Discussion
#WritersCoffeeClub 25 Nov
What are some tips you can share to avoid 'clunky' phrasing?
Everybody's suggesting reading your work aloud, but I disagree: prose fiction should not focus on replicating speech, but on conveying meaning. It's a separate art form from the spoken word and should be treated as such. Splitting long sentences so that they're readable aloud is a shibboleth of modern editorial fashion that focuses on accessibility and market share, meeting the needs of "young adult" readers.
@cstross ooh, that's a cool perspective. I never read my books aloud while writing/revising, but I read them. Over and over and over. I figured it was the same thing, but perhaps it's not. Some books are very good for reading aloud though, you have to admit. Especially picture books, no?
@cstross I hate audio books, I think that listening to the reading of a stranger curtails the imagination of the listener.
But as a father, it was my way of getting my children to enjoy books.
We would all 3 cram into a comfy armchair and I would read at least a chapter each night before bedtime.
Piers Anthony's Xanth novels, the Wind in the Willows, the Hobbit, the Lord of the Rings.
My wife and her friend would often be in the kitchen listening.
Until they grew too old.
I miss that very much.
@cstross I guess it really depends on your narrative style.
Mine is quite suited to reading aloud, but I've also read quite a few books aloud to my kids (including The Hobbit and the first fifteen Discworld novels). Some books are definitely better suited to reading aloud than others. For my own writing, I always have that 'this might be read aloud to someone' idea in mind.
The speech patterns are quite different from normal conversation, of course - but the storyteller vibe goes quite well with fantasy. My kids certainly seemed to enjoy it.
I did read them Harry Harrison's "The Misplaced Battleship", but that might have been the only sci-fi (apart from the novella I wrote).
@cstross I'd still consider it a good practice. The author doesn't *have* to change everything their mouth stumbles over.
@cstross As against that, a lot of people now "read" by listening to audio books. Do you adapt for this at all?
@wendyg No—although I probably should consider it. (I can't absorb information from audio books *at all* so it's a non-consideration on my part, although the market has exploded in recent years.)
@cstross that bit about splitting long sentences makes me think of whichever H2G2 book it was with the several-line single-sentence paragraph that was followed by the phrase "the previous sentence makes perfect sense if you read it again" 😁
Install bonfire.cafe
Get the full app experience
@cstross I have used text to speech as a useful tool to break out of the author mind and realise what I meant to write was not what I wrote.
A Noob tool to fix noob behaviours.