Prose

Ordinarily, when I think of my sister, what I can remember is: swollen eyes, the smell of piss, and the sound of sobbing from a toilet. Seldom, I can also remember, wide eyes as she tried to slit her wrists at dinner with a boxcutter. What I remember in these instances are not memories; neatly formulated; easily catalogued; pedagogical. They are instead; silhouettes on stone; dust on reading glasses; gnats on a dog; a letterhead that reads: “she is/she had been/she was/she became/nobody/no thing.” I remembering feeling rage at her funeral when my mom met my eyes and opened her mouth; the implication being, that there was anything to say. I wanted to hit her because, for me then, and still, death needed to be a wordless horror; needed what I was experiencing to be incomprehensible; an event that language was unequal to describing. Only then, could her death be meaningful and mine.

Five years on, I still haven’t learnt anything from her death. To do so would be to diminish her to a cau

I don't mind elements of fantasy, sci-fi, horror, etc., but I'd like the writing to be funny on its own rather than lean on crazy settings. Imagine if Douglas Adams or Terry Pratchett wrote a contemporary novel, and you might see what I'm looking for.

I appreciate anything you can suggest. Thanks in advance!

Are purple prose considered as descriptive writing with extra fancy words?

Purple Prose- prose that is too elaborate or ornate.

descriptive writing - involves paying close attention to the details by using all of your five senses.

I've been reading a ton of magical realism, sci-fi, fantasy etc and I'm burning out. While I love the imaginative stories, sometimes the characters or actual writing get lost in the intricate world building. I'm looking for realistic, character-driven novels. I've really enjoyed works like The Blind Assassin, Lolita, A Prayer for Owen Meany, The Poisonwood Bible, Middlesex, Suite Francaise, The Bell Jar, Dolores Claiborne - basically a myriad of styles. Gracias!

So gue belom pernah kontrak/sewa apartemen, dari dulu rantau di depok/jakarta mampunya ngekos lel, nah disini gue mau tanya, biasanya prosedurnya gimana sih? Mulai dari nyari sampe tektokannya

Gue kemarin sempet cari" online, tp dikasih tau temen katanya kalo online harganya udah di markup, nah gue mau tau aja apakah redditor lain ada tips/pengalaman mengenai ini?

Terus biasanya hidden feenya apa aja ya? Selain listrik/internet? Kalo misal ada fasilitas semacem gym/kolam renang kena fee lagi ga ya buat pake?

So far sih mau nyari studi/1br aja gue sendirian doang, rent durationnya long term sih, at least 6 bulan, mungkin 1 tahun kalo perlu, dan kedepannya dilihat nanti.

My favorites are John Steinbeck with his elegant prose, Virginia Woolf with prose like brush strokes painting the world & ephemeral feelings, and Ray Bradbury with prose like golden stardust.

In terms of new and probably less known prose masters, I recently discovered Carmen Maria Machado. She writes short stories and I was completely blown away by her The Husband Stitch even though I find most of her stories redundant and overly abstract in terms of subject matter.

A recent favorite passage of mine comes from Terry Pratchett's Wee Free Men:

"Glint, glisten, glitter, gleam... Tiffany thought a lot about words, in the long hours of churning butte. Onomatopoetic , she'd discovered in the dictionary, meant words that sounded like the thing they were describing, like cuckoo. But she thought there should be a word that sounds like the noise a thing would make if that thing made a noise even though, actually, it doesn't, but would if it did.

Glint, for example. If light made a n

hi! i'm in the mood for some books with really nice prose—think like on earth we're briefly gorgeous by ocean vuong vibes, etc. i read a lot of poetry, so my favorite books tend to be the ones with both compelling stories + hard hitting or elegant prose, and that's what i'm looking for now. does anyone have any good recommendations?

Hey folks,

First post here so I hope I’m tagging correctly.

Finished Abaddon’s Gate the other night after a long beak from both the show & the books (to read all the Dune chronicles) & while I enjoyed AG for what it was (more of a blockbuster sci-fi romp vs. Dune’s metaphysical philosophy), I was really quite astounded by The Churn.

