I feel they are superfluous most of the time, just there to inflate the length of the book. Like I started reading the book in the pic I posted and the first page is just useless descriptions, they add nothing to the story, they are just there...just because. You know what I'm saying? Nobody reads books to read descriptions (unless they are books heavy on world-building like LOTR), just get to what you want to say, what's your unique perspective on things that I might find compelling and interesting, everybody can write fucking descriptions, show me what you bring to the table...
>phoneposterKys, iFag
>>25308885I'm on desktop? The screenshot is not from my phone, it's a desktop ebook reader called Readest
>>25308879>Nobody reads books to read descriptionsI do.>In the pipefitters’ sheds, icicled, rattling when the gales are in the Straits, here’s thousands of old used toothpaste tubes, heaped often to the ceilings, thousands of somber man-mornings made tolerable, transformed to mint fumes and bleak song that left white spots across the quicksilver mirrors from Harrow to Gravesend, thousands of children who pestled foam up out of soft mortars of mouths, who lost easily a thousand times as many words among the chalky bubbles—bed-going complaints, timid announcements of love, news of fat or translucent, fuzzy or gentle beings from the country under the counterpane uncounted soapy-liquorice moments spat and flushed down to sewers and the slow scumming gray estuary, the morning mouths growing with the day tobacco and fish-furred, dry with fear, foul with idleness, flooded at thoughts of impossible meals, settling instead for the week’s offal in gland pies, Household Milk, broken biscuits at half the usual points, and isn’t menthol a marvelous invention to take just enough of it away each morning, down to become dusty oversize bubbles tessellating tough and stagnant among the tar shorelines, the intricate draftsmanship of outlets feeding, multiplying out to sea, as one by one these old toothpaste tubes are emptied and returned to the War, heaps of dimly fragrant metal, phantoms of peppermint in the winter shacks, each tube wrinkled or embossed by the unconscious hands of London, written over in interference-patterns, hand against hand, waiting now—it is true return—to be melted for solder, for plate, alloyed for castings, bearings, gasketry, hidden smokeshriek linings the children of that other domestic incarnation will never see.
rewrite the page how you think it should be written i do wonder
>>25308950Doctor Eduardo Plarr stood watching among the rails and yellow cranes. He found himself alone at that hour except for the one sailor who was on guard outside the maritime building. It was a nostalgic evening. The rails, the cranes, the maritime building–these had been what Doctor Plarr first saw of his adopted country. The years had changed nothing except by adding a line of smoke along the horizon on the far side of the Paraná. The factory that produced it had been built when he came down from the northern republic with his mother more than twenty years before on the
>>25309036Oh boy, the prosefags ain't gonna like this one
>>25308879I also don't like it, but I'm more a non-fiction guy, so that might be why. I think the point is to paint a picture in your head; the problem is, I have a very vivid imagination, and when I start picturing all these things I just never stop, trying to make all the details come alive in my head, which takes a lot of time.
>>25308879>just get to what you want to say, what's your unique perspective on things that I might find compelling and interestingSounds like you'd prefer non-fiction
>>25309036I can do better>doctor was standing alone. He saw some buildings in his new country.
I think I'm similar and that's why I prefer poetry to the novel
>>25308879Your example is bad, as this first page doesn't read like chewing the scenery. The comparison between the lines of smoke in the sky to the stripes of a flag carry thematic importance. This novel(don't know what it is) is about nationalism and it's impact on a man's identity. He used to be from the North country. So he must be an immigrant. Does he like the nationalist symbolism or dislike it? Why? Read to find out.
>>25309936doctorbuildingsfactory
>>25308879I'm the exact opposite. I don't care about plot or character whatsoever. I enjoy reading because I love language and rich sensory, emotional and psychological experiences. I actually look down on plotfags and characterfags ("I want to care about a character"). I view them as subhuman and inferior to me. It's probably the reason I exclusively read poetry now instead of novels now. The only exceptions are things like this masterpiece:https://coldreads.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/under-milk-wood.pdf(Under Milk Wood by Dylan Thomas)
>>25310021How can a writer deliver ”emotional and psychological experiences” without characters?
