# Apparently, I'm an Idiot- And So Are You



## Mindfire (Aug 31, 2012)

Let's talk about the doom of human civilization: shorter attention spans. This exchange occurred in another thread. I'm moving it here to prevent further derailing.



Ankari said:


> I think the use of italics have become the standard tool of great modern authors because:
> 
> 
> Modern readers are not as smart as their predecessors.*
> ...





Jabrosky said:


> I wouldn't go so far as to say that modern readers are _dumber _than earlier generations, but they do seem more impatient and lazy when it comes to prose. I was reading some of Robert E. Howard's stories a while ago, and while he enjoyed a lot of success as one of _the _pioneers in the fantasy genre, I for one could not get away with writing prose like his without reviewers complaining about excessive floridness. Don't get me wrong, I_ like _his prose most of the time and would love to write like him, but it has fallen definitely out of fashion in the last fifty years.





Mindfire said:


> I don't think the change in style is necessarily due to modern readers being idiots. You're a modern reader aren't you? Rather, I think what's happened is that the standard for books and what readers want has changed. "Classical" authors were expected to be masterful and descriptive because that's what was wanted at the time. Readers wanted those extra details to aid immersion. Modern readers don't need or want that so much. We want the author to get out of the way so we can get to the story. The bare bones of it and nothing else in many cases. Also, what with the rapid advancement of visual media, lifelike images are so common to us that we can summon them into our own minds without difficult. Readers in the olden days had never seen movies, and would never have thought of stories as such. They probably went about the process of imagining a little differently than we do now, thus the need for more details.





Ankari said:


> Mindfire,
> 
> I can't believe that.  In reference to the digital media providing imagery for readers, thus removing the need to describe elements of a fantasy world, I once read an article where authors didn't want their characters displayed in any format that may be considered official.  Think of Game of Thrones.  Everyone know pictures Jon Snow as Kit Harington.  They picture Ed Start as Sean Bean.  The problem is, I didn't picture those characters precisely as such in my mind.  Now, if book 6 ever comes out, I'll find a clash between what I'm reading and the image gathered from the TV show.
> 
> ...





Mindfire said:


> Lower attention span does not = stupid. Many highly intelligent people have lower attention spans. Furthermore, I'm not sure that the current disdain towards purple prose is bad or stupid, just different. Just because "that's how it used to be" doesn't make it automatically superior. In my opinion, that's a very rigid and untenable way of thinking. Also you're ignoring the evolution of the novel itself. Books like Moby Dick (which I hate) aren't just hard to read because they were written for people with longer attention spans. They're harder to read because the novel as we know it was still largely unrefined. People hadn't gotten the formula down yet. Purple prose came from, I think, the transition from writing epics, plays, and poetry into writing what we now think of as books. The floridness was an artifact from an earlier style of writing that eventually got dropped because it was plain unnecessary.
> 
> What's more, I don't see how e-books with music, portraits, concepts, etc. are somehow a bad thing. Audio books have had music for forever. And books have had illustrations since the dawn of time. But now that those illustrations are clickable instead of in an appendix at the back or folded into the pages it's somehow the Doom of Civilization? I mean no offense, but your arguments are all starting to sound like "You kids nowadays! Back in my time..." and "Get off my lawn, you rascals!"
> 
> ...





Steerpike said:


> I disagree, Mindfire. Moby Dick is a nice example of the novel, and hardly an instance of an author not having the form down. The same is true of many classic novels. They are hardly unrefined works.





Mindfire said:


> If Moby Dick is such a great novel, why does the author constantly interrupt to give lectures on whaling that are completely unnecessary and add nothing to the plot? In fact, a lot of things in that book are unnecessary to the plot. Like when Ishmael visits that church. He just kinda goes there, and then its never mentioned again. By "unrefined" I don't mean "unskilled". I only mean that they didn't really have the "formula" yet. Perhaps "undefined" would have been a better choice of words. This observation isn't completely mine. It was pointed out to me by my literature professor. Who taught Moby Dick.
> 
> Older novels also tend to seem dry to modern readers because we expect more action. That doesn't mean we're stupid, only that we have different tastes. Also, I don't hate the classics. Count of Monte Cristo is one of my all time favorites. But some "classics" have not aged as well as others.





