Quote:
Originally Posted by gmw
You're not the first.  It is interesting to read what other people consider to be good writing. I like Jane Austen very much (have been rereading some of her work just recently), but that doesn't mean I think anything/everything would have been better for being written in such a style. I believe it is just another style to be enjoyed, a style suitable to its time, content and audience just as more modern writers write for their time, content and audience. |
Oh, no question but that different styles make for different good writing. But I think there are commonalities as well, not of style, but of construction & attention to such things as connotation, shades of meaning, foreshadowing & so forth.
And one does not even have to like good writing to understand that one is seeing it. I am unable to get into either early or late Henry James, but I do see that he knows what he is doing with words, and is paying attention not merely to what he says, but how he says it.
But poor writing is not just another style. In fact, poor writing usually incorporates, among its other defects, lack of style.