>!I kept waiting for the link to Amos, because of Burton, but him being a kinda dystopian sci-fi take on Stringer Bell, I could just not see the connection, even though I knew Corey wouldn’t use that name by sheer coincidence.!<

>!Needless to say, when the penny dropped I was quite blown away & dare I say moved by this origin story for my boy Amos. Damn.!<

>!I also like how differently the novella was structured versus the mainline books, how it changed perspective, compressed time & bobbed & weaved into & out of the lives of other inhabitants of Baltimore during the churn.!<

>!Finally, the visual treatment

Hi! I'd like recommendations (interpretatiorons open) for books with the most exquisite prose, the most impressionable sentence structure and (optionally) a captivating beginning line! It can be any genre.

Edit: A MASSIVE THANK YOU to everyone that took the time to provide their picks for the recommendation! I will get to listing all the books here as soon as I find the time. Please keep 'em coming!

Edit(2):Here are (hopefully) all the books recommended so far:

Marcel Proust - In Search of Lost Time

Robert Lewis Stevenson's works

Vladimir Nabokov - Lolita; Pale Fire; Speak Memory; Ada or Ardor.

Zora Neale Hurston - Their Eyes Were Watching God

Cormac McCarthy - The Road; Red Meridian; All the Pretty Horses

Flannery O'Connor's works, Annie Proulx - That Old Ace in a Hole

John Steinbeck - Tortilla Flat; Cannery Row; East of Eden; The Grapes of Wrath; Travels with Charlie in Search of America

Pat Conroy - The Prince of Tides Michael Chabon - The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier a

I love a lot of the Lovecraft ideas and concepts but I find his prose really difficult to read casually and I abhor the man’s personal views. I’ve read Lovecraft Country. What else is there?

I'm going over my manuscript and I have to admit my writing is very simple. I have gotten positive feedback on well developed characters and good stories but the sentences need a little spicing up to make them lyrical (pretty enough that someone will want to quote the book on Goodreads for example).

How do you suggest I improve? Do you have books, articles, writing exercises, Youtube videos or podcasts that can help?

How do you write beautiful prose?

EDIT: thank you all for the replies. I appreciate it. I'll try each of these a day and see which one works best. Again, I appreciate the replies.

I know when Lovecraft comes up, a lot of people talk about how they had a hard time getting into his work because of his prose. Specifically, how purple and overwrought and heavy it is with adjectives, descriptions etc. But man, I actually totally love his style almost as much as I do the creepy cosmic horror content of the stories.

I don't know what it is about it - it's most certainly very dense and yes, oftentimes quite purple and melodramatic but I feel like it actually works in the favor of his stories. It creates such a foreboding mood and an atmosphere of dread. I feel like I'm walking through those misty, creepy swamps and islands and moors he describes. It's immersive as hell. Besides, if you're gonna write about your characters going batshit insane from looking at unimaginable interdimensional horrors you may as well go all out, right?

Anybody else really love his style of writing?

Hello!

So I've tried writing prose while playing, it was way too slow for me and I got bored of it quickly, but I'd still like to write something from this that I could share. So yeah, have you written prose, or a journal for your character, from your play notes?

Thanks n_n.

See the thing is I'm trilingual and the emphasis on the English language is just not enough in India for starters my English classes only trained superficial comprehension, memorization, and saying a lot without meaning anything. Now I can deal with this with the internet and I wanna know how you guys developed things like vocabulary a good control over writing devices and other things that allow you to write good prose.

So I was looking at a bunch of really well written quotes from Williams Gibson’s work. And it was some of the best prose I’ve ever seen. So I decided to make this. What’s the best prose you’ve ever seen in a book?

Hi there!

I fall absolutely in love with books that are written with beautiful language. I can sit and reread lines and be completely mesmerized by the author’s talent and cleverness. A few books like this I’ve read are:

-Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

-Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward

-The Sorrow of War by Bao Ninh

If you all don’t mind, I humbly ask to suggest books of really any genre that you consider containing brilliant and interesting wordplay.

I'm someone who has been using git to track prose, mainly collaborations on academic articles. I've found that out of the box, it's not great for this purpose. You can either write with auto-filled paragraphs across separate lines, or with long lines w/ one paragraph each. Either way, diffs will be too coarse-grained. If you change one word in a paragraph, it will show either a bunch of lines changing if it triggered a paragraph refill (former way), or one huge line changing (the latter way).

