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There's an interesting stylistic thing I've noticed lately, since I've been going through a heavy-duty fanfic-reading spell in a fandom with a lot of good writers. I'm not sure why I never noticed this before, and I don't know if it's universally true, but it seems to be very true of this and other fandoms I've spent a lot of time in.
It's a style difference between the way that slash and gen writers tend to write ... the good ones anyway. Slash writing is very sensual and lush. Even when it's not describing naked male bodies, there is a rich multi-textured style to the writing -- a way of describing things in terms of all five senses, spending several paragraphs describing a sunset or developing a setting. You can often recognize a story that's going to develop into slash even before the actual slash, because of a lingering sensuality in the descriptions of soft hairs on someone's arm glowing in the sun, of the texture of a leaf's edge or the glimmer of moonlight on water. The characters' inner life is similarly rich and detailed, where many paragraphs may be spent just on the thoughts passing through someone's mind in a moment.
The writing style in most gen fic tends to be more stripped down and bare, more focused on describing events and less on the fine details. Now, I don't mean that in a derogatory way, and actually, of the two, I tend to prefer the more basic, less flowery style, especially for long works. This applies to regular published books as well as fanfic. Probably it comes out of my reading preferences, which lean more towards SF and action/adventure and less towards romance and drama. Not to say I can't enjoy the slower, more textural works; they're just not usually my first preference.
What really made me notice the difference is that even when slash writers do gen fic, which many of them do (vignettes, at least), you can still see that sensuality in the writing. Because of this, a lot of the best, really exquisite short gen pieces -- from the perspective of being really well written and beautiful to read, if not necessarily pushing my particular fan buttons -- are written by slash writers.
Now, keep in mind here that my exposure to slash is pretty limited. I'm not opposed to it on principal, but it's not my first choice as a reader and I don't tend to seek it out. So I'm mainly coming to this from an outsider's perspective. Still, I'd be interested to know what other people think, especially those who have more experience than I do with reading both.
It's a style difference between the way that slash and gen writers tend to write ... the good ones anyway. Slash writing is very sensual and lush. Even when it's not describing naked male bodies, there is a rich multi-textured style to the writing -- a way of describing things in terms of all five senses, spending several paragraphs describing a sunset or developing a setting. You can often recognize a story that's going to develop into slash even before the actual slash, because of a lingering sensuality in the descriptions of soft hairs on someone's arm glowing in the sun, of the texture of a leaf's edge or the glimmer of moonlight on water. The characters' inner life is similarly rich and detailed, where many paragraphs may be spent just on the thoughts passing through someone's mind in a moment.
The writing style in most gen fic tends to be more stripped down and bare, more focused on describing events and less on the fine details. Now, I don't mean that in a derogatory way, and actually, of the two, I tend to prefer the more basic, less flowery style, especially for long works. This applies to regular published books as well as fanfic. Probably it comes out of my reading preferences, which lean more towards SF and action/adventure and less towards romance and drama. Not to say I can't enjoy the slower, more textural works; they're just not usually my first preference.
What really made me notice the difference is that even when slash writers do gen fic, which many of them do (vignettes, at least), you can still see that sensuality in the writing. Because of this, a lot of the best, really exquisite short gen pieces -- from the perspective of being really well written and beautiful to read, if not necessarily pushing my particular fan buttons -- are written by slash writers.
Now, keep in mind here that my exposure to slash is pretty limited. I'm not opposed to it on principal, but it's not my first choice as a reader and I don't tend to seek it out. So I'm mainly coming to this from an outsider's perspective. Still, I'd be interested to know what other people think, especially those who have more experience than I do with reading both.