Steerpike said:


> Maybe you're making Ankari's point for him, and are too hindered by the generic modern novel. Melville put the whaling chapters in on purpose, of course, to educate the reader a bit about whaling. It's not like it was some oversight where he didn't realize they didn't relate to the story at large. They weren't meant to relate to it. That should be apparent enough to even the casual reader. It's a stylistic choice and not evidence of a lack of refinement or understanding of the form.
> 
> Also, Ishmael goes into two churches, and the contrast between the sermons in them relates to competing views of the world contemplated by Ishmael as the story progresses. The black church is also seen to set up racial stereotypes that Melville attacks later. The fact that the churches themselves are not mentioned again is irrelevant, as the reader is supposed to have the intelligence to draw meaning from them even as singular events. Perhaps you would have been better served by another professor, because this isn't difficult stuff to see if you think about what Melville is doing in the novel.





Mindfire said:


> I disagree with your point on a visceral level and am having difficulty articulating why. But I'll try anyway.
> 
> Over time, as humans practice things, we have a way of stripping away things that don't work and getting to the purer form underneath. Computers were once the realm of hobbyists and experts, but now I'm holding one in my hand. Everything becomes more user friendly with time. The novel is no exception. Some art is always lost when we forsake the old in favor of the new, which is unfortunate. Craftsmanship has largely been abandoned in favor of mass production for instance. But this is not the bane of civilization.
> 
> ...



The floor is open.


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## BWFoster78 (Aug 31, 2012)

I are not an idiot.


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## Steerpike (Aug 31, 2012)

A bit over dramatic perhaps.


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## Mindfire (Aug 31, 2012)

Steerpike said:


> A bit over dramatic perhaps.



Yeah... I overhyped the title a lot.


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## BWFoster78 (Aug 31, 2012)

I kinda liked your title, Mindfire.

I don't exactly agree with Ankari's premise either.  I consider myself to be a smart man (my claims to fame: I scored higher on the ACT than anyone in the history of my high school; I scored 20 points higher on the GRE than the smartest guy I know; and I passed my PE exam on the first try with minimal studying.).  

I dislike the classics.

Can't stand them.  I tried five times to get through A Tale of Two Cities.  Couldn't do it.


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## Philip Overby (Aug 31, 2012)

TL;DR

Just kidding.  

I think short attention spans are not necessarily a bad thing.  I don't think I have one, but if more modern readers can't handle certain kinds of prose, then that seems about par for the course.  I'd probably say that some readers during Melville's time couldn't handle earlier generations' prose either.  I wouldn't say it's the end of civilization as we know it.  I'm sure some people thought the printing press was the end of civilization.  We need to adapt to our own times as writers and not worry about an audience we're not pursuing.  If you want to write intelligent, in-depth fiction, then focus on that audience.  Don't worry what other people are doing or not doing.


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## Jabrosky (Aug 31, 2012)

I for one find the modern insistence on terse prose annoying and maybe even damaging to me as a writer. This morning I had a reviewer tell me I should remove an introductory descriptor of my main character because she thought it made the character look vain.  I understand the general guideline that descriptors should have "significance", but frankly we have the problem of defining what counts as significant. Does painting images or scenes no longer count as significant in its own right?

On the other hand, we can't get around the need to cater to an audience in order to enjoy success...although now that I think about it, even if modern readers really do have shorter attention spans, they might still tolerate more than we estimate. We writers may judge each other's creations far more harshly than casual readers judge them.


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## Steerpike (Aug 31, 2012)

I don't think modern readers are stupid. I think a lot of modern writers think they are and write accordingly.


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## BWFoster78 (Aug 31, 2012)

Steerpike said:


> I don't think modern readers are stupid. I think a lot of modern writers think they are and write accordingly.



I don't think that intelligence has anything at all to do with it.  I give my readers a lot of credit and expect them to pick up on a lot of subtlety.

I don't think that it's necessarily attention span either.  I can read Eye of the World in two days.  I sit and read, barely stopping to eat and go to the bathroom until I'm finished.  

On the other hand, I think that tastes have changed.  The modern reader does not necessarily value the style of writing that the classics employ.  Whether you think that's good or bad, it seems to be the case.


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## yachtcaptcolby (Aug 31, 2012)

I also have trouble with the style of older literature. So many words! 

