Lush and overwritten

[pjthompson]

So, what is the difference for you between lush prose and overwritten prose?

I’m not asking to be a smart aleck or because I have an ax to grind (I don’t), I’m genuinely curious what the breaking point is for any of you who would care to comment.

I know that one person’s lush is another’s overwritten and vice versa, so some of it is a matter of taste, but I’d still like to hear your thoughts on this if you’re willing.

For myself, yeah, I do sometimes hit a wall with some lush prose where I want very badly for the author to tone it down several notches. Usually for me it involves the use of a lot of two dollar words when simpler ones would flow better, but it can also involve a great deal of artery-clogging images piled one on top of another. Still, other people lap that kind of thing up like cream—arteries be damned.

There probably isn’t a consensus. But, please, discuss…

Mirrored from Better Than Dead.

Comments

IMHO

[safewrite.livejournal.com]

Lush prose means lovely images that do not intrude on the story: they enhance and support it. Overwritten prose is tacked on and detracts from the overall experience of reading.

When description, similes and metaphors give a story wings, that's great. When they cover it in too many layers of paint, it distracts - and that's a crying shame.

Re: IMHO

[pjthompson]

Yeah, that. Sometimes hard to decide from inside the story, but blatantly obvious from outside of it.

[marshallpayne1.livejournal.com]

Lush prose is what I write. Overwritten prose is what the other guy writes. ;-)

No seriously, I've really worked at trimming this from my own writing over the years. The stuff that I use to think was the height of expressive prose, I now see much of it as pretentious crap. What I like is expressive language that is there for service of the story, to bring forth the characters and plot. Often with so-called literary fiction, the emphasis seems to be only on the language, to mask that the writer doesn't have anything important to say. Here's a snippet I used from my review of the antho Paper Cities at The Fix. It's from Hal Duncan’s “The Tower of Morning’s Bones.”

Fire. He had dreamt of fire: a fierce firmament in the deep structure of the afterworld, a flux of flash in an ocean system of eddies and currents, waves and tides, splashes and ripples, the simple quarternity of colour complexified into chiaroscuro.

Need I say more? Some consider this fine writing. I find it very pretentious. So bad it would be funny if the writer wasn't serious.

[pjthompson]

No, you needn't say more. That's the stuff I mean, too.

I've really worked at trimming this from my own writing over the years. The stuff that I use to think was the height of expressive prose, I now see much of it as pretentious crap.

I'm constantly working on that! As I said above, it's sometimes hard to tell from inside the story when you're (I'm) doing that. Often I only see it with time and distance.

[stillsostrange.livejournal.com]

Whereas I tend to love Hal Duncan's writing for that. I want prose with texture, flavor, color, rhythm. I want language, and I want it to do something beside put subjects and predicates together, rinse and repeat.

[marshallpayne1.livejournal.com]

I will say that I'm reading The Drowning City currently and really enjoying your use of language. It's quite expressive and I'm not just saying that. I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on Duncan. ;-)

[stillsostrange.livejournal.com]

Heh. Thank you. For me, TDC is very much on the spare side. I'll definitely agree the Hal's writing is very dense and often an effort to untangle, but it still falls in the feature vs. bug category for me.

[pjthompson]

It is all a matter of taste. I enjoy chewy language, too, but I have my limits. If it piles too high, I just want to rip my hair out.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

To quote the guy in A Princess Bride, "I'm not sure that word means what [he] think[s] it means"--namely, "quaternity," which means "a union of a group or set of four." So what the heck is "the simple [union-of-four] of colour"? Hmm? And "chiaroscuro" means shading, a mix of light and dark. Does color (whether in a group of four or not) "complexify" into a mix of light and dark? These big words aren't making any kind of sense.

(And actually, you could argue that the others aren't, either. What is a flux of flash, exactly? And the meaning of "firmament" that he's used is very obscure--usually "firmament" means "the heavens," but here he's using it to mean "activity"--but what does it mean to talk about fierce activity in the deep structure of the afterworld. What is meant by "the deep structure of the afterworld," for that matter?)

Complex, ornate language can be okay, but you have to make it mean something.

[marshallpayne1.livejournal.com]

Absolutely. The purpose of writing is to communicate. I see the above passage as trying to show off linguistic tricks. I used to love Delany years ago. I still admire him, but when I go back and reread his work, I'm not as impressed.

