Are you developing bad prose?

[Incanus]

I’ve been wondering about the writing advice that more or less goes something like, “Just write. Just throw words on the paper and worry later about grammar, typos, bad writing, etc.”

I like to think I understand this advice: The first draft is supposed to hit all the major plot and character points, but before the story is complete it is hard to know just what will be used in the final version of the story–and therefore spending energy on stuff that might very well be cut out later is a waste of time.

So my question is–if you are spending most of your time writing rough, poor prose, isn’t that exactly the thing you end up developing? Poor writing skills?

And while I’m a picky reader, I’m certain that at least some of the authors I admire have gone about writing this way. I just can’t stand leaving a mess in my wake as I go forward, and I feel that if I practice good writing now, good writing will come to me that much easier in the future.

So, just how weird am I?

 

[T.Allen.Smith]

When I first starting writing, I just wrote, as you described. The product was atrocious. Once I realized how little I knew, I began studying craft and practicing different techniques. That's the training phase. Putting concepts into action allowed me to grow. I figured out what worked for the styles I chose and worked on them until using those methods in writing became second nature.

That growth never really stops, though it does slow down. Most of the fundamental principles though, I don't have to actively think on any longer. I've practiced enough to where it's become the natural way.

There's still plenty to learn, but it is now more specialized. My focus has shifted from craft fundamentals toward other considerations, like characterization or descriptive choices that offer imagery while simultaneously conveying character details and mood.

So yeah, I agree the learning phase should be more focused than simply writing any old thing. Later after the fundamentals have been learned and experimented with, the writing can come freely, at least that's what worked for me.

I always say, any writing performed in earnest is not wasted. I believe that's true, but the key is the earnest effort, whether it's learning the basics or employing higher level concepts.

 

[Svrtnsse]

I think you may have a point here.

I've been tinkering away at my WIP for a fair while now and I've noticed that my writing style has changed quite a bit since I began. This, I think, is partly because my writing skill has increased, but also because I've developed, or shrugged off, different writing habits along the way.

I've always tried to write the best possible prose I could while still maintaining at least some kind of progress, but I think that what I've considered good prose has changed since I started. Currently I'm tinkering with the ending of the story, but I'm also re-reading my story from the beginning and it's like it's an entirely different book.

I'm going to have to do a lot of editing and rewriting to bring it all up to par.


I'm not too worried about writing poor prose and letting that cement into bad writing habits. I call that outlining. It's when I scratch up the vague outlines of the scenes to get the progress right and when I do that, it's barely readable. Sitting down to actually write the scene itself is a very different matter.
As I have the progress and action clear to me, I can focus on the technical aspects of the wordcrafting.

 

[Guy]

When starting a story I only have a general idea and maybe a specific scene or two in mind. I have to start writing it to know where I'm going with it. That's the only way I can see how to get all the elements to work and gel, what specific rough spots need to be polished or removed, what all the nuts and bolts tightened. But I have never been able to complete a rough draft, then go back to revise and rewrite. I can't help starting the revision process while I'm still writing the first rough draft. Knowing those mistakes are in there will drive me absolutely mad until I fix them.

 

[skip.knox]

I wouldn't worry too much about it. There are many ways to write, and successful writers have used every one of them.

I understand the worry. The antidote is feedback. If I were to "just write" and the only editing I ever did was my own, if I never had beta readers, never had editors, then I agree it's possible I might develop bad habits and never correct them.

The fault, then, is not so much in the "just write" approach but in the "just write and never learn" approach.

 

[Penpilot]

The following is my experience. Your mileage may vary.

My college writing teacher said one of the purposes to continually writing is to empty ourselves. It took me a while to figure out what he meant by that. What he meant was you empty yourself of expectations, of what you expect the prose and story should be.

Once you empty yourself of this, the story and prose comes out more naturally. You're not trying to twist it into this or that. Eg is this prose active enough? Is there enough action? Are my characters flat? How many times did I use "had" or "was"? ETC.

Now this isn't to say you'll write a great story or great prose on the first shot. You won't. What it means is you're prose and story will be of you and not you trying to be something you're not. Think of a parent trying to force their kid into being something they're not, like a Jock or a Doctor.

