To take this to another but similar place the difference is even more apparent in poetry. Certain poets seem to intentionally make their work inaccessible.
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Originally Posted by gmw
Prestidigitweeze, I suspect we agree on a lot, but I don't mind a discussion rather than an argument.  I'm not a fan of simplistic rules with regard to writing, they're only useful if you understand their intention, and if you understand that then you probably don't need the rule. (My knowledge of music is not sufficient to fully follow your example, but I can recognise that it is saying much the same thing.)
One of the misunderstandings that I've seen happen here (on MR) a few times is different distinctions that people place on the word "story". A guess a lot of people will interpret it as equivalent to plot, but I tend to use it in a wider (and admittedly more nebulous) sense - something like: what the book is about. That seems to be the only way to be inclusive of the huge variety of fiction.
Many books are mostly about the plot (the storyline, the sequence of events to be revealed). Some have almost no plot in the traditional sense (I sometimes have trouble with these). And some use a background plot mostly as a structure from which to hang the real story. In this latter group I think John Irving makes a good example; he usually has a plot, but I don't generally think of it as the story, it's not what the novel was about (not that Irving is usually about just one thing).
None of that is to place a value judgment on the different types of story, beyond what I personally find accessible, but it is to try and give some further definition to what I mean when I say that: "If the writer wants to impress me with their learning then that had better be conveyed within the context of the story, rather than the obscurity of their text."
The words that form the story should all be part of the story, whatever the story is. The writer's task, if they have a desire to exercise their erudition, or to pass on some message or moral, is to create a story that allows them to say these things as part of the story, rather than as an essay within a story. It should feel like a cohesive whole (... even if that cohesive whole is a demonstration that the world is not a cohesive whole - as per what I was saying about not liking simplistic rules  ). |