[pjthompson]

To quote Fernando, "I'd rather look good than feel good."

[lizziebelle.livejournal.com]

For me, lush makes pictures in my head, and overwritten gives me a headache.

[pjthompson]

Ha! Good definition.

[safewrite.livejournal.com]

Agreed. Much more concise than mine!

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah. With 'lush' I notice the pictures in my head. With 'overwritten,' I notice the writing and it pops the bubble.

[hominysnark.livejournal.com]

You've read my stuff, so you know I'm a big fan of the less-is-more school. But I do appreciate a good turn of phrase or a pretty sentence, as long as it's not overdone.

Here's an example (no names, to protect, well, me) -- "Steam imbued the air with breathless humidity."

Here's another -- "Over a layer of convective air, flat-based cumulus clouds floated tranquilly like latherings of soap-bubbles on invisible water, their frayed rims gilded by the dawn."

There's nothing wrong with that first sentence. It's a perfectly lovely way to say it was kinda humid. But if every sentence is like that (or the second one) then you've lost me. And if, with every sentence, you're obviously straining to come up with yet another shimmering simile, you've lost me again. Sometimes, a round thing is just round. It doesn't have to be compared to the gentle curve of a woman's breast or a baby's cheek or even your favorite childhood yo-yo.

Here's an example of pretty that works for me, because it fits in nicely with the book's subject matter (which is a turn of the century colliery) -- "A hazy idea simmered deep in his stomach, taking shape like molten pig iron, coalescing until it filled every empty space inside him."

It also works for me because the author doesn't go overboard with it -- the lush bits are sprinkled throughout, with clean, simple prose making up the bulk. Here's another from the same author -- "(The men) all had an air of well-bred complacency that lent them a certain similarity, like chess pieces waiting to be placed into formation." That's a simile that pulls double duty, by giving the men in question both a physical description and a spiritual one in the same breath.

There's my tuppence. :)

[pjthompson]

Sometimes, a round thing is just round. It doesn't have to be compared to the gentle curve of a woman's breast or a baby's cheek or even your favorite childhood yo-yo.

Oh God, yes, that! Sometimes you can feel the paper/screen stretching to the point of bursting.

Sample #3 and 4 are great, perfectly in balance. You gots your pretty, but it's also kind of spare and clean. Who is that?

[hominysnark.livejournal.com]

It's a friend of mine who hasn't been published. Yet.

[pjthompson]

If those examples are anything to go by, your friend is riding that smooth, clear line. In a just world, your friend will find a publisher.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Sometimes, a round thing is just round.

Yes! Sometimes it's the quantity of the lush prose that makes a work cross the border into the overwritten zone.

[pjthompson]

Quantity! Yes, that's definitely a turning point for me.

[asatomuraki.livejournal.com]

Oh! Read Sutree by Cormack McCarthy. Well, okay. The prologue. THAT is overwritten. Don't get me wrong, it is very clever, any individual image is lush and surprising and fun. Some writers write like they have something to prove, like every metaphor is them tying a cherry stem in a knot with their tongue. That's not necessarily a bad thing.

But, in Sutree, McCarthy builds a cherry stem Eiffel Tower with his tongue, and, as impressive as that is to see, it's also kind of gross. Off-putting. Also, he uses about 6-7 uncommon words per page and (in this book) eschews punctuation.

You know when contortionists fold themselves up into little boxes right in front of you, and you're amazed just to see it done? It's like that. The point of it isn't the story, it's watching how many times the author can fold himself.

To me, THAT's overwritten.

[pjthompson]

Well written definition!

Whenever I see a contortionist like that (or watch Cirque du Soleil) I think, "Yeah, but that's not human. What does that mean to me?" (Of course, when I watch Cirque du Soleil, I usually wind up saying at some point, "Gee, I sure do miss the animal acts.")

I don't mean that everything has to relate to me and my little world, but I do need something I can hang onto, and if it is so far removed from the pathways of my heart, why bother?

[asatomuraki.livejournal.com]

Trouble is, the line between lush and overwritten is often in a different place for different people. It's a moving target.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

I think really a lot of it is a matter of taste, but beyond that, I agree with safewrite. The story needs to be capable of supporting the lushness, and the lushness should enhance the story. And really: if you're going to use lush language, make sure you understand grammar and word meanings and so on; otherwise you just look ridiculous.

