T. Kingfisher's prose is really good if you're reading a short story about goblins but I have questions about its efficacy in a horror novel
The problem is I'm stodgy and I like when books are written a certain way and it seems like the prevailing style of a lot of contemporary authors is shifting away from what I like, which is obviously neutral in and of itself, but it makes it harder for me, Coriander, to enjoy them
@coriander it’d be more neutral if it wasn’t being pushed on authors by big publishing companies
@Lady oh is that happening? I didn't know that, that definitely makes me feel less stodgy
@coriander i mean it’s always been happening but increasingly so i think; a reductive but probably at least somewhat accurate summary is that YA’s popularity has resulted in publishers trying to make every other genre more like YA
@coriander a slightly more accurate take would be that the amount of money in film adaptations of books means that publishers are looking for books which are easy to film-adapt, and YA just figured out that formula first
@Lady Yeah that makes a lot of sense
@Lady Sorry I don't have anything more in-depth to say lmao you just made solid points
@coriander but it’s complicated. for example over the course of my lifetime publishers have decided to get really into dialogue and shied away from lengthy prose. this is BOTH because dialogue is easy to adapt to film AND because an audience which is more versed in film than literature is more comfortable reading dialogue exchanges than lengthy prose AND (and subsequently) because it is an aesthetic choice in a lot of YA, which preconditioned the preferences of a lot of heavy readers who grew up on the stuff