Should reading be easy...?

[odangutan]

"I'm not sure I believe that reading should necessarily be easy for the reader."

I made this statement in one of my critique threads and I was wondering what other people thought. Do you try and make your writing easy for Dear Reader to understand? Do you want reading to be easy when you read for yourself? What's your view on what constitutes 'easy' versus 'difficult' reading?

Discuss...

[springs]

I have nothing against challenging books for those who enjoy those sort of things. Believe it or not, I've even read a couple. (and enjoyed them!)

But to deliberately set out to make a book hard to read makes me wonder where the motivation is? If it's to sell it doesn't it defeat the purpose?

There is a question of markets, and I'm writing for those who maybe want an interesting story, and I'd like to make it as easy as possible for them to read it. By which I mean, they can tell who said something, they can tell what happened next, they can get a natural break to take in what's happened so far. I might even get the odd apostrophe in the right place. Not that they don't have to think, or engage, or have everything answered for them.

i just think if I'm asking them to pay money (dream on!) to read my story then I should make it enjoyable for them. If the market I'm in enjoys heavy description, then that's what I should do; if the market enjoys unusual sentence structures/ venaculars then that's great, and I should meet it, but to set out to make reading difficult for the reader seems at odds to being a story writer.

Maybe I'm daft. Could be.

[Peter Graham]

Depends entirely on what you mean by "easy". If you mean fumbling about with grammar, freespelling (eek) or sticking the whole lot into ancient Aramaic or Norse runes, I'd say that you were doing something wrong.

There's a difference between the act of reading and the experience of reading. Writing is about communication and the best communication is plain and comprehensible. So, the act of reading should be as painless as possible. This is achieved by making your words concise, your grammar precise and your punctuation clear.

None of this means that you have to reduce everything to James Elroy Does Sesame Street. You can challenge the reader with heavyweight writing and with clever imagery. You can ever bugger about with the rules of grammar/spelling/whatever if you understand them and if your playing around is clever and genuinely adds something to the story. But this is all about the experience of reading.

Take our old friend, James Joyce, as an example. Each sentence lasts for about ten pages. That said, each sentence is a work of craftmanship - it's easy to read if you have the patience to do so. It's all done properly and is precise down to the last nuance. The act of reading it is no great shakes because it is written well. However, the experience of reading it is immensely challenging, which is why Joyce might sometimes seem like the literary equivalent of Marmite. There is so much going on (and for so long!) that it really gives the reader a few mental hoops to jump through.

Regards,

Peter

[AnyaKimlin]

It depends on the season in my life what I am looking for. Something more challenging when I can read a book in a night, I was a teen or at uni then sure.

Now I have 3 kids under eight who need more attention I prefer entertainment. I've always read all kind of books, but personally I don't like a book that is constantly drawing me out of the story to run for the dictionary or to tell me how smart the author is. I've nothing against rich and varied use of language but a good author for me will place the word in the text in such a way I can hazard a guess at what it means and then look it up properly later.

I don't intentionally write anything that is difficult to read. However my current story is about a detective and a criminologist who are civil partners, one of them is raped. It is not an easy, cosy read.

[odangutan]

Originally Posted by springs1971

But to deliberately set out to make a book hard to read makes me wonder where the motivation is?

I'm thinking more of the opposite; writing something, wondering whether you should second-guess whether a potential reader will think of it as being too difficult and then re-writing (possibly) against your initial ideas.

[Toby Frost]

I agree with Peter's post. To my mind, if you're not communicating clearly, you're failing. That doesn't mean that you have to write simply - writing simply is not easy, either - and nor does all writing have to move towards one particular style.

If you look at Chandler, Orwell or to a lesser degree Steinbeck, they write very clearly, but often communicate complex ideas. Their writing flows. But if you look at a "heavier" writer, such as say Mervyn Peake, it gets a bit more complex. Peake's writing in the Titus books often goes on a bit of a poetic ramble - however, he is always communicating an idea, even if the verbose style does at times reflect the ornate castle a little too much. He is still in control. But you can't do the fancy stuff unless you know the basics.

[springs]

"I'm thinking more of the opposite; writing something, wondering whether you should second-guess whether a potential reader will think of it as being too difficult and then re-writing (possibly) against your initial ideas."


But that's what we all do! Try to get it out in the way we want it to be told, to the readership we hope will like it. That's nothing to do with hard or easy, it's about best fit; Kaizen; continually making it better. And I think there's as much art in making it easy to follow as in pushing the boundaries.

Your question, though, was should reading neccesarily be easy for the reader. My answer would be, yes, it should; but you have different types of readers out there and it is a horses for courses argument. Some, as Peter says, enjoy the intricacies of a well crafted sentence which takes a while to read. Some, like me and Anya are struggling to find the time to read and want something to carry us along.

