When it comes to writing novels, there are several rules for writing the good ones. however the phrase good writing by itself is a purely perspective as there have been numerous cases where writers were crucified of writing something treated as unacceptable on the part of critics one such writer being J.M Coetzee, his writings are clear, straightforward, informative, having well researched content and possess brevity. It includes all what is needed to be a great writer. Nevertheless the three times booker prize winner and the Nobel laureate was criticised to have written a text lacking imagery, undeveloped characters and involving too many rapid transitions. Yet another famous example includes the historic fight between the Nobel laureates William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway. Contrary to Hemingway's prose Faulkner's writing included grandiloquent and excessive use of complex-compound sentences, style of stream of consciousness and even syntactic ambiguity. Faulkner argued that Hemingway's writing never sent a reader to the dictionary. Hemingway replied back saying he too new those flashy words, but he just wanted to keep things simple enough.
Most of the literary work of the Victorian era was found to contain flowery prose, circumlocution, excessive use of abstract nouns and a deliberate abstruse language to confuse the readers. When Djuna Barnes wrote her highly intricate work "Nightwood" TS Eliot supported the ambiguous nature of the novel saying" The writers work is only to write, he is not responsible for explaining what is already written there", if writing is seen to be one of the basic means of communication and publication of literary works a method to flourish the radical ideas of the author such statements would come out to be entirely baseless. Eliot himself new five languages and his magnum opus "The wasteland" is truly a hard read. Ezra pound and James Joyce were no different and they both wrote their overly complex works "The Pisan cantos" and "Finnegans wake" respectively. Since then there have been several experimentations almost all of which were praised, however the use of these styles have never been advocated by the professors of creative writing.
David foster Wallace wrote his encyclopedia novel "Infinite jest "with over thousand footnotes, William Sardis "R" had no dialogues at all, William Burroughs "Naked lunch" was split into vignettes and could be read from anywhere, Allen Ginsberg's "A supermarket in California" is an extremely absurd free verse poem, Cormac McCarthy's "Blood Meridian" is an excessively wordy novel and nearly every line requires the dictionary for ready reference! Salman Rushdie's "Midnight's children" is full of Intertextuality, Umberto Eco's "Name for the rose" is a slow themed novel, contrary to all the modern novels which are fast paced and William Faulkner's "As I lay dying" takes stream of consciousness to a whole new level comprising 15 narrators and the story being divided into 59 chapters.
From the instances shown thus it could reasonably be argued that there may be rules for bad writing, but there is no rule for the Good ones. Further, it could be inferred that it's always encouraging to write simple but not simplistic. A good writer should formulate a sound plot, should know its characters and needs to find diction and cadence in his writing. Concrete nouns can help in providing a clear imagery and abstract nouns an in-depth analysis in the various psychological processes of the human mind and finally ending up with the words of William Faulkner" a great writer would be a fool to follow advices, learn from your mistakes!"
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