To your question, are we practising bad prose. Kind of but not really. To me the worst prose out there is dishonest prose. That's the type of prose that comes out when we're trying to be something we're not. When other's read it, it comes off as fake and produces a false note that people may not be able to put their finger on, but it will push them away.

Honest prose draws you in, no matter the flaws in it technically. I use to be in a writing group where a woman was writing her memoir. She didn't tell us at first that it was her memoir, so we all just treated it like a normal story. It was full of technical flaws, run on sentences, changes in tense, head hopping, etc., but despite that everybody agreed that the story was completely engaging.

It was engaging because it was completely honest to the subject. That honesty lifted it above it's flaws.

In terms of writing good prose, that's where editing comes in. Editing is where the presentation is fixed. That's what prose is, presentation. This is where prose gets polished. This is where you learn and practice crafting, stress the crafting, your prose. This is were you balance the slickness of presentation with the honesty of a story. You want to get the best presentation possible without losing that honesty. But always err on the side of honesty.

For example. In a Michael Bay movie, presentation trumps everything else. (This is not to say Bay is a dishonest story teller, just not a very good one because the presentation takes precidence.) Pick your favorite movie. I bet it has many flaws, but there's something about it that speaks to you and makes it rise above those flaws.

OR have you ever watched a movie where you know it's a crappy movie but you can't help liking it for some reason. I think that's because there's a certain honesty that's speaking to you, whatever that means.

 

[cupiscent]

The flipside of the "just get it down" is that then you have to edit it. This is where the "spending most of your time writing shoddy prose" idea falls down. For instance, I just spent a month slamming down a first-draft of a novel with heaps of problems. I'm walking away from it for a while to do other things - get the distance from it to be able to edit - but then I anticipate I will spend at least twice as long editing it - rewriting and reworking and shifting and polishing - as I did writing it. So actually, the majority of my time will be spent turning my shoddy prose into better prose.

Hopefully this will mean that the next time I write slightly better first-draft prose, but I'm not going to worry if it doesn't, because the really conscious good-writing comes - for me - with the editing.

 

[Incanus]

Interesting responses. Thanks to everyone for sharing their thoughts on this subject.

I think T.A.S. and Skip make a good point about not just throwing down words, but learning something about it while doing it. This seems a must, no matter the approach.

For myself, I'm not the least bit 'worried'. I've found my method and am happy with it. I'd guess that around 80-85% of the total time spent on a story is spent on the first draft. After that its expanding on some details, clearing up a few muddy bits, and doing another round of polish.

I think I work more like Guy seems to--moving forward, but tinkering. Also, I've had experiences rather like Svrtnsse relates. I suppose that even if you are just spewing words, and you do it regularly, then you should show some improvement over time.

cupiscent--your approach makes me wonder: your first draft sounds like it might really be a super-detailed outline. Maybe that's the difference in how some of us go about storytelling. The notes I start with before I begin writing are so terribly written that I'm not sure they even qualify as language. That's my outline. Writing a novel in a month is absolutely incomprehensible to me, I can't even begin to picture how it could be done at all. At least not one that I'd want to read or write.

For me, the story and the presentation are bound up together. I can't treat prose as an 'after-thought'.

 

[Incanus]

I'm not sure I understand the comment about Michael Bay. I consider most of his movies pretty poor, with one or two rising into mediocrity. His presentation, like just about everything else in his movies, seems formulaic and uninspired.

A better example of what I'm talking about here might be David Lynch. Content and style are inextricably woven together, changing one drastically effects the other. I'm trying to picture a Michael Bay presentation of Eraserhead. Addmittedly, I'm not getting very far.

Kubrik, Coen Brothers, Terry Gilliam--now we're talking presentation!

 

[cupiscent]

cupiscent--your approach makes me wonder: your first draft sounds like it might really be a super-detailed outline. Maybe that's the difference in how some of us go about storytelling. The notes I start with before I begin writing are so terribly written that I'm not sure they even qualify as language. That's my outline. Writing a novel in a month is absolutely incomprehensible to me, I can't even begin to picture how it could be done at all. At least not one that I'd want to read or write.

There's a lot to what you say! When I committed to writing the book in a month, my plan actually was to write a super-detailed outline - I gave myself permission to skip, to summarise, to make do with placeholders. But in the end - while there are a few of those, especially single sentences standing in for bigger descriptive elements - I've ended up with prose end to end.

