The Main Thing I See Lacking In Top Fimfiction Authors' Writing · 3:21am Jan 12th, 2016
But not in mine. Heaven's no. 
You probably remember hating high school English, where they made you remember this thing (AND FAILED HORRIBLY, EVIDENTLY ). I'm of course talking about:
Literary Devices
This is the part where I get called an egghead 
Of course I see authors use them somewhat. But rarely do I see them call upon the full range, or properly spice up their writing with them. In a monumental show of hubris, I'm going to pull on examples from my own writing (I'd have to get up to grab a book from my shelf.)
The chill from outside had long since clawed its way inside the cave
Here the chill is being personified.
This excerpt is from a chapter where I spend the first five or so paragraphs building the atmosphere and setting tone. The reason being that I ended the chapter before it on a devastating note. But it's plainly evident how much more colorful the above is compared to: "The chill from outside had entered the cave long ago."
Without using literary devices—assonance, repetition, juxtaposition, atmosphere, metaphor, hyperbole, etc—what you are left with is plain writing. I think that's the main thing that has made me turn away from so many otherwise popular fics (the runner-up would be dialogue).
I would hazard a guess that most authors start off bad, then they adhere to the rules and get better. This trains them to stop experimenting, or to keep experimentation on the down-low, leading to them never developing a voice nor flair. They might just not be aware of what to do in order to spice up their writing.
I'm kinda curious though: whether or not it's just me that feels this way. I think there are a number of "technically correct" authors on the site whose writing just doesn't "pop". The writing lacks spice, variation, and interesting use of mechanics—the kind that when you see it done well is a joy to read.
I'm not sure whether I'm the only one put off by this.
I think more authors could stand to take a poetry course.
My favourite line ever is "A drop of crystal water hanging from the lip of a razor". Whenever I come up against a moment where I have to write a description of something I pause and mutter that line to myself to put me in the zone. Poetry, especially minimalist poetry, makes you contemplate every word so carefully and makes you layer meaning in so densely it's the best kind of practice for making descriptions vivid.
We should all endeavour to be better at our craft. I did take some literary analysis classes (in French mostly, but I did my higher level ESL English in literature instead of just learning English. I'm rated at a 'near-native' level ya know
)...and I do make an effort to try and not be too boring in my writing style...but I guess I'm not consciously trying to use every literary devices available to me?
I have a fic in my favorites that I enjoy and is always fun to read but... man the writing is really repetitive and could really use some spicing up...and yet I still read it? sometimes you just get attached to characters.
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It's definitely not the be-all end-all, but it is something that frequently irks me. Story is (mostly) king, and if you don't have that then there's only so much writing can do.
I think in one of the worst things for it to be paired with is plain dialogue. Plain dialogue would be the runner-up to what puts me off of otherwise popular and "technically correct" writing on the site. If you have plain dialogue and plain narrative then everything is boring, even if the premise is good, characterization is solid, and the plot is moving.
That said, I haven't figured out how to articulate what makes good dialogue vs. what makes for plain dialogue. I think it boils down to the characterization, information, and wit of the dialogue.
Characterization being "does this character have a distinct voice and manner of speech?"
Information being "does every word this character says carry weight?"
And wit being the author's ability to come up with clever responses and dialogue.
There may be some other elements I'm missing there.
You bring up a really good point. As an author, I find myself not using enough literary devices, despite them being hammered into me from my AP Lit class. Though, one thing that does make it hard for me is that way of thinking can be really technical, obsessed with rules and systems and less so with... well, art. It makes me a pretty alright programmer, but a par or sub-par author. I need to try a bit harder, I suppose.
Oh, I can't not sneak literary devices into my stories. I generally speak in simile and metaphor anyway, and that bleeds into my work.
Literary devices are used all the time. I think it might be more correct to say that a lot of people don't really embellish their prose much; it is nearly impossible to write without using literary devices. A story without literary devices would be a story without structure; even basic stuff like conflict is a literary device.
The main issue with a lot of literary devices is using them to enrich your prose without making your writing seem overly flowery; they should be, by and large, fairly seamless with the rest of your text. A lot of literary devices, when misused, draw attention to themselves, which is a bad thing. Awkwardly used literary devices are bad.
And even pretty writing can be bad. The reason why purple prose is problematic is because it draws too much attention to your writing, sucking away attention from the story you're telling.
