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/lit/ - Literature

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6922920 No.6922920 [Reply] [Original]

Why do all sci-fi and fantasy books have such poor prose? Some have great stories/characters/etc. but the prose is always shit.

>> No.6922925

What do you even mean by prose

>> No.6922927

>>6922925
yeah, prose is just this imaginary word that has no meaning at all

>> No.6922931

>>6922920
because you read the shitty ones, dumb frogposter.

>> No.6922935

>>6922927
Are you talking about how it flows? Proper punctuation? What? Examples?

Dont jerk off in your own abstractions and just expect people to play along if you want to have a discussion

>> No.6922951

>>6922920
if you'd stop reading shitty sci fi your opinion on this topic would be different. almost anything thats a franchise, or written by a white american qualifies as shitty.

>> No.6922962

>>6922951
>by a white american
Ayyy elmao

>> No.6922979
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6922979

>>6922962
white russians are fine.

>> No.6922984

>>6922935
>not understanding the meaning of "prose" in the context of literary criticism
Are you new here?

>> No.6923000

>>6922979
Russians aren't white.

There are in fact barely any white nations in the Europe, let alone rest of the world. These insights I have learned from learned sages, also known as dank memers, on this Finnic yurt enthusiast image board, more specifically a place for high discussions known as /balt/, located in /int/ernational tapestry painting sub-board.

>> No.6923012

>>6923000

>> No.6923029

>>6923012
Why are you quoting me, my friend?

>> No.6923060

>>6922920

It's cuz all SF/F writers were science pleb nerds who complained about reading old books in English class.

>> No.6923179

>>6922920
Most fiction writers use flowery, abstract language to inject their stories with life, strangeness, and a sense of everyday magic.

But in a sci-fi/fantasy story filled with abstract concepts, flowery language only gets in the way because those concepts need to be communicated clearly to the reader.

>> No.6923189

what does that even mean. poor prose

>> No.6923204

>>6922920
>Some have great stories/characters/etc

Yeah, tired genre cliches sure make for some great stories.

>> No.6923233

>>6922984
Nah, anon's got a point. 'Prose' is an unhelpfully broad term. 'Bad prose' is a lazy-ass criticism and it would be far better to actually talk about specifics.

>> No.6923244

>>6923233
...I think the unhelpfulness becomes more obvious if you consider the term for writing which isn't prose.

"Man, William Carlos Williams is a bad writer."
"Why?"
"His poetry is bad."

...and the term 'poetry' is actually more specific than prose if anything.

>> No.6923278

>>6922920

They don't

See Eddison, Dunsany, Peake, Wolfe, Chesterton, MacDonald, Howard, etc.

Hell even Tokien and Lewis wrote some seriously good prose.

Be honest, OP, you don't read much do you?

>> No.6923319

>>6923278

Lewis' prose, at least in his fantasies, was dongs. The Inklings, esp. Tolkien, gave him loads of shit for just dashing it off.

>> No.6924010

Philip Jose Farmer has some seriously terrible prose in his Riverworld books. But they're a pinnacle of sci-fi for some reason.

>> No.6924014

>>6922920
the same reason why most books have shit prose

because there are not enough hours in the day for the average writer to study good prose