The reason I wanted to do this is that the novel before this took me two years to write a first draft of, and I'm still going to have to spend - I estimate - three months putting it right and moving things around, because however hard I worked on chapter 8 in first draft, the finale just made it redundant, because I need the character to be elsewhere, doing other things, in order to arrive properly at that finale. I find this very frustrating, and wondered if I could "fast-forward" to that overall view of the novel that would allow the big work of editing and putting the book right. Looks like maybe I could, but I couldn't swear that this would work again!

And I stress that I would not want to read what I wrote in November either. It's very rough. But it's sand in the sandpit, and now I can build castles. I think my key point here - and the key point of those who advocate the "just get it down" method - is that extremely few people write first draft that looks like what ends up on the published page. Don't let yourself get bogged down in trying to do that. Just aim for that endpoint, and keep moving forwards.

 

[Penpilot]

I'm not sure I understand the comment about Michael Bay. I consider most of his movies pretty poor, with one or two rising into mediocrity. His presentation, like just about everything else in his movies, seems formulaic and uninspired.

What I meant was, it's all about getting your attention and moving you along quickly. There's no meaning behind it, no though beyond what's on the surface. And yes, it's formulaic, but that's what you get when you follow the "rules" in writing too strictly and treat them like gospel. If it works, it works, regardless of if it follows the "rules" or not.

In general, voice overs in film are frowned upon. It's a general indication of poor film making, but how many great films use voice overs?

On a side note. There's a youtube video out there of some guys playing the Transformers movies side-by-side and the beginning of the first two movies synch up beat for beat.

 

[DeathtoTrite]

Making a detailed outline and then starting to write is one way. But I think sometimes people underestimate the brutality with which they should attack their first draft. And often, its about cutting material, not adding. "How are these words useful? What does this add to the story?" are two good questions. I remember my high school english teacher showing us an author's first draft of a few paragraphs vs. final product. Entire similes were cut. Redundancies were removed. If I wanted to, I could redo this reply 2-3 times before it approaches polished writing. Over the course of hundreds of pages, some of this is lost, especially since editing is hardly fun. But stick with it, and never be afraid to completely rewrite something you had earlier thought was good.

 

[Chessie]

I think sometimes people underestimate the brutality with which they should attack their first draft. And often, its about cutting material, not adding.

Yes. Every writer is different but that doesn't take away from the fact that the first draft is hardly perfect. I don't think that letting the words flow without stopping means you're developing bad prose. I read recently that--writing in the flow--is a good way of discovering your voice. Haven't discovered if that's true for me yet or whatever, but writing in this fashion has allowed me to finish multiple projects in less than a year. Before I started writing that way finishing projects was impossible. My first drafts are awful...probably worse than any other writer's out there...but at least they get DONE.

Don't be afraid to pound the keys away. And as some have said before, when you study the craft and apply those principles to your writing, the habit of forming sentences a certain way is something you eventually get used to. My point is, don't strive to get it perfect the first time. Go easy on yourself because writing something to finish is usually the hardest part of it all.

 

[SM-Dreamer]

And I stress that I would not want to read what I wrote in November either. It's very rough. But it's sand in the sandpit, and now I can build castles. I think my key point here - and the key point of those who advocate the "just get it down" method - is that extremely few people write first draft that looks like what ends up on the published page. Don't let yourself get bogged down in trying to do that. Just aim for that endpoint, and keep moving forwards.

This. Yes. Highlighted my favorite part. I feel the same about my NaNo story. It is not worth showing to anyone - it's sloppy, I backtracked, I repeated myself because I didn't think that I was getting my point across well enough, I changed my mind mid-story (more than once)... It's a confusing, jumbled mess. There probably is bad prose in there, and there are also a few nuggets as well.

I think that the first draft is supposed to be bad writing. The writing itself might not be the point - it's the ideas, the characters, the plot, the setting, the story. You're planting the seeds to see what grows. There will probably be weeds that you didn't want, or plants that don't grow right, and you pull and trim until you have a beautiful garden.

But that garden took an awful lot of dirt and sweat before it got that way.

 

[psychotick]

Hi,

In a word - no. You write stuff in your first draft that isn't perfect. But if you're like me even as you're writing your first draft you're also rewriting bits of it. Already finding weaknesses and fixing them. It is the fixing that will help you improve most as a writer. And then comes the editing etc, where you critically examine your work through the eyes of another, and suddenly you can spot more and more mistakes.

