/lit/ - Literature

>>20675217
Diction and/or Register
an exerpt from pic rel
>One way to tell slick genre prose from really interesting writing is to look, in the former case, for the absence of different registers. An efficient thriller will often be written in a style that is locked into place: the musical analogue of this might be a tune, proceeding in unison, the melody separated only by octave intervals, without any harmony in the middle. By contrast, rich and daring prose avails itself of harmony and dissonance by being able to move in and out of place. In writing, a “register” is nothing more than a name for a kind of diction, which is nothing more than a name for a certain, distinctive way of saying something—so we talk about “high” and “low” registers (e.g., the highish “Father” and the lower “Pop”), grand and vernacular diction, mock-heroic diction, clichéd registers, and so on.
I'd highly recommend the entire book, its pretty short and covers a wide variety of literary topics in a very accessible manner

>>18398320
I am back; I have found this book, which apparently is a good guide to the different types of writing styles, POVs, and narrative techniques employed by modern novelists ('modern' as in post-Flaubert); I am hoping that the answer to my question (–"Why do all modern fantasy writers write in the same kind of style?") will be somewhere in this book; I will report back in a couple hours with my findings.