Prose vs Plot

[Roland 85]

Oh sure, it's comprehensible. It's just bellow the line for me. I'm not super smart or overly elitist, but this type of literature has become unreadable to me.

 

[Sfinx]

What would you rather have, a book that doesn't really have a exciting fast paced plot, but great prose, or a book with an addiciting plot that you can't seem to put down, but the writing it just very straight forward.

Interesting question. First instinct is to go with plot, on second thought I opt for prose. Anyone (well, quite a few people at any rate) can come up with a decent plot idea. Properly conveying this idea is something altogether more difficult. And that's where prose comes in.

I can stick with a book for more than a 100 pages if the prose is good but the plot and/or characters half-baked (Iron Council anyone?). Bad prose will end it for me by the end of page 1. I realise that a decade or so ago plot was my main reason for appreciating a story, prose just played a minor part. I wouldn't say it is now the other way around (a solid / inventive storyline has only gained in significance) but the quality of the prose has become much, much more important to me. I can read sentences by Vance or Wolfe without caring one bit about context, just savouring the wit, atmosphere and craftsmanship the words exude. English not being my native language may play a part in this: I know how hard it is to form even a half decent sentence! So in short: prose > plot

Cheers,

Sfinx.

 

[Sparrow]

English not being my native language may play a part in this: I know how hard it is to form even a half decent sentence! So in short: prose > plot

Cheers,

Sfinx.

I dunno dude, you seem to have a better command of the language than most folks I know. English is a harsh mistress.

 

[saintjon]

You know, all the time while reading through this thread I was thinking of Toll the Hounds, because a) I am currently halfway through it and b) Erikson is really experimenting (more so than in the previous novels) with prose. Interestingly I almost gave up with Reaper's Gale which I found slow and not that interesting neither plot or prosewise; but Toll the Hounds I find a lot more interesting because he throws so much around in various styles and tones, from tragedy to comedy.

Earlier I had a bit of a revelation that I must have been getting tired of it because usually I would have jumped on a new entry in an ongoing series as soon as I got home with it. Be that as it may, in the fullness of time I will want to know what happens. The fact that the series appears to be almost done and that Esslemont has what, three (?) books out now as well has tweaking my interest level a bit lately. I'm sure I will dig it out and get back on the horse at some point in the near future. You make a strong case for it here.

 

[Sfinx]

I dunno dude, you seem to have a better command of the language than most folks I know. English is a harsh mistress.

Aye, that she is...if only more (well, a LOT more) authors would hail from the Low Lands - we could have us some proper discussions in this forum - in Dutch But truthfully, aside Wim Gijsen, not a single one comes to mind

Ah well, back to the thread!

Cheers,

Sfinx.

 

[Palfrey]

Good prose is about a strong voice, and that will keep me reading almost anything.

Bad prose will keep me from reading anything.

I second this. I'll read just about almost any subject if the writing is good.

I don't think the prose styles of either Hobb or GGRM are at the extreme ends of the spectrum however. For the extreme of the simplistic and, I nominate Ernest Hemingway (whose writing I can't stand).

 

[3rdI]

Aye, that she is...if only more (well, a LOT more) authors would hail from the Low Lands - we could have us some proper discussions in this forum - in Dutch But truthfully, aside Wim Gijsen, not a single one comes to mind

Ah well, back to the thread!

Cheers,

Sfinx.

Damn Sfinx you command the english language better than I do. Respect. Go AJAX!

 

[tinker]

I prefer plot to prose. Don't get me wrong, I don't want to read something that was written in three days and not proofread, but a good plot is what immerses me in a story. Too much prose sometimes gets in the way of a good story and I spend more time trying to get my head around the words. I actually find an author like George Martin to me a perfect blend of the two for me.

 

[itisjustme]

To me he is extremely poor in action descriptions. Too much tell, not enough show, if that can be applied to action. What I mean is - with authors like Bakker or Gemmel, the action sequences flow almost with the speed of the actions the combatants themselves perform. With authors like Salvatore or Knaak you have a long description of different movements, attacks and counters, followed by the cheating "it only took ten seconds" or something hilarious like that.

Funny enough, I tend to find Gemmel tiresome after a while due to the heroic posturing and grandiloquence he tends to use. Salvatore's style though, even if not award-winning I didn't find too bad in his latest, my issue with him has always been more his plotting.

 

[Trip]

Somewhat off-topic:

That whole discussion got me interested in some Salvatore in English (I've only read it in translation) and so I decided to try a few pages of Pirate King. Here's how it begins:

Suljack, one of the five high captains ruling Luskan and a former commander of one of the most successful pirate crews ever to terrorize the Sword Coast, was not easily intimidated. An extrovert who typically bellowed before he considered his roar, his voice often rang loudest among the ruling council.

I'm now in the process of wiping away laughter-tears. I may go on; the above makes me feel good about my own command of English and my writing skills in that language, even as I'm not a native speaker.

On-topic:

Kat, I may have overstated the reality about writing quality and the publishing industry, but I guess it was a reaction to Wayne's post. I agree there's room for everything to find its way into the hands of readers.

 

[kcmay]

Interesting question. I would have said plot without thinking much about it, but I love Robin Hobb and GRRM equally. If the prose is truly lovely, I'll let it sweep me away, but I prefer a page-turner with a well-thought-out plot as a general rule.

 

[feitelberg]

If I have to chose, plot first. But that said, I want text that is clean. Some ebooks I've read recently have had typos and that spoils the experience completely.

 

[Roland 85]

Funny enough, I tend to find Gemmel tiresome after a while due to the heroic posturing and grandiloquence he tends to use. Salvatore's style though, even if not award-winning I didn't find too bad in his latest, my issue with him has always been more his plotting.

