this post was submitted on 16 Dec 2024
9 points (69.6% liked)

Books

4581 readers
37 users here now

A community for all things related to Books.

Rules

  1. Be Nice

Official Bingo Posts:

Related Communities

founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
 

This is a major issue for me as a non-native English speaker (it even happens in my own language, but the effect is not as bad). Why do some authors go out of their way to make their books very convoluted? Like they make it so hard for you to connect the dots from different chapters or even the same chapter. What's the point? Do some readers actually enjoy this? Or is it the author trying to show off/feel superior? (This is not meant as an insult, just an assumption/opinion?). I've read several Stephen King books and they're mostly easy to understand, but sometimes he'd go on tangents where shit doesn't make any sense. I just skip all that "filling", as a I call it. Like who's whom, and what's just happened? Where did this come from? And so on. Tried with the Malazan book of the fallen, and holy shit. The beginning of the first book was a major pain to understand, so I stopped and I've been reading more English books so I can get better then go back to it. On the other hand, my wife has introduced me to this writer, Freida McFadden. The lady has the most straight forward books I've ever read. You read and you understand everything from start to end. I don't even find myself getting distracted like I do with the books that I have a hard time understanding. Her books are very clear and the English she uses is very simple in terms of vocabulary. Vocabulary...... That's another can of worms that I don't want to open.
Thanks for reading my rant.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I should mention that I have a habit even outside of writing to overcomplicate things. I want to still write about my complex ideas, like the inner life and philosophy of an Eldritch god, but it definitely won't help if I overcomplicate the language I'm using.

Recently I finally accepted that not everything I write is pure gold and that I'm allowed to rewrite or delete stuff. After all, it's the idea being expressed in a paragraph that's important to me, not the words and their layout.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Philosophy is inherently complex, as it were. You speak philosophy and it's just a spaghetti. Novels don't need to be complicated in some cases.
Good luck on your writing. I won't mind a link to your books, btw. lol