I still want help but I am having a hard time with understanding advice.

Have I given offence? Or was it @Chinspinner?

I'm not sure how, nothing either of us said was particularly out of the ordinary. In fact you could say they were more or less the same things you have been told time and time again. I don't see the need to be so defensive, you claim to seek advice and have been given plenty of it, yet you still make these threads asking for more. What exactly are you finding so incomprehensible about writing clearly rather than fluffing everything up for the sake of it? You seem perfectly fine with writing coherently on these forums, yet the second it is creative you find the most circuitous wording possible.

 

I wasn't mad at anyone. I was just insulted so I wrote the first thing that came to mind which was random to be funny. I was insulted because it seems like you're saying I am the worst writer ever, and that makes me feel like you don't think I can improve. So I felt like I was wasting my time and figured what is the point?

 

I just don't understand it. You can write clearly and concisely in response to posts, so why don't you when writing creatively?

I am sticking with my original assertion that this is a convoluted troll.

 

You can improve. You fight tooth and nail to ensure that you do not improve.

As another piece of advice for you to ignore: I would recommend withdrawing the rude post and issuing an apology.

 

When I write a forum post, I make no effort to achieve rhythm or voice. I just use grammar and make sure my words are not off a beat. When I write creatively, I try to achieve certain sound effects, as I have mentioned in my older threads.

It is not hard to write a forum post, because I am mostly reacting to something somebody just said. I don't have clear enough or abundant enough thought when it comes writing creatively. My mind literally gets blocked. I wanted to write an epistle many times this year and I could not write the outline. I just could not figure out what to think, what to put first, what to put next, etc.

I don't know what a convoluted troll is but I am not a troll.

 

I am sorry about the rude post. I should not have written that. Sometimes I get in a less disciplined mode and do stupid things. I don't really want to offend anyone, and I feel bad that I did.

 

And that's why you should write creatively using your forum voice.

I have said this several times. I'm curious as to whether you have ever read, and understood, that suggestion? Are you hearing any of us, at all?

 

"Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex... It takes a touch of genius --- and a lot of courage to move in the opposite direction." - Albert Einstein

 

I hear you. My ultimate goal however it to write in more elegant voices. I wish there was a way I could write what I want to say clearly first, and then try to change the rhythm, as I believe some of you also suggested before.

 

This is a writing forum, we are all creative individuals here, and as such we all know that criticising people's work can be a sensitive issue. From looking through the threads, it does seem that most have tired to remain as inoffensive as possible, but due to the sheer number of threads you have made on this topic I would say that there is a need to be as blunt as possible.
Despite your claims otherwise, I believe a lot of the issue here is stubbornness and unwillingness to change. Look, I mean this is the nicest possible way, but your creative writing style just does not work, and if you ever want any degree of readership you will need to tone everything back. The fact that each time you post excerpts the usual response is "why is this so over worded? What are you trying to say?" should be a reasonable indication of that.

Fundamentally, I would say it's an issue of making everything too stylised. You can have style, but too much style just makes everything sound absurd. Again, there's no possible way for me to say this without it sounding kind of offensive, but it seems like you are writing in such a style to make everything sound more intelligent, elegant, profound and poetic than it actually is.

So in summery, you should probably try to strike a middle ground somewhere between your forum posts and your creative writing. Style is like a spice, too little or too much can make the meal foul, and eating a bowl of pure spice is not particularly pleasant.

 

That goal is standing in the way of your writing.

 

Exactly, you have to strike a balance between the style you want, and the clarity you need.

 

I'm not sure there is much audience for new works written in the King James Bible style.
A lot of the appeal of Shakespeare is that it gives a real sense of history.
It combines the writing style of 1600 with real cultural and social values of that time. We get to see what has remained the same and what has changed.
I'm not afraid to say that for most 21st century audiences, the style lacks clarity. It's a slog to read.

Maybe there's a niche audience for imitation 1600 writing, but in terms of subject matter, your material seems to be trying to convey teenage angst in the 21st century.
It's a really odd combination of subject and style.

 

I've just been notified of another post on the forum for a writing course that I was on a while ago.

On that thread, a woman had posted an example of "great" literature (her opinion). It was a descriptive paragraph of such purple prose that my response was "I fell asleep", a response that received a fair amount of agreement. It also received a fair amount of support to the effect that this was the work of one of the geniuses of American literature. Emperor's new clothes? Or am I just an ignorant philistine?