In time as you go through these steps, you naturally learn to write better prose. You actually can't avoid it.

The only time you would have to worry about this is if you never reviewed or edited. Then you would simply keep writing and not improving.

Cheers, Greg.

 

[Incanus]

OK. I understand and agree with the fact that if you write and write and write, you should show some kind of improvement over time. But I still can't shake this sense of prose being an 'after-thought', something that's only on the surface, and that can be polished up later. I'm certain that one can create passable prose this way, but that's not going to be good enough for me. I may be setting my aim a bit high, or setting myself up for disappointment, but I don't want my stories to read like the blah/meh stuff that seems to currently take up 90%+ of the bookstore shelves.

Simply finishing a story is commendable, a testament to endurance and willpower. But if the final result ends up in the prose vicinity of anything like Hickman/Weis, or Salvatore, or even Terry Brooks, I'd consider it an artistic failure and throw in the towel. Yes, these folks sell books, but that doesn't automatically make them good. I couldn't, in good conscience, peddle what I consider to be junk, and I'll only buy some of it for educational purposes--it is occasionally useful to learn what not to do from reading mediocre prose. A book should have something resembling literary art in it somewhere to be worthwhile.

I guess I'm a bit opinionated on this subject--can't really help it, I just demand good, strong prose.

 

[Chessie]

Yes, but you also have to remember that any kind of art is subjective. To you, those authors may have prose that doesn't seem good, but others like it. Everyone has their own style. What's meh to you is gold to someone else. And really, if you want to avoid sounding meh by your own standards, the only way to make your style "shine" is to edit edit edit. What I think we're all mostly saying is that writing a good book is done in layers.

 

[cupiscent]

I may be setting my aim a bit high, or setting myself up for disappointment, but I don't want my stories to read like the blah/meh stuff that seems to currently take up 90%+ of the bookstore shelves.
...A book should have something resembling literary art in it somewhere to be worthwhile.
I guess I'm a bit opinionated on this subject--can't really help it, I just demand good, strong prose.

I 100% agree with this, Incanus! I get sad reading same-old "easy-listening" fantasy prose, and I get very excited when I find someone doing more exciting things with prose. (Like Scott Lynch, for instance.) I want to write stories that are fun and wondrous and riveting, but that also sing on the page and in the ear. I want to write stories where every word is a perfect pearl on a string of outrageous beauty and power.

But a key point of magnificent prose is that it serves the story, first and foremost - every word is a brick in a magnificent edifice. There is no point (for me) in agonising too much over the bricks when I don't know the shape of the building. Even if I have detailed plans for construction, it's only once the frame is built that I can really started putting the right bricks in place.

I think perhaps you underestimate just how significant "polishing up" can be. And no one decides a story is done except the author. I've finished a draft in a month. The book is still - as I noted - at least three months of hard effort from being anywhere in the vicinity of "done".

 

[Svrtnsse]

I guess it's a question of "edit as you go" or "edit afterwards".

The main drawback I can see with editing as you go is that you'll risk ending up in a situation where you'll have to cut out something that you'd previously polished to perfection. It's a kind of trade-off you'll have to make.

 

[Penpilot]

But if the final result ends up in the prose vicinity of anything like Hickman/Weis, or Salvatore, or even Terry Brooks, I'd consider it an artistic failure and throw in the towel. Yes, these folks sell books, but that doesn't automatically make them good. I couldn't, in good conscience, peddle what I consider to be junk, and I'll only buy some of it for educational purposes--it is occasionally useful to learn what not to do from reading mediocre prose. A book should have something resembling literary art in it somewhere to be worthwhile.

I guess I'm a bit opinionated on this subject--can't really help it, I just demand good, strong prose.

Ok, the way I'm reading this is there's two things being talked about here, story and prose. You can have a fantastic story with only simple prose, but just because prose is great doesn't mean the story will be good.

Obviously there's a minimum level that must be reached on both these fronts, but after that I think it's about finding your own voice, and telling the story in a honest way.

I'm reminded of a famous exchange between Falkner and Hemingway.

Faulkner: "[Hemingway] has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary."
Hemingway: "Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words?"