Thus, my co-authors and I have started writing with one sentence per line. This seems to work best for making the git commit diffs legible. However, it's annoying to write that way, and easy to forget and accidentally put two sentences on a line, resulting in junk commits.

I'm wondering if there's some hook that could be used to automatically unwind and wind paragraphs into one-sentence-per-line text, just for the purposes of git tracking. Ideally the way it would work is:

1. Write text in nat

So this book. I’m not done with it but it is making me finally understand what it means to be beautifully written.

The scene describing the war movie being played backwards from the perspective of Billy was just beautiful. The topic itself was nothing unique but just how it was written was outstanding. I had to reread it a couple times just to fully appreciate it.

I dunno it feels kind of silly to me but I’m just blown away by how Vonnegut writes words.

I've been really bad at prose and I'm wonder if there's a book like save the cat that teaches you how to do it beautifully. Thank you in advance!

Hey all, I just started reading The Name of the Wind. I'm only on chapter 14, so I'm not far at all, but I still wanted to make this post.

I'm pretty new to the fantasy genre, and reading in general really. I've read a few series, but I started out with Brandon Sanderson, and most of what I've read is from him. Now, I've heard his prose is pretty simple and weak, and I wanted to try out something more poetic and lyrical and beautifully written. I've seen all over the place that Kingkiller Chronicle has some of the most beautiful prose in fantasy, and that it's just a fantastic series, so that's why I decided to check it out.

Now, maybe I'm just not experienced enough of a reader to distinguish good prose from bad, but I'm honestly not all that impressed with Patrick Rothfuss' writing. It's not bad at all, it's good in fact, and I'm enjoying this book a ton -- it's just not incredibly mind blowingly good, which is what I've been led to expect. It doesn't seem much different from how B

Vince Gatherhold inched nervously backward with sedated steps. There was a storm outside and the bite of it whipped around his kitchen, spilling in through the hole where the door had been. The radish man had torn it from the hinges before forcing its way inside.
“You’d better get out of here, I’m not super enthusiastic about wrecking the place.” Vince warned it, wondering if it was already too late for that. He didn’t expect the it to respond, but talking helped him think. The fuchsia figure, as tall as it was wide, and topped by a sprig of green, advanced. “You can turn around now, head back home and I won’t think anymore of it.” Vince’s left arm was firmly outstretched in front of him, palm pointed toward it as if commanding it to stop. He figured that made him seem in control, or so he’d hoped. His right arm was behind him: flailing desperately, searching for the countertop. That’s where he’d put the glove. He wasn’t sure what else it could want.

I'm just getting into wri

Talk about whatever you want in this regular thread! Just brought some cereal? Awesome. Just ran 5 miles? Epic! Just watched Fantastic Four and recommended it to all your friends? Atta boy. Wanna bitch about Supergirl's pilot being crap? Sweet. Just walked into your Dad and his dog having some "personal time" while your sister sends snapchats of her handstands to her boyfriend leaving you in a state of perpetual confusion? Please tell us more.

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How terrifying it is to feel such an absence of oneself, to have turned from a high-spirited individual to a well-oiled machine, lacking that necessary zest for life, moving through the hours mechanically.

There is no grace in such emptiness, only splintering numbness. When daylight seems too bright and the summer heat becomes a nuisance, where must the weary go to find a moment of cool comfort? Perhaps solace is for the fortunate, not for the forlorn.

And It is damnation to live in this hollow hell, this labyrinth teeming with less air than the coolness of space. With light and guidance in sight, they dissipate, appearing only for a moment to tease the hopeful. They evade eagerness, leaving wretched minds in grossly grim binds

Welcome to the void. I hope you find something in all of this nothingness

Signed...Me

P.S. I felt a little less of the void today

One thing I've noticed is that, much like its programmed counterparts, the neural network in my skull alters the style of its output based on how well I select the inputs to feed it. In particular, I find myself expressing my thoughts in more novel/interesting ways after reading especially well-crafted (or just stylistically unique) prose - it feels like my brain has a more diverse library of examples to draw on when crafting a sentence.