There can be differences of opinion about writing. However, I've yet to see a response that suggests that your flowery "creative" style is the way to go.

Why not try:

1/ Write it simply, in as few words as possible.
2/ Flower it up so that it's half-way towards the "sound effect" that you're after
3/ Post, and see if 50% volume is a better blend of style and substance.
4/ Repeat.

And I disagree with Plothog. Your style isn't Shakespeare-esque; Shakespeare's language is archaic, but once you translate the words that are no longer used, it's a model of clarity.

 

You're disagreeing with something I've not said. I'm certainly not saying he's achieved Shakespeare's style. I guess I need to aim be clearer with my forum posts

But he has told us that he is aiming to write in the style of the King James Bible, hence a lot of the archaic phrasing he's used. I'd be impressed if he's even achieved a bad 1600s style of, as it would take a considerable amount of time studying the language of that time to make it accurate.

I was trying to question his aim. He's making life considerably harder for himself. And I don't know to what end. There isn't much audience for an archaic writing style, even if you do manage to do it as well as Shakespeare.
The only reason I brought Shakespeare up, is because Shakespeare is the most obvious counter to my lack of audience argument. There's lots of people who like to read Shakespeare, but I just can't see many people being interested in what @waitingforzion is aiming for, because it lacks the 1600 authenticity of Shakespeare.

 

I have a feeling here that we have a member who really wants help in achieving his goals (not ours), and everyone is responding by telling him to change his goals. This doesn't help him. It's as if he's saying he admires William Faulkner and James Joyce, and everyone is telling him to write like Raymond Chandler. This, again, does not help him.

I have a ton of sympathy for @waitingforzion, because it sounds like he's trying to achieve with his prose what I try to achieve with mine. I understand his motivation. I don't want to write like the King James Bible, but I sure do want to produce prose that sounds good when read aloud and has a good rhythm to it. I hate it when my stuff sounds clunky.

As I see it, waitingforzion's problem isn't with his content or his ideas. It's that he's got a bone in his head that says there is one way to structure a paragraph and he doesn't know what it is. He's asking for a book or a guide of some kind that will teach him the One True Way to write a paragraph. Of course, there isn't one. Paragraphs are as much a matter of feel as anything else in art. Give ten professional writers the same writing assignment - say, include a given set of three or four ideas in a paragraph - you'll get ten different paragraphs back, including some angry statements from some of the writers saying, "I'd break this into two or three paragraphs! Who wants to fit all this into just one?" This is why I was suggesting that waitingforzion read some good modern literature and study how real writers do this.

@waitingforzion, if the how-to books aren't helping you, FORGET THEM! Write! Get your stuff down on the page. Once you get some experience, you can look back at the how-to books and see how the lessons apply to you, but right now you can't. You're missing the essence of the thing. Ever read the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy trilogy (actually more than three books, but who's counting?)? There's a scene in there where some rather misguided people have been sent to a strange planet to make their lives there, and they've formed a committee to figure out how to invent the wheel. The heroes are astonished. "You need a committee to invent the wheel? It's the simplest thing there is!" The committee members say, "Okay, smart guy. You tell us what color it should be!" I think that's where you are. You're worrying about the color of the wheel when you haven't satisfied its specifications yet. Make it round. Make it useful. Then worry about silly things like color if you want.

Just write. Abandon the how-to books for now. Write as freely as a child sings, or finger-paints. No rules (other than basic grammar, for now). You will eventually hit on something that sounds like you. You, the way you want you to sound. Develop yourself from there.

Another thing: Long sentences are not evil. Too many of them in a row can be very confusing unless you've achieved a level of mastery, but that doesn't mean long sentences are evil. What you probably want is a mix of sentence lengths. You want sentence variety. Short ones, long ones, sentence fragments, the whole shebang. Mix it up and the readers probably won't even notice that you're confronting them with the occasional 100-word sentence. Sometimes you'll give them a nice little three-word sentence for dessert.

And always remember: advice is simply advice, not hard-and-fast rules. This includes advice given on this forum. I suppose some people were telling William Faulkner he should write like Raymond Chandler, and Faulkner was entirely justified in ignoring them.

 

I've been reading all these threads without comment, because I can't quite get a handle on this situation.

The OP says he doesn't like to read—or finds it hard to read—and is dragging his heels about reading archaic stuff similar to what he's writing in order to learn to do it more effectively.

If he doesn't like to read archaic books himself, why is he trying to write that way?

Just not sure what this is all about, really.

