Writers' Vocabulary - Faulkner vs Hemingway

[Tio_Narratore]

Tio I'm twice as smart as you, so don't make me embarrass you.

You sure don't need me to embarrass you...

 

[NOIRTRASH]

You sure don't need me to embarrass you...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd_41tM6H2Y
TIO TUNES

 

[NOIRTRASH]

TIO's one of the shiny things Naoko picked up off the beach.

 

[Tio_Narratore]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jd_41tM6H2Y
TIO TUNES

Thanks for the laugh, James. By the way, did you know that Road Runners are carnivorous ("eat meat")?

TIO's one of the shiny things Naoko picked up off the beach.

Thanks for the compliment, James; I didn't expect you to ever say something so nice to me. You are truly a gentleman!

 

[Hypoxia]

You sure don't need me to embarrass you...

Everything JBJ knows, he learned from Lil' Abner.

EDIT: And everything I know, I learned from Rocky & Bullwinkle.

 

[NOIRTRASH]

Thanks for the laugh, James. By the way, did you know that Road Runners are carnivorous ("eat meat")?



Thanks for the compliment, James; I didn't expect you to ever say something so nice to me. You are truly a gentleman!

I rave about your writing talent all the time, but it wont save you from the concentration camp for Canadians.

Not to worry, the only thing of yours I eat is your lunch.

 

[NOIRTRASH]

Everything JBJ knows, he learned from Lil' Abner.

I spent half my life acquiring knowledge, and the other half throwing it away.

 

[Tio_Narratore]

I rave about your writing talent all the time, but it wont save you from the concentration camp for Canadians.

Not to worry, the only thing of yours I eat is your lunch.

Mais je suis Américain aussi, mon ami!

Happy to share. Today's offering is Braunschweiger with purple onion and tarragon mustard on a panini, washed down with an Angry Orchard cider.

 

[Tio_Narratore]

I spent half my life acquiring knowledge, and the other half throwing it away.

One can acquire or discard information; knowledge is the understanding of information, and is not so easy to dismiss.

 

[Hypoxia]

One can acquire or discard information; knowledge is the understanding of information, and is not so easy to dismiss.

I find myself discarding memories at an increasing rate. Sometimes they pop up and warn me before they go.

I've just now remembered how Rocky and Bullwinkle changed my life, and my pilgrimages to Laurel Heights (scene of the Sunset Strip riots immortalized in the Buffalo Springfield song FOR WHAT IT'S WORTH) to the modest witch-house studio of Jay Ward Productions with it's more-than-life-size statue of Bullwinkle out front. That memory will surely fade soon. Why, I can barely recall screwing in the back room of the Fifth Estate coffeehouse around the corner during the riots.

As for understandings... they constantly morph, metastasize, and migrate. I used to understand why assholes act as they do. Now I'm not so sure. Oh bother.

 

[8letters]

We have a predilection to use complex, technical, archaic or less used words, which comes from our varied experiences and backgrounds. We like words and the way the English allows for numerous ways of expressing something. Lots of words that might be simplistic, don't carry the additional connotations that we're trying to shade with, so we often opt for the most precise words we can.

An author is often pretending to be others, especially in dialog and to be successful, an author needs to convey ideas clearly. This is an erotica site, but there seems to be a strong emphasis on the literature aspect as well. The two authors in the thread name are probably at the most well known opposites on the spectrum.

Without starting another feud; is there a prevailing opinion on the where the happy medium lives? How frequently might the average reader be sent looking for a word?

Of course seeing a consensus may not change our habits. -MM

I’ve never worried too much about it. I write about characters how are similar to me, so have a vocabulary similar to mine. When I wrote about an Irish character, I worried a lot about vocabulary as she didn’t speak like I do. I tried to use phrases that would translate well and explained the words that didn’t. If I had a character that was significantly different then me - say a poorly-educated criminal - then I’d worry about downgrading that character’s vocabulary.

To me, easily understandable writing has more to do with quality description, good grammar and clear sentence structure than vocabulary. My understanding is that it’s a good thing to occasionally have a five dollar word in your story. Most readers even if they don’t know the word will understand it from its context. By having an occasional obscure word, you provide more variety to your writing. If you are constantly using obscure terms, you’re going to lose your readers.

PS Congrats on placing in the Summer Lovin' contest and making the Incest/Taboo hall of fame. I think if you had published your story earlier, you would have edged out mine for second.

 

[8letters]

In the current reading atmosphere--and especially for on-line reading--you'll get more readers with the Hemingway approach than the Faulkner approach. The general reading level of popular literature has been going down since the advent of the computer and Internet. Just a conclusion from the publishing industry.

