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/lit/ - Literature

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7073838

Anonymous Sat Sep 5 02:11:09 2015 No.7073838 [Reply] [Original]

Why is academia so obsessed with the idea that making "concise, short phrases" is something inherently good? Most of my teachers and everyone I know that has any relation to formal literary studies completely oppose any instance of maximalism in contemporary literature. For example: any time a teacher asks us to bring in a creative text, if a sentence is longer than, say, 15 words (even if it is grammatically perfect and there's no argument to be made on that ground), the teacher will tell us to try and make it shorter and try to get rid of anything "irrelevant" to the main idea of the sentence. Now I don't have a problem with short phrases when there's a perfectly good reason for them to be that way and when the writer is adept and clever enough to do that sort of thing. But I can't help but think this whole "minimalist prose" movement and this tendency of making everything shorter and shorter is just starting to feel like a lazy excuse to make it acceptable for mediocre writers to make prose that has no substance on the grounds that it was "a conscious decision".

>>	Anonymous Sat Sep 5 02:12:44 2015 No.7073842 >>7073838 What matters more is the flow in the mind.

>>	Anonymous Sat Sep 5 02:37:10 2015 No.7073876 >>7073838 Because it's very difficult to be both bad and concise at the same time.

>>	Anonymous Sat Sep 5 02:47:19 2015 No.7073899 >>7073876 Perhaps "inherently good" wasn't what I meant. What I meant to say was: why are concise, short phrases preferable to long and complex ones?

>>	Anonymous Sat Sep 5 02:48:09 2015 No.7073901 >>7073876 I disagree, look at any paper written by an idiot

>>	Anonymous Sat Sep 5 02:48:20 2015 No.7073903 >>7073876 >>7073899 Then again, if you read my whole post you would've understood what I meant

>>

Anonymous Sat Sep 5 02:51:32 2015 No.7073918

>>7073838

Reading and comprehension, while working hand in hand, are two separate motions. It is much easier to understand and digest smaller sentences. If you have too many long-winded sentences they may lose impact and value as the reader struggles to assess the entirety of the sentence at once.

>>	Anonymous Sat Sep 5 03:00:26 2015 No.7073945 >>7073918 But wouldn't that be a problem of the reader's capabilities and not directly related to the writing itself?

>>	Anonymous Sat Sep 5 03:02:02 2015 No.7073948 >>7073903 tl;dr

>>	Anonymous Sat Sep 5 03:04:22 2015 No.7073952 >>7073948 >literature board

>>	Anonymous Sat Sep 5 03:06:33 2015 No.7073959 >>7073952 Too short, didn't acknowledge.

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Anonymous Sat Sep 5 03:08:50 2015 No.7073967

>>7073945

Yes, however most writing is intended for a wider audience than just a few geniuses. It is good practice to write to a level that can be understood by most.

If you write long sentences people may find their train of thought being confused or completely dropped by the time they get to the end of the sentence. You want to show the reader your book, a piece at a time, allowing them to resolve each sentence into an idea, abstraction or other thing in their mind.

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Anonymous Sat Sep 5 03:10:24 2015 No.7073970

>>7073838
One: that's just the MFA-institution fashion at the moment, and two: it really is a quick and almost surefire way to improve the writing abilities of most people. Of course talented people should disregard, but for the creatively-lacking, it really does help and when you need your program to deliver results this is the way to do it.

>>	Anonymous Sat Sep 5 03:11:13 2015 No.7073973 Why do you think? So that the academics can circlejerk over context and metaphors that are only open to interpretation through the ambiguity that a small array of words allows.

>>	Anonymous Sat Sep 5 03:11:50 2015 No.7073976 >>7073959 >not using a semicolon REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

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Anonymous Sat Sep 5 03:26:01 2015 No.7074001
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>>7073838
Maximalism is for an educated audience with well above average reading comprehension, and thass raciss. Seriously, my professors mock Pynchon and Wallace as just being for "overeducated white boys."

At the level of a composition course, it makes sense to keep things simple for the sake of clarity and reaching a wider audience.

>>	Anonymous Sat Sep 5 03:34:29 2015 No.7074012 >>7073838 I don't know. I read the later books of James Ellroy and the shear mass of 6 word sentences gets under the skin.

>>	Anonymous Sat Sep 5 03:39:28 2015 No.7074022 >>7073838 Because the only way you'll get published is with invisible-style. Submit a manuscript with anything resembling prose is a guaranteed rejection.

>>	« Ƹ̵̡Ӝ̵̨̄Ʒ » Sat Sep 5 03:40:48 2015 No.7074028 >>7073838 Makes it easier to understand. Duh. You want people to read the fucking books you write you ignoramus.

>>	Anonymous Sat Sep 5 03:46:53 2015 No.7074041 >>7074028 Soo, you mean like spoonfeeding?

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Anonymous Sat Sep 5 07:23:09 2015 No.7074304

>>7073838
Great writers can write long, complex, metaphor-heavy sentences well. However, an average kid isn't a great writer, and his long sentences will probably just be confusing and unclear. It's better then to just write relatively short sentences, to force the kid to get to the point quickly.

>>	Anonymous Sat Sep 5 07:37:52 2015 No.7074321 >>7074304 So is your point that the teachers can’t be arsed to teach the students how to write, so instead they just tell the them to write short sentences and focus helping them with plot structures – or whatever else there is – instead?