Now I've got this improved list, but I'm unsure of priorities. It seems like the narrator voice (protagonist's or otherwise) is the first part of the narrative the reader encounters, but I doubt it's the most important factor. Meaning seems a good pick for MVP, but the reader won't know the full meaning until the story is complete.
To be more specific, which factors are most important for keeping the reader involved until they're even willing to ask the other questions?
(edited list)
Narrator: Is this poetic-prose voice interesting enough to spend quite a bit of time with?
Protagonist: Is this character someone I can root for?
Antagonist: Is this a tension I can relate to, with plausible motives?
Setting: Is this an interesting place for things to happen and are the details accurate/plausible?
Plot: What's going to happen next?
Structure: Is the story-action engaging and progressing towards a satisfying climax?
Meaning. Is this story saying something interesting about the moral human condition?
Language Surface: Is the text edited so I don't have to wince every few pages?
posted
A close-read survey of publication guidelines and editor comments place voice at the top priority too, more from a lackluster voice being common as air, dirt, and water. Bland voice across the board raises lively voice to a priority due to supply is low and, ergo, in demand.
A general sense of the common dry voice is of a bland and rigid formal grammar read and encouraged for formal essays. This is the school grammar expectation and partly the everyday conversation grammar and partly the journalism grammar and a hodgepodge of flat idiom and un-poetic grammar.
Common diction and syntax features of the voice are excessive -ing words, excess use and misuse of connector function words, conjunctions and prepositions, misuse of particles, adverbs, and adjectives, run-on or fused sentences, jumbled causation, passive and static voice, and a too on-the-nose direct address of over-explanation, for example, excess simile and that is too congruent on its face, like these are too-direct similes: angry like a newly risen sun, dark as burgundy wine, joyous as Sunday's hallelujah choir.
A poetic prose voice uses words and syntax to enhance meaning and emotion, especially dramatic action's meaning and emotion. Not per se rhymes or rhythms, though prose's poetic voice entails several rhythms of a complex structure. Anapest and trochee, iamb, accentual verse, dactyl, amphibrach, mixes of three-syllable and two-syllable meters measured in parallel yet incongruent structures, emphasis strength that rises and falls, makes and breaks a cadence, not a formal rhythm, though that reflects the normal rhythm of speech, and isn't, these are subtle and call no undue attention to their rhythms.
Another poetic prose voice feature is emphasis. Far more complex and as well subtler than rhythm metrics, emphasis accomplishes prose's poetry from varied punctuation, pace, tone, cadence, strength of expression and emotion -- emotion most of all, raw, painful, funny, pitiful, proud, enthusiastic, forlorn resignation, glorious emotion -- and, well, diction and syntax chosen for poetic effect. Poetic prose is aesthetic, is emotional. However, writing emphasis is intuitive by ear and can be learned also.
Again, prose's poetry voice is a matter most of diction and syntax use that enhances and amplifies meaning and intent and emotion, is immediately accessible, uses words and structures that suit their functions, not rhymes or rhythms use, and surprise and delight like a firecracker string thrown into a bonfire, crazy like a hit loon, dumb as a deadfall log, quiet as an iron foundry; or metaphor, tazed by a crossfire squall; the sky broke out ill cottonball clouds a yellow of phlegm, and feverish chills and hot sweats; my love is a red, red rose -- blossom, bouquet, beauty -- thorns and all.
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posted
Thanks, extrinsic, for the enthusiasm-revving recommendations for poetic-prose voice (or poetic prose-voice). And thanks also IRWhite for the balancing input.
Is there a page on the Hatrack where y'all have already gathered examples of poetic prose voice? I probably need a pressure release valve so I don't start littering my manuscript with darlings I'll have to kill later.
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posted
Poetic prose features come up in small pieces here and there on Hatrack, my comments included, none per se centralized. On the other hand, overly purple prose gets comments, too, here and there -- a troublesome scale to manage: some too little, some too much, some just right. Dear Goldilocks . . .
See The Art of Fiction, John Gardner, Chapter 6, "Technique," for a discussion of prose's poetry methods. Also, see Noah Lukeman's A Dash of Style, for poetic punctuation focused methods and rationales.
From those bases, analyze writing for those techniques and methods. Any popular or critically acclaimed story or stories will do. Also compare to one's own writing and as well others' works in progress.
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