And Anya makes a good point; my nice, easy to read novel gets very dark, the subject matter needs to be handled well; I don't have to write it in a challenging way for the book to be challenging.

[Ursa major]

As Toby says, one ought to be trying to communicate, as best one can, with the reader. If one's idea of communication is to induct (a few) select readers into cult-like reverence for the meanings hidden in deep inside one's prose, then fair enough. But if one wants to reach out to as many readers as possible, don't place unnecessary barriers in their way.

This isn't a question of dumbing down, simply one of concentrating on what is important. Surely, the harder the concepts one is trying to communicate are, the easier the prose ought to be, so that the reader can concentrate on what is important. (And shouldn't this apply to all our work: the language is usually meant to be transparent, not calling attention to itself. If the prose is in the foreground, doesn't this suggest something of a paucity in the tales being told?)

Of course, there will be examples where the style of the prose is a defining feature of a book, because it's part of the world-building or it's delivering humour beyond simply the (one assumes, humorous) situations and characters. Both, if done correctly, require the author to know what they're doing, to know when their subverting conventions and to what purpose. It's a difficult skill to master; one may, with luck, be able to carry it off for a few sentences without knowing precisely what one is doing; to do so for a short story, let alone a book, requires a deep understanding of the language.



Switching from fiction.... I recall reading a tiny book by Einstein (it may have been a translation; I don't know) about relativity and though most of the ideas were more than challenging, the prose could not have been easier to read. It's a shame that some other cosmologists don't achieve this, rather than treating the obscurity of their language as a badge of honour, not the dismal failure it truly is.

[springs]

Originally Posted by Ursa major

Switching from fiction.... I recall reading a tiny book by Einstein (it may have been a translation; I don't know) about relativity and though most of the ideas were more than challenging, the prose could not have been easier to read. It's a shame that some other cosmologists don't achieve this, rather than treating the obscurity of their language as a badge of honour, not the dismal failure it truly is.

I think that's true for most academia; the jargon is their armour! and the skill is in making it readible; I use Steve Covey as another good example of this. Complex ideas, written so well it's like reading a novel.

[AnyaKimlin]

I always find the academics that really know what they are talking about can teach their subject without the jargon.

In every day life I tend to find those that speak using complicated language are usually hiding they don't know what they are talking about.

[Ursa major]

Which, when translated to a fiction context, rather suggests that an author ought to write clearly in case someone suspects that he or she is blagging it.

[AnyaKimlin]

Originally Posted by Ursa major

Which, when translated to a fiction context, rather suggests that an author ought to write clearly in case someone suspects that he or she is blagging it.

Pretty much. In my teen years I went through a snobby time of trying to look intelligent by what I read. I have no idea how many times I waded through 'beautiful prose' to find out it was the literary equivelent of air freshner and there to hide the true crap, or disguise the fact the author had forgotten to inlude a decent story.

Each to their own some people like air freshner and some people like reading stuff like that. Personally I want a good story, great characters, with elements that make me laugh, make me cry and make me go oh my gosh what just happened. I don't like needing a shovel to find it.

My only issue in my stories tends to be - the word singeing - it manages to creep in all the bloody time and I don't like removing it.

[Ursa major]

I would like to add that there is nothing wrong with prose that is beautiful in itself. It can be a joy to read, if that's what you're in the mood to read.


A slight detour: Oddly enough, classical music that is seen to be all surface, without apparent depths ("the music doesn't grow organically"), is often frowned upon, however beautiful it is**. In literature, the opposite can appear to be true, where the use of words transcends the absence of anything significant being related.

[/detour]


** - Sometimes the way the music is constructed can be very clever, but this may not cut any ice with the music-should-grow brigade.

[odangutan]

Originally Posted by Ursa major

(And shouldn't this apply to all our work: the language is usually meant to be transparent, not calling attention to itself. If the prose is in the foreground, doesn't this suggest something of a paucity in the tales being told?)

I find this interesting. I'm of the belief that the medium can be the message, if the medium is interesting enough.

Maybe I spent too much of my childhood reading too many roleplaying rule books that I actually like piecing together stories from short elements that have huge gaps in the plot. Maybe I'm alone in this...

I'm increasingly thinking of 'standard' novels as 'air freshener'. They're nice and they pass the time but what do they tell me about me?

[AnyaKimlin]

Maybe that is the thing - in my middle age I'm pretty comfortable with who and what I am. When I sit down I don't want a journey into me - I want a journey someplace that doesn't involve smelly nappies, crying kids and dishes (not that my life is always like that lol)