(I suspect there's a similar GIGO principle - if you engage with crappy content, it'll be harder to surpass that bar when creating things of your own - but that's easier to steer clear of.)

To that end, who are some writers whose work is worth reading, not necessarily for its semantic content but for their talent in composing a well-crafted sentence?

I'll start by nominating the dialogue in Winston Rowntree's Subnormality, for instance this comic. Other suggesti

Wikipedia states that:

>The language and style used are intended to resemble that of the 17th century, though the prose has features characteristic of no period whatsoever: the almost-complete lack of dialogue and proper names, for example.

If you were to strip away all the contents of a book, have the story not really mean anything, discount character development and all that type of that, and you're just left with a piece of prose writing, what's the best book you've ever read? As in, out of every book you've ever read, which has the best prose?

For me, it's probably What We Talk About When We Talk About Love by Ray Carver. Every single line of it is pure perfection from where I stand. The amount of tension in every line, the power they're packed with, is amazing. But Carver manages to balance that so it never becomes overwhelming with so much grace and minimalism in every line. It's super bare bones, at times saying ever so slightly less than what it needs to say. And that's what I love about it. There's nothing to distract you, bog you down. It's just completely crystal clear and graceful, almost poetry in a prose setting.

But what about y'all? What book has your favourite prose of all time?

I’ve come to wonder, why can’t you see? That everything’s fine and there’s no particular way you should be.

I wanna be a good person and I want to be happy. But I also desperately want people to value me. I don’t wanna be a worthless little penny on the side of the street. What if somebody steps on me? And they don’t even notice cause I’m so little and weak. I’m a worthless little penny and nobody cares for me.

Hey, wait! You know that’s not true. You’ve got family and friends who truly care for you. But even if no one knew you, you would still have value.

But, I don’t care about that! I want people to know! And I want them to tell me! Tell me, tell me, tell me! Tell me how you value me! There are worthless little pennies, on the side of the street. Please tell me, tell me, that’s not me.

You’ve made yourself clear, you don’t wanna be weak. You want to be happy with your friends and family. So then tell me please, why do you sit by the street? Waiting to be crushed under somebo

I just finished The Handmaid's Tale and I really loved Atwood's writing. Not necessarily looking for something similar in theme, but I'd love some recommendations for other dramatic and dark books written by a female author. I really loved Gone Girl (Sharp Objects was okay but I couldn't get through Dark Places) and I have a soft spot for Jodi Picoult novels, but they're a little cheesier than what I'm looking for. Not very interested in fantasy or sci-fi.

Hi. I'm a Scottish author normally writing in English but I'm trying to branch out into writing more in Scots.

I have a 1,000 word short story in Scots I'm wondering if anyone would like to review or give their thoughts on? I'm particularly looking for feedback on syntax and grammar in non-dialogue prose which I've been struggling a bit with. I'm familiar with all the online Scots resources but particularly seeking the feedback of someone familiar with writing in Scots.

Let me know if you're interested and I'll send the story your way. Thanks!

Wrapped in a roiling and chaotic night sky, the small funerary procession forged a lantern-lit path over treacherous terrain. Jagged pillars of moss-clung stone burst from the ground like the fingers of the waking dead, threatening to spear any body that dared to slip and fall upon them. The aging Shayen leading the way stepped confidently from point to point, seemingly heedless of the western winds that seemed to burrow into every pore and stole breath from the lungs. Her wood and bone accoutrements rattled in eerie harmony with the cacophony of nature. The line of folk behind her followed with care to light on every stone their leader walked upon, with heads bowed, humming softly into the wind. And finally, in the rear, two younger apprentices of the Shayen struggled with the funeral palanquin, desperately striving to keep footing and from keeping their cargo from tipping into the void below. This was their first Stone Walk, and they had fallen a fair bit behind the main procession.

I am learning English through books. Please suggest some with great diction. What I read and loved: FRANKEINSTEIN, LITTLE WOMEN, IT AND SHINING, LOTR, HOBBIT and Study in scarlet

I liked the world and magic system but I felt like the GNs were lacking a lot of depth, especially in comparison to other Cosmere books. You can tell it's an adaptation of something rather than standing on its own as a work. So before I dive into the prose I was curious on how others felt it compared to the GNs.

