RE: Annoymoosaga's Monster Girl Saga( Recommendation )
12-27-2017, 01:20 AM (This post was last modified: 12-27-2017, 11:40 AM by Acyl.)
12-27-2017, 01:20 AM (This post was last modified: 12-27-2017, 11:40 AM by Acyl.)
I agree with classicdrogn. The writing isn't very elegant, and that's a problem for me. It's technically accurate and there are no obvious grammar or spelling errors, so at least it clears that bar of quality, and the author is trying. But there's something vaguely awkward and not completely fluid about the prose.
There's an Issac Asimov article where Asimov argues that fiction writing should be as functional as possible. That is to say, if you want to say the sun rose in the morning, you say... the sun rose in the morning. No excessive description, no excessive adjectives. Nothing but the bare minimum of what you need. Now, I don't entirely agree with that, because there definitely are authors who can write beautiful prose descriptions of things and really make use of the language.
The trouble is, most people can't do that. I include myself in that category. Playing with the language isn't easy.
The author of this story isn't trying painfully hard, the writing isn't extremely purple or anything. But they are trying to be descriptive. They're adding lots of qualifying lines, extra sentences and words to paint a picture... and it isn't working. It just isn't. At least for me. Just comes across as sort of clumsy. Which means it becomes an active barrier for me - it actually stops me from reading, since I keep interrupting myself and thinking, wait, what?
Mind you, that isn't necessarily a damning thing, it just means that some random person named Acyl on the Internet can't read this stuff. Acyl has failed to read a lot of things.
If you enjoy it, then that's what matters.
There's an Issac Asimov article where Asimov argues that fiction writing should be as functional as possible. That is to say, if you want to say the sun rose in the morning, you say... the sun rose in the morning. No excessive description, no excessive adjectives. Nothing but the bare minimum of what you need. Now, I don't entirely agree with that, because there definitely are authors who can write beautiful prose descriptions of things and really make use of the language.
The trouble is, most people can't do that. I include myself in that category. Playing with the language isn't easy.
The author of this story isn't trying painfully hard, the writing isn't extremely purple or anything. But they are trying to be descriptive. They're adding lots of qualifying lines, extra sentences and words to paint a picture... and it isn't working. It just isn't. At least for me. Just comes across as sort of clumsy. Which means it becomes an active barrier for me - it actually stops me from reading, since I keep interrupting myself and thinking, wait, what?
Mind you, that isn't necessarily a damning thing, it just means that some random person named Acyl on the Internet can't read this stuff. Acyl has failed to read a lot of things.
If you enjoy it, then that's what matters.