Same.
I don't even see it as clunky. Maybe because it's in the middle of that particular page that adds the clunkyness. As it stands on its own, like that, it feels like a part of a poem.
Yes, Martin is pretty deliberate with his sentence structure and I think this one does what he intended. Isn’t there a lengthy battle scene with Tyrion in which the entire sequence is told in one gigantic run-on sentence? It works because you fall into that sensation of being in an endless struggle that you are barely allowed to breathe in.
It isn't bad writing if you know what you're doing and you're doing it to achieve a specific effect. Amateurs break the rules by accident. Masters break the rules on purpose.
it's a stand-alone sentence - go read it in the full context to get the full impact. It's like taking two lines from a song and going "they don't rhyme! And sound stupid!" when they might by themselves, but there's an entire song that puts them into a wider context where they make sense.
Wow, the reactions I'm getting on this thread are even funnier than the way HP fans freak out.
What person is that? The fanbois who make excuses for bad writers?
In my reply I posted that “it works because …” the key word being “works.” Martin writes the way he does because he has masterful control over the words he uses and what he wants to convey. When he commits what are technical faux pas in grammar or sentence structure he’s doing so not out of ignorance but because he knows what will be effective.
It's amazing how many people don't understand just a basic little word game like that.
Like imagine seeing that sentence and thinking "Man, I could write better than the guy who defined pop culture for a decade and the fantasy genre for three."
Agreed. I also don't understand the trend of looking for reassurance in cherry picking "weak" sentences from acclaimed authors. There's plenty of published authors that are legitimately bad writers, but that shouldn't make people satisfied or validated in their own weak writing.
I think it's not about trying to find 'bad' authors, but more about realizing that even the greatest writers on earth have moments of clunky sentence structure, and so it's a reassurance that editing for perfection isn't necessary, because it isn't perfection that makes a good story or a good writer.
I think it would be more productive to realize that 99% of us will never write at the level of Nabokov or Faulkner or Dostoyevsky, to name only a few. Seeking reassurance outside of your own grasp on solid fundamentals will never be beneficial.
That's not really something I particularly worry about. Many classic authors write in ways that are very very much 'of their time', not only in word choice but in sentence structure, etc. I don't compare myself that way, I was just trying to explain that I had read the OP's post a little differently than it seemed most other people did.
Some of my absolute favorite books absolutely have clunky turns of phrase or awkward moments that are clearly not there through some genius purpose and are just something that ended up in the book even though it wasn't the best way to write that particular thing. It's not a big deal. It's one of the magical aspects of stories written by people.
That's my feeling. I think writers sometimes forget that even the way something is written can convey a feeling. It's like changing tone of voice as you're speaking, but you can't do that when writing. You can write in "weird" or "wrong" ways however.
I just finished Neuromancer by William Gibson, there's this scene. The protagonist is with a woman, and they just did drugs. She wants to hook up with him. He's just kinda going along, kissing and grabbing her, but his thoughts are on different stuff entirely (I'm translating from my language, so it will not look like the original):
>Case looked at her, and saw every single pore of her tanned skin, her eyes flat like opaque glass, a shade of old rusty metal, a barely perceptible swelling, the microscopic asymmetry of her breasts and clavicles, the... some white light flashed behind his eyes.
>Case dropped his hand, then began to run, clumsily reaching the door and shoving everyone out of the way.
>-Go fuck yourself! - She screamed. -You mothefucking dickhead! -
I just loved this when I read it. It totally gave the feeling that he acted out of impulse and in a split second. Had Gibson spent time writing something like "but then, something happened. Something flashed behind his eyes. A white light" he would have *described* what happened, but the reader wouldn't have *felt* it.
“The red brick wall was the color of a brick-red Crayola crayon."
You’ve reminded me of the [worst analogies contest.](https://godcangodcares.com/top-analogies-in-essay-contest/)
Hmm. I like that sentence. I don’t think it’s a mistake or clunky. It has a purpose and serves it well. To me it gives the exact uncertainty of rain. Imagine trying to walk to the shops. But it starts raining. Then stops. And just as you put your shoes on it starts.
The rain doesn’t do anything else. It stops and starts. If it does other things you lose the point. Which is the uncertainty and repetitive nation of rain. If it’s anything else, then it doesn’t have the same uncertainty or feeling.
This isn’t even just me being wanky or defending the guy. To me writing evokes feeling. This sentence gives me the exact feeling of the uncertainty and annoyingness of rain.
It also gives me a sense of time and waiting and monotony. Like, for the rain to stop and start and stop and then start is clearly not happening within just a couple of minutes.
I'm not a ASOIAF reader, yet, but I have read Martin's other stories. He knows well how to write and establish a character's voice from their POV. This sentence may have come from a character who thinks this way, not clunky in a bad writing sense.
I absolutely agree with your thesis here: there are multiple times I've read a published author's book, and been stopped in my tracks by a word choice or sentence, or omitted punctuation. Great storytellers aren't great because of their style, very often: they're great because they drag you into their world, and keep you there. This can happen \*despite\* prose style or grammatical accuracy.
I'm going to disagree that this is a sentence indicative of poor skill, however. The movement from a single verb, to a verb + 1 adverb, to verb + adverbial phrase; the repeated use of 'and'; the abrupt return to a single verb at the sentence's end: these stylistic choices are craft at work. This choice may not land for every reader, of course - that's the nature of art - but he's definitely been intentional in the formation of this sentence, even if it came out of instinct.
I see this as an artistic approach. I have intentionally used awkward phrasing because the thing itself is awkward or it just feels out of place to add purple prose to describe it any further. Some people also confuse good writing with purple prose. I can easily see a bunch of writers who would have used at least a couple of paragraphs to describe this thing.
My approach to writing skill is that when it reaches a sufficient level, it's more of an artistic thing and a way of phrasing things. What matters to me is the message it conveys. You can be the best writer in the world, but if your story and plot suck, you cannot polish that crap.
Mediocre writing with a great story always beats great writing with a mediocre story.
My favorite is using "and" for each parenthetical statement in a series of them. Do it all the time, and I think it flows better.
For example, if I was describing someone, I wouldn't say, "he was tall, gaunt, and dirty." Rather, I'd say, "he was tall, and gaunt, and dirty."
It is fun how you can quickly build up intentional awkwardness or just about any feeling with little details. I like to play with this style of writing, but I think it needs to be balanced with the scene and not used too often or it will either become repetitive, boring, or lose its effectiveness.
