the good, the bad, and the adequate

[marycatelli]

For some reason, I've run across a slew of discussions abouat good writing vs. bad writing.  As a dictomony.

That doesn't quite work.


There's a continuum of writing from the best to the worst.  There is a threshold below which the writing is bad.  It's just too turgid, or tiresome, or opaque, or what have you.

But making it above this threshold doesn't make it good writing.  Adequate writing, perhaps.  No one will pick it up for its crystalline singing prose, but readers may pick it up if it has a good story, plotting, characters, setting, etc., and perhaps more eagerly than they would crystalline singing prose that contains inferior version of those elements.

The sentence

At the soda fountain by the drugstore's back wall, a red-haired soda jerk, in the pink and white uniform, handed a soda to a little girl with blue ribbons on her braids.

is not going to win immortality for its eloquence, or even be singled out by a review as an example of fine writing. (Unless it has some really odd context to lend it weight.)  It is not, however, the same thing as

There was a drugstone.  There was a soda fountain in it.  The soda fountain was at the back.  There was a soda jerk there.  His hair was read.  His clothing was the uniform.  The uniform was pink and white.  What he was doing was handing a soda.  The person he handed it to was a little girl.  The girl had braids.  The braids had blue ribbons.

even though that has exactly the same information.

Comments

[bunn.livejournal.com]

Writing quality as a dichotomy doesn't work, I agree, but not sure if it entirely works as a sliding scale either.

I think there are two things going on, correctness, which is more or less a right / wrong thing*, and style, which is very much an audience thing. For example, I loved the writing of China Miéville's The City and the City - I thought it was right up there with the crystalline singing prose. But my husband, who I think is less in love with language, thought the style was so opaque it was almost unreadable, and got in the way of the plot.

*though I suppose not entirely even that - what about e.e. cummings?

[marycatelli]

Humm, yeah, it has its aspects -- similar to plotting, characterizatin and setting 0:) -- where the harder stuff may be too hard at first.

Then, for cummings, if we thought it was correct and proper English, half the effect would be lost.

[headnoises.livejournal.com]

Don't know the context, but it might work if you apply the same metrics as, oh, milk.

When I hand my husband the jug of milk and ask him if it's any good (I can't taste the difference, and it all stinks to me) I am not asking him if it's a superior example of the lactic arts; I'm asking him if it is too bad to use.

"Bad writing," outside of taste areas, would be stuff that's too bad for (most) uses. Good writing works, although you might not care for the dish.

[marycatelli]

How true. It's supposed to be the same principle for checking the wine in restaurants -- you're checking for whether it turned to vinegar.

A good analogy.

Though then we can argue about better and worse milks within the "good enough" group.

[headnoises.livejournal.com]

Though then we can argue about better and worse milks within the "good enough" group.

Oh, heavens yes!

The milk notion works alright if you branch into a cooking metaphor, come to think of it. Milk was just the first thing that came to mind as able to be "good" and "bad" where it wasn't a matter of quality.

[marycatelli]

Metaphors -- Aristotle observed a long time ago that the art of seeing resemblences was the one essential gift of the imaginative writer, and the only one that could not be taught.