Craft Chat TV Brain Prose and Writers Who Don’t Read

[Aethalope]

Here is a really interesting post about writing that reads like a camera or TV show, and how this is increasingly prevalent among writers who don't read.

What Not Reading Does to Your Writing

More thoughts on "TV brain prose" and why reading is, yes, useful for your writing.

open.substack.com

 

[Rich.]

Interesting, indeed! Reminds me of Ursula Le Guin saying that screenplays are written in present imperative, which just adds weight to the dangers of writing novels using the TV brain -- you end up asking the reader (now standing in for both audience and production crew) to enact the world, instead of author and reader enacting it together (telepathically, as Stephen King would have it).

 

[Sedayne]

I watch far less TV now than I used to, and I read far more than I used to.
My writing is improving.
It's not the reason, but it might be a small, contributory factor.

The converse is also true: the more I write, the less I want to watch TV and the more I want to read.

And the more I read, the more critical I am of TV drama. Or maybe I'm just getting old.

It's funny how there are good TV and film adaptations of novels, but I've never read a good novelisation of a TV show or film.

Anyway, just some musings prompted by your post. Are you a regular Substacker @Aethalope ? I'm on there, but I don't post much. I can't get into the swing of it, and it feels like tiny voices can't be heard. But there's some really interesting stuff to read if you can find it amongst the clamouring-to-be-read self-promotion hot air.

 

[Aethalope]

Yesh, substack is interesting @Sedayne. Lots of excellent writing, but also lots of ReadMe! spam.

Anyway, have followed you

 

[JohnBertel]

“TV brain” prose tends to lack interiority and perspective. This is a big problem since those are arguably the greatest strengths of prose over film.

Very aguably. I don't think movies would be very popular if they lacked 'interiority and perspective.'

His argument seems to be that because the camera shows us everything, 'TV-brain' has led this writer to describe everything. But just because a camera technically records everything in its field of view doesn't mean that a film can't emphasise certain scene elements and put them in perspective to let us know what is going on internally in the characters. If they couldn't, they would be extremely boring.

The example in the post is bad writing, and would also be a bad movie scene. Is it bad because the writer has watched too much TV? Maybe ... who knows?

 

[Sedayne]

Anyway, have followed you

I'll have to start posting stuff now.
I've followed back of course x

 

[Aethalope]

I'll have to start posting stuff now.

Yes! Please do