I was talking about action scenes in particular though, not overall writing.

 

[KatG]

Salvatore may not top Gemmel on battle scenes, no. But his martial arts background makes his hand to hand combat scenes interesting and he does well with monsters. When he came into the scene early, there was a lot of writers working on Conan style stories and this particularly is the style that the D&D people needed for their tie-in novels, so that creates a certain amount of bombast and heavy bardic language for the Drizzt tales, etc. that are tie-in. Sometimes the plotting wasn't Salvatore's but related to what they did in the games, though nowadays I would assume that's less the case. Salvatore became the favorite in that universe with readers because he does nicely with characters. The demon who causes all the trouble in his first novel, for instance, was a very fun, well-realized creature. Away from the tie-ins, Salvatore's style is a bit different. His Demon Awakens series is a more mournful, more tangled, with a monk who goes through an enormous crisis of faith and a young woman who goes through different stages of post-traumatic stress syndrome. Salvatore is also exceedingly flexible -- he can go comic and he can go dark. He is a workhorse author and he's not going to dazzle with metaphor but his ability to get readers caught up in the characters and thus their struggles has introduced a lot of people to fantasy. If you don't like his characters, then you probably are going to be bored.

Terry Brooks came into the field exceedingly rough, which even he admits. But what he did well was do a potboiler with more than most people usually threw into the pot, which made it fun because writers were just beginning to play with the form on a broad scale. He threw in epic fantasies -- Peake, Tolkein, and The Three Musketeers, and some post-apocalypse SF aspects, some comic material, etc. This was again in the Conan-favored, early era, when authors were experimenting and seeing if they could do longer stories. And again, he makes it work with characters. His young squire who wants to contribute but has been sitting on his heels, hunting on daddy's estate, then suddenly finds himself a key part in saving the world (essentially Porthos,) is an example of a character that was endearing and even complex, and it is this why people are still reading Shannara novels. Brooks greatly improved in writing style and also branched out. He does comedy very well, and his Word and Void series is quite different, a dark fantasy tale that goes both contemporary and bardic (Brooks never steers on just one track,) and is pretty well written in my view. Again, he's a workhorse author who came in when the formalized market was very new and raw and he's won a following on his characters and his little flourishes.

Raymond Feist -- who is a very good speaker by the way -- came in a little bit after the Brooks, Salvatore era, when things had spread out a good bit more for the new publishing imprints and larger books were a regular thing. Feist, like a lot of the writers at that point -- Cherryh, Lackey, Eddings, etc., was playing around with more fable structural stuff than Salvatore and Brooks' adventure tales. Though he has been heavily involved in gaming, and his books vary too, Feist was less interested in sword & sorcery and more on world building, or rather worlds building, with the 1960's, 1970's legacy of multi-dimensions that led a lot of 1980's alt world fiction to be multi-dimensional or cross-over from Earth rather than just a separate world. He tried things, sometimes very interesting things, and his characters also attracted him a following.

I think that in fantasy, it very often does come down to the characters, rather than plot, world-building or prose style. People like the characters and so they may not be that hung up on the author's use of language or even the plot, and whether they like the characters or not seems to have a lot to do with how they assess the writing, the world building and the plot.

 

[BreakLater]

Salvatore...his martial arts background makes his hand to hand combat scenes interesting and he does well with monsters...

Terry Brooks came into the field exceedingly rough, which even he admits. But what he did well was do a potboiler with more than most people usually threw into the pot, which made it fun because writers were just beginning to play with the form on a broad scale... he's won a following on his characters and his little flourishes...

Raymond Feist...He tried things, sometimes very interesting things, and his characters also attracted him a following...

I think that in fantasy, it very often does come down to the characters, rather than plot, world-building or prose style. People like the characters and so they may not be that hung up on the author's use of language or even the plot, and whether they like the characters or not seems to have a lot to do with how they assess the writing, the world building and the plot.

Come on, KatG. Surely there's someone, one writer out there, that you absolutely hate and can't say one good thing about.

Interesting, so you'd say good characters are what make or break a fantasy novel?

I guess I'd tend to agree with that. It seems like the most well-received fantasy novels are very character-oriented. Martin and Abercrombie, for example, use the device of having each individual chapter told through one specific character's point of view. The Name of the Wind has Kvothe, its larger-than-life leading man. Really a character study. Jordan painstakingly builds his group of callow youths into unstoppable super-man god-slayers. It's all about character development with him.

Yeah, I've heard it before in writing workshops and it still holds true. Character is the cornerstone of good fiction. Plot and prose pale in comparison!

 

[Sparrow]

Yeah, I've heard it before in writing workshops and it still holds true. Character is the cornerstone of good fiction. Plot and prose pale in comparison!

I'm going more with plot.
I've read enough fiction with well written characters fumbling around a poorly configured plot to accept the alternative, reasonably well done characters living out a well constructed plot.

 

[BreakLater]

I'm going more with plot.
I've read enough fiction with well written characters fumbling around a poorly configured plot to accept the alternative, reasonably well done characters living out a well constructed plot.

Good characters are the cornerstone of popular and profitable fiction? Can't say Jordan isn't profitable!

 

[Roland 85]

And neither is Salvatore unprofitable. It's just that most readers have low standards when it comes to... well, everything. And therefore Drizzt is one of the most beloved characters in fantasy, even though he's a whiny emo *impolite word for female genitalia*...

 

[Sparrow]

Good characters are the cornerstone of popular and profitable fiction? Can't say Jordan isn't profitable!

That we can't.

But yes, I think well drawn characters are the ones that keep us buying books in a long running series... popular or otherwise. I just sometimes wish I didn't have to follow these characters for so many years.

 

[Trip]

I've no idea how it's possible to speak of good characters in separation from plot and prose. That's what they are.