/lit/ - Literature

>>15964609
It’s actually not that bad anon. John Green is a fine writer. Just don’t overthink it, which you might be if you can’t pinpoint why you don’t like it. Go to some fanfic site if you want to see real examples of bad writing.

>>15964609

Its actually pretty simple, if you read the except again you'll notice the author keeps using ''And then'' over, and over again.
This is boring, because the human brain prefers continuity of logic, or cause and effect.
Therefore, if you want to avoid how to write like that person, instead of using ''And then'' Every thought should be connected with ''Because'' and ''Therefore''

Try to re-write it by replacing ''and then'' with ''because'' and ''Therefore''

>>15964609
Internal narration is for faggots and should be very reserved and curt. It's a terrible way people write and I don't know why it's so popular now. It's like adverbs: you save it for a very special occasion.

Have an audience in mind. This is as good as it gets if you're writing for modern women.

>>15964630
Completely wrong. He uses "and then" as a way to create a long but syntactically simple sentence that bridges the previous short sentences with the final, complex sentence.

The writing here is actually pretty solid. What's wrong is the character sounds like a pathetic fucking loser and characterization is a part of how we evaluate writing.

Anyways, stop posting this shit.

>>15964677
Makes sense. How do I write a character that doesn't sound like a loser then? and even if I am writing a loser, how do I make it not feel 'cringe'?

>>15964677

Nope, it comes off as overdrawn, unnecessary, and outright boring. While you might say this was done on purpose to bring about the personality of the character into the writing, I believe that is not an excuse for shitty connective logic.

>>15964609

>>15938795

>i'm not a writer, but if i ever have to write something i want to make sure it doesn't end up looking like that. when i read this excerpt i feel this visceral aversion but i can't pinpoint exactly why it is bad. any advice on how to not write like a faggot?

there were a multitude of opinions there, did you really need to make the same thread all over again?

>>15964609
>>15964677

Wrong, and I can prove it by re-writing the except with my own words.

>>15964609

''I wanted to lie down with my arms wrapped around her, to feel the comforting warmth of her gorgeous body, as we both drifted to slumber, devoid of any carnal desires.
But I could not.
I was weak, gawky, and frightened. Frigtenened of the consequences, and of rejection.
So I walked back to my room, where I collapsed on the bottom bunk. Thinking to myself, that if people were rain, I was drizzle, and she was a hurricane.

- Anon Anoneen, Anooning Anon Anonka

>>15964771
That did look better, except the whole 'drizzle hurricane' thing is still pretty fucking cringe.

>>15964609
I tore into this passage in the last thread. If I had to break it down to the main point about why it's bad it would be this. Green is trying to imitate the thought process of an average, unsophisticated and not particularly teenage boy. He himself admits he is hopelessly boring, the narrator of the entire story! Hence the deliberately breezy, spare, unpretentious style. Except that an average, unsophisticated teenage boy is is one of the top things that isn't worth reading about, it doesn't lend itself to such a dignification. There is nothing special about the prose and nothing special about its subject. Besides the mechanics of the writing which are merely OK, add to this the triviality of its subject, and the result is fatal.

If there were something unique about this teenager then maybe it could be justified writing a book centered around his consciousness. On the contrary even he tells you how boring he is and basically warns the reader away from proceeding further. He doesn't even have the gumption to pursue the girl and make the plot more conflict prone and climactic. He just listlessly walks away and sulks.

>>15964855
>and not particularly
*not particularly interesting

>>15964630
retard. that's not it at all. retard. fucking idiot.

>>15964894

I disagree

>>15964630
>>15964917
read mccarthy

>>15964630

The phrase "and then" does not appear a single time in the excerpt

>>15964785
It’s supposed to be cringe teenage brain stuff

>>15964609
It's not "written like a faggot", it's just that the interior monologue he's writing about is the one of a faggot

>>15964677
This. And even that is dependent of the context. Is the character supposed to be a whiny loser AND there is an interesting reason for us to follow this whiny loser? If I were writing a story about say some romantic loser who eventually abandons the pursuit of women and becomes a monk, that would be a start to illustrate the flaws in the character's mindset.