I like rich language sometimes, and I like simple language other times. I guess... I want to be able to understand what's being said, and I want what's being said to be worth thinking about. Like this, which mojodragonfly quoted, from Wild Comfort, by Kathleen Dean Moore:

Suddenly, streaks of light splatter toward our boat. They leap from the sea and patter against the swell, thousands of them flying clear of the water. They hit the boat like pebbles, clunking and bouncing off the hull, sparking back into the sea. I duck reflexively and brace my paddle for balance, but the lights strike the paddle blade too. The sea is alive with them, plunging toward our boat. They dive and flash. In the midst of the melee, a large blur of blue light surges toward our bow. Sparks glint to the heavens. Starlight plummets onto the sea, the fallen stars, the Lucifers. Their spread wings blaze one last time, then slide under the dark waves.

It's describing bioluminescent algae and single-celled organisms, and how strange and beautiful they look at night on the sea. In the following paragraphs, the narrator reflects on seeing just as much beauty and feeling just as much wonder in common things. The language here seems appropriate to me--it's to make us feel the wonder and strangeness and beauty--and THEN, the author's going to take the extra step and make us see that in the commonplace.

[marshallpayne1.livejournal.com]

Yes, there's an example of where rich language works well. I want the choice of words to cast up images in my mind. For me, it succeeds there.

[pjthompson]

Yes, that's exactly it. She's doing a conjuration that makes sense in terms of the story she's trying to tell. It's wonder-full and we flow and glide and dive along with it. As safewrite said, in service to the story.

I don't always manage to walk that line myself. I'm always reining myself back in. It's beautiful to read when someone uses it so expertly. But the other stuff, the pyrotechnics with no purpose but to say, "See how brilliant I am and all the sparkly words I can use!" doesn't really burn. It freezes.

[safewrite.livejournal.com]

A "conjuration." See? That's a precise use of lush prose: in one word you compared that lovely passage to an act of magic, and it made us see that it was one.

[asakiyume.livejournal.com]

Yeah--that is a perfect word choice

[sartorias.livejournal.com]

Lush prose for me has a pleasing rhythm, and evokes the senses. If there are too many metaphors--if an image has to have two poetical phrases because one just isn't good enough--I tend to begin skimming.

There are certain words that show up too often to interest me, and also adverbs modifying adjectives will cause me to skim.

Words I'm tired of: vulnerable, (especially when it's aching), lyrical, ethereal, haunting, shattered, piercing (unless something is actually being pierced), nuanced.

[pjthompson]

Lush prose for me has a pleasing rhythm, and evokes the senses.

Yes, exactly, that evocation and rhythm. Language that pulls you along toward a goal, or toward understanding, rather than being merely about itself.

I liked your list of overused words, too. I agree with them.

[safewrite.livejournal.com]

"...adverbs modifying adjectives." *twitch*

[darkspires.livejournal.com]

Lush for me is when a theme is chosen. Frex, dry. All the words in a piece are focused on conveying dryness in subtle ways.

Overwritten, purple prose is multiple qualifiers in every sentence to convey the same theme. If it reads over the top and down the other side, then it is.

[pjthompson]

Yes, definitely.

[handworn.livejournal.com]

Images to me are like adjectives; very easy to abuse, but wonderful in the hands of a writer with a strong personal B.S. detector. I.e., if they survive a rigorous rewrite, they're usually pretty good.

[pjthompson]

That's very true. For me, the vigorous language purge is the last thing I do before releasing a ms. to the world after I've worked through all the other drafts. I'm so sick of it by then and it's had so many "tweaks as I go" that it's a lot easier to clear the underbrush.

[kmkibble75.livejournal.com]

Lush is when I read 5 pages but it feels like 1, and overwritten is when I read one page but it feels like 5.

[pjthompson]

Very good! The slog vs. the not slog.

[frigg.livejournal.com]

A bit late, but here goes:

Lush: adds volume, depth, mood - like a body of a good wine.

Overwritten: when it interrupts the flow of the read, or makes the reading tedious and bogged down.

[pjthompson]

Yes, the overwritten is definitely not a good vintage. :-)