Kurt R.A. Giambastiani

I’ve been reading about Gustave Flaubert and his writing method.  “What a bitch of a thing prose is!” he wrote to his friend and lover, Louise Colet. “It’s never finished; there’s always something to redo.” And redo he did.

Flaubert was a definite “basher,” taking up to a week to produce a single page. He once remarked that for the first 125 pages of Madame Bovary, he actually wrote 500 pages. But this constant revision was required to achieve the style for which he aimed.

“A good sentence in prose should be like a good line in poetry, unchangeable, as rhythmic, as sonorous.”

In reading an analysis of the style he adopted for Madame Bovary, I realized that I, too, have a style.

This was a bit of a revelation. I’ve never taken a class in creative writing, and when in school, my artistic output was music, not writing, so frankly, if my teachers ever spoke of a writer’s style, it went clean over my head at the time. So analyzing other writers’ work, seeking their style, doesn’t come naturally to me. But like that black and white picture of the vase and the faces, once you see it, you can’t not see it.

Flaubert strove for a spare style, dispassionate and unfettered by sentiment. This lack of sermonizing, this lack of commentary on the immoral behavior of his characters was actually the reason he and his publisher were hauled into court, so I guess he achieved his goal. But Flaubert was also incredibly cognizant of the rhythm and the “music” of his prose. He went over his writing time and time again, stripping out words, looking for repeated assonance and uncomfortable alliteration. We know this because he kept his drafts (sometimes fifteen drafts for a single section), and can see the evolution of his prose.

I, too, strive for a particular style in my books, but I have never analyzed my goal to such an extent. I have had the odd set-to with editors over my inconsistent use of the “and” at the end of a series, but when I omit it, it’s for a reason (usually for rhythm of the sentence). And, don’t tell Captain Grammar Pants, but I’ve been known to use comma splices now and again, linking together two short but independent sentences. I also built compound words a lot in the Fallen Cloud Saga, especially when writing from the POV of a Cheyenne character, as this is a common construction in their language.

Unfortunately, most of my stylistic efforts have been…instinctive…rather than intentional. I went for lyrical in the Ploughman Chronicles, and a more spare, mythic style in the Fallen Cloud Saga, but I never analyzed the specific techniques I wanted to use to achieve these goals.

So, style, yes; I have it, to a degree. But seeing what Flaubert did, I know there are light years between where I am now and where he was as he created his masterwork.

What a bitch of a thing prose is!

k