And while I'm at it I had a question about Sand Masters and the Diem. What exactly did they do? They're one of the "professions" but nothing is ever said about what role they play (unless I missed it). I assumed they were like Jedi, monk warriors and so on. But then it's shown they weren't even helping common people until Kenton decided they should. Were they aiding the soldier guild in wars? Were they just hanging out and fighting desert monsters while they played with their cool powers? The story didn't really give me any reason to root for them coming back into prestige within the society.

I like books with complicated characters and relationships—nothing black and white. Plot and world building are secondary to me. Though a great plot would be nice too! But the writing must be beautiful. (For example I don’t like Brandon Sanderson books because of his writing style, even though his imagination is great). The book could have the best characters and plot on paper but if the writing isn’t gorgeous I usually don’t get very far.

I love fantasy and sci fi most but would be happy with any genre except horror. A series would be great but stand-alone is OK too.

Other things I like: Bromance, slow burn romance, good mix of dark and light, science or history as elements in the story.

My fav books: Hyperion, The Broken Earth, Persuasion, Riddle Master, Bleak House, The Master and Margarita, Titus Groan

Thanks so much for the recs!

An English teacher was explaining the differences of poetry and prose to her class.

“Mary had a little lamb, whose fleece was white as snow, and everywhere that Mary went, the lamb was sure to go.”

“This is an example of poetry, but if I wanted to change it to prose I would say, ‘the lamb went with her’.”

“Can anybody else provide me an example of an example of either poetry or prose?”

Little Johnny raised his hand and began, “Mary had a little pig, an ornery little runt. He stuck his nose into her skirt and sniffed her filthy...” He paused. “Would you prefer poetry or prose?”

“PROSE, Most definitely!” Exclaimed the teacher.

“Asshole!”

Please suggest me books that are gorgeously written! Some that come to mind for me are On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous, Gatsby, All the Light We Cannot See,etc.

Genre is irrelevant as long as it makes me feel something. Looking for books that make you go "Whoa, what did I just read" with sentences that you reread over and over. Thanks in advance!

Movies adapted from books usually don’t turn out exactly as I would have imagined while reading the book, and often don’t follow the book closely enough for the analysis I want to do (... which is expected because it’s a very different medium).

A movie adaptation is a collaboration by several people, and ends up being interpreted and reinterpreted by the screenwriter, director, producers, actors, editors, cinematographers, etc. I would think that a novelization would simply be a direct translation from pictures to text, in prose form.

This is kind of a convoluted question, but what I am trying to do is get a feel for how what we see on screen would be conveyed in several hundred pages of a novel that only exists to translate a movie into words.

Can anyone recommend a good novelization to try this with?

As for strangeness, this can be anything. It could range from outright supernatrual elements, to explorations of form (like Cloud Atlas), or even very subtle strangeness (like the description of Cathy Ames in East of Eden, or the lady with moths in her room in the Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay).

In terms of wonder, I'm looking for the feeling of being in an almost empty museum, noticing some strange coincidence, being exposed to a strange idea...that kind of a feeling.

Since Latin has basically been a foreign language to anyone alive for some time now and there's still controversy surrounding pronunciation, it's probably safe to say that we're deaf in terms of its intended musicality. I know people like to point out frog sounds and other euphoniae that come with scanning, but to spend time on it just for that is nonsense to me. I did it a lot in school magistro suadente and up to this day I still see no benefits in it. It would probably take 5 times longer to read a poet's work if I also scan it. So, what are some real benefits you've had from it ?

This is an interesting one to look at from our perspective. It might just be what I'm reading, but I've talked to a lot of people who agree that workmanlike prose is more prevalent in spec-fic than it is in other genre fiction. That is to say it's minimalist, with simple, clear, and functional language. It's transparent instead of decorated. There are exceptions of course, but if you pick up a random spec-fic book from the bestseller list, you'll probably wind up with one that uses a simple and pragmatic writing style instead one that draws attention to itself aesthetically.

It brings up an interesting question: what is it about those types of books in particular that lends itself to workmanlike prose? Is it the added aspect of worldbuilding? Are readers just after different things when they pick up a fantasy or sci-fi novel? Would beautiful prose make any of these story better, or does it only work when it's written with the story in mind?

