Wednesday, 22 April 2009
Painting a picture with words
As I was reading through the posts to make enough comments and such to not lose 5% of my grade by not being involved enough it occurred to me the difficulty of writing fiction. There is an extremely thin line dividing good from bad. A writer must describe enough to help people build images in their minds of what is going on, while not boring the readers with too much detail. I have friends that have stopped reading books because their is too much of nothing happening. The great depth of description can stop many readers today. Our world is very now and due in large part to the large media we have people do not use our imaginations as much as we used to. I think this maybe one of the reasons why graphic novels, a.k.a comic books, are getting more attention. While I being a comic fan have always looked at this form with respect and I feel now that as it gets some it maybe for the wrong reasons.
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I definitely agree. Even I, an English literature major, can get lost in the pages of description that Charles Dickens wrote. I love classic novels including Dickens but I sometimes skim through the details because I want to get back to the story. Impatience with authors is very common especially in high school classes with required reading. But what's the solution? Drop all classic writings and allow students to just read recent bestsellers like Twilight? Or students could read the abridged versions of the long novel but isn't that cheating the writer out of half their hard work? I'm not sure how to induce students into wanting to read the classics but I do feel that they should read them. Using your imagination to create the action instead of just passively watching it on a tv screen is a fantastic part of reading and is sadly becoming a less appreciated form of art.
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