>>15964936

You serious?
Look.
>And then sleep
>And then she had a boyfriend
>And then I was gawky
>And then She was gorgeous
>And then I was hopelessly boring
>And then she was endlessly fascinating
>And then collapsed on the bottom bunk

Its stupidly written, all of it could have been organized into two beats with proper connective logic. This idea that, you should write shitty, boring prose as a way to express the character's personalities through the way you connect phrases is retarded, it reeks of modern art muh spechul snowflake cumbrain degeneracy.

>>15964609
>I posted this in another thread but got no responses so fuck it.
124 replies weren't enough? https://archived.moe/lit/thread/15938795

>>15965005

Copy and paste the excerpt into a word processor and run a search for the string "and then"

It will return 0 results

>>15964609
Pic related could become based if you add either of the following at the end:
>And she was thinking about Chad.
>Or so I would have thought if I was a fag.

>>15965139

>>15965139

Dude, you don't need to write ''and then'' to use its connective logic in a phrase, it is implied by the subtext.
What's more interesting to you?

>I was really hungry, then I met an old woman, and then she cried, and then she told me about being lost, and then she told me she had her wallet stolen, and then she couldn't return home, I then I decided to give her my money.

>(I was really hungry, I went outside, I met an old woman, she cried, she told me she was lost, she had her wallet stolen, she couldn't return home, I gave her my money.)

Or

>I was hungry, therefore I went out to buy something to eat. But then, I met a crying old woman, therefore I stopped to help her, because I did that she told me her wallet had been stolen, therefore she was unable to return home. Therefore, I decided to give her my money.

>>15965257
The bottom one is atrocious. The top one is at least readable. Using 'and' several times in a row can work, but repeating 'therefore' is unforgivable.

>>15965292

>>15965292

You don't have to write those words, that's the whole point. They are there to serve as an easily identifiable example of how using ''Therefore'' and ''Because'' even if you do not write those words, but merely imply them in the way phrases connect, makes them better.

>>15964609
>The worst part is that I can't even pinpoint exactly WHY the little excerpt is bad,
Because people on the Interwebz told you it is. If you can't even tell why you like or dislike certain writing, the whole writing thing isn't your thing. Just keep consuming media and parroting shit others say.

>>15964739
Why shouldn't it feel cringe? It's the feeling losers give others, being able to recreate it is part of good writing.

>>15965333

That is the most retarded argument I've ever read in this place. The human brain is very capable of detecting something being off, without being able to explain why.
The same way you can look at the face of a retard, and understand something is off with them, even if you do not understand the underlying conditions that made him so.

>>15965321
oh i admittedly didn't read the whole thread. I see your point but I guess I still agree with >>15964677 regarding the specific passage. There's a time and place, and if the whole book was written that way it would be awful but you can throw it in every now and then and the long run on with lots of 'and' can work.

>>15964771
>comforting warmth of her gorgeous body
Yikes. Now that's a perfect example of lacking connection.
>Frigtenened of the consequences, and of rejection.
Shit like that could use a deeper focus to make the reader feel the fear. Green did it better by letting subtext handle it.

Besides generally the narrator in this one sounds more autistic than the original one without feeling like a real person. Green's shitty style emulates how someone like that would think in a more effective way.

>>15965257

>Dude, you don't need to write ''and then'' to use its connective logic in a phrase, it is implied by the subtext

At no point did I make any assertion even remotely similar to the one you repudiate. What I asserted, verifiably, was that the phrase "and then" does not appear in the posted excerpt. The rest is your projection.

>>15965348
>comparing art with hardcoded biological examples
Naaaah.

Besides, being able to explain why is the most basic job of a writer. What sort of mutt-brain does it take, not to be able to tell why they like/dislike certain bits?

>>15964771
>>15964677
>>15964630
It's a rhetorical device called a polysendeton. It's written this way for effect, and writers have been doing this for a long, long time. Rhetorical devices are always breaking, mostly arbitrary, grammatical rules.

And then there's this faggot >>15964771 who thinks good grammar = good writing but doesn't understand rhetoric or composition.

