I am not a very eloquent writer, and when it comes to the process, there’s a lot I struggle to explain. I’ve been doing this for so long that a lot of it comes down to instinct–I write something because I know what I’m trying to express, or maybe I’m don’t but I’m reaching for it, and then I edit to make that even better, or clearer, or I’ll delete it and start all over again.
Prose is one of those things I stumble over in trying to explain, because people have all sorts of ideas about it, which is great. But as someone who has to produce it in order to invoke something in my readers, I have to be aware of what I’m doing at all times and why I’m doing it, which means occasionally deconstructing the concept, or talking about it over and over again until people get bored and shrink away from me like that dude who sat on cat urine you now have to share the bus with. (To my unfortunate friend: I’m sorry, I know it was my cat, but it’s a hilarious story).
I’ve had people mention, for example, that my prose is easy-to-digest and simple. But also dense, in that a lot of information is packed in such a short amount of time. I’ve also been told my worldbuilding is complex, my characters are complex, and on one occasion one of my plots has been called a “Rube Goldberg machine.” I’ve been told that readers can imagine themselves in the environments I portray. A contrast, dear reader. None of this is an accident. To portray breadth and depth without stumbling over the words is a constant challenge, and one of the reasons I actually write really slow. I may be taking down those word counts like a storm, but it’s taking me hours. There are times when I agonize over a sentence for days.
I love to say that good prose is invisible. It is a tool that relays information. The best prose is able to relay a lot more–packing not just information, but emotion, atmosphere, and so on. The Great Ursula Le Guin explains this a lot better than I ever can:
The chief duty of a narrative sentence is to lead to the next sentence.
Beyond this basic, invisible job, the narrative sentence can do an infinite number of beautiful, surprising, powerful, audible, visible things… But the basic function of the narrative sentence is to keep the story going and keep the reader going with it.
Its rhythm is part of the rhythm of the whole piece; all its qualities are part of the quality and tone of the whole piece. As a narrative sentence, it isn’t serving the story well if its rhythm is so unexpected, or its beauty so striking, or its similes or metaphors so dazzling, that it stops the reader, even to say Ooh, Ah! Poetry can do that. Poetry can be visibly, immediately dazzling. In poetry a line, a few words, can make the reader’s breath catch and her eyes fill with tears. But for the most part, prose sets its proper beauty and power deeper, hiding it in the work as a whole. In a story it’s the scene–the setting/characters/action/interaction/dialogue/feelings–that makes us hold our breath and cry…and turn the page to find out what happens next.
–Steering the Craft
