Hi, just read that – very interesting.

I have just also read ‘The God of Small Things’, where the writer does mess around all the time with metaphor and simile, but in a way that really does integrate and work well with the story. So in other words, something positive is added to the mix to make for an enhanced reading experience. But even so, often the use of language (although beautiful) is distracting and also irritating, as you just become interested in what is happening and she lays some clever, clever metaphor down instead, thus leading to alienation.

The God of Small Things is not that experimental – and just using it as an example here, but anyway the form of the language (and also the plot) is slightly different and more to the point, does really work.

The trouble with experimental writing is that it is often alienating, distracting and too much hard work to bother with. Also there is always the emperor's new clothes syndrome.

I thought your sample was interesting, but at the same time, all I could really see was the use of unusual or quirky description.

So what I’m trying to say (and not very well) is that unless you can integrate the experimental aspects right in with the story – so that it works on all levels and is still appealing to the reader, then all the reader really sees is someone messing around with form or language, and it doesn’t really work as an integrated piece.
*

er it's a 70,000 word novel ... That would be on heck of a long post to have to trawl through. "A,B&E", "Not In My Name" and "52FF" (flash fiction anthology) all available on Amazon Kindle

"How a psychopath makes sweet love. I can get you ringside. Royal box even."

Does anyone else feel that we are in desperate need of some genuinely new metaphors as the gamut of the 20th Century novel pretty much put together every possible word combination and exhausted metaphor to the extent where they now reverberate as cliche when you encounter them...

Hence that post of the George Orwell piece in full on another thread. "A,B&E", "Not In My Name" and "52FF" (flash fiction anthology) all available on Amazon Kindle

"How a psychopath makes sweet love. I can get you ringside. Royal box even."

Each time anything is read it can be seen in a different light can't it?

I might read something one day and then read it again a year later and see it in a completely different way.

So, as well as the endless ways that things can be written whether it be a metaphor or anything else there are the different ways that each of us can see it at different times, depending on our mood.

.....and then there is the endless variety in the way that different individuals read something.

I don't think you can say that every possible combination has been used.

Heck, I read my own stuff and interpret it differently each time so god knows what others make of it.

I think, sometimes, we examine words to the exclusion of the emotions of the reader. We concentrate on the writing, not the reading.

It is the emotion of the reader that adds the colour.

Not sure I'm making sense here; been cooking; had some wine; feeling at one with the world.

So when I read this later I will see it with completely different eyes and, no doubt, wish I could delete it.

I also talk bollocks on; awriteblog.com