No, John Green is not a particularly good writer, and I'm not defending him. You can have problems with this passage, fine, but when you guys REEEEEEE about the "and and and and", it's clear you don't know what you're talking about, so why should anyone trust your observations about any other aspect of writing?

Stop being ignorant faggots, and learn how to read properly. Step one is to be quiet and to think better about what you're reading and what you might say, even for an author like John Gree. because maybe you don't know what you're talking about after all.

>>15965417

>He thinks art has nothing to do with hardcoded biology
You have no idea what you are on about. Go, and look at a painting with badly drawn perspective, even if you yourself are unable to explain why a drawing looks off, your brain will.

Mathematics exists under every single thing, art included. No matter how hard you try to separate both concepts, they exists intertwined.

>>15964609
It's bad because its lazy. He claims to have infinite love for this girl but cannot even be bothered to describe his feelings in a creative manner. He just states he wants this and that but he feels too shy to fight for it and it's not convincing. He doesn't actually like this girl, he likes the idea of liking a girl so 'innocently' that all he wants to do is tenderly sleep together, and being the gawky nerd that can't get the one he loves is almost a persona he likes performing because he wants pity. And thats lame and faggy.

For the record I understand what its like to like someone so much you'd be content with sleeping with them and not even fucking, because even sleeping together is a special act of intimacy. Only he butchered it with his description.

>>15965445
/thread

>>15965466
Kinda missing the point, anon. Of course you'll be able to tell it's off but it's irrelevant for the quality of an art work. That value judgement will come from what you were told about good and bad art, unless you have the thinking skills to tell yourself.

Also when it comes to writing, pretty much all of it tends to be vastly different from human speech so you automatically get the "it's off". (and the rest is too abstract for biological responses, since our brains didn't evolve to interpret writing)

>>15965489
> He doesn't actually like this girl, he likes the idea of liking a girl so 'innocently' that all he wants to do is tenderly sleep together, and being the gawky nerd that can't get the one he loves is almost a persona he likes performing because he wants pity. And thats lame and faggy.
But that's like the point. It's some teenage fag who thinks he loves a girl. Green needs to convey it in a way that is understandable and relatable to his teenage readers, from the perspective of someone who doesn't understand it himself.

>>15965570
>and the rest is too abstract for biological responses, since our brains didn't evolve to interpret writing

You mean to say our brain did not evolve to do the very thing we are doing right now?

>>15965611
Obviously not. It's not how evolution works. Just because it CAN do the thing, doesn't mean it was supposed to and made in a way to makes the activity easier.

You can deliver huge goods using a motorcycle without it being the best tool for the job.

>>15965601
Then I don't know what to say, he made it marketable to faggy teenagers. He should pull a Ready Player One

>>15964609
The only bad thing about this passage is the self-consciousness ("like in those movies"/"most innocent sense of the phrase"), and the drizzle/hurricane bit.

>>15965729
I wonder why he didn't in the first place. Doubt it's integrity.

>>15964609
Just don't overestimate yourself. If I had to say exactly what I don't like about the passage, it isn't really John Green's writing, it's just that he think's he's original for being the sort of person to use simultaneously "Fuck" casually and want something beyond sex. It's babby's first heartbeat, as written by a grown man. Fourth line is good though.

>>15965445
It is in the most technical of senses polysendeton but he's not using it to create solemnity or to slow down the prose. In fact he speeds up the prose by introducing a number of quick contrasts. If you compare it to how Cormac McCarthy uses polysendeton you'll see really obvious differences: McCarthy usually uses it to string complex independent clauses together and when he does choose to use it to bring together simple clauses or individual words he uses commas to force a pause. Green is using it here to create these quick-cut comparisons. Read it out loud and you'll see that it's pretty fast sentence despite its length. As I said above, it's used to build to the last sentence, which has greater complexity and forces the reader to pause.

>>15965908
Finally, someone who knows what they're talking about.

>>15965908
That's fair, and I stand corrected. But at least you explained why this device was used poorly and where it can be used effectively. Hardly anyone on this board can do that.