|
FIRST PLACE
On Story vs. Style . . .
By Fred Venturini
Patoka, Illinois
My foray into the world of writing is
that of a newborn, but in the course of my college
career, after encountering many different professors
and a lot of different work, a conflict of sorts has
arisen—that conflict, while complex, can be summed
up by calling it story versus style.
I remember the first day of a particular writing class,
where the professor walked in with a folder that was
bursting at the seams with rejection slips. He
told us that most of the people that teach writing
for some reason aren’t good enough to do it for
a living, making a dilemma—those who aren’t
the best are the ones teaching the craft.
For this reason, I found the only real way to become
a better writer was to read and to write. I always
enjoyed stories and novels by popular novelists such
as Stephen King and Dean Koontz, and was continually
railroaded for this in these writing classes.
Why? “Because they write trash. They
don’t pay attention to craft, only money,” I
was told.
Here’s what I surmise from this experience. There
are many writers out there, many of them writing teachers,
that know what preposition goes where, know how to
strike out unnecessary adverbage, and can nail active
voice. In that sense, they are indeed good writers.
The most horrible thing that these people must realize
is that you don’t make money with good writing;
you make money with a good story. This creates
a sense of jealousy that I’ve seen in professor
after professor.
Perhaps this is just my experience, but it’s
a good question to examine. What would you rather
read? Good writing for the sake of writing in
the form of a boring, contrived tale, or an excellent
story put into words that might not be called grammatically
or stylistically perfect?
Answering this question can give you a good perspective
on your own writing. I’d much rather write
a knock your socks off great story and have my professor
rue my mistakes that writing BORING in big bold letters
at the top.
Because of this, I’m a storyteller more than
a writer, so I concentrate on substance over style. Other
people are obsessed with making everything absolutely
perfect—they want to capture an idea, though
it might be boring on mundane, and paint it as perfectly,
meticulously, and stylistically stunning as possible.
It sounds like it’s a win-win situation, but
if I may interject my opinion in the form of a metaphor,
would you rather have a candy-apple red Porsche that’s
empty under the hood, or a Corsica with two broken
windows, duct tape upholstery, but with an engine that’s
proven itself over a couple hundred thousand miles?
Of course the Corsica has a much better chance of getting
you to work.
What I’m saying is that if you’re discouraged
by the fact that you can’t write perfectly, relax. It’s
the story that you’re telling that is going to
be the meat of the matter. Great writing style
can sometimes be just window dressing.
This isn’t an excuse to be a lazy writer that
makes so many errors that the fictional dream is broken. This
isn’t an excuse to stop re-writing over and over
and over again until you’re pleased with the
work, but it is an excuse to get someone with a great
idea into the world of writing. It’s fantastic
to help drive your own work, but I’ve found that
it does one thing very well above all else:
It angers fancy-pants writing professors beyond all
other things on this Earth.
If you want to succeed in the world of writing, tell
good stories no matter how much you might stumble to
get them out of your head. If you concentrate
more on the parts of speech than the words themselves,
you’re well on your way to being one of the unsuccessful,
stuffy professors that I just mentioned.
But if that’s your thing, go for it.
Notice how I just started a sentence with but. And
just ended one with it. The fragments? Of
course I’ll let a couple of those slide. Why? Because
those things don’t worry me.
Because I’m a storyteller.
Copyright (c) 2003 for the
author, all rights reserved.
|
|