Much of the problem belongs to the swarm of fanfiction editors wielding their swords of "purple prose" and "show don't tell", among other maxims. "Show me what the camera sees" they say, which, however inadvertently, encourages mechanical description. Accusations of purple prose and too-flowery language put writers on their guard against imaginative imagery. Young, inexperienced writers absorb this advice, later becoming its peddlers. Show don't tell is by far the worst, but among its symptoms lies an obsession with communicating body language--the flick of an ear, the tremor of a hoof--which puts out of the mind other forms of communication in prose and story.
Remember, you're not allowed to tell the reader what to think, feel or say--you can only do that to the author. You must have something to say to write a good story, but if you say it you've gone too far. And for heaven's sake don't impose anything on your characters. That's contrivance. Just let them be. We'll ignore the fact you impose on them their personalities, desires, back stories--pretty much their entire identities. Good characters are everything, without them there is no investment, and with no investment there is no interest. Take time to build them. By the way, your story must catch my interest immediately, right out of the gate, don't dare make me wait for anything. Every word that is unnecessary cut out with a knife! How you determine what is necessary and what is not, we won't say. Make me laugh, make me cry, make my mind explode. But don't do anything that will get you the feature box too quickly and too often--that's unartistic and pandering. On a side note, always make sure to keep your audience in mind--pick one and
panderwrite to them. Avoid direct mention of any feelings or physical reaction to an emotion like the Black Plague. You may be the author, but if you act like you know what a character is feeling you might as well have hung Christ on the cross. Don't draw attention away from the story and to the prose with flowery language. Forget that the entirety of the story is communicated through the prose.If you follow all this advice and fail to write a good story, it's your fault.
I could go on ^.^
3681128 - This! I like to start my longer stories with "flowery" language, because I see my stories as the entrance into a dream state, and dreams tend to have that quality, where you notice things you'd never really notice in reality. Hell, one of my stories started out as a daydream, and someone complained it was too flowery. You can't win them all!
What's worse is that so many people dislike different methods that I'll try to write a story with their suggestions in mind, and I always end up sitting at the beginning of my work, blocked all to high hell, unable to come up with anything. It's frustrating. That's why I say "fuck it" and write what feels good to me.
You can see this in my stories. My first story is riddled with grammatical and punctuation errors (I was just getting the hang of the whole thing), but I wrote off-the-cuff and took it in the direction I wanted. By my third story, though, you could see that while the grammar and punctuation had vastly improved, I was starting to struggle with trying to meet every expectation of what a fanfiction story was supposed to be, and that resulted in planned 50,000 word stories becoming 15,000 words, because my idea burned out until I couldn't make it work any longer.
"Literary device" may be too general a term to be useful this way. Some literary devices, like authorial intrusion and allegory, are generally considered bad. (And that's just going through the A's.)
I could use personification more. It depends on the style, though. You could say Hemingway strove to avoid using literary devices, and it was very effective. Generally, you choose a set of devices to use to express the narrator's character or the story's character. Raymond Chandler uses ironic hyperbole over and over again, hyper-hyperbole, self-consciously over-the-top, presaging the defensive, cynical irony of two generations later, to show how cynical Philip Marlowe is. Conan Doyle's Watson, on the other hand, is a just-the-facts kinda guy, because his personality is secondary to Holmes'. He expresses his personality in different ways, like his moral judgements or his circumlocutions, which aren't counted as literary devices.
I like your example, and I'd like to make my stories pop more that way. I worry more about precise expression.
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After some thought on it, I want to say
3681123
has a point. While the I do feel authors don't use full range of literary devices, I think core of the problem is that a lot of good authors I've read on the site don't embellish their prose well. That goes for those who over-embellish (purple prose) and those who under-embellish (plain prose). It's difficult to find the best balance of sprucing up your writing and making it easy to read; it's not a linear relationship, you can have both and you can have neither, but it is hard to have both.
I'll try to pull another example from something I wrote.
There are a few places where I embellished: the repetition of 'why', the aside between the two 'why's, the phrase "in her pool of pain", and finally using 'nor'. Correct me if your opinion differs, but I believe the above passage is both colorful and easy to read—which is what I think good narrative is. (I'm not saying all my narrative is good, believe me.
) It's possible to inject color into your sentences without making them thick.
Being easy to read means the narrative doesn't break the reader's flow. Being colorful means the descriptions are evocative and full of imagery. Plain prose doesn't interrupt flow but isn't evocative. Purpose prose is evocative but interrupts the reader's flow.
I think I singled out literary devices because they are one way of making prose more colorful, but really it also comes down to sentence structure (non-regular sentences and varied structures add color) and diction (perfect use of an otherwise uncommon word can make a sentence stand out).
