What is "Good" Writing?

This brief essay is particularly cringe-worthy. Perhaps not objectively, but certainly from this vantage point on the inside looking back in at a piece several years old. Whereas my fiction has involved significantly since 2007-8, it was already "good" and thus, improvement is a small percentile compared to the leap my academic writing has done in the past two years. I thank the challenges set forth by Dr. Boren [English Dept. UNCW] and the memoirist/guest teacher at UNCW last year, Peter Trachtenberg.

The second assignment from Fiction II (taught by the underestimated Jeff Jacobson), was to define what is that ephemeral and very subjective creature called "good writing."

Returning the paper Jeff told me it made him pull out The Big Sleep and read it again. Reference to Chandler tend to do that to some people. :)


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(1st Draft)


FICTION II
2/18/08
Journal II: What is Good Writing?

Ehem, let me get up on my soapbox for a couple minutes about this:

What is Good Writing?

Good Writing is when you can smell the mold growing on the floorboards of the room in the story.

Good Writing is when you forget all sense of self and know nothing more than what is passing through your head and heart via the words printed on a page.

Good Writing asks questions, it doesn't give you answers. If a writer has the answer, they usually end up lecturing you. They should probably skip fiction and go right on to writing religious tracts (Crews).

Good Writing is something that might not be evident upon first read. If the writing calls attention to itself with deliberately pretty words, it's probably veered over into the Bad Writing side of things.

Good Writing doesn't need to call attention to itself--you-as-a-reader are too involved in the story of what the words are telling to notice how pretty they are or how well constructed the sentence is. Which, as course means, that the words used are fitting the story they tell and the sentence is structured well, without grammatical problems.

Sure, cite Shelby all you want in regards to why you shouldn't be constrained to using the commonly accepted rules about punctuation and quotations marks, but chances are great that you don't have as strong of a narrative voice, internal consistency, and as powerful subject matter as Shelby did. Sure, you probably do within the confines of your own genius head of yours, but queers, transsexuals, junkies, and whores was new in literature with Algren, Selby, and Burroughs, and Irving Welsh managed a go of it, but only two of those four ventured very far from the accepted rules of grammar. Unless you can lay down your pedigree as powerfully as they did, you might want to learn the rules before you break them. Find/Replace is a brilliant feature of word processors.

After the grammar-thing, one of the next flashing neon signs advertising a piece as Bad Writing would be the use of adjectives and adverbs. Bad Writing is often carelessly, needlessly, atrociously rife with myriad, horrid, eldritch, and often incomprehensible adverbs and adjectives. If you spot more than a handful per page, you've probably veered off the Good Writing highway into the purplish vistas of pedantic typing. Which doesn't mean don't ever use them, it means ration them. They're powerful things, like compost. A little bit helps make a garden become lush and beautiful. A lot of them together creates a pile of shit. The road to hell is paved with adverbs. [King gets credit for this, but I've seen it written previous to his On Writing. Aw, hell, he can have the credit if you're gonna argue about it.]

I can think of at least one example that violates a lot of guidelines I have for Good Writing, and which I still found it to be one of the most amazing bits of writing I've ever read: Nabokov's Lolita. I don't remember exactly (and don't have the book at hand to check) but there was a passage about the dandelions in the yard turning from suns to moons that just floored me and then continued to kick me with poetic words while I was left drooling in amazement.

That's Good Writing.

One of the most dangerous aspects of writing, and a particular razor's edge between Good|Bad Writing (and one rife with potential for cliché): Metaphors.

Ah, the foetid cliché. A bad cliché sticks out like a sore thumb. A red-headed stepchild in a black family. Clichés are horrible. Their use without precise care is a huge indicator of piss-poor writing. Not unlike showing up at a klan rally in a Boy George outfit (Hicks).

Which brings me back to metaphor. A poorly wrought metaphor usually doesn't travel alone and falls upon the reading psyche like a rapid ton of bricks; knocks the clipper ship of Good Writing right off its hinges. Some Bad Writing not only mixes metaphors, but cross-breeds those suckers. ("Damnit, Jim, I'm a wordsmith not an ontological geneticist!")

On the other side of that, Raymond Chandler spun some of the greatest metaphors in the English language:

"She smelled the way the Taj Mahal looks by moonlight."

"Her voice trailed off into a sort of sad whisper like a mortician asking for a down payment."

"A wedge of sunlight slipped over the edge of the desk and fell noiselessly on the carpet."

One of my favorite things about a story is the opening line. Not every good story has a good opening line, but maybe the great ones do.

"It was Friday the thirteenth and yesterday's snowstorm lingered in the street like a leftover curse." William Hjortsberg, Falling Angel.

"Horselover Fat's nervous breakdown began the day he got the phone call from Gloria asking if he had any Nembutals." PKD, VALIS.

Perhaps one of the most quoted by the under 30, 40, 60 crowd, "We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert when the drugs began to take hold." Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.

One more: "What's the worst thing you've ever done? I won't tell you that, but I'll tell you the worst thing that ever happened to me...the most dreadful thing..." Peter Straub, Ghost Story.

There have been a few books over the years that I read in one sitting because I couldn't pull away from it--in one case staying up all night before having to start a three-day road trip. The first time this happened, I was twelve or so. The culprit was Douglas Adams's The Restaurant at the End of the Universe. Years later a book I've read more than a few times, including reading it aloud as a serial on two occasions. Falling Angel by William Hjortsberg. Then I picked up Lewis Shiner's Deserted Cities of the Heart. Shiner got me again a couple years later with his next book, Slam.

A book that can hold you in it despite what is going on outside of it is a fine example of Good Writing.

So I guess that's what Good Writing comes down for me.

Story. Storytelling.

Good Writing has nothing to do with good literature. In fact, good literature is sometimes completely at odds with Good Writing.

And Good Writing has everything to do with good storytelling. If your story's good enough, and told well enough, it can break any rule there is and be, not only Good Writing, but Great Writing.

Good Writing is when there's magic in them thar words. Words are magic. Why else d'ya think it's called spelling? (Barrett)

Of course, asking the question, "What is Good Writing?"(a question only slightly more interesting as being asked, "Where do you get your ideas?") has as many different answers as there are people with vantage points atop their proverbial soap boxes.

And it's time I hopped down from mine.


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