details and why those details are significant.
But even more frustrating is getting students to understand the importance of using correct grammar (which I hope the writer is including somewhere in this discussion). So many students get offended when you correct their run-on sentences, their split infinitives, their sentence fragments, etc. They all complain, “But that’s just my style— my voice!” or— even better— “But what do a few grammatical errors matter as long as my ideas are good!” Sigh. If the mistakes are unintentional, then it’s a lack of style; if you can’t effectively and completely express your ideas, then why should anyone care about those ideas? We all make mistakes— I know I still do— but it’s saddening when there are so many aspiring writers out there who are more than happy to remain ignorant of their mistakes or who show zero interest in craft or form— the very mechanics that make stories pleasurable to read.
(via calantheandthenightingale)
This, this so much, ow my heart. I’m so happy that this stuff is still being taught, from the way everyone talks about literature I thought character and plot are the all and everything in classrooms. But this is beautiful.
"Style and structure are the essence of a book. Great ideas are hogwash."
(via sammydavisjuniorjr)
I agree with 90% of the quote. But here’s the thing: style and craft are, for the most part, guidelines. Sure, you need to have an understanding of craft and style in order to properly write a novel. If the basic understandings are not there, you will have a poorly written novel despite the interesting plot or realistic characters. But part of the joy of writing is playing with style, with creating a different kind of craft; if we all followed Strunk and White then all we’d do is write with the same kind of cookie-cutter formula that merely swapped out different character and plot. Playing with style, inventing craft, using realistic and lifelike characters with twisting plot, that is the joy of writing, not simply the mechanics of writing, but the joy of it. Sadly, yes, there are a lot of new writers who don’t want to study the math and the structure of construction when it comes to writing.