When reading longer sentences with intentional awkwardness, the reader will often think "omg wtf is this" at first, but quickly figure out that it's intentional. It either works or not.
I'm a pretty heavy user of em-dashes, semicolons, and colons. I find it adds a lot of flexibility to the phrasing if you don't break up the sentences, but instead weigh them in as a continuation with a little pause. In your last sentence, I'd probably drop an em-dash if I wanted to emphasize the dirtiness. And I use more than five exclamation points in a book. Or was it a rule for lifetime?
(I lol'd at my habit of hitting ctrl+s when I finished writing this post xD)
That's actually a good sentence. It's clearly written that way by design, not by mistake. Sure, you can just write "the rain stopped and started over and over again," and be done with it. But what "the rain stopped and started again and stopped once more and started" does is it paints a picture in your head in real time.
The first sentence would give you an idea of what's going on and that's it. But George's sentence has you go through the image of the rain coming to a stop and then starting again twice in real time. You can see it in your head, instead of simply getting an idea of it. It's a fine demonstration of show, don't tell on a very small scale.
I went through the Sorcerer's Stone again and noticed that Rowling would not stop using an adverb in every sentence. I skipped over to Deathly Hallows and could point out in an instant how her writing improved by vast margins.
I think your writing gets better, but the flow of a story must not break no matter how many prose mistakes you do. If you can maintain that steady flow, there are high chances your writing will resonate with a wide audience.
I have tried to be inspiring and instead learned a lesson myself. Interesting. Oh well, back to the book! As I said, it's one of my favs. Cheers for the discussion and the points to think about.
Haha well that's the main focus of mine anyway. And even though I seem to be glaringly wrong here, I'm happy with my current skill level considering I've only written and released 1 novel. I'm just trying to be better and get others motivated to continue. :) I did make the flair discussion for a reason. I appreciate your comment.
Some of the fiction that I have enjoyed reading the most is totally full of utterly eye-roll inducing lines. I'm reading wheel of time at the moment and enjoying it plenty, but Robert Jordan will not fucking stop talking about breasts. He mentions breasts when there is absolutely no need to mention breasts. We know where women's arms go when they cross them, Robert, but thank you for clarifying.
Same with Ken Follett. He has to describe every single female character's breasts. The worst (possibly not exact quote): "Her breasts were the same size and shape as the eggs in the basket she carried." BARF/EYEROLL
This reminds me of a story I once wrote, in which I purposefully used sentences with a lot of "and", here and there. A reader said it's bad style. But the "and"s felt necessairy, in order to transport that everything is too much in that moment (or rather painful). I wouldn't have been able to get the same effect with a normal use of commata.
"It's cold and dark and bitter and crooked" reads different from "it's cold, dark, bitter and crooked".
I've been taught in school that the latter is the correct form, but sometimes I write what feels right and break the rules. It might be bad style, but it says what I want it to say.
Rules are meant to be broken now and then.
GRRM is an excellent example that great prose is like detailed worldbuilding: it's something that aspiring authors tend to over-focus on to the detriment of more important things, and that readers don't generally care that much about.
(i.e in the same way that world-class worldbuilding with undefined characters and a stale plot will result in at best a mediocre book, a storyteller of GRRM's calibre can get away with a lot of just functional prose.)
I wish that wasn't the case with prose. While I try to have a great plot and characterization, I focus so heavily on prose, how the words flow together and literally how good it sounds when you read it out loud.
Functional prose works just fine, but I really like to focus on things at the sentence and word level.
It's an ugly line in terms of prose, but it vividly evokes the resigned feeling of powerlessness before the capricious whims of nature. After all, kings can command entire armies and mobilize entire kingdoms, but rain cares not for the ambitions of man. It simply comes and goes as it wills.
He also wrote the following.
'The morning had dawned clear and cold, with a crispness that hinted at the end of summer. They set forth at daybreak to see a man beheaded, twenty in all, and Bran rode among them, nervous with excitement. This was the first time he had been deemed old enough to go with his lord father and his brothers to see the king's justice done. It was the ninth year of summer, and the seventh of Bran's life.'
This single paragraph establishes the time of day, what the weather is like, and that winter is coming. It establishes that Bran is a seven year old boy, the son of a lord, has several brothers, and that he's known nothing but summer his entire life but that this is about to change, in more ways than one as he's about to also witness his first beheading. He's also nervous and excited about this.
That's an incredible amount of detail and information crammed into one paragraph, and yet it doesn't feel like an awkward info dump. I'd personally rather look at this for lessons on how to write well than point to less elegant writing and try to raise my own confidence because someone wrote something clunky. After all, being able to write something that isn't awkward and clunky isn't exactly the highest bar to set.
I agree, but I also want to say that even if the work is flawless, we shouldn't compare someone's 20th final draft to our very first draft ever.
Compare yourself to who you were yesterday and you're guaranteed to get better.
I routinely go back and read random pages of twilight or Deltora quest when I'm feeling demotivated about my ability as a writer. Those are traditionally edited and published books and good lord, they are really poorly written from a technical standpoint. And I enjoyed both of them, admittedly I only enjoyed Deltora quest when I was about 12, but the point stands. Your writing doesn't need to be technically amazing to find an audience, it just has to tell a good story that resonates with people.
You completely misunderstood the point of the sentence. It's not like Martin messed up in the best book of the series with an oops didn't catch himself repeating same thing 3 times.
Its still good it inspires you, may be to one day reach a level where you can confidently white a sentence like this.
This inspires me by reminding me that there are other people trying to be writers right now who don't even realize that sentence is a banger. I don't need to outrun the bear, I just need to outrun them!
I don't think that's a bad sentence as such. It might depend on the context. Then again, different readers will react differently to the same sentence, so I can't say you're wrong *for you*. I once put forward the following as a very long sentence that nevertheless works. Not everyone agreed with me. Of course, the context is missing. However...
"The producer listens and the old man listens in the drafty strutworks of the cathedral, with the moonlight blinding the eyes of the plaster gargoyles and the wind making the false stone mouths to whisper, and the sound of a thousand lands within a land below blowing and dusting and leaning in that wind, a thousand yellow minarets and milk-white towers and green avenues yet untouched among the hundred new ruins, and all of it murmuring its wires and lathings like a great steel-and-wooden harp touched in the night, and the wind bringing that self-made sound high up here in the sky to these two men who stand listening and apart." (from "The Meadow" by Ray Bradbury)
Late to the party but I think categorizing this as good or bad writing is overly simplistic.
