Hi I'm new here so sorry if I say something to upset anybody. Self-indulgent writing for me is when the author cushions her characters in too much detail. You know, when there are endless lists of what they had for breakfast and lunch, where the author lets you know good and proper that she's really researched this period and isn't going to waste a bit of it. Every movement or speech or thought a character has is swamped in the author's cleverness, so they never really breathe. A lot of literary writing is like that for me, especially period stuff. The writer takes pages just to have someone get up in the morning and if they're going to have a romantic scene, you better book a week off work!

By that defiition, Jenny, you'd almost certainly class Joyce and Proust as self-indulgent in the extreme. That sort of detail is frequently a reflection of the character of the narrator if the story is being voiced in the first person. Some characters are more observant and are inclined to use everyday objects as metaphors for past events, while others are concerned only with their actions in the here and now - and as writer, playing god, it's our duty to be true to the characters we've created while driving the story forward. That in my humble view is not necessarily self-indulgence, unless carried through to extremes - and you might argue that in the case of the two great authors I mentioned above!

Jenny, I know the kind that you mean. It's lack of rigour, really; the author hasn't bothered to work out which of those details are really earning their keep, and which are just padding.

On the other hand, when I'm bored with a novel, I do try to ask myself if it's not that there's nothing there, it's just that I'm missing it.

Emma

Well, I'm afraid I would class Joyce as self-indulgent. I mean, what's 'Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man' supposed to be about? All I can remember of it is Catholic guilt. Page after page of it. I got the point pretty early on and wondered when the real story was going to start, but it never did. As for that sermon about hell that goes on forever – do me a favour; it might be funny if Rowan Atkinson read it out but as a piece of prose it's a waste of space. Give me Herman Hesse any day: there's always a point to his stories, and they've stayed with me years after reading the books. I've never met anyone who's read and enjoyed Ulysses or Finnegan's Wake; well, actually, I've never met anyone who's read them. I agree that you have to be true to your characters but that means it's the writer's job to find interesting characters to write about in the first place. I can't remember a single thing about the main character in 'Portrait' apart from the fact he had a lot of guilt.

Emma, I know what you mean about thinking one has missed the point. But at the same time, I think 'the point' is often not so much a universal one as simply the complicated personal hang-ups of the author.

The self-control, as opposed to indulgence, is recognising which is for public consumption and which should be kept private.

How do we know what we should keep and what we should discard? Sometimes I have been prepared to edit out passages and then subsequently received positive feedback on those particular passages. I can understand how superfluous descriptions are clearly in the realm of 'keeping private', but isn't it difficult to know what to edit out and what to keep? Also, in relation to self-censorship - how far do we go in gauging what should be up for readership and what shouldn't. Sometimes I cut out passages or words in the fear that they might be seen as offensive, but then wonder whether I've made the right decision. Has anyone else had the same experiences?

Yes, I'm doing it all the time now I'm writing a book about my experiences in China.How much of myself to put in, how much detail to leave out - it's hard to know when the right balance is struck, so very useful to post to this site.

I know just how you feel about the unneccessary detail, though, Jenny. A book I read on holiday was 'Ripley Under Water' and it was so overlaid with details of dressing, drinking coffee, getting into cars and eating meals that it became extremely irritating.I had see a film I enjoyed, with that young man who looks a bit like Leonardo Di Caprio, and so was pleased to see a book in the series on someone's shelf when I was on holiday, but you could swear that Patricia Highsmith was getting paid by the word - either that or people were starved of information about life in French villages. I think it was written a while back.

Sheila

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Matt Damon was the young Ripley - much more interesting to watch than the chap in the more recent 'Match Point'- oh dear,I've forgotten his name, too, but it was a similar role. I'm always afraid of losing what I've written if I go to Google from here. The book was published in 1993, but that may just be the paperback.

Jonathan Rhys-Meyers played Chris Wilton in 'Match Point'.

I think part of the problem with erstwhile writers over-describing things, or wrapping their characters in lots of detail is indicative of the fact was a very different place not so long ago. You were less likely to see certain places, or encounter certain kinds of people, because of class, lack of reliable transport and communication such as letters etc too an age to arrive at where they were going. So, perhaps writers of a previous age are only self indulgent in hindsight, and described these things because they were performing a service to people who were unlikely to share the same experiences.

These days of mobile phones, internet and international travel, the descriptions are a lot less needed. Even your average mum in Huddersfield knows what a camel looks like.

Another form of self-indulgent writing is that rare breed of writers who just write with little or no soul behind what they do, just a towering desire for praise and adoration. I guess I'd call that self-indulgence of the worst kind, and missing the entire point about art. It is generally spotted a mile off, and has the effect of curdling your guts somewhat - I call it the 'all mouth no trousers' approach to story writing.

