ext_7991 ([identity profile] keristor.livejournal.com) wrote in [personal profile] rolanni 2009-02-04 02:17 pm (UTC)

I've heard it said that a mark of an expert in any kind of art[1] is that they know when to break the rules. Haydn disliked Beethoven's music because it broke some of the existing rules Beethoven got away with it because he was good at it. Heck, look at Shakespere's mixed metapohor -- who would actually "take arms" against a sea of anything? But it works because he knew when the literal meaning was irrelevant to the imagery.

One of the things I like about your (plural) writing is the way your narration changes style depending on the point of view character. One may be formal and precise and the next uses colourful language and cliches (contrast Miri and Val Con, for example, I can tell within a sentence which of them is PoV in a passage by the styles, without any clumsy explicit statement of who is the PoV character). If a character uses cliches and contractions, or if they studiously avoid them, that's part of the character and therefore is an important source of information. (There are of course some authors who don't use characterisations in narrative, it is all written as an objective author; that is also a valid style, but neither is 'wrong'.)

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