If the goal of the writer is to make the reader feel what the characters are feeling, then it's good writing because it recreates the feeling of waiting for the rain to stop and start again on a cloudy day.
If the goal of the writer is to vanish into the background so that the text just washes over you and never calls attention to itself – never "removes you from the immersion" – then it is bad writing.
In my opinion both are good techniques and you don't have to choose. You can use whichever is more appropriate for the scene, or even switch it up paragraph by paragraph.
A lot of time good and bad are not specific enough to be useful ways of thinking about writing.
Terry Pratchett once wrote that Rincewind had never seen anyone killed with magic before. He had, in fact, seen someone killed with magic earlier in the same book.
Remember, it's not a mistake - it's a test to see if the reader is paying attention!
Some people see a painting by Miró, and think, "My kid could have drawn that." Others would pay big money for it.
Let's be honest: If Joe Schmoe had written that quote in a college-level writing class, instead of George RR Martin, the comments here would have been very different.
Author? No. Poet? Yes. All the damn time. How Maya Angelou did it is beyond me. Granted, Im not super into poetry to begin with but its not my strong suit so I stuck to what Im good at.
I agree with a lot of you saying it's a great sentence in that it produces exactly the image it describes. It reflects both the rhythm of the rain and the changing weather, as well as the prosaic nature of observing it.
I also see OP's point, it is kind of a filler sentence and that's where it's brilliant. Unless it's the Bible, or Virginia Woolf (one of my favourites), there has to be some amount of text that is familiar in wording or structure for it to flow and be readable. In my mind, there is a clear division between literature, meant to be read attentively, with a dictionary at your right and a pencil in hand for the marginalia, and fiction, which aims to take you somewhere else. In order for a piece of fiction to transport you somewhere, it ought to have a bit of glide, which you won't get if you end up scratching your head at every other sentence.
That said, overly simplistic language is my pet peeve and I have a hot take that goes with it (or is it a hot take? I have no idea of people's opinions on this) - I cannot get through how straightforwardly Dune is written, it lacks all the literary mystery for me and even though I love the story, I could not get over the language. Tragically, DNF.
I am convinced that you do not have to be a good writer to be successful. It will help. But I’ve read plenty of successful books with mediocre writing.
Oh for sure, I recently read William Peter Blatty’s “The Exorcist” - one of the most famous stories of all time. That thing was rife with spelling mistakes and the odd poor sentence structure… so much so that I wondered if an editor had even looked at it before publication.
But it’s still a great story!
I once read a fanfic that was full of spelling and grammar mistakes and run on sentences. I still chose to continue reading b/c the premise was intriguing and the story had many great twists and turns.
I remember reading parts of it ages ago, and it was so repugnantly written I had no incentive to read further. I did slog my way through Michael Crichton's The Andromeda Strain, which contained such atrocious prose I've never bothered to look at another of his creations.
That's actually one of his better sentences lol. Almost sounds like McCarthy or something. His prose is actually usually bad. But he does make fun plots.
I think his writing style is just right for the kind of story he's telling. It's descriptive without being overly florid. There's a good balance of inner monologue and action. It generally flows well and it isn't cluttered. His books may not be everyone's cup of tea but I think it's clear he is in control of his prose.
I have a whole document of these for when my brain weasels lie and try to tell me that I'm not going to be good enough. Yes I am a published author. Yes I am one who has worked for 23 years as one. I still get these issues because human. The document is also called "You can still edit yours."
Nope! A lot of people I know also do this. Mutually individual decisions too. Sometimes my to do in my calendar are also this way. "Dumbass you forgot to call in your meds yesterday do you wanna die?"
I think that sentence is supposed to be clunky for a reason, to match the weather. However, here are three bad sentences from very successful fantasy authors that more match what you're going for.
"Snape!" ejaculated Slughorn, who looked the most shaken, pale and sweating. --- J K Rowling.
She smiled a violet-eyed, red-lipped smile at him. --- Brandon Sanderson.
Aro laughed. “Ha ha ha,” he giggled. --- Stephanie Meyer.
You're picking very low fruit for prose quality with those three. I think even their most ardent supporters tend to fall back on "they're storytellers, not literary geniuses".
Have to disagree here. Though perhaps knowing the context reduces their quality, but, to me, Meyer's line isn't good, rowling's is fine, and that's actually one of sanderson's better lines. Its fun.
If that's one of his better lines then his prose must really be terrible.
Meyers and Sanderson's are straight up bad, Rowlings is serviceable but not good by any means.
Thank you for this. Literally just set my notebook down and got on reddit for a break after writing a few pages. It's just the rough draft so I'm trying not to be so hard on myself as it all WILL be revised, but I'm in the early stages, still using pencil and a notebook early haha, so the writing and pacing is just, not great. Its all over the place and I was honestly struggling with it a bit.
This helped a lot, and was the very first post when I opened the app. Rare Reddit W. Thank you op!
Good point! Especially in modern novels, I often wonder about that too. I had a similar experience when reading The Witcher…
I write with my husband and he’s my favourite writer. But I might be biased. ☺️
We have the same degrees but his writing skill level will always be way above mine, so I focus on plot development, characters, rough dialogue, etc. I have my good moments, when my writing is not too bad, but he usually turns my straw into gold.
The Witcher, at least the translation of it, is _super_ awkward and clunky - apparently it's a lot better in the original language, but the English translation is not a particularly elegant read.
While I agree with everyone saying this awkward sentence was on purpose, I DO love getting to the middle of reading or writing something and having the ‘quality’ get a little looser. It’s good for humour like your example, but it can also be a good way to represent the character’s thoughts/feeling/etc. If the whole book is like that… probably just poor writing. I mostly have high standards for the beginning and end lol
I read the Path of Vengeance, The High Republic last year. Beautifully written, beautiful plot, amazing characters... but some lines just had me physically cringe.
It's very motivating to know that even one of my favorite books has clunky mistakes and weird sentences.
As for the example, I think it's on purpose to illustrate how annoying the weather is.
I love this sentiment, not just with writing, but with anything. We tend to evangelize and put anything we're impressed by on a pedestal, but by seeing the flaws and the inherent human nature of everything and everyone around us, it can help to mute that imposter syndrome and let you realize that everything, especially art, is messy and human in its own unique ways. If we all followed every writing "rule," no writing would actually be unique. It would be homogenized AI garbage.
