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veqq  1mo ago (text post)   Edited 1mo ago   820 thread views

What's Good Writing to You?

Lately, I've proofread some friends' articles, native and not, on political and technical matters. In no case, did I only guide them to my preferred style (poetic diction, preferring verbs over nouns, participles over finite verbs, archaicizing, Germanic purist including V2, no hyphens) and rather enjoyed seeing, sampling (and rejecting) their distinct tastes. I once wanted to ask a friend who wields fiery invectives to liven up my (technical opinion) prose, but realized his style was ill-suited to sewing my bullet points together.

What is beautiful literature to you? Or clear and precise technical style? What do you just hate? Most importantly, what do you aim for and avoid when writing yourself?

I'm curious for opinions on all languages (even programming or e.g. programming code comment style) but naturally English is our community's shared tongue.

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I'm really partial to Murakami's style. I really like Wallace although the example others often use of his isn't my favorite:

She had promised to get him a fifth of a kilogram of marijuana, 200 grams of unusually good marijuana, for $1250 U.S. He had tried to stop smoking marijuana maybe 70 or 80 times before. Before this woman knew him. She did not know he had tried to stop. He always lasted a week, or two weeks, or maybe two days, and then he’d think and decide to have some in his home one more last time. One last final time he’d search out someone new, someone he hadn’t already told that he had to stop smoking dope and please under no circumstances should they procure him any dope. It had to be a third party, because he’d told every dealer he knew to cut him off. And the third party had to be someone all-new, because each time he got some he knew this time had to be the last time, and so told them, asked them, as a favor, never to get him any more, ever. And he never asked a person again once he’d told them this, because he was proud, and also kind, and wouldn’t put anyone in that kind of contradictory position. Also he considered himself creepy when it came to dope, and he was afraid that others would see that he was creepy about it as well. He sat and thought and waited in an uneven X of light through two different windows. Once or twice he looked at the phone. The insect had disappeared back into the hole in the steel girder a shelf fit into.

I love his essays and humorous nonfiction more.

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