I recently read the Cloud Atlas, and the shift in styles really jarred me. I almost couldn't get through the first few parts, which were written in an older style, but I really started to enjoy it when the writer switched to more modern prose and added some science fiction elements. I don't know if the author intended to make his readers examine their own reactions to different eras and types of literature, but it left me thinking a lot about my tastes and biases in regard to literature.

Anyway, the bottom line is that times change. Things fall in and out of vogue. Methods of communication change and evolve. It's got nothing to do with intelligence, and more to do with one's level of comfort with particular forms. And although I may not enjoy reading most older literature, I certainly respect it. Without the classics, we wouldn't have the modern writing styles we have today.


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## Ankari (Aug 31, 2012)

Let's approach this differently.

Someone posted an example critique of one of the _Twilight _ books.  In that example critique we saw evidence of blunders and mistakes that the poster agreed were wrong.  Yet the author (I forgot her name) has sold well beyond what anyone here would dream of imitating.  

So, you have an example of a writer succeeding in a style/prose/technique that most would agree is a degeneration of currently acceptable guidelines.  I'm not so much focusing on the guidelines, don't derail this into following or not following rules.  I'm talking about the evolution of writing and how it changes from one generation to the next.

You're now witnessing a transition from what is current to what will be considered obsolete.  You (used collectively) are writing in the obsolete and harping on the new wave of writing.  

I didn't mean, not fully anyway, that readers are intellectually stunted.  I'm more concerned about their lack of patience and attention span.  Also, another point for those who really want to compare apples to apples.  The level of education that one gained in the 60's is inferior to what is now learned today.  I really want someone to contest this and prove me wrong.  But when a student simply goes to Google and performs a search for "The Theory of Evolution" and copies and pastes it onto a Word Doc, he didn't learn anything.  When technology didn't exist, and the world wasn't at our fingertips, we had to actually _research_ and _learn_ what the hell we were asked to do a report on.  I don't think that someone can contest that the more time you put into a particular subject, the more you know of that subject.

PS:  I think I need to point out that I'm talking about books from Robert E Howard's time and on.  1930's and up.


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## Christopher Wright (Aug 31, 2012)

I actually wrote an entire post about this very topic on my own website. I'm going to link to it here for anyone who is interested...

https://www.eviscerati.org/articles/2012/05/aeschylus-james-dean-william-shatner-and-writing

Short version: it's not stupidity, it's that tastes change--and that what is popular now is simplified and direct. In 20 years it'll change.


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## Amanita (Aug 31, 2012)

There's something else we have to take into account. The audience has changed greatly since the 19th century and earlier times. Back then only an small part of society had the time and means to read books for pleasure. Therefore the books were made for them and suited their tastes. 
During the great changes that happend to the western countries during the 20th century, almost everyone learns to read here, and most people have access to books as well. Time to read has also become much more common now when the amount of hours that have to be spend working has lessened. The so-called mass marked has evolved, full of people who want to read stories for pleausure, to escape to others worlds, experience things beyond their ordinary lifes through stories or just for simple entertainment. The majority of modern readers doesn't want their books to be a way to show their education and high social standing by being familiar with things that are beyond most others anymore. 
Those readers still exist though and so do books for them, but most of them aren't found within the fantasy genre. It's not the kind of thing respected in such circles and therefore fantasy books for this audience aren't selling well. I've heard the statement "fantasy really isn't my thing" among people I'd count into these circles really often and I have to admit that I don't mention what I'm doing to them most of the time. I don't like such sentiments but they're not exactly rare. This might change when tastes do like Christopher has written above, but at the moment, fantasy books in a more simple language that doesn't get in the readers' way are what sells well.


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## Jabrosky (Aug 31, 2012)

Steerpike said:


> I don't think modern readers are stupid. I think a lot of modern writers think they are and write accordingly.


I'd go further than that and submit that casual readers of any generation judge the merits of literature _more _objectively than a lot of "educated" writers. They don't have preconceptions about what constitutes "proper" writing drilled into them by so-called educators and so can judge writing by whether it personally resonates with them rather than by the standards dictated by some arbitrary authority. I know that I personally enjoyed reading a lot more before I read articles on the Internet attempting to define good writing; ever since then, I can't help but notice authors I otherwise admire breaking the so-called writing commandments all over their texts.