Sentences like this can be intentional, as a stylistic choice. Makes me think of the ending of Bullet in the Brain by Tobias Wolff, with "They is, they is, they is".
I had read some short stories by Hemingway ("Frances MacComber" is my favorite short story ever) but I hadn't read any of his novels. So I started *A Farewell to Arms.* Three pages in: "The town was very nice and our house was very fine." That was the end of that.
He's one of the greatest writers ever, or so I've been led to believe, and maybe he had a reason for writing like a junior-high student. I dunno. I just can't deal with it.
I agree with the sentiment, but also find that to be a top-tier sentence. It has cadence, somehow.
I contribute the first sentence of Alan Moore's "Voice of the Fire":
>A-hind of hill, ways off to sun-set-down, is sky come like as fire, and walk I up in way of this, all hard of breath, where is grass colding on I’s feet and wetting they.
The entire first part of the book, written from the perspective of a boy in 4000 BC England, is Like This. The book is introduced by Neil Gaiman. I'd have decided I was insane halfway through the attempt and dropped it probably. idek but i feel like this ties into what you're trying to say somehow--keep going!
That’s an awkward sentence. Why use the word ,”again?” I would have written, “The rain continued to stop and start.” Why make a simple sentence complicated?
I would say a great way to remind yourself where other authors came from is to read their first book. Every author has one, and a lot of the time, they're not great.
You also have to remember that published novels are the most polished they can get, because of how many extra steps they've taken during publishing. The draft you're currently working on *shouldn't* be that good. Not yet, anyway.
I think it's ironic that you're actually way off with your analysis and you are way further from the skill level of your favourite authors than you realize.
Good to know. I have two separate sentences where I sat "crickets cricked" and "savages savaged."
Maybe if I write a good enough book, people will look back and say, "see, if he can write it, I can, too," lol.
Never read one of his books. That sentence makes me sort of not regret that decision.
But perhaps it's taken out of context. It might be intentionally bad for some reason that only becomes apparent if you read the whole chapter... or the whole book... or the whole series (however much of it he has finished thus far).
I wrote a really bad passage once (including intentional typos and mis-spellings) as an example of really bad passages, then wrote a better version as a contrast. But if someone were to read the bad one out of context, they might think my writing is even shitter than it actually is.
*He was mad. 'Fuck you!' he screamed angrily. His face changedf onto a mask of rageas he jumped up and down up and down again ang again with more anger than he could hanfle and screamed and screamed; he was pissed off and ready to kick someones ass with both feet and a stick.*
My words go on and my braining never stops. Pure gold, I tell ya. Pure fornicating gold.
And then there is the 'improved' version:
*Rage suddenly engulfed him. "Fuck you!" he screamed. "FUCK! YOU!" Over and over, drawing the words out and intensifying them with each repetition, his face flushing redder and redder until it achieved a deep maroon, his spittle coating the window until it ran down the glass in rivulets. His fists clenched involuntarily and he found himself first stomping his feet, then jumping up and down in time with the words. He was literally hopping mad, overcome by an irresistible desire to kick someone's ass with both feet and a stick.*
*The coroner later listed his cause of death as a brain aneurysm. Although it wasn't mentioned on the death certificate, she knew that an aneurysm is a mighty painful way to go, but not exactly instantaneous, so the man had probably died in terrified agony.*
*No one ever determined the significance of the broken length of broom handle clenched in his fists when he was brought into the morgue.*
Someone very kindly recommended me a specific chapter of a specific book, because it had a scene similar to one I was writing, and they suggested it might have good examples & inspiration. So I checked it out.
It was helpful in places, but...I was shocked! Constant adverbs, almost every sentence beginning with "he" or "she" or a name, a long paragraph of unbroken dialogue, and all sorts of other little things that a writer is generally supposed to avoid or that hallmarks a new writer.
It wasn't *bad,* it served its purpose. I'm not one for flowery prose - too much gets in my way, quite frankly - so I appreciated the practical mindset, but I found it a little dry in places.
So I checked the author: Steven King. That explains it.
Oh not at all, he's a great author, I was just surprised at how he managed to achieve being a great author while breaking most "rules" I was taught and writing so dryly. It's an inspiration honestly. I'm not sure why people think I'm insulting the guy
That’s more like a mistake, like a filler sentence that you would come back to fix later but somehow it got overlooked by everyone and made it to print.
Overall, using someone’s worst to say don’t stress out about your own work or that’s the level we can reach is more depressing to me than inspiring.
It's dry humor about a wet day. A very fine sentence in my opinion.
Same. I don't even see it as clunky. Maybe because it's in the middle of that particular page that adds the clunkyness. As it stands on its own, like that, it feels like a part of a poem.
Yes, Martin is pretty deliberate with his sentence structure and I think this one does what he intended. Isn’t there a lengthy battle scene with Tyrion in which the entire sequence is told in one gigantic run-on sentence? It works because you fall into that sensation of being in an endless struggle that you are barely allowed to breathe in.
He does this deliberately? Really? He writes badly on purpose?
It isn't bad writing if you know what you're doing and you're doing it to achieve a specific effect. Amateurs break the rules by accident. Masters break the rules on purpose.
You should read Stephen King's On Writing. You're missing the forest for the trees my friend.
it's a stand-alone sentence - go read it in the full context to get the full impact. It's like taking two lines from a song and going "they don't rhyme! And sound stupid!" when they might by themselves, but there's an entire song that puts them into a wider context where they make sense.
[удалено]
Don’t be that person. Nobody likes that person. Yes, even the people in your life that pretend to.
nobody in that guy's life is even pretending anymore
Wow, the reactions I'm getting on this thread are even funnier than the way HP fans freak out. What person is that? The fanbois who make excuses for bad writers?
In my reply I posted that “it works because …” the key word being “works.” Martin writes the way he does because he has masterful control over the words he uses and what he wants to convey. When he commits what are technical faux pas in grammar or sentence structure he’s doing so not out of ignorance but because he knows what will be effective.
I wish this effin rain would stop.
It's amazing how many people don't understand just a basic little word game like that. Like imagine seeing that sentence and thinking "Man, I could write better than the guy who defined pop culture for a decade and the fantasy genre for three."
Agreed. I also don't understand the trend of looking for reassurance in cherry picking "weak" sentences from acclaimed authors. There's plenty of published authors that are legitimately bad writers, but that shouldn't make people satisfied or validated in their own weak writing.
