What Really Makes a Novel Good? (Part II)
Not having come to fiction writing through an MFA program, I was never told up front, “This is what makes a novel good.” Exactly what constituted good writing was something my longtime reader’s head had to figure out for itself: if that’s what I like in a book, then that’s the way I want my books to sound. Now—having studied writing, attended conferences, gotten feedback from editors and beta-readers, etc., etc.—having done, in short, all the things we all do to improve our craft—I may be more confused than ever. Especially about that subtle aspect called style or texture, and this is a make-it-or-break-it part of any book for me as a reader.
Who Gets to Say What’s Good?
We’re told not to use the passive voice. We’re told that present continuous verbs weaken the sentence. We’re told that “It” or “There” is a terrible way to start a sentence. Yet I’ve read so many wonderful books, especially those of the past, whose authors missed out on the experience of an MFA, and golly! They do those things, and it doesn’t sound weak or inexpert at all! Someone out there has (recently) decided that these things Must Not Be Done…but who is it? There is—oops, there I go—no Academy for the English language, folks. So who makes up the Rules? Good writing has to be more than just avoiding these predesignated pitfalls, which to some extent are arbitrary.
If Everything’s Good, Then Nothing Is… or Something
And yet, clearly it isn’t a case of “anything goes.” Bad writing does exist, and boy, can we recognize it when we see it. I actually read a MG novel to my son once years ago where the only adjective seemed to be “incredible.” Nerve-pain bad. Yet it’s not so easy to point out the exact line where writing veers off into badness. The worst things I read are not usually offenders against the Rules (presumably they have been edited before publication). They’re just clunky, stiff, amateurish. Unoriginal. One has the suspicion that perhaps this author isn’t writing in her native language. How do you legislate against that? How do you teach people to be artists, to have genius? The old-fashioned way to learn a craft was to be an apprentice. So maybe the best way to learn good writing is to read good writing? Just a thought.
Why Bother with Style?
Plenty of writers don’t. They hang their success on tricky plotting, fast-paced action, or emotional satisfaction. But the books this reader loves best are breathtakingly beautiful, original, powerful wielders of English. Their style is so luminous that I would swoon over that author’s grocery list. That doesn’t mean they’re full of complex turns of phrase or a vocabulary that makes me keep a dictionary handy as I read. They just know how to use their language. Every word conveys meaning, subtext, imagery. The old lateral geniculate nucleus starts firing away when these writers speak (I think that’s the part responsible for mental imagery). We tend to isolate such books as “literary,” but aren’t all books supposed to be literary? They’re just good books! Others, perhaps, not so much. I want to say it’s their use of words that sets the good on a higher shelf, but certainly sentences play a part. Variety, but not to a self-conscious extent. Why shun adverbs? Yet don’t overuse them.
The Golden Mean?
Maybe avoiding excess is part of good writing. Eccentricity can be charming, but—with all respect to James Joyce—it palls pretty fast. Yet neither should good writing be pedestrian. Good writing is transparent; it doesn’t draw attention to itself. It may make us cry, “I wish I had said that!” but what we’re celebrating is the crystalline ideal under those words. It’s not ordinary. It’s not average. But it’s certainly golden. And hard to define. What do you think?