I still question whether today's readers really cannot tolerate so-called "purple prose". Certainly Christopher Paolini and Stephanie Meyer, supposedly notorious for that kind of prose, nonetheless won over large fanbases in their heyday, so clearly a lot of casual readers can comprehend their writing. If anything, laypeople might actually find "purple prose" more awe-inspiring than writers conditioned to abhor it. When I read _Eragon _once as a teenager, I _loved _some of Paolini's descriptions to the point of envy. Even today, my problems with his Inheritance Cycle have more to do with his trite worldbuilding and apparent plagiarism of the _Star Wars _plots than his writing style per se.

As for "classics" losing popularity, I'd attribute that to K-12 schools shoving them down students' throats more than changes in taste. Authorities telling us what we should and shouldn't enjoy ruin everything.


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## Jared (Aug 31, 2012)

Ankari said:


> *Don't get angry.  You can't convince me otherwise.  I've read older books.  They used what is now called "purple prose" extensively.  Sometimes a whole scene can be written in metaphor and the reader understood (based on the successes of these books).  Consider the complex words that authors used.  Back then, no one told the author "That word is too difficult, it makes your writing stand out.  Change it."



I find this argument to be more than underwhelming.


"You can't convince me otherwise" implies that one has no interest in engaging in a discussion. Why even post, then?
This strikes me as a combination of the appeal to tradition and appeal to authority logical fallacies.
This strikes me as begging the question. It hasn't been proven that previous readers were smarter.
There has been no accounting for the classics that were serialized and paid by the word. That created an artificial incentive for purpose prose, not because it's superior.
There is no normalization by the type of book. Sherlock Holmes versus The Great Gatsby. Compare like to like. Genre fiction to genre fiction, literary fiction to literary fiction.




Ankari said:


> Back then, no one told the author "That word is too difficult, it makes your writing stand out.  Change it."



I shall point to two quotes.

William Faulkner on Ernest Hemingway: “He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary.”
Ernest Hemingway on William Faulkner: "Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words?”



All of this is attributed to intelligence...I find that to be premature. All of this can be explained by changes in taste or an _increase_ in reader intelligence.

Why an increase? Look at everything said. It can all be reduced to readers doing more of the work, filling in the visuals, and the imagining the scenes themselves ("the door dilated"). They don't need the writer to spoonfeed them flowery imagery because they are capable and prefer to do it themselves.

With the explosion in visual media, readers are much more familiar the way things work, the way things look. The writer does not need to put in more description to get the scene across. The reader will do the work for them. All of that purpose prose that's gone has now left more room for progressing the story.


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## writeshiek33 (Aug 31, 2012)

older litretaure seemsa to be a different breed than stuff now. i have no focus , sghort attention span and dyslexic only in writing reading i can rwead hard stuff


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## Jared (Aug 31, 2012)

Jabrosky said:


> I still question whether today's readers really cannot tolerate so-called "purple prose". Certainly Christopher Paolini and Stephanie Meyer, supposedly notorious for that kind of prose, nonetheless won over large fanbases in their heyday, so clearly a lot of casual readers can comprehend their writing.



Winning readers over "because of" and "despite" purple prose are two very different things.




Jabrosky said:


> As for "classics" losing popularity, I'd attribute that to K-12 schools shoving them down students' throats more than changes in taste. Authorities telling us what we should and shouldn't enjoy ruin everything.



I'm very much this way. I consume media to enjoy it. If I read an assigned book before we had to do work on it, it was fine. But if I was going through it with the work in mind...it was work, and thus not fun.

For me, this also applies to movies. If I keep hearing how great and how great something is, I kind of get tired of it before I see it. Shawshank Redemption, for instance. Saw it for the first time a couple of years ago after hearing how awesome it was for, what, a decade? Didn't enjoy it. I figured how it was going to end at the beginning and it just didn't live up to the hype.


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## BWFoster78 (Aug 31, 2012)

> Someone posted an example critique of one of the Twilight books. In that example critique we saw evidence of blunders and mistakes that the poster agreed were wrong. Yet the author (I forgot her name) has sold well beyond what anyone here would dream of imitating.



I think it's a function of what she did right far outweighing what she did wrong.

1. Her book is easy and fun to read.
2. Her writing evokes an emotional response.

Some rules are more important than others.  If you can engage the reader with your style and you can make them feel, it's likely that your book is going to find an audience.