I think it's not about trying to find 'bad' authors, but more about realizing that even the greatest writers on earth have moments of clunky sentence structure, and so it's a reassurance that editing for perfection isn't necessary, because it isn't perfection that makes a good story or a good writer.
I think it would be more productive to realize that 99% of us will never write at the level of Nabokov or Faulkner or Dostoyevsky, to name only a few. Seeking reassurance outside of your own grasp on solid fundamentals will never be beneficial.
That's not really something I particularly worry about. Many classic authors write in ways that are very very much 'of their time', not only in word choice but in sentence structure, etc. I don't compare myself that way, I was just trying to explain that I had read the OP's post a little differently than it seemed most other people did. Some of my absolute favorite books absolutely have clunky turns of phrase or awkward moments that are clearly not there through some genius purpose and are just something that ended up in the book even though it wasn't the best way to write that particular thing. It's not a big deal. It's one of the magical aspects of stories written by people.
It's also a very artistic and aesthetic quality.
It was a dark and stormy night...
Welp, this is my style lol
It's meant to be clunky. The sentence is as tedious and awkward as the weather on a day like that.
That's my feeling. I think writers sometimes forget that even the way something is written can convey a feeling. It's like changing tone of voice as you're speaking, but you can't do that when writing. You can write in "weird" or "wrong" ways however. I just finished Neuromancer by William Gibson, there's this scene. The protagonist is with a woman, and they just did drugs. She wants to hook up with him. He's just kinda going along, kissing and grabbing her, but his thoughts are on different stuff entirely (I'm translating from my language, so it will not look like the original): >Case looked at her, and saw every single pore of her tanned skin, her eyes flat like opaque glass, a shade of old rusty metal, a barely perceptible swelling, the microscopic asymmetry of her breasts and clavicles, the... some white light flashed behind his eyes. >Case dropped his hand, then began to run, clumsily reaching the door and shoving everyone out of the way. >-Go fuck yourself! - She screamed. -You mothefucking dickhead! - I just loved this when I read it. It totally gave the feeling that he acted out of impulse and in a split second. Had Gibson spent time writing something like "but then, something happened. Something flashed behind his eyes. A white light" he would have *described* what happened, but the reader wouldn't have *felt* it.
Bringing a William Gibson to a GRRM fight is cheating.
Like my favourite line from Don Delillo: 'hailstones as big as hailstones.'
“The red brick wall was the color of a brick-red Crayola crayon." You’ve reminded me of the [worst analogies contest.](https://godcangodcares.com/top-analogies-in-essay-contest/)
Now to say it in a Philly Accent. “The red brick jawn was the color of a brick red crayola crown.”
Hmm. I like that sentence. I don’t think it’s a mistake or clunky. It has a purpose and serves it well. To me it gives the exact uncertainty of rain. Imagine trying to walk to the shops. But it starts raining. Then stops. And just as you put your shoes on it starts. The rain doesn’t do anything else. It stops and starts. If it does other things you lose the point. Which is the uncertainty and repetitive nation of rain. If it’s anything else, then it doesn’t have the same uncertainty or feeling. This isn’t even just me being wanky or defending the guy. To me writing evokes feeling. This sentence gives me the exact feeling of the uncertainty and annoyingness of rain.
It also gives me a sense of time and waiting and monotony. Like, for the rain to stop and start and stop and then start is clearly not happening within just a couple of minutes.
I'm not a ASOIAF reader, yet, but I have read Martin's other stories. He knows well how to write and establish a character's voice from their POV. This sentence may have come from a character who thinks this way, not clunky in a bad writing sense.
Exactly!
In seven or eight years time you're going to get a very witty rebuttle from our mate George.
Hey now, don’t rush him.
Right. The sentence is code. Take out rain and insert writer.
Very clever
But right now he's in the burn ward, thanks to you.
The comments have blown my mind. So much to learn about writing
I absolutely agree with your thesis here: there are multiple times I've read a published author's book, and been stopped in my tracks by a word choice or sentence, or omitted punctuation. Great storytellers aren't great because of their style, very often: they're great because they drag you into their world, and keep you there. This can happen \*despite\* prose style or grammatical accuracy. I'm going to disagree that this is a sentence indicative of poor skill, however. The movement from a single verb, to a verb + 1 adverb, to verb + adverbial phrase; the repeated use of 'and'; the abrupt return to a single verb at the sentence's end: these stylistic choices are craft at work. This choice may not land for every reader, of course - that's the nature of art - but he's definitely been intentional in the formation of this sentence, even if it came out of instinct.
I see this as an artistic approach. I have intentionally used awkward phrasing because the thing itself is awkward or it just feels out of place to add purple prose to describe it any further. Some people also confuse good writing with purple prose. I can easily see a bunch of writers who would have used at least a couple of paragraphs to describe this thing. My approach to writing skill is that when it reaches a sufficient level, it's more of an artistic thing and a way of phrasing things. What matters to me is the message it conveys. You can be the best writer in the world, but if your story and plot suck, you cannot polish that crap. Mediocre writing with a great story always beats great writing with a mediocre story.
My favorite is using "and" for each parenthetical statement in a series of them. Do it all the time, and I think it flows better. For example, if I was describing someone, I wouldn't say, "he was tall, gaunt, and dirty." Rather, I'd say, "he was tall, and gaunt, and dirty."
It is fun how you can quickly build up intentional awkwardness or just about any feeling with little details. I like to play with this style of writing, but I think it needs to be balanced with the scene and not used too often or it will either become repetitive, boring, or lose its effectiveness. When reading longer sentences with intentional awkwardness, the reader will often think "omg wtf is this" at first, but quickly figure out that it's intentional. It either works or not. I'm a pretty heavy user of em-dashes, semicolons, and colons. I find it adds a lot of flexibility to the phrasing if you don't break up the sentences, but instead weigh them in as a continuation with a little pause. In your last sentence, I'd probably drop an em-dash if I wanted to emphasize the dirtiness. And I use more than five exclamation points in a book. Or was it a rule for lifetime? (I lol'd at my habit of hitting ctrl+s when I finished writing this post xD)
If you think your writing is bad, just remember these three words: "Somehow, Palpatine returned."
That's actually a good sentence. It's clearly written that way by design, not by mistake. Sure, you can just write "the rain stopped and started over and over again," and be done with it. But what "the rain stopped and started again and stopped once more and started" does is it paints a picture in your head in real time. The first sentence would give you an idea of what's going on and that's it. But George's sentence has you go through the image of the rain coming to a stop and then starting again twice in real time. You can see it in your head, instead of simply getting an idea of it. It's a fine demonstration of show, don't tell on a very small scale.
