That quote is massively overwritten. It should have just said "overkill"

Have a look at Ursula Le Guin - 'Steering the Craft': Ch 4 - 'Repetition'. (The rest of the book's pretty handy too.)

Repetition and echos can be a powerful tool if used conciously and occasionally.

Is the following sentence overwritten?

Burnishing the sky blood red, the orange glowing sunset hung over the dark western forest of the smoldering city . Keep writing.

Yes again - let me say why I think it doesn't work, though (other than the fact I'm not 100% sure it makes as much sense - if something's orange how come when it burnishes something that something ends up red? Forest of a city - a metaphor too far? The metaphor's confused, but assuming it wasn't, the problems are:

1. too many participles - nowt much is actually happening (the sunset hung being about it), which adds stodge.

2. I know it's unfashionable, but I love beautifully written sentences even if they are overwritten - but a beautiful sentence has a rhythm - it slides off the tongue (kinda the opposite of pitjhy dialogue that you chew up and spit out). Why this doesn't do that is you have three bits - sky blood red", "orange glowing sunset" "dark western forest" that are all constructed in essentially the same way - so there's no development. What you need is best described like music - you either have to have rhythm - with ups and downs, quicks and slows, or cadenzas, where you move slowly and very calculatedly up or down the scale of (over)writing, or sometimes an arpegio (sorry if this is patronising - that's a chord, only where you play the notes that make it up separately), where you take a big word (by which I mean an important noun not a long word)and tease it out by delivering a series of complimentary fragments (somewhat like a haiku).

Let me make a fool of myself by offering to rewrite the sentence in these 3 ways:
a. The sunset hung above the smoking city, burnishing the sky with its blood-red glow. Here the emphasis is entirely on how the words come off the tongue - "above" works where "over" doesn't, for example, because the stress is on the second syllable not the first. You can't have a qualifier for "sky" because for the rhythm to sound right to our ears, it has to go with "glow" and leave a pause with "sky", had to replace "smoldering" with "smoking", because only a 2 syllable word works there and so on.

b. The sunset hung over the smoldering city, its orange glow burnishing the sky blood red. We start simple (no adjectives), then build to the most impactful bit of the sentence (blood red) - the progressive descriptions now serve a purpose.

c. The city smoldered, an oil-black forest under a bloody sky, burnished in the sunset's orange glow. I've changed what words refer to what because I like the idea of the buildings black but glistening (like blood does in moonlight), but what I've done is: present what's happening ("the city smoldered"), give a metaphor - "oil-black forest under a bloody sky" - then echo the metaphor in non-metaphoric terms (OK burnished's kind of a metaphor becsue normally you'd burnish metal not buildings, but...).

That probably sounds really anal, and none of the sentences is any cop (partly because I think you need to "overwrite" very selectively and only to further the plot,and I don't think a sunset does that for me unless we're in a prophecy situation - "you will die when the sy turns red" say), but that's how I'd approach it. And yes, I really do go through that kind of thought process and deconstruction of rhythm with every sentence I write - I might try getting a life instead.


3. Repetition works best when it reinforces, builds, goes somewhere - music again - it's like the theme you vary then return to -this kinda says the same thing a few times.

Now I know I don't have the usual view of language for someone writing in English, but I think if you want your language to work, the principles are sound.

That's my twopenn'orth anyway :-) Nothing personal, though, Eilidh - I liked Silent Resistance very much - both versions I've had

Sounds like Helen's been reviewing my work

Nice analogy. Drunks are usually not only clumsy in expression, but also deluded about the importance of what they have to say. Some people who overwrite fall into that category. However, a perusal of the great philosophers will demonstrate that not all 'drunks' are deluded, and that overwriting may actually represent the path to clarity.

Now whether the path should be shown to the reader is another matter altogether.

Oops, sorry Shujinak

Not a YWO reviewer but a 'proper' one, imbued with authority, validated by common consent... or common apathy, whichever.

Listen. I have received 48 reviews in total. Of these, 10 say my writing should be published, 9 say it is the best they have read on YWO, 5 say they are looking forward to 'seeing what others say', 1 said my narrator was 'arrogant, self pitying and patronising', another has two labradors, 1 hated my story but thought it was brilliant, another 20 'liked it', 5 had clearly not read it, 1 said very well done and gave me all 2s, 1 was just below me in the charts and gave me a favourable review with 2s and 3s in the ratings, 3 said they had never read anything like it and clearly didn't (know what to) think, 3 genuinely hated it and the rest didn't seem to have an opinion.

The point being that YWO reviewers are in themselves, just a statistical sample of the population at large. Fortunately we don't all like the same things (when we do it is called a housing boom until we go bankrupt). The fact that they presume to write doesn't seem to make much difference.

There is little reason to suppose that professional critics are not part of the same population.

Keep the faith, but note that most of 'the great philosophers' are now dead, ie, they lived before word processors were available, thereby suffering from a lack of an iterative and incremental editing technology.

Also, people are less patient with unpublished authors than they are with Socrates: it is all about context and validation. The context provided by the odd millenia in the top ten have effectively validated Socrates despite his overwritten sentences.

On the other hand, if you have read Alan Bennett's latest book (An Uncommon Reader, I think), the Queen, on a reading binge, drops an Ian McEwan novel on the floor. The corgis pounce, ripping it to shreds.

If I was Ian McEwan, I would sit up and take notice of THAT reviewer.

Andrew

PS: I subscribe to Tommi's analogy about music. That is the acid test of writing. Both what it says AND what it sounds like (have you ever tried to read Lacan?).

Back in the family cave, did narrative evolve from music, or music from narrative?

The only sensible answer to any chicken and egg conundrum is: a turkey (although not this one: the egg seems to have got stuck)

Thank you Tommi and Lexi. Great work, Tommi.

Yes, I am feeling the same way about the sentence. I was curious whether someone would like it.

It's not my writing, by the way. The example is from someone outside YWO. The sad part is that the author had been praised for her powerful description. I feel that there was a great deal of mockery involved.

I used the sentence to show what overwriting is. I feel that often the term gets confused with info-dumping and too much expository.

Thanks. Keep writing.