Writing : Let's Fight About Minimalism!

Well... minimalism is like calculus. Continuous, often difficult in its application, but simple in its truth...

For me, minimalism is all about precise words to produce the desired effect. So, again, where do we want this to go?

Ding-ding-ding-ding-ding...

[Been about a month since I logged in. Howdy.]

So, minimalism. One needs to differentiate between mere "economy" and true "minimalism" (that is, if one wishes to posit "minimalism" as anything but a relative term). Hemingway was more "minimal" in his writing than some people, but he could be descriptive. One could say he sometimes wrote more than he absolutely had to, regardless of his whole "iceberg" concept. Providing the minimum of plot or expository details is not the same as using truly minimal language. One can describe an object with one word, or one can talk about a praline for two pages using short, minimal sentences all the while. Two pages of minimalist writing on a praline: Is this possible? Could you get to two pages and still be writing in "minimal" style? In a way, perhaps yes; in another way, perhaps no.

Need "minimalism" be minimal in both language choice and in aggregate arrangement of those choices?

There's the question as I see it. If not, one could say a plot is minimal though the language employed is not, or vice-versa.

"Minimalism and the Short Story" by Cynthia J. Hallett, Studies in Short Fiction. Fall96, Vol. 33 Issue 4, p487.

In literary analysis the term "minimalism" refers not only to a certain understated style of fiction writing, but also to an assembly of characteristics that are particularly ascribed to the short story, for both minimalism and the short story are governed by an aesthetic of exclusion. Generally in such texts, distraction and clutter are stripped from the depiction of human commerce until the reader encounters the whole of society reflected in slivers of individual experience. Here, the unstated is present as a cogent force.

We can break it down for Trump supporters, I suppose.

:-)

Suppose I were to analyze this:

Her mouth was intensely ovoid, an almond mouth, of citrus crescents. And under that sling, her breasts were like young fawns, sheep frolicking in hyssop – Psalms were about to pour out of me.

I suppose it's minimalist enough, but for me simplicity is better.

A mouth that gives an almond to my lips. Under embrace feeling the soothing words, I drift off into my own mythical Eden searching for Adam's fruit.

To me minimalist is about poetic directness, as specific as possible as one can make it. Now with that said, minimalism has become a touch harder for me in switching to pantsing novellas. I suppose that skillset is nirvana of a different fruit.

If minimalist can be broken up into two things, minimalist-language and minimalist-plot, is minimalist-language the same thing as plain-spoken?  

As I understand it, minimalism, or at least the writing style of Chuck Pahlahniuk, Tom Spanbaeur and Amy Hempel isn't minimalist simply because it uses precise language or short sentences or anything like that. It seems to me like it's an anti-Victorian novel style. First person POV and on the body descriptions rather than third person omniscient to make the stories very personal, for example. We're very much in the protagonist's head, getting everything filtered through them, rather than reading lush descriptions of the landscape or pages or page after page of historical events.

@ Jose

Agreed - you're not in their head in the sense that you're just reading their internal monolgue, you are experiencing the things that happen to them so that you feel what they feel rather than read what they think.

I like the Hallett description. An "aesthetic of exclusion" is exactly what "minimalism" could display. If it weren't about using "less", it wouldn't have been accurately called "minimalism". Chekov -> Carver -> tons of people. Chekov's moonlight reflecting off a sliver of broken glass is a way of "showing" the moon while excluding the moon itself. By analogy, a character's momentary behavior is the "sliver," their mental state and overall experience is the "moon."

This doesn't address the concept of "minimalist language" unless whatever language employed in such writing becomes "minimalist" by way of its author's agenda.

I think as soon as we say "minimalist language" we can only refer to economy of words. And the Hallett description works well for minimalism as an artistic style.

It works the same way as cubism in writing, which is about providing multiple perspectives on a single moment. The same for surrealism and magical realism.

We don't have cubist language, nor surrealist language, etc.

I can't, but you can, so we can't, but they can, and them, but not us. 

It is possible to have minimalist use of words. 

I prefer exact more and more when it comes to prose and description.

Also, because I'm actively against anything Thuggish says. Everyone deserves an antagonist.

 Makes me think of Picasso's bicycle seat bull, where the wide ass of the seat is the top of the bull's head and the handlebars create the horns, the nose of the seat pointed to the earth, arms of the handlebars raised to the sky. This arrangement of the fewest elements to express the most complex, is a sculptural example of minimalism, for me. A coagulation of one of the senses, in this case sight, where seeing an image of such simplicity leaves one speechless, joyful, and in awe.

Were I blind an example might be the chime of a guitar harmonic. It is the  transfer of  data from one brain to another via the fastest possible route and conveyance,

in the nature of Helen Keller's explosion of understanding when Annie taught her to spell water. it is what must be present for understanding to occur, no more to confuse, and no less to baffle, using what's at hand.

I just explained minimalism to myself. Tomorrow it will be something different. What fun was that.

This begins to remind me of Shakespeare and how he used different language in his plays so the audience knew things about the speaker outside of the actual prose.

He used iambic for nobility and the wealthy; he used simple prose for the commoner; and he used rhyme for when people were under a sort of spell, which was often because he considered love to be a spell.

It was really telling in some places. If someone was expressing their love, but they didn't speak in rhyme, then the audience could tell that the motives were false. And the opposite, if a character desperately wanted to hide his/her feelings, they would still speak in rhyme.

So, with that in mind, I'm sure we could use minimalist language, surrealist langauge, even cubist, if we wanted to develop a work................... (I have an idea....bye).....

EDIT: And Thuggish is right. I am an absolutely horrible writer who knows nothing, never knew anything, and will rightly go to the grave forever in obscurity. Forever the reader, never the writer. I am the person people tolerate, just to be nice, and it's what jesus would want.

In the naaaa-vyyyyy...

Little late to the party here but my working definition of minimalism in prose, poetry, even oratory is that each and every word has to count. Each one has to have a direct role in carrying the message or theme of the piece to the receiver. So yes the craft rules of stripping out adverbs and the like are useful BUT sometimes you need adverbs and adjectives galore to convey the point.

Cheers,

Chris