/lit/ - Literature

>>21872549
Not Gothic. (But Austen's Northanger Abbey is partly a satire of Gothic romance.) If you want a classic Gothic novel I recommend The Romance of the Forest or The Monk, both by Ann Radcliffe.

>>21872551
Middlemarch is as un-Gothic as you can get. Stay on topic dude.

For anyone in this thread who isn't put off by the idea of literary theory, I highly recommend Eve Sedgwick's book The Coherence of Gothic Conventions. Although I don't think she gives an account of why it's so comfy. Someone should write a paper on the coherence of Gothic comfiness.

>>21647474
Do you mean you over-describe locations?

Why not just limit yourself to one evocative scene-setting detail per location?

Maybe you write more in the final draft, but as an initial exercise it would discipline you in economic, effective description.

As always with questions in this thread, it would be good to see examples of what you're talking about.

>>21399643
>Thinking about what it was like in college or even work, she always diverted my attention solely to her whenever I was what getting close to other ppl. I remembered there was a period where I tried hiding new ppl I met from her but would always feel guilty over it and would mention them and she would isolate me from them again.
This is a textbook abusive relationship. Maybe you should talk with a therapist. I don't mean that in a trite 'get therapy' way, but you do need someone with whom you can talk about this who isn't 4chan or your wife. Hope things work out for you.

>>21385708
Sometimes I think it's because many people on here don't actually enjoy reading lit, and lack any kind of aesthetic sense. But sometimes I think that maybe they do enjoy it, and do sense the subtle stuff that makes books inherently worthwhile, but they're not able to value or articulate those feelings because they divide all experience into either 'meaningless leisure time' or 'useful practical activity'.

>>20938961
I think one solution is to give the reader a sense that 'more is to come'. If you set up some kind of tension, something unresolved, something anticipated, then it creates a momentum leading into the next paragraph. Obvious advice, but it's helped me keep my writing focused.

>>20939061
The clumsiness I identified was from this:
>Normal students in normal families might say their goodbyes before heading to school, but throughout my life, ‘normal’ would be the farthest descriptor for me, and my family.
I think you need to make the implicit idea 'but I shared no goodbyes with mine' explicit for this to really make sense. (I'm also not sure about 'farthest descriptor'.)

I like the image of a wicked witch in an abandoned mansion, by the way. The idea of a child identifying with someone haggard and aged has some nice melancholy.

>>20903132
If you read philosophers you get to see thoughts you'd never have thought of yourself, you see criticisms of your own thoughts that are worth responding to, and you understand the debates and historical situations that make things worth thinking about.

I agree that it can be a pointless diversion to spend time arguing over philosopher's texts as if understanding the individual philosopher is the ultimate goal. But surely the reason people bother thinking in the first place is to go beyond your immediate experience and the little cell of yourself in order to expand your knowledge of and perception of the world. Reading philosophy can be a fun and useful tool to achieve that.