So I think the problem, is that most of the authors I've read are in "Camp Plain Prose" or "Camp Purple Prose" with very few in "Camp Moderate Prose". I think the second problem, is authors not putting in conscious effort to frequently inject "good sentences" into their story—either in dialogue or prose. There's a great book I read on it some time ago called "It Was the Best of Sentences, It Was the Worst of Sentences." (Amazon preview here) which convinced me on the importance of good sentences.
Anyway yeah. After some thought, literary devices are only a part of the picture. The real issue is most authors try to write colorful sentences or readable sentences, but not both.
3682323 Colorful and readable often pull in opposite directions. For example, in your quote,
the bits that add color also cause me some confusion. The use of both feeling and thought in the first sentence combines two ways of perceiving, which is good, but doing so raises questions about tense. The grammar and the use of a comma rather than a period after "consciousness" suggest she's on the edge of consciousness while wondering this. Is it possible to focus on a feeling and a thought at the same time (particularly when the feeling is the feeling of being incapable of rational thought?) The repetition of "why" is dramatic, but also a stumbling block to the grammatically minded. That's why it's dramatic; if it were perfectly grammatical, it would be unremarkable. The consonance in "pool of pain" sounds nice, but makes me wonder whether this pony is being self-consciously lyrical, and if so, am I supposed to read this as her being dramatic to herself? "Had not felt an ounce of hunger nor thirst" adds more sensations, but requires a metaphoric language that slows me down: hunger and thirst aren't measured in ounces, and ounces aren't felt.
Colorful language is often metaphoric, and always unusual, so it's more difficult to process than plainer language. It's fitting words, images, and senses together that don't quite semantically match, so it makes reading more challenging, and the difference between colorful and wrong is often a matter of taste.
Nope, you're not the only one who's noticed this. But before this blog, I'd only say "the writing is too... bland", without knowing exactly why.
Now? I do know why. And I have you to thank for it.
I think I still have my glossary of literary devices from high school. Gotta go dig it out, excuse me...
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Yeah, contradicting opinions from different editors is very much a problem, and sadly it probably exists everywhere and I doubt it's ever going to go away. That's why its so important to learn about good storytelling on your own so you can filter out bad advice. Personally, I learn by studying stories I really like. The best thing to really do is learn what kind of stories you want to write, because that's what going to determine how you use all these story elements. In my opinion, there is no such thing as an inherently "good" or "bad" element or device. Only "aligns with your purpose" or "doesn't align". Too many editors approach stories with a stock of red stamps that they apply the moment they see something they've been taught is "wrong".
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I definitely agree, there is a lot of plain prose out there. I think you hit on it concerning knowledge and effort, and I think fear is a factor too. I've seen the color of a pony's magic get labelled as purple prose. No one wants to get accused of it, being such a wide known "issue".
For me, "flowery-ness" amounts to personal style, or taste. I have read great stories with very flowery prose, and others with very un-flowery prose. If a story feels too "purple" to me, and I am confidant it simply isn't a matter of taste but is hurting the story the author wishes to tell (not the story I wish to read), then I am going to look in other departments for the solution first. Namely, I think flowery prose tends to irk us when that's all there is to evoke emotion, or when it is trying to evoke more emotion than the action of the story is evoking. Like when your baby brother sobs over something that to you isn't worth balling over. The issue isn't that the prose is flowery, it's that the author is trying to use flowery prose in order to convince us our emotional stakes ought to be higher, instead of using other elements to properly heighten our investment. We can all tell when a story is trying very hard to make us feel something we just aren't feeling. This is why we "notice" the prose: there's little else to sidetrack our attentions, like a really good story.
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This sentence I wholeheartedly agree with.
This I disagree with, not factually but on principle. Outright labeling any device "bad" is problematic and restrictive to art. Better to say, I think, that a device might be used poorly, or successfully, or that a device is useful to your story, or not.
Anyway, try these:
RUN, Stereo Sub
Equestria's End (incomplete), Aquillo
Save the Records
Riverdream at Sunset
Along Softly on the Tongue
In the Place the Wild Horses Sleep
Wyrmlysan
"I would hazard a guess that most authors start off bad, then they adhere to the rules and get better. This trains them to stop experimenting, or to keep experimentation on the down-low, leading to them never developing a voice nor flair. They might just not be aware of what to do in order to spice up their writing."
This might also be true for other creative pursuits.
I'm going to check out more literary devices.