My understanding is that the opposite is true. That general reading level of popular literature plunged in the 50's with the advent of TV. TV has a tiny vocabulary. With the internet, people are reading and even mass audience articles will use a bigger vocabulary than TV.

 

[rjordan]

My understanding is that the opposite is true. That general reading level of popular literature plunged in the 50's with the advent of TV. TV has a tiny vocabulary. With the internet, people are reading and even mass audience articles will use a bigger vocabulary than TV.

Every new technology is a slippery slope. Computers and the Internet destroyed popular literature. At least what was left of it after TV destroyed it. Literature-destroying technology goes all the way back to that fucking Gutenberg guy. Compare illuminated texts carefully handcrafted and gilded by real artists to the shit squeezed out by printing presses over the last 576 years.

rj

 

[Hypoxia]

Every new technology is a slippery slope. Computers and the Internet destroyed popular literature. At least what was left of it after TV destroyed it. Literature-destroying technology goes all the way back to that fucking Gutenberg guy. Compare illuminated texts carefully handcrafted and gilded by real artists to the shit squeezed out by printing presses over the last 576 years.

And literacy itself destroyed the oral tradition. No longer do bards memorize millions of lines. (Best I ever did was maybe 50k lines of song lyrics. And 'way to many catchphrases.)

My prediction: upcoming neural implants will link our brains to wireless network nodes, granting us effective telepathy with anyone who wishes to connect. We will interact with words, yes, but also with images and impulses and abstractions. This may return us to something like an oral tradition augmented by digital memory and AI helpers, what we might call genii or daemons.

Will literacy soon be as obsolete as isinglass?

 

[Tio_Narratore]

And literacy itself destroyed the oral tradition. No longer do bards memorize millions of lines. (Best I ever did was maybe 50k lines of song lyrics. And 'way to many catchphrases.)

My prediction: upcoming neural implants will link our brains to wireless network nodes, granting us effective telepathy with anyone who wishes to connect. We will interact with words, yes, but also with images and impulses and abstractions. This may return us to something like an oral tradition augmented by digital memory and AI helpers, what we might call genii or daemons.

Will literacy soon be as obsolete as isinglass?

Isinglass is obsolete?????

AI can only give artificial intelligence; I'm sorry, but I want the real thing!!

Though,

"I used to be sure of something, but I forget what it was,"

 

[Hypoxia]

AI can only give artificial intelligence; I'm sorry, but I want the real thing!!

The older meaning of 'intelligence', still used in military and espionage circles (and the Post-Intelligencer newspaper), is 'information'. Hmmm, artificial information... I still have a sticker from an old Computer Faire exhibitor. It reads "INFOMANIA: Not Real Info, But An Incredible Simulation!"

I might accuse some political figures of being artificially intelligent -- but not on this forum.

I digress. Some writing should be clear. Some should be murky. Some should be worth working at. I'm reading the Wiki entry on Avram Davidson: "Davidson's attitude to his readers is similar to that of Nineteenth Century authors: He assumes that his readers are there to be amused, and will follow him wherever he happens to go." Down weird, funny paths, yes...

That's the key point. How far will readers go to be amused? BTW I (and others) find Henry James vastly unamusing. Oscar Wilde criticised him for writing "fiction as if it were a painful duty"." Faulkner strikes me as being in a similar zone.

 

[Tio_Narratore]

How far? I would hope readers would go all the way, particularly here on a smut-site. But are all readers amused the same way? Are there no fetishists? Are there no kinksters? There are! And some like it painful, to be sure, and do their literary duty. And some are not amused at what others may find regally entertaining. May he/she/it who is without prejudices cast the first diatribe!

Artificial information? I do believe there's a lot of that appearing this election year...

 

[MindsMirror]

I’ve never worried too much about it. I write about characters how are similar to me, so have a vocabulary similar to mine. When I wrote about an Irish character, I worried a lot about vocabulary as she didn’t speak like I do. I tried to use phrases that would translate well and explained the words that didn’t. If I had a character that was significantly different then me - say a poorly-educated criminal - then I’d worry about downgrading that character’s vocabulary.

To me, easily understandable writing has more to do with quality description, good grammar and clear sentence structure than vocabulary. My understanding is that it’s a good thing to occasionally have a five dollar word in your story. Most readers even if they don’t know the word will understand it from its context. By having an occasional obscure word, you provide more variety to your writing. If you are constantly using obscure terms, you’re going to lose your readers.

PS Congrats on placing in the Summer Lovin' contest and making the Incest/Taboo hall of fame. I think if you had published your story earlier, you would have edged out mine for second.

We haven't worried too much, but we know it is an area we might adjust slightly. Of course we love words, so maybe not.

Thanks for the complement. We needed the time to finish. Lots of things fell into place that last week. We started that story around the same time we started Thanksgivings. So it's been in various stages of development for over a year.