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## ShortHair (Aug 31, 2012)

I only have time for two quick points.

I don't think people are particularly more intelligent these days. They have access to much more information, and they have much more experience processing it, so it can appear that they are smarter.

The differences over "purple prose" etc. are matters of style. Some people like it, some don't. Neither side is right or wrong.


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## Feo Takahari (Aug 31, 2012)

I think we've learned specialization. We get detailed descriptions from visual media--movies, comics, etc--which can provide them more quickly than literature, and we read books when we're not looking for that same level of description.


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## Ankari (Aug 31, 2012)

> "You can't convince me otherwise" implies that one has no interest in engaging in a discussion. Why even post, then?



You're right.  Withdrawn.



> William Faulkner on Ernest Hemingway: “He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary.”
> Ernest Hemingway on William Faulkner: "Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words?”



I'm not talking about "big words," I'm talking about "big ideas."  

Someone once quoted a line where an older author wrote something like _A parasitic sack dragging on the slight woman_ (paraphrased).  That is purple prose and paints a different picture than _A swollen belly burdened the petite woman._  I get a clearer picture of the girl AND the author's intent.



> All of this is attributed to intelligence...I find that to be premature. All of this can be explained by changes in taste or an increase in reader intelligence.



I already clarified my statement with



> I didn't mean, not fully anyway, that readers are intellectually stunted. I'm more concerned about their lack of patience and attention span.



And I linked an article speaking particularly about attention span.

I think that most of these arguments derive from attributing my statement personally.  Just to make a clarifying statement, *I am a modern reader.*  I'm only 33, but that places me on the transitional border between the olden days and the new way of modern prose.  I fully admit that reading some of the older stuff doesn't appeal to me because it can't hold my attention.  I'm trying to recall a book that I remember vividly disliking, but can't.

Another point.  The teachers _forcing_ us to read classical books helped me love writing.  I didn't like the stories so much, but the passion she (I attribute my enhanced love of literature to one teacher) had about her classical books (Wuthering Heights an example) made me want the same thing.  Also, she encouraged me to enter a local writing contest,  even when I dragged my feet because of teenage insecurities.  Don't hate teachers, they open up realms of potential to the waiting mind.

As an aside, if flowery writing is purple prose, is modern writing grey prose?


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## Mindfire (Aug 31, 2012)

I'm glad that worked out for you, Ankari. But nothing kills my enjoyment of a book more than having an assignment on it. Also, there is such a thing as beige prose. Although I would say that most modern writing falls somewhere in between purple and beige.


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## BWFoster78 (Aug 31, 2012)

I think an interesting question is:

In modern writing, is there room for some purple prose?

Every time I've tried to insert any, I've gotten generally negative feedback from my readers.  I kept some of it in anyway, though, just because I liked it.

(I'm thinking that Ankari and Steerpike are going to be nearly apoplectic at the thought of me writing anything remotely considered purple.)


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## The Dark One (Aug 31, 2012)

This is a pretty fascinating and extremely complex topic. I think most of the points I would have made have already been made, but in a simplistic and overly generalised nutshell - I reckon literature is inevitably a reflection of the milieu in which it was generated (it wouldn't get published otherwise). 18th, 19th century literature was generated by the literate few for the literate few and reflected their class interests, idioms and world. With the dilution of political power and massive increase in literacy, the market changed profoundly throughout the 20th century and continues to change. On top of that, the science of literature has evolved and become far more sophisticated - the literature of today leaps onto the shoulders of what went before and forges whole new frontiers in step with the evolution of society.

There are all sorts of levels and types of literature these days, but to what extent do you generate 'literary' work? Maybe that's an idea for another thread, but I guess the questions are:

- can your work be appreciated in a multi-textural sense?
- does your work convey any subtextual meaning?
- do you experiment with craft and form?
- do you care about any of these things at all?

It seems to me the most popular books these days are not literary, but I can't help but write literary works. It's what I naturally do, and probably no surprise that the only book I've written where I really tried not to be literary is by miles my most successful. (It's still a bit literary though.)


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## Ankari (Aug 31, 2012)

BWFoster78 said:


> I think an interesting question is:
> 
> In modern writing, is there room for some purple prose?
> 
> Every time I've tried to insert any, I've gotten generally negative feedback from my readers.  I kept some of it in anyway, though, just because I liked it.



