Contrary to popular belief, Dickens did NOT get paid by the word. However, many of his readers read his novels in serial form, and paid monthly to receive the journal, which published the current installment of his novel. Later, the successful serials would be published as a book or a book in several volumes. So, in a sense, he was paid for keeping his readers' interest, rather than by the word.
Dickens does tend to be quite verbose. What are some of the benefits of his "wordy" style of writing, and what are some of the detriments?
8 comments:
Oh boy. Dickens does seem to enjoy finding the most round about and confusing way to describe simple things, and he sometimes forgets to describe some important items (like setting). The imagery he uses is fantastic, though, and you can picture everything he describes. That is, if you can understand what he is saying.
I like Dickens style of writing. His imagery is fantastic but I think he should have put some explanation into some of the places such as the Temple in London. One thing bothers me that sometimes in long sequences of dialouge between Pip and the other characters, he interchanges names. For example when Pip talked to Mr. Jaggers he first referred to him as Mr. Jaggers, the he refferd to him as "my guardian." That was an easier example to tell that it was again Mr. Jaggers. Also sometimes during long sequences of dialouge the speaker changes with no hint beforehand.
Good points.
Trevor,
I agree that the way he interchanges names is especially confusing. Dickens called "the convict" a total of five different names in the last chapter.
Dickens definately has a very interesting writing style. At some points I love the way he uses so many unique words to describe an intense seen, but at other times I feel he uses wayyy too many words to describe something so irrelevant. At times I would like to say to him, "Please, just get to the point!" On the other hand, I am enjoying the book and story line and it is a book I would probably not choose to read of my choice and it's good to expand my interests!
In the last chapter I read, Dickens was describing a March day and said, " It was one of those March days when the sun shines hot and the wind blows cold- when it is summer in the light, and winter in the shade" (Dickens 462). I love the way he words this, I felt like I was right there with Pip. Dickens can be a little too wordy for me sometimes and he goes round about ways to get to what he is saying. He can be very quite in his writings and very loud in how he lets the reader see change in characters. Miss Havisham basically melted in front of Pip, when Jaggers you could barely notice when he changed his character. Dickens likes to keep you on your toes when you read, the only problem with that is that you need some major caffine intake to get through all the, can I say the word, boring reading to get to the intense parts of the novel.
Anja, I love that description, too. We've had some of those days lately!
Dickens uses many words to describe simple objects. At times, it can be helpful for the reader to picture an object in their head. However, many times his wordy descriptions leave me confused. Sometimes while I was reading, I got to a long description, and would forget what was happening before the description. While reading the book I thought that his descriptions were unecessary. Now that we have finished, I realize that while some of them were unecessary, a lot of them had a lot of meaning and were needed in the book
I do agree with both sides of the arguement. Yes, I do sometimes feel that Dickens has dragged something out, and made a long discription of something so simple. After reading the book, I feel that even though the discriptions were long and tidious, sometimes they were needed to get the full point across.
Well I just believe that Dickens should have found a medium and used mild discriptions for minor things and his trademark long tidious ones for important things for mood, setting and other important things.
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