suzakugaiden

The phrase suddenly entered my mind. googling turned up results for workshops, but no real descriptions. anyone have any ideas?

Lord Raiden

*shrug* To me it's just another way of saying "solid writing", aka very good quality writing with few if any glitches. Actually, no glitches if I'm correct.

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mammamaia

no clue... i can't stand most jargon, so would simply advise you to ignore it and just write 'well' and in a compelling way that will grab the readers from the first word and not let 'em go till the last...

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lisajane

I've heard of the phrase and I also thought it meant 'solid writing', but not really too sure...

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Londongrey

Concrete writing means staying away from vague descriptions and imagery, it also means staying away from abstractions and abstract words such as love, hate, emotion, etc etc. The basic rule is if your word choice is generic, it is abstract.

Concrete writing means being more precise in your writing in order to provide better clarity. Whether it be prose or poetry, it is important to 'Show' rather than 'Tell'. The difference between simply describing a scene and showing through visual imagery i.e.

Tell: - The man played ball with his dog.

Show: - The dog leapt through the air to catch his ball.


The difference is subtle but the latter is more concrete writing and more precisely describes the scene at hand.

So all you have to remember is; if it is generic, it is not concrete writing and basically adds nothing to whatever your writing.

Hope this helps.

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Dephere

Now I think this is a trick question, after all who is to decide what is concrete writing and what is not? To one person a certain style may be conrete but to another person it may be a horrible piece of writing. Thus the inherit uniqueness of humans.

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Londongrey

It is pretty obvious Dephere. Concrete writing isn't in the eye of the beholder. Either it is vague and abstract or it is concrete and precise.

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Dephere

Well, I am sorry to say but I disagree.

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Londongrey

So what is the difference between vague and concrete for you? Can you give an example?

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TimWrites

You're walking down a sidewalk. It could be your town, it could be any town. You might be whistling, iPodding or just plain eyeballing the peeps. Whatever you're doing, you stop doing it when you come upon a stretch of sidewalk that is roped off by yellow rope held six inches off the ground by four stakes. Within the confines of the rope are three rectangles of pristine sidewalk. Virgin sidewalk. It looks wet, but when you reach down to touch it, you know that it is dry as a bone, any bone. Then you notice something else. Someone else was here before you, long before, long before the concrete was dry. How do you know that? Because your finger just bent upon the new sidewalk and that other person's finger sank right in. And they took advantage of it to wax literary with the world in a mildly humorous manner. His or her finger had written in the soft sidewalk with a jerky script: "Don't tread on me." You laugh, mainly because you are there reading it. If somebody maybe told you the story, you wouldn't have laughed. You do know one thing: That concrete writing will be there forever -- not because it can't be filled it with more concrete, but because the words aren't offensive, they have a message, and they entertain. What more can you ask from a sidewalk?
#
What more can you ask from your own writing?

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Dephere

When concrete is said I do not think it should be synonymous with solid, or precise. Conrete writing is not just about getting your point across in a concise way, but about having a concrete quality. Concrete being overall - great. At least that is how I view it londongrey.

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Londongrey

Show vs. Tell,

good example.

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Dephere

Show vs. Tell is a very key part of writing but that was not exactly the point I was trying to get across.

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Londongrey

Dephere your more talking about Narrative and Tension. Two very important things, however you cannot achieve a good piece without concrete writing, which means showing rather than telling. If as a writer you are unable to use metaphor, extended metaphor or any other tool of imagery other than simply plain description, it is still not concrete writing. The whole point is that any dual meaning in your imagery is understood and adds to your work and Narrative. If it doesn't, that means it is not concrete. If it is not concrete and is purely descriptive it does not give the piece any Tension, it just falls apart into abstraction. Nobody draws a meaning from it.

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suzakugaiden

"after all who is to decide what is concrete writing and what is not?"

No, concrete writing is a concept. Like concret music, it's the opposite of the abstract form. Abstract writing and abstract music aren't really equatable, but still.

"Well, I am sorry to say but I disagree."

That's like saying that you disagree that an apple is a typically red or green fruit that grows on trees.

"having a concrete quality."

No it's not. You can have concrete writing that sucks. It doesn't have anything to do with quality.

Now that LG's explained the concept to me, that's effectively sparked my memory. I believe this might more as an example: Fiction writing is, ideally, concrete, while technical writing is somewhere between abstract and concrete, and stuff like metalanguage things would generally fall strictly into the region of abstract writing.