What does “good prose” even mean? Has no one ever questioned this? It’s a completely baseless and subjective value judgement that very much does depend on the psychology and natural inclinations of the reader (whether by nature or nurture). Different languages have completely different sentence structures and even alphabets and ways of expressing ideas, it’s inconceivable to determine one having better prose then the other yet the whole idea of “good prose” is the platonic ideal of a “good prose” that all prose should strive to approximate but be impossible to apotheosize a prose into becoming, which I have already shown is nonsense. I therefore assert all labels of good and bad prose to be a dirty rotten lie!
>>24116792Based
>>24116792Good prose is just prose which effectively achieves its intended purpose with nothing wasted and free of unintended ambiguity. Your prose is not so good, subtext in general is uncontrolled and dissonant with the text itself, you don't even seem to know what prose is beyond the most reductive dictionary sense and admit to not knowing what "good prose" refers to but are confident in your conclusions.
>>24116792>Has no one ever questioned thisYou say this like there isn’t a thread every other day about it. Kill yourself.
>>24116792Know the difference between prose and poetry. Know what prose is. A good writer of prose is a good writer. Different people have different opinions about the strength of various writers and their styles. Anyone who uses “good prose” as a descriptor is probably young and naive. Rarely do I see anyone elaborate off of the “good prose (good writer)” description
Good prose is prose that I like. Hope that helps!
>>24116885>A good writer of prose is a good writer.not necessarily, not even in the other direction. dosty's prose is horrible. his novels are masterpieces. updike's prose is beautiful. his novels are not as good as dosty's
>>24116792>But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned.
I didn't read all your post but just think of "good prose" as meaning "good writing". Yes, it's subjective but that's not a unique problem and it doesn't mean there are no technical elements to it with varying degrees of acceptance among 'experts', think of what 'good music' means, it has the same issues and is subjective at its core but there are elements to it that are closer to objective than others.The reason prose is a separate word to writing is because it's not really just about the writing as what denotes an instance of good writing is very contextual. Good artistic writing may be a closer phrase for you to understand what underlying concept the word prose is trying to represent but even that is flawed, its because prose (and good prose) is such a multifaceted concept with different values to everyone (again, a lot is shared among people and experts though). It's also dependent on what perspective you are viewing the prose from, like whether it's good prose in terms of achieving what the author intended it to achieve (my usual angle for judgement) or whether you want it to be technically impressive for scholars/experts, whether you want it to evoke emotions in the masses or the most fringe literary consumers who have already consumed all other literature and need to go ever deeper. Blah blah cbf
>>24116877/thread
>>24116792>What does “good prose” even mean?Commenting on prose quality is something midwit pseuds do when they don't have anything of value to say but want to chime in anyway (because they're pseuds).
>>24117217I like this. Good prose not only dresses for the reader but it dances according to the range defined by the occasion of the attire. It sways and seduces while showing just the right amount of cleavage to be curiously erotic.
>>24116792It means my posts.
i think fundamentally, it has to do with the flow of ideas, how each sentence connects to the next, paragraph to paragraph, whether your imagery is unnecessary, your metaphors and similes appropriate, to the effect that you are well read enough to guess the author's intent throughout the narrative, it's almost like food tasting, you should have a good enough palate to notice what food you are tasting and whether there's a mismatch in ingredients and what should be done to bring out the desired taste
>>24116792>It’s a completely baseless and subjective value judgement that very much does depend on the psychology and natural inclinations of the readerYou can make this statement about any aspect of art. "What makes a painting look nice?" If you want to talk about certain axioms relating to symmetry or inherently pleasing colour combinations etc then you could likely make a similar argument for which words and sentiments a writer uses. It doesn't matter: if it stimulates a particular, positive effect in a reader/observer then, for that person at least, it has succeeded. All you are pointing out here is that the experience of art is a subjective one. It just happens that people who have more experience with a particular artistic medium often tend to agree on what is good and what isn't.
>>24116792You are treating your objection as if it concerns the word 'prose', where really it seems to me that it truly concerns the word 'good'. Sure, 'good' is a fairly subjective and hence unhelpful descriptor, but what about 'economical prose'? Or 'elegant', or 'mechanical', or 'florid'? Sure, it's all subjective in the end, but if criticism such as the above is sufficiently evocative then it may be useful to help assess the writing in question. Total objectivity in the vein of 'this writing is a 2/10 on the James/Hemingway scale' would be as pointless as it is impossible.
>>24116792>good proseIt’s prose written in the Faustian spirit, foretelling the fall of the West.
>>24116877This. Everyone else is just dancing around the fact that they don't know what prose is. It is not difficult to quantify prose, saying it subjective is banal and pointless. We can say this word adds nothing and explain why, or that the text and subtext are at odds, or that this usage is archaic and the accepted usage makes no sense forcing the reader to stop and sort it out killing the flow and a great deal more that is objective and can be demonstrated.
