Quote:
Originally Posted by LDBoblo
Everyone's got some pet peeves when it comes to writing. I've got two myself that irritate me.
A) contrived description. The show-don't-tell ideal gets stretched quite a bit. Most days I'd rather get "his face was slightly bleeding again" than "lazy rivulets of crimson lifeblood crept hesitatingly from the freshly reopened wound between his flat bulbous nose and small, deeply-set eyes that shone with brilliance and down the scar-laden texture of his experienced, leathery cheek".
B) "artificial semantic density". I got sick of reading and writing in the pretentious scholarship mode some time ago, and never really cared for the way many academics would follow formulaic field-specific conventions to intentionally convolve and complicate their writing to gain credibility.
Of course, other people adore those things, and hate terse, direct, vernacular methods of writing.
|
Just as a humourous observations... the two bolded sentences (the first which you say you detested, and the second you posted as a thought process) are quite similar in scope.
*blah blah blah*
Now for the serious point... I quite agree. Short and sweet is
very most often the best choice. Or maybe, simply, a fine line between the two.
In noir novels, they are filled with long descriptions, followed by very short observations. "The bright flare of the streetlamp through the half-open window played havoc with the scotch-induced buzzing of my migraine. The night was chill."