/lit/ - Literature

>>22950173
how the fuck should I know? I've been thinking of writing for awhile, but write nothing. my advice, write anything. stop preparing and start writing you pussy.

>>22950173
There are only 2 rules for good prose:
>sound good to the ear
>correctly evokes the image and/or idea the author wants to covey
Of course, this can lead to very different results, depending on the author. And you can always write something that sounds bad or ugly if it helps to evoke a certain idea.

>>22950258
this
fuck prose standardization. we don’t need another Stephen king sounding “author”

>>22950173
"Good prose" is just the careful use of certain rhetorical devices. The greeks already solved this shit two thousand years ago. Here's a passage from Nabokov:

>“Of the not very many ways known of shedding one's body, falling, falling, falling is the supreme method, but you have to select your sill or ledge very carefully so as not to hurt yourself or others. Jumping from a high bridge is not recommended even if you cannot swim, for wind and water abound in weird contingencies, and tragedy ought not to culminate in a record dive or a policeman's promotion. If you rent a cell in the luminous waffle, room 1915 or 1959, in a tall business centre hotel browing the star dust, and pull up the window, and gently - not fall, not jump - but roll out as you should for air comfort, there is always the chance of knocking clean through into your own hell a pacific noctambulator walking his dog; in this respect a back room might be safer, especially if giving on the roof of an old tenacious normal house far below where a cat may be trusted to flash out of the way. Another popular take-off is a mountaintop with a sheer drop of say 500 meters but you must find it, because you will be surprised how easy it is to miscalculate your deflection offset, and have some hidden projection, some fool of a crag, rush forth to catch you, causing you to bounce off it into the brush, thwarted, mangled and unnecessarily alive. The ideal drop is from an aircraft, your muscles relaxed, your pilot puzzled, your packed parachute shuffled off, cast off, shrugged off - farewell, shootka (little chute)! Down you go, but all the while you feel suspended and buoyed as you somersault in slow motion like a somnolent tumbler pigeon, and sprawl supine on the eiderdown of the air, or lazily turn to embrace your pillow, enjoying every last instant of soft, deep, death-padded life, with the earth's green seesaw now above, now below, and the voluptuous crucifixion, as you stretch yourself in the growing rush, in the nearing swish, and then your loved body's obliteration in the Lap of the Lord.”

Just in this short passage alone there's alliteration, assonance, consonance, polysyndeton, asyndeton, epizeuxis, hyperbaton, anadiplosis, hyperbole, antithesis and of course, simile and metaphor.

>>22950258
>sounds good
This is vague as fuck though, what does that even mean? That's like saying a good drawing "looks good" it's a meaningless statement

-avoid neoligisms
-do not use words you do not have full command of
-avoid cliches
-avoid writing beyond your abilities
-seek a creative state where language is flowing readily, let your pen move with poise, pleasure and confidence, do not allow the pen to scratch out every secons thought or hesitate at every word.

The heavy lifting of writing takes place in the subconscious.

Hence Rule Number One of writing:
>Read and think incessantly

>>22950315
That's the point: you, the author, should judge what sounds good to you. That's why writers such as Kafka, Flaubert or Robert E. Howard used to read their writings aloud and see if they sounded good.
There isn't a single formula for good writing, and anyone who tries to teach how to write good prose is just transmiting his own tastes and prejudices. If you don't know what sounds good to you, then you are not a writer, or need to read and write.

>>22950378
Of course there isn't a formula. But even in art there are still basic fundamentals that most people tend to follow, for good reason, and that are broken typically when serving a specific purpose.

>>22950173
my tip: plagiarize the masters.