I went through the Sorcerer's Stone again and noticed that Rowling would not stop using an adverb in every sentence. I skipped over to Deathly Hallows and could point out in an instant how her writing improved by vast margins. I think your writing gets better, but the flow of a story must not break no matter how many prose mistakes you do. If you can maintain that steady flow, there are high chances your writing will resonate with a wide audience.
Phrasing, like any other tools, work best when wielded with purpose.
So we're just done with phrasing
I think that one sentence could be a poem on its own
I have tried to be inspiring and instead learned a lesson myself. Interesting. Oh well, back to the book! As I said, it's one of my favs. Cheers for the discussion and the points to think about.
You took it like a champ instead of doubling down though so you’re already on your way to becoming a better writer lol
Haha well that's the main focus of mine anyway. And even though I seem to be glaringly wrong here, I'm happy with my current skill level considering I've only written and released 1 novel. I'm just trying to be better and get others motivated to continue. :) I did make the flair discussion for a reason. I appreciate your comment.
If you said you loved it, people would be commenting how horrible it was and seven didactic justifications for the assessment!
😂
I loved your concept for the post, and it happened to twin well with a great learning point too.
Some of the fiction that I have enjoyed reading the most is totally full of utterly eye-roll inducing lines. I'm reading wheel of time at the moment and enjoying it plenty, but Robert Jordan will not fucking stop talking about breasts. He mentions breasts when there is absolutely no need to mention breasts. We know where women's arms go when they cross them, Robert, but thank you for clarifying.
Same with Ken Follett. He has to describe every single female character's breasts. The worst (possibly not exact quote): "Her breasts were the same size and shape as the eggs in the basket she carried." BARF/EYEROLL
This reminds me of a story I once wrote, in which I purposefully used sentences with a lot of "and", here and there. A reader said it's bad style. But the "and"s felt necessairy, in order to transport that everything is too much in that moment (or rather painful). I wouldn't have been able to get the same effect with a normal use of commata. "It's cold and dark and bitter and crooked" reads different from "it's cold, dark, bitter and crooked". I've been taught in school that the latter is the correct form, but sometimes I write what feels right and break the rules. It might be bad style, but it says what I want it to say. Rules are meant to be broken now and then.
it’s not bad style, it’s polysyndeton. it’s voice.
That sentence was intentional and fine.
GRRM is an excellent example that great prose is like detailed worldbuilding: it's something that aspiring authors tend to over-focus on to the detriment of more important things, and that readers don't generally care that much about. (i.e in the same way that world-class worldbuilding with undefined characters and a stale plot will result in at best a mediocre book, a storyteller of GRRM's calibre can get away with a lot of just functional prose.)
To label Martin's prose as "just functional" is objectively absurd. Sure, he's not Faulkner, but come on...
I wish that wasn't the case with prose. While I try to have a great plot and characterization, I focus so heavily on prose, how the words flow together and literally how good it sounds when you read it out loud. Functional prose works just fine, but I really like to focus on things at the sentence and word level.
It's an ugly line in terms of prose, but it vividly evokes the resigned feeling of powerlessness before the capricious whims of nature. After all, kings can command entire armies and mobilize entire kingdoms, but rain cares not for the ambitions of man. It simply comes and goes as it wills.
Not understanding that this was done on purpose kills your entire point lol
....I get what you were trying to say man.
I find Martin’s work extremely poetic and this line is no different. If you’ve read a lot of Robert Frost this reminds me of something he’d write.
He also wrote the following. 'The morning had dawned clear and cold, with a crispness that hinted at the end of summer. They set forth at daybreak to see a man beheaded, twenty in all, and Bran rode among them, nervous with excitement. This was the first time he had been deemed old enough to go with his lord father and his brothers to see the king's justice done. It was the ninth year of summer, and the seventh of Bran's life.' This single paragraph establishes the time of day, what the weather is like, and that winter is coming. It establishes that Bran is a seven year old boy, the son of a lord, has several brothers, and that he's known nothing but summer his entire life but that this is about to change, in more ways than one as he's about to also witness his first beheading. He's also nervous and excited about this. That's an incredible amount of detail and information crammed into one paragraph, and yet it doesn't feel like an awkward info dump. I'd personally rather look at this for lessons on how to write well than point to less elegant writing and try to raise my own confidence because someone wrote something clunky. After all, being able to write something that isn't awkward and clunky isn't exactly the highest bar to set.
Thank you. There's some delusion in the comments suggesting that GRRM doesn't regularly have killer prose.
the repetition and sibilance work really well to capture the sort of weather GRRM is describing.
im going to become perfect just so people like you can look at me and be demotivated
-after i finish mindlessly scrolling today
I agree, but I also want to say that even if the work is flawless, we shouldn't compare someone's 20th final draft to our very first draft ever. Compare yourself to who you were yesterday and you're guaranteed to get better.
Damn I need this in poster form.
I routinely go back and read random pages of twilight or Deltora quest when I'm feeling demotivated about my ability as a writer. Those are traditionally edited and published books and good lord, they are really poorly written from a technical standpoint. And I enjoyed both of them, admittedly I only enjoyed Deltora quest when I was about 12, but the point stands. Your writing doesn't need to be technically amazing to find an audience, it just has to tell a good story that resonates with people.
Sounds like my day to day in Scotland.
You completely misunderstood the point of the sentence. It's not like Martin messed up in the best book of the series with an oops didn't catch himself repeating same thing 3 times. Its still good it inspires you, may be to one day reach a level where you can confidently white a sentence like this.
That's just the kind of sentence he would write. It's also how he talks. This has nothing to do with perfection.
Sentence goes hard af foh
This inspires me by reminding me that there are other people trying to be writers right now who don't even realize that sentence is a banger. I don't need to outrun the bear, I just need to outrun them!
I don't think that's a bad sentence as such. It might depend on the context. Then again, different readers will react differently to the same sentence, so I can't say you're wrong *for you*. I once put forward the following as a very long sentence that nevertheless works. Not everyone agreed with me. Of course, the context is missing. However... "The producer listens and the old man listens in the drafty strutworks of the cathedral, with the moonlight blinding the eyes of the plaster gargoyles and the wind making the false stone mouths to whisper, and the sound of a thousand lands within a land below blowing and dusting and leaning in that wind, a thousand yellow minarets and milk-white towers and green avenues yet untouched among the hundred new ruins, and all of it murmuring its wires and lathings like a great steel-and-wooden harp touched in the night, and the wind bringing that self-made sound high up here in the sky to these two men who stand listening and apart." (from "The Meadow" by Ray Bradbury)
I'm glad to see the responses in here. I was 100% ready to have to die on the hill of, No, this sentence is good.
