Exquisite writing or rip roaring story telling?

[Ursa major]

Maeve Binchy - I love her stories, especially her early ones, and her characters. She didn't do fancy, she just pulled me so close I cared. But that takes skill, and I wonder does that skill get disrupted if we get too intent on perfect words every time and perfect punctuation.

Setting aside the perfect punctuation... I haven't read any Binchy, but I suspect she gets the response from you that she does, because she's using exactly the right words - the perfect words - to achieve the effect she wants (i.e. the words are perfect for the use to which they're being put in the story, not because they're particularly poetic or beautiful in of themselves.)

 

[Jo Zebedee]

I don't think I'm bad, I just know I'm not good enough. And I think we must all think that or we wouldn't be here questioning everything we do.

Yup.

Setting aside the perfect punctuation... I haven't read any Binchy, but I suspect she gets the response from you that she does, because she's using exactly the right words - the perfect words - to achieve the effect she wants (i.e. the words are perfect for the use they're being put to in the story, not because they're paticularly poetic or beautiful in of themselves.)

I suspect you're right.

 

[Tyburn]

**Edit: that's how I would define "exquisite", I think: maximum effect with fewest words. Although the fireplace image might not seem particularly spare, it conjures (again, to me) an entire atmosphere in one line.

That to me changes the definition of 'exquisite', even puts a couple of my turns of phrase into the category - Doctor Burkenhare's description of the effects of his Mildy-Fatal Pork Pie as 'thermobaric diarrhoea' comes to mind.

That I see as a good thing. The change of definition, not the diarrhoea.

 

[Hex]

I think this comes back to critiques and voice. If your first version of something flows (and sometimes they do) then you're already where you need to be -- whatever you hear on critiques from people who don't like what you've done. It's your story, it's your voice. If I tried to write like HB I'd spend months weeping sadly into my keyboard, ditto for writing like Mouse, however simple she thinks it is.

When I was editing DC for John Jarrold to edit, I knew he didn't like metaphors and similies so I stripped most of them out. The story I sent him was dry because of that and I was trying to write to please him, not the way the language worked in my head.

 

[Ursa major]

As we're beginning to examine what the word, exquisite, means, here's the definition on Wiktionary:

1. Especially fine or pleasing; exceptional. They sell good coffee and pastries, but their chocolate is exquisite. Sourav Ganguly scored an exquisite century in his debut Test match.
2. (obsolete) Carefully adjusted; precise; accurate; exact.
3. Recherché; far-fetched; abstruse.
4. Of special beauty or rare excellence.

Perhaps it's my age, but I've been using Definition 2, the apparently obsolete one:

Carefully adjusted; precise; accurate; exact.
​

and taking "exquisite writing" to mean that the writing is designed (is adjusted) to best put the ideas in the writer's head into the reader's.

 

[HareBrain]

They sell good coffee and pastries, but their chocolate is exquisite.

Where is this please?

 

[Ursa major]

That's what I was thinking.

 

[Parson]

I don't think I'm bad, I just know I'm not good enough. And I think we must all think that or we wouldn't be here questioning everything we do.

Well said! I'm glad for the correction of my assumption. On that level, none of us is ever good enough. The day we stop changing we are dead. The day we stop trying to improve we've given up and probably should die.