A great example is Brandon Sanderson. He's

Conflict makes me sad and suspense makes me tear my hair out and read too quickly. However, I do love reading and I especially love reading beautiful language. Ideally looking for something atmospheric and inspiring where little to nothing bad happens, ever. Any suggestions?

This is an issue I have when writing, and when I am trying to analyze a text and I find it really difficult to tell the difference. It sometimes seems to me that an example of vivid language, or purple prose, is only distinguished by whether or not the author likes it.

Exhibit A: "goldenly, youthfully, it bubbled with all the melodious characteristics he knew"

Now if I just read this somewhere I would think that it was written by a romantic teen who just feel in love for the first time and is being super sappy trying to express himself. But it's from Lolita apparently, which is considered a classic.

So how do you tell?

I’m looking to try and get my short stories into academic literary magazines and journals and I’m wondering what prose rules they teach in universities or is their a prose guide that they tend to give out or prefer.

You are enough, you know. You always have been and no amount of mistake or loss will change that. For the things that belong, you will always be enough.

Hold on to that.

Listen here.

Find Ruby’s original post here.

I recently got into reading light novels, but i noticed a bit of problem: a recurring theme was awkward phrasing or sometimes unnecessary adjectives. I know that not every author is a great writer, but it's also possible that some of the meaning was lost in translation, hence the awkward phrasing. Is it the former or the latter?

Hello,

I juste finished Pale Fire, my first book by Nabokov. This is undeniably an excellent book, the idea and execution are just incredible. But I was a little underwhelmed by the prose, it's well-written, no doubt about it, but having heard that Nabokov have one of the best prose ever, it was a bit of a let-down.

Am I the only one to think that ? Are the other works by Nabokov differently written ?

Does anyone remember or have a collection of the hardcover/paperback novels from the 90's/early 2000's? I'm talking like Spider-Man: The Venom Factor, X-Men: Mutant Empire trilogy, Fantastic Four: Redemption of the Silver Surfer, and the Batman: No Man's Land novelization.

Howdy friends! I've been on the cusp of ditching my current hair and face cleansing products for these personalized ones that keep popping up wherever I go. The thing is that I'm a huge skeptic and find it hard to trust ads these days... I was wondering if you guys had a good or bad experience with personalized care products and if it's worth the hype.

Thanks! (◕ᴗ◕✿)

For me, it was Raymond Chandler's The Big Sleep.

That book has a nonsensical plot and one-dimensional characters. The prose, however, carries the reader from one line to the next, one page to the next, all the way to the end of the book like listening to your funniest, overly cynical friend tell you about his day and observations of the world. The prose is so good, it makes up for flaws that would doom any other book.

Chandler is still among my favorite authors, but I'm much more aware of his weaknesses now. What I think is more important is that his work has raised my standards for writing. Some might see this as a bad thing, but I don't: I can't tolerate lazy or weak prose.

I’m a big fan of books and writings that have a poetry feel to them, and also like stream of consciousness style, a la I’ll Give You the Sun and some of Virginia Woolf’s works. Any other recommendations for books like this?

What books have stood out to you as especially beautifully written, I want to know! :)

Any genre is good!

This is a link to a copy of the Prose Edda, for anyone curious about some of the myths associated with the Norse characters in the game, or for anyone looking for new characters to create concepts for.

Also called the Younger Edda, The Prose Edda was written, or collected, by Snorri Sturluson in the early 1200's. In addition to myths, it also includes Snorri's beliefs of how Norse mythology fits into world history, from a Christian perspective.

This 1879 translation also includes Preface and Notes sections by the translators.

I hereby present to you, The Prose Edda

Talk about whatever you want in this regular thread! Just brought some cereal? Awesome. Just ran 5 miles? Epic! Just watched Fantastic Four and recommended it to all your friends? Atta boy. Wanna bitch about Supergirl's pilot being crap? Sweet. Just walked into your Dad and his dog having some "personal time" while your sister sends snapchats of her handstands to her boyfriend leaving you in a state of perpetual confusion? Please tell us more.

Please remember that future spoilers must be tagged.

Regular Posts Schedule

• Latest No Stupid Questions
• Latest Rewatch
• Latest What's Who With You
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