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Is this bad writing? Yes. A great description should be precise and evocative. Food neither runs wild not explodes (both would have unpleasant consequences for the eater). They are just the wrong w...
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#5: Post edited
by
Mark Baker
·
2020-04-28T20:52:01Z (over 4 years ago)
typos
Is this bad writing? Yes. A great description should be precise and evocative. Food neither runs wild not explodes (both would have unpleasant consequences for the eater). They are just the wrong words to capture the intensity of a flavor and the surprise that you feel when you experience that flavour for the first time.The problem, of course, is that that experience is ineffable. We don't have words that capture it. The best on can really do is to refer a similar experience, like the first time you bit into a jalapeno.In fact, there are a lot of experience that are hard to capture in words. We don't have words for what music sounds like, only to describe a few of its gross characteristics like pitch and beat. The formal language of wine, which it may work for trained somaliers, sounds like gibberish to most ordinary wine drinkers.This is what makes writing challenging. A writer tries to capture an experience for which we don't actually have words. The effective techniques for doing this don't consist in gross comparatives like explosions or running wild, but in the subtle evocation of the readers prior experiences. Want to describe a taste that is both sweet and spicy? Say it was like eating a peach dipped in hot sauce.Writing is about telling stories that evoke memories. Good writing pulls feeling and emotions and experiences out of the reader. Bad writing tries to force them in. Great writing makes you look past the words and taste the experience on your tongue. Bad writing throws the words in your face and you remember the words themselves because they evoke nothing.It may be a matter of opinion whether a particular set of words evoke and experience or not, particularly since we all have different stocks of experiences and different triggers that evoke them. But the principle, I would submit, is not a matter of opinion but of craft. And I cannot imagine who would have the memory of an actual taste experience evoked by the clumsy words in the examples you give.
- Is this bad writing? Yes. A great description should be precise and evocative. Food neither runs wild not explodes (both would have unpleasant consequences for the eater). They are just the wrong words to capture the intensity of a flavor and the surprise that you feel when you experience that flavour for the first time.
- The problem, of course, is that that experience is ineffable. We don't have words that capture it. The best on can really do is to refer a similar experience, like the first time you bit into a jalapeno.
- In fact, there are a lot of experience that are hard to capture in words. We don't have words for what music sounds like, only to describe a few of its gross characteristics like pitch and beat. The formal language of wine, while it may work for trained somaliers, sounds like gibberish to most ordinary wine drinkers.
- This is what makes writing challenging. A writer tries to capture an experience for which we don't actually have words. The effective techniques for doing this don't consist in gross comparatives like explosions or running wild, but in the subtle evocation of the reader's prior experiences. Want to describe a taste that is both sweet and spicy? Say it was like eating a peach dipped in hot sauce.
- Writing is about telling stories that evoke memories. Good writing pulls feeling and emotions and experiences out of the reader. Bad writing tries to force them in. Great writing makes you look past the words and taste the experience on your tongue. Bad writing throws the words in your face and you remember the words themselves because they evoke nothing.
- It may be a matter of opinion whether a particular set of words evoke an experience or not, particularly since we all have different stocks of experiences and different triggers that evoke them. But the principle, I would submit, is not a matter of opinion but of craft. And I cannot imagine who would have the memory of an actual taste experience evoked by the clumsy words in the examples you give.
#4: Attribution notice removed
by
System
·
2020-01-03T20:41:58Z (almost 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/48280 License name: CC BY-SA 4.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
#3: Attribution notice added
by
System
·
2019-12-08T13:03:37Z (about 5 years ago)
Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/48280 License name: CC BY-SA 4.0 License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/
#2: Initial revision
by
System
·
2019-12-08T13:03:37Z (about 5 years ago)
Is this bad writing? Yes. A great description should be precise and evocative. Food neither runs wild not explodes (both would have unpleasant consequences for the eater). They are just the wrong words to capture the intensity of a flavor and the surprise that you feel when you experience that flavour for the first time. The problem, of course, is that that experience is ineffable. We don't have words that capture it. The best on can really do is to refer a similar experience, like the first time you bit into a jalapeno. In fact, there are a lot of experience that are hard to capture in words. We don't have words for what music sounds like, only to describe a few of its gross characteristics like pitch and beat. The formal language of wine, which it may work for trained somaliers, sounds like gibberish to most ordinary wine drinkers. This is what makes writing challenging. A writer tries to capture an experience for which we don't actually have words. The effective techniques for doing this don't consist in gross comparatives like explosions or running wild, but in the subtle evocation of the readers prior experiences. Want to describe a taste that is both sweet and spicy? Say it was like eating a peach dipped in hot sauce. Writing is about telling stories that evoke memories. Good writing pulls feeling and emotions and experiences out of the reader. Bad writing tries to force them in. Great writing makes you look past the words and taste the experience on your tongue. Bad writing throws the words in your face and you remember the words themselves because they evoke nothing. It may be a matter of opinion whether a particular set of words evoke and experience or not, particularly since we all have different stocks of experiences and different triggers that evoke them. But the principle, I would submit, is not a matter of opinion but of craft. And I cannot imagine who would have the memory of an actual taste experience evoked by the clumsy words in the examples you give.
#1: Imported from external source
by
System
·
2019-09-30T18:30:59Z (about 5 years ago)
Original score: 7