Quality Prose vs Affected Narcissism

(After Cindy read my earlier blog, we started talking about prose. Affected, clever, and so on. This is what I had to say...)

I was thinking about prose, and affected prose. It's a tricky distinction. Written words created in the present day have something of a drawback that something like Poe or Dickens or what have you does not. When you read fiction written 100 years ago, you automatically take into account that the perspective is dated.

When you read fiction written in the 21st Century, you know it's false in a way. Real people don't talk or think the way they do in novels. We can compare the characters to ourselves and other people in the real world.

So how does a writer go about describing something deep and meaningful, without coming across as affected? Is it word choice and length?

I think that being succinct is a big factor. It's usually clear whether or not too much has been said. There's a point at which the description turns into the writer stroking themselves for their cleverness. If this is true, the difference between heartfelt and affected comes down to editing. Keep the quality, and lose the stroking. Cleverness is good, as long as it comes through the character's voice, not the writer's.