Dense Prose or Rich Prose?

[Moonsong]

Lately I've been reading through a lovely edition of Robert E. Howard's Conan the Cimmerian yarns, and I've been astonished by his extraordinarily abundant prose style. Take these two sentences, for example, from The Pool of the Black One:

'Had Zaporavo known he was being compared, even though unconsciously, with a man before the mast, he would have been speechless with amazed anger. But he was engrossed with his broodings, which had become blacker and grimmer as the years crawled by, and with his vague grandiose dreams; and with the girl whose possession was a bitter pleasure, just as all his pleasures were.'

Holy mackerel! I find the ripping pace of the story-telling he's doing here incredible. I feel like he just did more in two sentences than I often do with several entire PAGES.

Perhaps this kind of breakneck speed is a relic of the pulp era in which Howard (and Lovecraft - recall that the two were something like friends!) wrote. In any case, I find myself trying out something similar in my own work now, if just to develop my ability for economic storytelling.

Who else is doing something similar? Trying to pack in as much as possible into the tight containers of their sentences? And who has encountered the same problem I have, which is a burdensome density, wherein the sentence drags itself down - instead of tearing along like Howard's?

 

[pmmg]

I found Howard to be very close to purple prose at times, but yes, he could lay it on thick.

I think my own writing voice is similar to his, in that I try to capture the epic feel of the narration, but I lack is focus on corrupting civilization, and the spirit of man against it. Its just not my interest.

Since you are on to Howard, Conan is great, but the Kull stories are better IMO.

 

[Moonsong]

I found Howard to be very close to purple prose at times, but yes, he could lay it on thick.

I think my own writing voice is similar to his, in that I try to capture the epic feel of the narration, but I lack is focus on corrupting civilization, and the spirit of man against it. Its just not my interest.

Since you are on to Howard, Conan is great, but the Kull stories are better IMO.

Indeed I see you've been compared publicly! "His voice has been compared to Robert E. Howard's epic style, and his stories have been compared Michael Moorcock's unlikely warrior with a legendary sword"

Glad to know there's more there. I was planning on digging into Solomon Kane next.

 

[pmmg]

By this axe I rule, I think is Howard's best story.

 

[ThinkerX]

The pulp novels date to an era when the first draft was written by hand, and subsequent ones were laboriously typed out. No spell check. No grammar check. One typo, one minor change meant redoing an entire page.

Hence, the better authors put a lot of thought into each sentence before writing it, and their books were often on the shorter side.

 

[pmmg]

I could not imagine writing with a typewriter. I make so many typos, and have so many missing words, I simply could not type an error free page. I need a word processor. Word Perfect saved the world then Miscrosoft took over.

Howard also wrote to sell his stories. If they did not sell, he would reuse his ideas in others works, so...now that the complete set is released, some of his stories seem very similar to others.

 

[Fyri]

I must be confused again. I loooove the prose you shared here, but I wouldn't consider it...fast paced? Just full of rich vocab and detail with clever structure. In college, I remember a writing group that harped on a guy that wrote his creative nonfiction like this, "Your sentences are too long and exhausting." I found those members of the group to probably dislike philosophical debates in general too.

 

[Mad Swede]

When we're discussing prose from these periods we should remember that many authors were paid by the word, even for their novels. There was also not the competition we see today from games, films, video clips and TV programmes, so books (and radio shows) could be slower paced. As Edgar Rice Burroughs put it in the foreword to Skeleton Men of Jupiter:

"Particularly disliking forewords, I seldom read them; yet it seems that I scarcely ever write a story that I do not inflict a foreword on my long-suffering readers. Occasionally I also have to inject a little weather and scenery in my deathless classics, two further examples of literary racketeering that I especially deplore in the writings of others. Yet there is something to be said in extenuation of weather and scenery, which, together with adjectives, do much to lighten the burdens of authors and run up their word count."

 

[pmmg]

^ This too

I also note how many youtube vids are 10mins when they could say it in 2. Its because of the monetization rules.

 

[Naruzeldamaster]

^ This too

I also note how many youtube vids are 10mins when they could say it in 2. Its because of the monetization rules.

Not all channels follow this rule, but most of them have to because it's like their only income.
It's annoying but consider that for most youtubers this is how they make money. Though a few of my favorites do make 'dense' guides (as in informative) in a ten minute span, some of them spend 30 minutes covering what could have been covered in 10 or even 5.

Regarding the topic title.
Someone Once asked me to tell them a story about Rich Prose
I then told them a story about Dwayne Jhonson going to wall mart to get groceries.
My friend said that's not rich prose at all.
I said 'what, you said a story about Rich Pros '
My friend then proceeded to facepalm.

 

[JBCrowson]

Been reading Steven Norrel and Mr. Strange. It reads, at sentence level, like a nineteenth century author such as Austen, with language most would consider flowery today. The pacing is slower than an ox cart though, with many chapters before the story proper actually begins.