Good writing is the living, breathing heart of a great book, and by good writing I don't necessarily mean soaring arias of prose, although they have their place. I mean using the fewest number of words to convey the most meaning: every phrase should carry its full payload, without wasting so much as a syllable. That way your writing will remain lean and taut and highly charged.
Let me give you an example. The other day I heard a man say, "I've a daughter lives down that way." I thought it was the most extraordinarily revealing phrase: by saying a daughter, he completely depersonalised the relationship between them in a way which spoke volumes. If he had said, "My daughter lives down that way," there would have been a sense of connectedness, of possession, even; certainly of belonging.
This shows very clearly what a huge effect a tiny change in words, in phrasing, can have. It is at this nuts and bolts level that you need to work when you are writing. A forensic attention to detail is incredibly important if you want your prose to be concentrated, with an internal drama all of its own. Forget the purple prose and concentrate on the precision of each individual line, because that's where the really interesting chemistry occurs.
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