I think there is and should be a good portion of purple prose in modern literature.  I watched a few of the Brandon Sanderson videos linked here recently and he discussed the difference between *epic fantasy* and other works like *thrillers* (You know the song is playing in your head).  In it, he addressed immersion, pace, and cliffhangers.  He said that epic fantasies are not meant to be read in a short period of time.  They're meant to move the reader from their world to the author's world.  This requires immersion.  Immersion incorporates description of scenery, emotions, and people.  From this, I'm assuming that purple prose is not only allowed, but necessary to slow the pace of the book and immerse the reader.

He goes on further to state that he doesn't like to use cliffhangers at all.  Readers of epic fantasy must consider the world of the author has fashioned.  Allowing a reader to sit back and think about what was presented in a scene is encouraged.  (I've done this a few times with *Deadhouse Gates.*  I don't reread books, but Deadhouse Gates will be reread soon).

If you're interested, he stated that thrillers and mysteries are meant to be read relatively quickly.  So thrillers use tons of cliffhangers and very little immersion.


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## Mindfire (Aug 31, 2012)

Ankari said:


> I think there is and should be a good portion of purple prose in modern literature.



There's room in modern literature for creative description, but _not_ for purple prose. Purple prose, almost by definition, means that you've overdone it. Rather than purple or beige prose, a writer ought strive for the happy medium in my humble opinion.


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## Zero Angel (Aug 31, 2012)

Ankari said:


> I think there is and should be a good portion of purple prose in modern literature.  I watched a few of the Brandon Sanderson videos linked here recently and he discussed the difference between *epic fantasy* and other works like *thrillers* (You know the song is playing in your head).  In it, he addressed immersion, pace, and cliffhangers.  He said that epic fantasies are not meant to be read in a short period of time.  They're meant to move the reader from their world to the author's world.



I believe that I write epic fantasy and I think I do a good job at the whole "secondary world" thing, but saying that epic fantasies have to be slowly digested is like saying you have to savor tiramisu. You can eat it quickly! and if you do, you might get more before someone else gets to it! In fact, read it at a breakneck speed, regurgitate it so you have more room and read it again!

In fact, this is what I did with Sanderson's "Way of Kings"! The last 300 pages I felt like I was going at the speed of light. I feverishly completed the book only to re-read the last few hundred pages AGAIN. 

One of my proofreading/editing attempts with my book had me read the entire thing aloud. It got to the point where I was going to have a heart attack and would have to force myself to take breaks and "come down". The respites in my books are short, the rest of it feels like a wild ride. If you read it out, then be prepared to work yourself up!

Anyway, back to the original poster, I completely agree that we have shorter attention spans, and I think that is a good thing. Well, I have a very short attention span. My time is important. Give me the goods. 

I don't think it means we are less intelligent or even less sophisticated. We don't use the vocabulary our forefathers used. So what? It's different styles, not less intelligence. And we are not going to subject readers to something that takes them out of the story. I don't think that is a bad thing either. Although, to be fair, when reading old-timey authors like Melville or Tolkien, I usually skim/skip the crap. You guys actually spend time reading it?

Although having ADHD might help with that...


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## Zero Angel (Sep 1, 2012)

Just looked up purple prose....

...I do that for my vampire character in some short stories (although I am concerned because I do not have the energy to keep it up for his chapters throughout the second novel -_-)




Aside: I was hoping this topic was going to be on the doom of civilization, apocalypse, revelation, cataclysm, etc because of the first few words of the OP =P


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## shangrila (Sep 1, 2012)

Purple prose, as I understand it, is excessive and often unnecessary decriptions.  I haven't seen that in any of the recent epic fantasy books I've read (First Law, Malazan, etc).

I can't imagine it would be used as an immersive tool, since part of the problem with purple prose is it's so jarring to read it sucks the reader out of the story.

Just avoid purple prose whenever possible. That's my opinion, anyway.


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## Lorna (Sep 1, 2012)

@ Steerpike



> I don't think modern readers are stupid. I think a lot of modern writers think they are and write accordingly.



I couldn't agree more. I feel that as writers we have a duty to amaze, astound and enchant readers with the force of our stories and beauty of our prose. Rather than attempting to limit our imagination and the form we give it in the written word to 'the mass market' - which is a product of capitalist society, we should direct our work at real people. 

