Or, to put it another way, when it comes to the large majority of readers, do the words get in the way? Is a writer better off with less craft, more story, and more transparency in the style?
If we define better off as selling, then for the most part -- at least from observations in genre, and recently -- one is better off. Writers, and people who would be writers, are the readers who most often care.
I have mixed feelings about this, because I have a bit of the word fetishist in me. Also, as a reader, I seldom find -anyone's- prose to be so difficult that I have trouble parsing story. I can point to a piece of writing and say "you will lose people with this", but it doesn't lose me, and from a purely selfish standpoint, I don't necessarily encourage people to change their style.
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branchandroot
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Date: 2004-07-15 12:55 pm (UTC)If we define better off as selling, then for the most part -- at least from observations in genre, and recently -- one is better off. Writers, and people who would be writers, are the readers who most often care.
I have mixed feelings about this, because I have a bit of the word fetishist in me. Also, as a reader, I seldom find -anyone's- prose to be so difficult that I have trouble parsing story. I can point to a piece of writing and say "you will lose people with this", but it doesn't lose me, and from a purely selfish standpoint, I don't necessarily encourage people to change their style.