>>24828111
I think this is all very sound advice. Even if it's not eternal dogmatic truth, it will lead to better writing than trying to force prose into a sort of VR experience that invites readers into your beautiful mind palace. Amateur writing always feels like a desperate attempt to communicate 'the movie in your head', instead of focusing on the words on the page. But!
>I've read far too much prose that made me think "can we move on already?" This is especially true with older novels.
I think older novels are the exception to what you're saying (as long as you can project yourself into the context of the people who originally read them). The literary theorist Frederic Jameson talks about a Balzac story that begins with a lengthy, detailed description of a nice house - no characters, no plot, just house facts. He makes the point that, today, a similar description would usually be given only through a character's eyes, as a description of what the house means to them emotionally, what memories it recalls. But in the early 19thC when Balzac was writing (says Jameson), because society was more coherent and communal, and people's experiences and desires more similar, it was as if that description already *was* being filtered through a character's eyes - the eyes of the collective consciousness of French middle-class society. They were all on the same page, and when Balzac fantasises about a neat garden or a cosy kitchen or whatever, his readers would have shared in the fantasy, felt the words evoke the same desires, and recalled the same struggles for prosperity in the recent past of their society. Whereas today, if a /wg/ anon gives us lengthy paragraphs of scene description, the raindrops dripping from the trees etc., it feels as remote from us as if they were describing the different varieties of half-elf in their private worldbuilding project.