>>24116792I mean obviously it's subjective, but that doesn't mean it's not useful to comment on, or even that it's not true? 'Good prose' means, really, that it's enjoyable, so 'it depends on the inclinations of the reader' isn't really this takedown that you think it isIt's also pretty clear a lot of the time:>Bad proseThe office was a rectangle of more than 1,300 square feet. One wall was dominated by a floor-to-ceiling bookshelf thirty feet long containing a remarkable assortment of literature: biographies, history, business and industry, and A4 binders. The books were arranged in no apparent order. It looked like a bookshelf that was used. The opposite wall was dominated by a desk of dark oak. On the wall behind the desk was a large collection of pressed flowers in neat meticulous rows.Through the window in the gable the desk had a view of the bridge and the church. There was a sofa and coffee table where the housekeeper had set out a thermos, rolls, and pastries.Vanger gestured towards the tray, but Blomkvist pretended not to see; instead he made a tour of the room, first studying the bookshelf and then the wall of framed flowers. The desk was orderly, onlya few papers in one heap.At its edge was a silver-framed photograph of a dark-haired girl, beautiful but with a mischievous look; a young woman on her way to becoming dangerous, he thought. >Good proseHow could they expect her to sleep when she was going through all of it? They didn’t know. She had swung about the room from the ceiling and it was a swinging from the cross. There had been a burial. She was lying quietly in the bed and being covered over her face. She was carried quietly out and put in the casket. Down, down she went in the rectangle that had been made for her. Down and the dirt fell in above. Down and the worms began to tremble in and out. Always she had kept telling of it, not one word of it must be forgotten. It must all be recorded in sound and after that she could sleep.
>>24117378>tldr; you know it when you see itMore words does not mean better argument.
>>24117423Prose can have meter, it is just not restrained by line and can stretch over pages in incredibly complicated ways which poetry can not realize. In prose we generally call it rhythm and/or flow but at its heart is the same thing.
Prose is sometimes thought of as the opposite of poetry. I think of poetry as ice and prose as water.Poetry by it's nature is limited by it's structure, it needs meter and sometimes rhyme, therefore it's often times "empty" it leaves a lot of negative space, it's sometimes abstract, it can often be thin.Good prose is writing that does a lot of building, whether it's building of the actual scene or environment, or building of something internal, such as the subject's mind. It's not confined, It doesn't leave much empty space, it shouldn't leave the reader wondering or interpreting too much. It's simply clear, and engaging, and should feel natural, while simultaneously feeling like "literature", like you're reading something purposely refined and meant for an audience, and not like you're talking to a Trump Voter in a Walmart parking lot or reading a note from your coworker who reads and writes at a 4th grade level.
>>24117431Your edit did not change much, just broke the thread but>it's simply clearthat is not a requirement of prose in anyway.
>>24117428Yes yes I didn't say that prose is necessarily absent of meter, it ofc can incorporate poetic structure, the different is that it doesn't have to. You can't really have good poetry without some type of structure but you can have good prose with none.
>>24117431>It's not confined, It doesn't leave much empty space, it shouldn't leave the reader wondering or interpreting too much. It's simply clear, and engaging, and should feel natural,Just not true
>>24117436>you can have good prose with none.You can? Can't think of anything which could be called good and lacks rhythm/flow. At best you can say that meter is more fluid in prose, but the only way you could say it is absent is if you are the sort that believes commas signify pauses.
>>24117438I don't conflate mystery, or double meaning within the story or text for clarity of prose>>24117448Yes What are you thinking of as meter? I'm talking about poetic meter, there's a clear definition, and rules to what makes poetry poetry otherwise it would just be prose, and very shitty prose at that.
>>24117462cont. again I'm not saying there can't be meter in prose, just that's it's not necessary to have it in what we could or would considered to be good prose
>>24116792Simple. Open Branderson. Whatever text you want of his.Then open Joyce. Dubliners. If you can't feel any difference, literature isn't for you.The same with languages other than English. Every well read Russian can spot the difference between one of the Stalkerslop book and classical Russian literature by reading one paragraph alone.
>>24117462Is an author reducing syllable content to make the text seem to read more quickly not a metrical device? All writers do this sort of thing even if they don't realize it and they do in regular patterns unique to them which they repeat in complex ways to create flow and rhythm. Unless you take a hard line view of poetry and say free verse and prose poetry are not poetry and that poetry can not break/change meter the line between prose and poetry is not meter and actually just formatting and structure. You can not have rhythm or flow without meter and I can not think of any prose that could be called good which lacked rhythm and flow. Meter is more complex and fluid in prose but meter is there and the authors who are considered the greats were acutely aware of it and exploited it.
>>24117505These are things that I interpret as style more than structure or a writer seeking intentional meter. Poetry still has an obvious structure, I've never seen free verse poetry presented on page in prosaic form. Even free style spoken word poetry lacks the intentional clarity, descriptiveness, and more dense substance of someone reading or writing prose.
Good prose is any prose I like.
>>24116877Annihilated OP.
>>24117512>these things that I interpretWhat does your interpretation have to do with anything other than avoidance of answering the questions asked? >poetry still has an obvious structureSo does prose and I flatly stated that the differences between them were in the formatting and the structure, not the meter which is what we are discussing. >intentional clarity, descriptiveness, and more dense substanceFW? I can give many other examples as well as examples of poetry which lacks the density and descriptiveness which I suspect you know. Also, terrible prose, stop trying to be poetic and exercise the "intentional clarity" you say is inherent to prose. You seem poorly read in both poetry and prose.
>>24117523I think you just want this - (You)go fetch
>>24117523Well, not sure if I got you right on the last bit, partially right at least. I think I failed to ignore previous context. I can give examples either way which will not align with your views.>>24117527>I can't find my way out of the hole I dug so I will make you out to be a troll.You can expect me to run around in circles with you when you evade all of my questions.
>>24117227Guess Horace, Ovid, Catullus, Plato, Aristotle, Dante, and etc were just midwits then
