First time through...
Sep. 3rd, 2006 01:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
khiemtranEvery now and then, I come across a piece of prose that sounds incredibly awkward on first reading, but which starts to smooth out on re-reading, until at last I can't see anything wrong with it. I had this reaction to an excerpt on ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
llygoden's blog, and I've been thinking about it carefully.
My guess is that it's something to do with the rhythm of the prose and the way the sentences appear as I read them clause by clause. Certain clauses or sentences seem at first like they're important enough to be emphasized, only to turn out to be relatively minor when the whole passage is read out. It's analogous to reading aloud and suddenly finding that you've run out of breath because the sentence you are erading takes longer than expected. Only in this case, it's not just the sound of the words, but the concepts. Once I have a broad overview of the passage in my head, I know which bits to emphasize and which bits to rush through, as it were.
Reading that passage now, I can barely see what might have caused the reaction the first time, although I can clearly remember reading the first line and thinking "oh, that's clunky!" I think this is also related to the problem of good writing mysteriously turning bad on re-reading, especially after a long break. This is something I had a lot of trouble with in The Silver Bowl, especially with overworking some of the early opening paragraphs.
It's also possible, of course, that this is just a purely idiosyncratic reaction on my part, and it's just a matter of tuning in to a particular writing style or voice to tell how best to read a passage. It's probably also amplified in the excerpt by the fact way it starts abruptly in the middle of an action scene with no time to tune in to the narrator's voice and speech patterns.
llygoden's blog, and I've been thinking about it carefully.My guess is that it's something to do with the rhythm of the prose and the way the sentences appear as I read them clause by clause. Certain clauses or sentences seem at first like they're important enough to be emphasized, only to turn out to be relatively minor when the whole passage is read out. It's analogous to reading aloud and suddenly finding that you've run out of breath because the sentence you are erading takes longer than expected. Only in this case, it's not just the sound of the words, but the concepts. Once I have a broad overview of the passage in my head, I know which bits to emphasize and which bits to rush through, as it were.
Reading that passage now, I can barely see what might have caused the reaction the first time, although I can clearly remember reading the first line and thinking "oh, that's clunky!" I think this is also related to the problem of good writing mysteriously turning bad on re-reading, especially after a long break. This is something I had a lot of trouble with in The Silver Bowl, especially with overworking some of the early opening paragraphs.
It's also possible, of course, that this is just a purely idiosyncratic reaction on my part, and it's just a matter of tuning in to a particular writing style or voice to tell how best to read a passage. It's probably also amplified in the excerpt by the fact way it starts abruptly in the middle of an action scene with no time to tune in to the narrator's voice and speech patterns.