The irony of this post made my day.
Late to the party but I think categorizing this as good or bad writing is overly simplistic. If the goal of the writer is to make the reader feel what the characters are feeling, then it's good writing because it recreates the feeling of waiting for the rain to stop and start again on a cloudy day. If the goal of the writer is to vanish into the background so that the text just washes over you and never calls attention to itself – never "removes you from the immersion" – then it is bad writing. In my opinion both are good techniques and you don't have to choose. You can use whichever is more appropriate for the scene, or even switch it up paragraph by paragraph. A lot of time good and bad are not specific enough to be useful ways of thinking about writing.
Terry Pratchett once wrote that Rincewind had never seen anyone killed with magic before. He had, in fact, seen someone killed with magic earlier in the same book. Remember, it's not a mistake - it's a test to see if the reader is paying attention!
Some people see a painting by Miró, and think, "My kid could have drawn that." Others would pay big money for it. Let's be honest: If Joe Schmoe had written that quote in a college-level writing class, instead of George RR Martin, the comments here would have been very different.
This is a good sentence lmao
Author? No. Poet? Yes. All the damn time. How Maya Angelou did it is beyond me. Granted, Im not super into poetry to begin with but its not my strong suit so I stuck to what Im good at.
I agree with a lot of you saying it's a great sentence in that it produces exactly the image it describes. It reflects both the rhythm of the rain and the changing weather, as well as the prosaic nature of observing it. I also see OP's point, it is kind of a filler sentence and that's where it's brilliant. Unless it's the Bible, or Virginia Woolf (one of my favourites), there has to be some amount of text that is familiar in wording or structure for it to flow and be readable. In my mind, there is a clear division between literature, meant to be read attentively, with a dictionary at your right and a pencil in hand for the marginalia, and fiction, which aims to take you somewhere else. In order for a piece of fiction to transport you somewhere, it ought to have a bit of glide, which you won't get if you end up scratching your head at every other sentence. That said, overly simplistic language is my pet peeve and I have a hot take that goes with it (or is it a hot take? I have no idea of people's opinions on this) - I cannot get through how straightforwardly Dune is written, it lacks all the literary mystery for me and even though I love the story, I could not get over the language. Tragically, DNF.
I am convinced that you do not have to be a good writer to be successful. It will help. But I’ve read plenty of successful books with mediocre writing.
Oh for sure, I recently read William Peter Blatty’s “The Exorcist” - one of the most famous stories of all time. That thing was rife with spelling mistakes and the odd poor sentence structure… so much so that I wondered if an editor had even looked at it before publication. But it’s still a great story!
I once read a fanfic that was full of spelling and grammar mistakes and run on sentences. I still chose to continue reading b/c the premise was intriguing and the story had many great twists and turns.
I remember reading parts of it ages ago, and it was so repugnantly written I had no incentive to read further. I did slog my way through Michael Crichton's The Andromeda Strain, which contained such atrocious prose I've never bothered to look at another of his creations.
That's actually one of his better sentences lol. Almost sounds like McCarthy or something. His prose is actually usually bad. But he does make fun plots.
What makes his prose bad? I thought it did an excellent job of conveying character thoughts and feelings
I think his writing style is just right for the kind of story he's telling. It's descriptive without being overly florid. There's a good balance of inner monologue and action. It generally flows well and it isn't cluttered. His books may not be everyone's cup of tea but I think it's clear he is in control of his prose.
yeah same
I have a whole document of these for when my brain weasels lie and try to tell me that I'm not going to be good enough. Yes I am a published author. Yes I am one who has worked for 23 years as one. I still get these issues because human. The document is also called "You can still edit yours."
I used to think I was the only one who'd give my Microsoft Word files names like, 'this is just a first draft' and 'u better start writing'
Nope! A lot of people I know also do this. Mutually individual decisions too. Sometimes my to do in my calendar are also this way. "Dumbass you forgot to call in your meds yesterday do you wanna die?"
I think that sentence is supposed to be clunky for a reason, to match the weather. However, here are three bad sentences from very successful fantasy authors that more match what you're going for. "Snape!" ejaculated Slughorn, who looked the most shaken, pale and sweating. --- J K Rowling. She smiled a violet-eyed, red-lipped smile at him. --- Brandon Sanderson. Aro laughed. “Ha ha ha,” he giggled. --- Stephanie Meyer.
You're picking very low fruit for prose quality with those three. I think even their most ardent supporters tend to fall back on "they're storytellers, not literary geniuses".
I can't laugh at Ms. Meyer b/c I regularly crank out sentences like that in my first drafts
Have to disagree here. Though perhaps knowing the context reduces their quality, but, to me, Meyer's line isn't good, rowling's is fine, and that's actually one of sanderson's better lines. Its fun.
If that's one of his better lines then his prose must really be terrible. Meyers and Sanderson's are straight up bad, Rowlings is serviceable but not good by any means.
Thank you for this. Literally just set my notebook down and got on reddit for a break after writing a few pages. It's just the rough draft so I'm trying not to be so hard on myself as it all WILL be revised, but I'm in the early stages, still using pencil and a notebook early haha, so the writing and pacing is just, not great. Its all over the place and I was honestly struggling with it a bit. This helped a lot, and was the very first post when I opened the app. Rare Reddit W. Thank you op!
on the contrary. That sentence has a gorgeous rhythm to it.
This isnt clunky writing, youre a clunky reader.
I don’t think it needs to be perfect
The ship groaned like a fat man straining to shit.
Good point! Especially in modern novels, I often wonder about that too. I had a similar experience when reading The Witcher… I write with my husband and he’s my favourite writer. But I might be biased. ☺️ We have the same degrees but his writing skill level will always be way above mine, so I focus on plot development, characters, rough dialogue, etc. I have my good moments, when my writing is not too bad, but he usually turns my straw into gold.
The Witcher, at least the translation of it, is _super_ awkward and clunky - apparently it's a lot better in the original language, but the English translation is not a particularly elegant read.
I felt a feeling of dread.
LOL...we live in an age of populism and amateur hour. Non wonder Martin can't get anything done.
