I say that glorious prose is a fine and laudable thing, but without an enthralling story, it's just so much verbal tapioca. Simply put, the best books have both, and the best writers disparage neither.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
A lot of times you get people writing wonderful sentences and paragraphs, and they fall in love with their prose style, but the stories really aren't that terrific.
I like terrific writing, but I also like a terrific story. My favorite books have both, and they're by contemporary, commercial American writers.
The best novels are those that are important without being like medicine; they have something to say, are expansive and intelligent but never forget to be entertaining and to have character and emotion at their centre.
There is no denying the aesthetics of a well-made, well-loved book.
I have two ideas for novels at the moment, neither of them all that conventional, but I'm not ready to choose between them yet, let alone settle down to the process of writing.
I think there's something quite interesting about the almost tragic quality of a lot of overwrought prose, because it has a much more self-conscious awareness of its own failure to touch the real.
My view of an excellent novel was probably set in the golden age of fiction in the 19th century: narrative, character and voice are of equal importance.
I think graphic novels are closer to prose than film, which is a really different form.
A well-written novel, the most immersive of all forms of storytelling, should command your full attention and belief.
Everybody's idea of a great book is different, of course. For me it's one that makes my jaw drop on every page, the writing is so original.
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