Good Writing: Efficiency part 2

I didn't discuss everything I wanted to in my last post concerning efficiency. There's one aspect of the quality that's fairly universal in writing, and that's word economy.

It's generally considered better writing to describe a concept or other subject in as few words as possible. Of course if you take this too far you can wind up being too vague to communicate anything. A description of the universe and its workings could be "there's stuff," but that does very little to establish anything of importance about the realm of our experience. This doesn't diminish the tedium of an exhaustive list of traits the observable universe possesses. That may be useful for science, but not for an answer.

I don't have the confidence to provide you with what I think a good description of everything looks like.

I suspect I should provide some good examples of the merit of word economy. Take poetry. Especially today, with the prevalence of free verse, there is an emphasis on making every single word in the poem belong and carry as much weight as possible. The conventions of English grammar are loosened in this pursuit. Incidentally I find this to be part of the reason many people find poetry inaccessible. It is language abstracted, reduced and elevated by a presentation much unlike what you experience in spoken word or in prose.

But word economy applies to prose just as well. The word "that" is often extraneous, and can be omitted from many sentences without any sacrifice in meaning. Word processors and writing professors alike discourage the use of phrases that take more words to say the same thing as "like" or "but."

I guess what we're striving for is an utterance that comes as close as possible to meaning what it says. That's not to imply it says what it means. Buried meaning, that can be read into the diction or syntax or tone of what is written, is of high value in today's writing environment. It's probably why literature studies in school stress a search for symbolism in works. It is an effective way to encourage deeper reading, which is valued because of reasons I won't get into in this blog post.

Honestly word economy can be as hairy as any other aspect of efficiency. Fantasy descriptions can be florid with adjectives and compound sentences and adverbs, and plenty of people love it that way. I return to my question that ended the last blog post: is their preference indicative of a lack of culture via delight in archaic and "inferior" means of discourse?

I would say that aesthetics play a large part in the value placed on words, and there is a great deal of differing opinion over what is valued aesthetically and to what degree.

Just be careful when you're writing, because if it takes too ling to say what it's saying then people will tl;dr you right in the face.

Good Writing: Efficiency

Often times my thoughts about writing manifest as insecurities about my own writing ability. I think about how I might not be stacking up, that the quality of what I write is a failing grade or at least not one that excels, and it brings me back to a fundamental question. For the purpose of this blog post I will choose to phrase it like this, "What is good writing?"

Of course to approach this empirically (as I presume should lead to improved objective results) I must distrust my own instincts when attempting to answer the question. Instead I rely on the answers peers, participants in the field, and educators have given me.

The first answer to the question is often to call the merit of the query itself into uncertainty. I could cite a book whose advice I respect, On Writing, but some may consider Stephen King to "not be a good writer," and if that argument is given its head then the question I suppose devolves into "who are good writers?" The answer to that is of course as subject to personal opinion as others. Is R.A. Salvatore a good writer because his prose for battle is oft gripping? Do my reader even agree with this statement? Do they possess the faculty of experience to judge that assertion true?

In addressing all this I suppose one method is for me to establish criteria, which I intended to do in the first place.

I have been told, have heard told, have told others that one element of good writing is efficiency. A story as humans tell it is a machine, regardless of its organic parts. It is something we fabricate towards a purpose, as opposed to the fellow creatures we encounter during the course of our existence. Those are not of our creation and contain mysteries we have yet to unravel. Yes, the best of stories can contain mysteries that baffle the author as well as the reader, but most if not all of those are parts of the whole lifted from life and rendered into the mechanism of the tale to borrow the effect that mystery has on people who live real lives.

An efficient machine does not have spare pieces hanging from its sprockets. These would interfere with the way the machine runs, slowing it and possibly even rendering its purpose unattainable. This is also true with stories. One memetic explanation of this principle is Chekov's Gun. That is, if you mention a gun hanging over the door it had better be fired before the end of the story.

It isn't that simple, since it would be just as important were the gun to fail to fire at a critical moment, or if the gun were one path for it owner to take in the story but he or she follows another. In the first case the gun as it stands as a literal object in the story is still a direct mechanism whereas the gun is abstracted to a symbol when its purpose is to provide a tight bundle of meanings for the reader.

There is another complication, and this enters some hairy territory. Speculative fiction (which includes fantasy and science  fiction) often includes pieces to the story that serve little purpose but to establish a setting that is compellingly other. In more "literary" examples the same cogs that establish this setting are driving elements of symbolism or of mechanical purpose to the plot of the work, but there are plenty of other works where this does not seem to be the case.

So the question with these arises, "Are the pieces which are essential to the abstract atmosphere of the story, but not the progression of the story itself, meaningful enough to be included in 'good' writing?" And that question is one of the finer points in the dilemma of my existence as a writer. I have friends who feel that the niceties of speculative fiction do not carry enough meaning to allow the genre, especially the more flourish examples of fantasy, to be counted as works that are well-written. I also have friends who, like me, think that fantasy is just the best thing.

What troubles me about this is that I can easily find myself immersed in a fantasy that may in fact be too embellished to still be good writing, granted the extraneous details themselves are interesting enough. Or I find myself liking a story because I see the things which are unnecessary as being there for comic relief or as goofy asides necessary only to preserve the emotions the author(s) seek(s) in the audience without detracting from the story that's being told. And other people have little tolerance for these things.

Does this mean I like bad things, or that more things are good to me than to other people?

There will likely be more where this came from but for tonight that's all I've got.