 

Sorry, Plothog, you're right...I read your above post too quickly, noticed Shakespeare, and conflated stuff. My mistake!

 

William Faulkner and Shakespeare. Those are pretty damn big shoes to fill. Have you seen any sign that the OPs feet are that big? More importantly, have you seen any sign that his feet are growing?

I don't think any of us are telling the OP what his ultimate goals should be. When he's able to do so, if he wants to write like the King James Bible, he should go for it. But he's clearly not able to do so right now.

I disagree that the best way to get better at writing long, convoluted, beautiful sentences is to practice writing long, convoluted, ugly sentences. You agree that the OP's work will eventually contain sentences of varying lengths - maybe he should practice the skill of writing shorter ones, for a while, and see where that gets him?

Or, if you want to keep encouraging the OP to continue writing the way he is, I guess that should be between you and the OP. Maybe you could also encourage him to stop posting the same questions over and over and then ignoring the preponderance of the replies he receives because they don't agree with what he wants to hear.

 

Another piece of advice I'd give is this: what makes you think simpler, shorter sentences aren't elegant? What makes you think they don't have rhythm? I'm not saying you have to prefer the rhythm and elegance of short, simple sentences. However, to think as though they lack all elegance and rhythm is flawed, and will skew your own writing.

Think of a piece of music, since you're always on about rhythm. A song gets boring if all the notes are slow and lengthy, or it sounds choppy if all of it was in staccatos. You have to vary the beat of each note - not every note is gonna be just one beat. You get notes that are 2 beats long, 4 beats long, a cluster of little quavers and then some staccatos and then a final 8 or 12 beat note that lasts several bars.

Writing's kinda like that. You gotta mix it up.

Also, you yourself said that you often don't know what to write first, where to start, how you should write it etc - it really sounds like you don't have your ideas clear in your head. If that's the case, then it makes perfect sense why your long sentences don't make sense. Even short sentences might not make sense if you yourself aren't sure what you wanna say and how to say it, but long sentences are harder to manage and the disastrous results are plainer to see if your ideas weren't coherent in the first place.

I wonder if your main problem is really in getting your ideas sorted. What if you first write a bullet point outline of what you want to write in chronological order, and then secondly, you write that as a fiction paragraph in plain, modern language - in exactly the voice you use on these forums, so you are absolutely sure of what you want to say and its order. And then write it in longer sentences, but toned down. And then finally write in the same verbose prose you've been writing.

And compare them. Post all of this on the forum (as one post) and see what people say. Start with a simple idea. Let's say, it's raining outside and your character's bored, so she picks up her favourite book and reads for the afternoon. The end. Simple enough. Not sure if this will actually help but... can't hurt to try?

 

In my stupid story I wrote in the workshop I thought I was pretty clear, but they said the sentences were too long. Also, I keep on contradicting myself in ways that other people did not even notice. I don't know why I said they pointed a wand at a chest, but when they chanted, people standing around it fell down. Am I of below average intelligence?

 

No, you're just demanding perfection. It's perfectly normal that when you pull thoughts out of your own head and put them down in words, you fail to include things that are obvious to you and not others. Most writers say, "Oh. Right. OK, fixed." You freak out. The issue is not to ensure that the confusion never happens, it's to develop a calm and businesslike attitude toward fixing it.

 

Thank you guys for wonderful input. Shouldn't it not have been to @waitingforzion 's benefit, it was to mine.
Part of the trick is, I guess, to really unplug one's ears. Every day I discover ne new dimensions of what that means.

My take is that @waitingforzion is a perfectionist who can't stand to start a clear, unequivocal prose because it isn't high-flung enough. He might be too lazy to get down to work and actually produce something.
And I wonder how anybody can beat around the bush so flagrantly with so much advice literally hovering around this damn forum.
Only by going through older posts one might find a lot of answers.

 

Waiting, you should try to cultivate the patience your username suggests.

Before you can entertain, you need to work on clarity. Each sentence should convey a single idea, and each paragraph should expand upon the first sentence of the paragraph to shape that idea.

Fiction does take liberties with those guidelines, but you shouldn't take liberties until you have mastered the fundamentals.

It takes practice, and it takes patience. And it takes more practice and more patience, especially the latter.

Before you can entertain, you have to develop a rhythm and style of your own, founded on solid writing skills. Simply demanding it to be better will only frustrate you and annoy those who are merely trying to help.

 

No, I don't think this is it at all. See @Cogito's post above. His observation is much closer.