“Among critics and reviewers, the plain style is more likely to be praised than the elaborate or sprawling. Embellished prose is treated with suspicion, if not dismissed outright as overwritten, pretentious or self-indulgent.”
A Short Defense of Literary Excess
By BEN MASTERS
The novelists I find myself attracted to are those who cannot resist the extra adjective, the additional image, the scale-tipping clause. It feels necessary to assert and celebrate this, for we are living in puritanical times. The contemporary preference seems to be for the economical, the efficient, for simple precision (though there is of course such a thing as complex precision). Books, it appears, should be neat and streamlined. Language shouldn’t be allowed to obscure a good story. There is a craving for easily relatable and sympathetic characters. Among critics and reviewers, the plain style is more likely to be praised than the elaborate or sprawling. Embellished prose is treated with suspicion, if not dismissed outright as overwritten, pretentious or self-indulgent. Drab prose is everywhere.
I do love a well-turned adverb. I appreciate the ‘get to the point’ school of literary styling, but every so often I feel the need to just cut loose with lush description till you can feel the words on your skin. This is why I wrote “Exposed.” And “Shiver,” for that matter, although I feel like “Shiver” is a bit graceless. (Then again, it was my very first porn fic.)