![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
A very useful idea for book reviewers
Kes: The following quote finally managed to put into words why I wince whenever I hear writers going on about "world building" as I can practically see the chapters of description appearing in the air above their heads. Plus, I just like the fact that the author ca discuss writing in terms of something so simple as Legos.
Beware the Trap of 'Bore-geous' Writing
By
AYELET WALDMAN
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704243904575630580347359368.html
block quote start
Though you won't find it in Webster's, there's a word to describe the kind of meticulously constructed writing that bores even its author. A "bore-geous" novel is one that is packed with gorgeous, finely wrought descriptions of places and people, with entire paragraphs extolling the slope of one character's
nose, whole chapters describing another's perambulations through a city. These novels are often historical or set in foreign lands, their bore-geousness inspired by the author's anxiety about making an unfamiliar world feel convincing and true. It's not that the sentences aren't well-constructed, even lovely.
They are. That's part of the problem. Bore-geousness happens when you are writing beautifully but pointlessly.
block quote end
Beware the Trap of 'Bore-geous' Writing
By
AYELET WALDMAN
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704243904575630580347359368.html
block quote start
Though you won't find it in Webster's, there's a word to describe the kind of meticulously constructed writing that bores even its author. A "bore-geous" novel is one that is packed with gorgeous, finely wrought descriptions of places and people, with entire paragraphs extolling the slope of one character's
nose, whole chapters describing another's perambulations through a city. These novels are often historical or set in foreign lands, their bore-geousness inspired by the author's anxiety about making an unfamiliar world feel convincing and true. It's not that the sentences aren't well-constructed, even lovely.
They are. That's part of the problem. Bore-geousness happens when you are writing beautifully but pointlessly.
block quote end
no subject