I think to truly embrace the art, humility and the ability to learn are essential. Without them, may as well give up.

JB

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*is indicative of the fact the world was...

Grrr. Typing at work trying not to be noticed!

JB

Hey JennyM, I've read Ulysses all the way through several times and I enjoy it. My favourite book. I'm gonna read it again sometime soon. The Wake was my first meeting with Joyce, in a public library in 1964, and although I've owned several copies since, I have to say I've never read it through, but dipped into it many times and enjoyed it. Portrait I love, although the triple-adjective-fog later on gets my goat (but I accept it as part of the point of view [or pint of view, I suppose]) But the Hell sermon is spot on for realism, and the Christmas dinner scene ... well, there are two pieces of book stuff I've read in my life that I wish I wrote and one is Joyce's Christmas scene, and the other is Lawrence's Rocking Horse Winnner. One thing I love is you can work out the exact date of the Christmas scene from details in Ulysses (it's 25 December to save you looking it up).

Best wishes

Jim

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Oh, and on 'unnecessary detail' (Cornelia), clearly we all have our thresholds, but I rather like detail. The bridge game in Moonraker, the crabs with hot buttered toast, and pink champagne in a pewter mug, in Live and Let Die (have I got the right book there?), the incessant smoking in Day of the Jackal, which makes me nauseous, but I wouldn't be without it -the feeling that there is a world somewhere where smoking doesn't give you cancer ... pure fantasy, and more rewarding to me than Narnia. And the brand names - lingerie, perfume etc - in books like ... what the **** is the Shirley Conran one called, where she namechecks Keturah Brown? Anyway, for me detail is often a feast. But there are limits, of course, even for me. The monthly bulletin of the 'bus chassis number collectors group' is pretty hard going ... xbv867-b and so on.

Cheers

Jim

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Or is it the 26th December? Saint Stephen's day? S**t, my mind is going.

J

Yes, it's St Stephen's Day. Wonderful stuff.

Emma

Sorry, when I mentioned detail I should have distinguised between reading and writing. Yes, I like details, too, when they are interesting. My favorite author used to be Henry James - I've read all of Dickens, Hardy, Lawrence. Where there was a choice when I did my author-based English degree I would choose authors who had written long novels and plenty of them. George Eliot is another that comes to mind. I remember being disappointd that Jane Austen had only written six novels but was delighted by the Gothic novels she was reacting to in 'Northanger Abbey'- I can really recommend 'Castle of Otranto' and the like for piled-on detail. My favourite short story is the very last one in Joyce's 'Dubliners' - The Dead' I was in heaven when I discovered Dostoevsky, although that was earlier.

It's the worst possible preparation for writing for a modern audience, though. Let's face it, flash fiction, sound bites and the graphic novel are the face of the future. Reading for pleasure is too low-tech. The only hope for its continuance is if this energy crisis comes to its logical conclusion. Then we will all be tucked up in bed reading by candlelight and those lovely long novels will be rediscovered.

Sheila

Let's face it, flash fiction, sound bites and the graphic novel are the face of the future. Reading for pleasure is too low-tech.

So it would seem, and yet, the more you head towards the commercial (aka popular/big-selling/rubbish, depending on your PoV) end of the market, the longer the novels get. Your average S&F novel (do they still write those, or have they morphed into something else?) can be 200,000 words, as are the fat SAS-type thrillers my adolescent son loves. Most people still buy a book so that they'll be sunk into a whole world for a nice long time; the only change is that now they want things to be much more plot-heavy and fast-moving. It's the 'literary' end of the market where novels are 65,000, and yet paradoxically the magazine short story has almost died, commercially speaking. Has no-one in bemoaning the death of the short story noticed that they're doing brisk business in the less upmarket women's magazines? Flash fiction, on the other hand, seems to me (I may well be wrong) to be consumed almost entirely by the people who write it.

Emma

Is it not as simple as writing and caring more about yourself than the audience you're writing for?

Nik.

Yes, I think it is. But how does that manifest itself, and why do we read certain kinds of writing as self-indulgent and not others?

Emma

That sounds like the perfect essay question, Emma! How many words? How long have I got?

But seriously, I think (just my opinion which can and has been known to be wrong!) it's got a lot to do with empathy. That and the story being told.

If we're with the writer, or his/her voice, and get where they're going, understand them and like them then I think we'll put up with a lot more. If it's obvious to the reader that the author is either showing-off or deliberatley holding up the narrative for no reason other than to show everybody how "well (s)he can write" then it's gong to irritate and become, in a reader's eyes, self indulgent.

My own pet hate would be the "frustrated poet syndrome." Lines and lines about scenery, sunsets blah, blah, blah! Oh and whenver someone uses a long word where a short one would be more apt.

Does that make sense?

Nik.

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Or when the book is more about the author than the characters and story it is (supposed) to be telling.