Honestly, I agree. Whenever a novel opens with some contrived imagery about how the sky looks I roll my eyes. Being a good prose stylist doesn't mean engaging in mindless wank.
>>25310043Primacy of language and style [for sensory and emotional experiences], not primacy of unique well-developed characters that I care about. Of course you need characters. Saying that, some of my favorite literature ever is nature writing like Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Anne Dillard or Arctic Dreams by Barry Lopez. Top-tier sensory and spiritual experience.
>>25310021>I actually look down on plotfags and characterfags ("I want to care about a character"). I view them as subhuman and inferior to meyou're acting as moronic as op.anyone who divides literature up in this artificial way - prose vs plot, description vs character - is my eternal enemy.you're letting abstract categories obscure the concrete text before you. it's like saying 'i like harmony, but i don't care about melody', 'i like colour, but i don't care about light and shadow'. like thanks for letting me know, you sound like a true aesthetic genius.
>>25310066I admittedly exaggerated because I wanted to secure a (You) but I genuinely do only read for the pleasure of language. I don't care about plot and character which is why I did "artificially divide up literature" and switched to poetry. Le mot juste >>
That's because you are a RETARD and you should, literally, and I'm not fucking joking, stop reading books. You're too fucking stupid seeing as you're complaining about a writer describing shit in a book. Just put the tiktok on, man, stop resisting it. It's your element.
>>25310066>it's like saying 'i like harmony, but i don't care about melody'Uh-oh...
Descriptions are where a story's tone and thematic depth come from. Without description you would just have dialog and narrative summary.
>>25308945dayyum, cracka ass crackas sure love toothpaste
>>25308945>>25310561Thomas Pynchon’s 1973 postmodern novel, Gravity's Rainbow
>>25308945>>25310793>Thomas Pynchon’s 1973 postmodern novel, Gravity's RainbowThat text posted is a single sentence.I started reading Gravity's Rainbow. I'm not really liking this writing style. These sentences that go on forever leave me feeling...out of breath? That's the best way I can think of to describe it. Anyone else understand what I mean?
>>25311122>leave me feeling...out of breathThat's the intended effect. Oppressive, hallucinatory, oneiric; like a nightmare you can't wake up from. And the next page he'll go right back to toilet humour.
>>25308879Yeah I always skip descriptions of the setting Finished Invisible Cities in like 5 minutes
>>25310021>I view them as subhuman and inferior to mebecause they are
>>25310074So instead you care about the character of the characters pressed on the page, the actions of the author instead of the intentions of his animated instigators...the actions that made the setting, not the actions changing the setting? The metanarrative communication between writer and reader, apart from the dialogue of the plot directors. To each their own.
>>25311122It's not meant for you to like it. It's meant for you to experience it as art. Like a painting of a violent rape or something. Liking it isn't the point.
>>25311350>Shits ALLLLLLLLLL over your mouth>"You're not supposed to like it, it's art!"
>>25311122Lmao, you think this is exhausting? It's fucking nothing. It's just a long right branching list. Not even a good sentence at that
I don't like long winded descriptions as well, because I actually can't build a good mental image in my head for the descriptions anyway.How to fix?
>>25308879The worst offender for this in recent years that I've come across was Jerusalem by Alan Moore.
>>25311371do visualization exerciseslearn to draw. half of learning to draw is learning to visualizeit's well known in music circles that most people who think they're tone deaf are just untrained and have low auditory reasoning/perception skills, and that with practice and training can perceive pitch pefectly fine. I suspect people who say they have aphantasia are the same way
>>25308945I just removed all Pynchon from my to read list
>>25308879Same. I zone out when some author thinks it's a good idea to describe a character's fucking front yard.
