This sounds like you're saying that Asimov does have a writing style, but you don't like it. Which is also fine.

Everybody has a writing style. His isn't particularly artful.

I still maintain that this is bullshit. Ideas are articulated with words, yes, but you have to have them first.

The idea behind Cold Kiss is not what makes it a good novel. It's just a plot bunny. It's a good plot bunny but many other writers could've executed it and it wouldn't have been as good as your book. The fact that your style and process is somewhat transparent to you is to be expected because it's your voice and that's how you write.

Maybe finding the right idea seems the most important to you because that's the spark that fires up your writing engine. That the writing itself flows from that idea. But I think that's just because you're very in touch with your own style as a writer. But I don't think the generative idea is as valuable as the writing style which you've developed over time which is as natural to you as dancing is to a trained ballerina. Her technique is invisible to her. She's using it to express the choreography.

But you get that I'm saying you do have to have an idea to tell first, yes? I'm saying that there are novels out there that have very little plot/content/whatever you want to call it, but are filled with lovely, pointless language.

Pointless language is as bad as clunky language, IMO. Neither of them use the tools of writing in the strongest way.

But knowing a subject in detail

I don't think you're risking getting called a snob because you know details, Hec. That's deflecting.

I have never read any Asimov, but I am picking up the I, Robot audiobook right now. All right, Scott Brick, make this serviceable prose worth listening to.

Some critics can certainly be pretentious assholes, but I also want to say that it's fine to love things that aren't actually good and critics pointing out the non-goodness is not, in an of itself, being snobby. I define a good work of art as one that uses all of its tools well. Not just plot or language or storytelling, etc. but all of them.

I am more familiar with film criticism so I will use that for an example. I don't care that some films I love are not liked by critics. I can love "Summer School" with Mark Harmon and not feel that film critics who hate it are snobs. Just because I love it does not mean it is as good a film as, oh, "Philadelphia Story." It's still seems to me to be useful to have the ideal of goodness, even if that can be hard to define. I don't think saying it's all subjective will EVER mean that "Billy Madison" is a great film, no matter how many millions of people enjoyed it. It's enjoyable, which is good, but not GOOD.I don't think I am a snob for pointing that out.

The thing with Asimov, and I just re-read Nightfall thanks to this discussion, is that his prose is often effectively transparent. Reading it, the story, the *what* of what's happening is what you notice, even 70 years later. It's aged exceptionally well in large part because of that.

Nightfall is probably the best example, but I think "The Ugly Little Boy" is damn close.

I don't think you're risking getting called a snob because you know details, Hec. That's deflecting.

What's your definition of a snob?

It's certainly not someone who knows details. I wasn't the one that called out criticism, so I'm not going to go into detail about *that* meaning, but knowing details? Isn't remotely a definition of snob. It's not even required. I'm just not sure why you'd come to that conclusion.

You'd have to ask Connie precisely what she meant. But I assume it's something vaguely like the dictionary definition.