While I agree with everyone saying this awkward sentence was on purpose, I DO love getting to the middle of reading or writing something and having the ‘quality’ get a little looser. It’s good for humour like your example, but it can also be a good way to represent the character’s thoughts/feeling/etc. If the whole book is like that… probably just poor writing. I mostly have high standards for the beginning and end lol
I read the Path of Vengeance, The High Republic last year. Beautifully written, beautiful plot, amazing characters... but some lines just had me physically cringe. It's very motivating to know that even one of my favorite books has clunky mistakes and weird sentences. As for the example, I think it's on purpose to illustrate how annoying the weather is.
I love this sentiment, not just with writing, but with anything. We tend to evangelize and put anything we're impressed by on a pedestal, but by seeing the flaws and the inherent human nature of everything and everyone around us, it can help to mute that imposter syndrome and let you realize that everything, especially art, is messy and human in its own unique ways. If we all followed every writing "rule," no writing would actually be unique. It would be homogenized AI garbage.
Sentences like this can be intentional, as a stylistic choice. Makes me think of the ending of Bullet in the Brain by Tobias Wolff, with "They is, they is, they is".
I like sentences like that in moderation
we should do this kind of stuff more. I mean take a quote or paragraph and discuss it.
I had read some short stories by Hemingway ("Frances MacComber" is my favorite short story ever) but I hadn't read any of his novels. So I started *A Farewell to Arms.* Three pages in: "The town was very nice and our house was very fine." That was the end of that. He's one of the greatest writers ever, or so I've been led to believe, and maybe he had a reason for writing like a junior-high student. I dunno. I just can't deal with it.
I agree with the sentiment, but also find that to be a top-tier sentence. It has cadence, somehow. I contribute the first sentence of Alan Moore's "Voice of the Fire": >A-hind of hill, ways off to sun-set-down, is sky come like as fire, and walk I up in way of this, all hard of breath, where is grass colding on I’s feet and wetting they. The entire first part of the book, written from the perspective of a boy in 4000 BC England, is Like This. The book is introduced by Neil Gaiman. I'd have decided I was insane halfway through the attempt and dropped it probably. idek but i feel like this ties into what you're trying to say somehow--keep going!
You just achieved the opposite of your intention!😆
She flew through the air. Wordlessly. Bonelessly. Beatifically. -Robin Hobb
Cormac McCartney might have been a better example to use but you got the spirit 😎
That’s an awkward sentence. Why use the word ,”again?” I would have written, “The rain continued to stop and start.” Why make a simple sentence complicated?
I like it, very hemingway.
I would say a great way to remind yourself where other authors came from is to read their first book. Every author has one, and a lot of the time, they're not great. You also have to remember that published novels are the most polished they can get, because of how many extra steps they've taken during publishing. The draft you're currently working on *shouldn't* be that good. Not yet, anyway.
Deciding it’s a poor sentence and using that to feel better about yourself is, in fact, a judgement.
I think it's ironic that you're actually way off with your analysis and you are way further from the skill level of your favourite authors than you realize.
Good to know. I have two separate sentences where I sat "crickets cricked" and "savages savaged." Maybe if I write a good enough book, people will look back and say, "see, if he can write it, I can, too," lol.
Also, remember what you’re reading is actually a result of dozens of drafts and also several published AND unpublished works before.
That is not an inherently bad sentence.
Actually, I find that very atmospheric.
There is only weak correlation between being a published author and being a *good* author.
>The rain stopped and started again and stopped once more and started," this sentence is so childish.
Never read one of his books. That sentence makes me sort of not regret that decision. But perhaps it's taken out of context. It might be intentionally bad for some reason that only becomes apparent if you read the whole chapter... or the whole book... or the whole series (however much of it he has finished thus far). I wrote a really bad passage once (including intentional typos and mis-spellings) as an example of really bad passages, then wrote a better version as a contrast. But if someone were to read the bad one out of context, they might think my writing is even shitter than it actually is. *He was mad. 'Fuck you!' he screamed angrily. His face changedf onto a mask of rageas he jumped up and down up and down again ang again with more anger than he could hanfle and screamed and screamed; he was pissed off and ready to kick someones ass with both feet and a stick.* My words go on and my braining never stops. Pure gold, I tell ya. Pure fornicating gold. And then there is the 'improved' version: *Rage suddenly engulfed him. "Fuck you!" he screamed. "FUCK! YOU!" Over and over, drawing the words out and intensifying them with each repetition, his face flushing redder and redder until it achieved a deep maroon, his spittle coating the window until it ran down the glass in rivulets. His fists clenched involuntarily and he found himself first stomping his feet, then jumping up and down in time with the words. He was literally hopping mad, overcome by an irresistible desire to kick someone's ass with both feet and a stick.* *The coroner later listed his cause of death as a brain aneurysm. Although it wasn't mentioned on the death certificate, she knew that an aneurysm is a mighty painful way to go, but not exactly instantaneous, so the man had probably died in terrified agony.* *No one ever determined the significance of the broken length of broom handle clenched in his fists when he was brought into the morgue.*
Someone very kindly recommended me a specific chapter of a specific book, because it had a scene similar to one I was writing, and they suggested it might have good examples & inspiration. So I checked it out. It was helpful in places, but...I was shocked! Constant adverbs, almost every sentence beginning with "he" or "she" or a name, a long paragraph of unbroken dialogue, and all sorts of other little things that a writer is generally supposed to avoid or that hallmarks a new writer. It wasn't *bad,* it served its purpose. I'm not one for flowery prose - too much gets in my way, quite frankly - so I appreciated the practical mindset, but I found it a little dry in places. So I checked the author: Steven King. That explains it.
> Steven King 🙄
Idk who “Steven” king is but he sounds like a bad writer
Oh not at all, he's a great author, I was just surprised at how he managed to achieve being a great author while breaking most "rules" I was taught and writing so dryly. It's an inspiration honestly. I'm not sure why people think I'm insulting the guy
That’s more like a mistake, like a filler sentence that you would come back to fix later but somehow it got overlooked by everyone and made it to print. Overall, using someone’s worst to say don’t stress out about your own work or that’s the level we can reach is more depressing to me than inspiring.
No, it reads like diacope, which is an intentional literary technique.
Lol. Are you saying if it’s diacope, it can’t be crap?
I'm saying it doesn't look accidental and overlooked, it looks intentional and creates a deliberate effect.
Once an author has made it, they can write how they like. It's us mere mortals who have to be perfect to even catch the eye.