I think it's a case of finding a balance between creating a work full of heart and soul that anybody outside the fantasy genre can relate to, but at the same time taking them on a journey into another world and into uncharted areas of imagination. If we're going to create new worlds and peoples this means creating unique imagery and metaphor and exploring the outer bounds of language. That's what makes fantasy difficult to write but at the same time challenging and exciting.


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## grimreaper (Sep 1, 2012)

Jabrosky said:


> I
> 
> I still question whether today's readers really cannot tolerate so-called "purple prose". Certainly Christopher Paolini and Stephanie Meyer, supposedly notorious for that kind of prose, nonetheless won over large fanbases in their heyday, so clearly a lot of casual readers can comprehend their writing. If anything, laypeople might actually find "purple prose" more awe-inspiring than writers conditioned to abhor it. When I read _Eragon _once as a teenager, I _loved _some of Paolini's descriptions to the point of envy. Even today, my problems with his Inheritance Cycle have more to do with his trite worldbuilding and apparent plagiarism of the _Star Wars _plots than his writing style per se.



My thoughts exactly. :biggrin:


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## a dreamy walker (Sep 1, 2012)

I'm glad I stumbled upon this topic 

Personally, I have had to look at myself in the mirror several times over the past few years and ask myself the question 'Do I still want to keep writing original ideas', even though a) I don't consider myself to be a good writer and b) I think that mass media views writers and original writing as 'crazy'.

Ever since, I have held a strong view that to get anywhere, you need to 'know somebody who knows somebody' and that the lust for money and predictability (after the banking crisis) in today's world has meant that original thinking has been kicked into the sidelines. If you look at European financial news, the markets want 'predictability', and I think that this 'predictability' extends into creativity. If the masses want something, they'll get it, no matter what.

(Sorry for rant - the 'fallout' from looking at myself has resulted in depression over the years.)


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## gavintonks (Sep 1, 2012)

stories and literature resonate to you at a time and place, I have one child that reads and another says why read when you can watch the film. The growth of any creative endeavor art, literature, writing [separated literature as being written by the dead] is based on finding a new form of expression that 
1 - a cost factor is the first mitigating factor you cannot be a starving artist and not be able to buy the materials
2 - the feeling of claustrophobia restricted by the way things were done
3 - the need to meet demand 
4 - being the first allows you certain leeway
5 - having good salespeople or being a good salesperson to sell your work [hard]


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## Zero Angel (Sep 1, 2012)

shangrila said:


> Purple prose, as I understand it, is excessive and often unnecessary decriptions.  I haven't seen that in any of the recent epic fantasy books I've read (First Law, Malazan, etc).
> 
> I can't imagine it would be used as an immersive tool, since part of the problem with purple prose is it's so jarring to read it sucks the reader out of the story.
> 
> Just avoid purple prose whenever possible. That's my opinion, anyway.



Well, to my vampire everything is excessively and unnecessarily described. Obviously I mean without the negative connotations though.


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## Benjamin Clayborne (Sep 4, 2012)

I think the simplest answer is that the audience has changed. Is _Moby Dick_ great because it still speaks to generations of readers sixteen decades after its publication? Or is it great because it shows up on all the lists of Great Classics™ and because they teach it in high schools and colleges, regardless of whether modern readers can relate to it?

It's plain that there's a lot of value to be derived from many older works; the problem is that those writers, with rare exception, simply cannot have written in a way that easily speaks to later generations, mainly because there's no way for them to know what kind of voices the later generations will respond to, let alone how the language itself will evolve. I personally have very little love for Shakespeare (gasp! horrors!), mainly because it's so difficult for me to get past the prose and just enjoy the story. Every Shakespeare adaptation I've enjoyed has always done away with his prose and told the story in a modern voice. I'd (arrogantly) challenge anyone to look back over my body of writing (both here and in my fiction) and claim that I'm just stupid or have no attention span, and yet here stands the fact that I just don't really grok Shakespeare. And even I can admit that Shakespeare's prose has a great poetry to it, even when examined in isolation; I just can't stand listening to it when I'm trying to follow a _story._

Any assertion that people in Ye Olden Days were somehow superior because they read _Moby Dick_ instead of watching _Jersey Shore_ is pure nonsense. People back then read just as much brainless trash as we read now; it's just that most of that was forgotten because classics departments didn't preserve it.


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