Quick question:

What is sentimental writing and what's wrong with it?

Geoff

The obvious answer is that sentimental writing deals with a certain set of very basic emotions - love, grief, friendship, happiness, loss - that we rather enjoy feeling , but of course so does lots of perfectly good writing that isn't sentimental in the least.

I think I find writing sentimental about such things when it's full if clichés, pressing the known 'right' buttons like a cheaply-made Hollywood tear-jerker, resorting to well-worn ways of making the reader/viewer come over all emotional with either sadness or happiness. The gambolling puppy, the dying mother's farewell to her children, the newly-opened rose with a single dewdrop trembling on a petal... When these things are imagined from scratch and expressed with all the particularity of a real situation, with the odd twinges and quirks that are always there, then it's not sentimental, it's good writing. That said, there are some subjects - including the above examples perhaps - which have been used for so long to jerk tears that it's very, very hard to find a fresh way to evoke them.

Of course, calling something 'sentimental' is a good, quick jibe at any heart-felt emotion that the reader doesn't share. Perish the thought that one's coolness might be warmed by a description of a crying child or a beautiful sunset. And more honestly, I might find a greetings-card rhyme sentimental and clichéd, while someone who's not a great one for words and has never heard moon rhymed with June before might be genuinely moved, and feel it expressed exactly - and better than he ever could - how much he loves his wife.

Emma

Thanks for that Emma.

It's something that's been playing on my mind for some time now. there are a number of themes in my book that play around this idea. Themes about memory and how it changes, how in our minds they can be sculpted and shaped until they no longer resemble the reality of the actual event. It also deals with issues about how western culture has become so cynical and therefore shuns emotional experience by negatively characterising it as sentimental.

There are also some scenes in which the character has a particularly emotional recollection or experience only to find himself second guessing and doubting it becuase of the way society has come to percieve such things. ANd I gues what my problem is trying to demonstrate this to the reader as some of the doubts about thoughts and feelings only appear much later in the book. This leaves me with the problem of trying to write something that could appear to be sentimental and even melodramatic, and with no immediate explanation I feel it might destract or put off the reader.

Geoff

Hm, I see what you mean. I suspect it'll all be in the writing: if you can imagine these potentially sentimental situations out in all their odd reality, and then find original ways to write it, you'll get away with it. Easier said than done, but excellent training. And there is a trick you can sometimes pull off, in acknowledging the thing that you fear a reader might have been thinking - a crass example would be the character thinking, 'it ought to have been sentimental, but somehow it wasn't, because...'

I once had a plot point which turned on three bunches of Valentine's Day flowers arriving one after the other, as seen through the eyes of a very solemn 16 year old. It was potentially very absurd, but I didn't want the reader to get the giggles, so I made the girl see the absurdity, and yet realise that what it signified about what was going on in her family wasn't absurd at all, so that her giggles - and I hope the reader's were painful.

Emma