I may be getting out of my depth here, but I’ll explain what I mean as best I can and then someone can come along, say it succinctly and disagree.

A writer might have a style that means long flowing sentences and verbosity. It may also challenge and force you to re-read. That may tighten up a bit during moments of tension, but essentially it’s still the same style, it has a certain rhythm to it.

I’ve not read any DeLillo but stick one of his sentences in the middle of a Dan Brown (i only read the one, honest!), it’s probably going to feel out of place. It may be the best sentence in the entire book but to the reader… it’ll feel like tripping over their own shoelaces.

I’d say every book has sentences that trip readers up… not because they are meant to challenge and force you to re-read, but because they are the sort of sentences that your first readers highlight and say “revise” and you’ll never find them all. And, of course it’s subjective, but if a reader finds they encounter a large number of these sentences over the course of the novel, that they can’t get the rhythm of the prose leaving them feeling almost breathless, then I’d say they’d call the book ‘clunky’.

Clunky, like a clunky ride in an old banger, the reader is constantly jolted out of immersion in the piece and loses that sense of confidence in the writing which is vital to enjoyment of a book. I don’t think it is so much about rhythm, actually. Words that seem innapropriate to meaning, or unnecessarily difficult. Images that are ill-thought out, do not stand scrutiny. Dialogue that is not honest or convincing. But in the end it’s really like saying badly written or well written, it tends to be a rather lazy shorthand for I did or did not like this.

I think you are being overly harsh on the use of “clunky” in reviews. If the review is in a short format then “clunky” says a lot in a small space.
For me clunky dialogue is something I couldn’t imagine people being able to speak aloud. That covers the range from real people to actors/professional speakers – if it’s on the page and couldn’t be spoken it’s clunky. This takes me out of the story and, as Joe said, that’s a bad thing.
Now if it happens to be a character who for some bizarre reason speaks in clunky, then i guess you could get away with that. I’d question why an author would want to do that though as taking someone out of the book everytime the character speaks seems like a very bad idea. You could argue that you are trying to be “realistic” but in that case you may as well ditch plot and theme as well and just transcribe the conversations of people on the tube.

I think I’ve never used “clunky” in any review. But this post has been great because it’s made me think about a few things. And I’ve read more than a few great comments here.

I agree that it looks like it’s laziness just to say “clunky” and not to give any more reasons. I kinda understand why laziness can happen, though, and why it shouldn’t.

It can happen because, I think, it’s harder to write a negative review, at least for me. Which ties in with the next point:

It shouldn’t happen because in case of a negative review, I, for one, feel more responsible in giving satisfactory explanations about what and why I didn’t like it. Which makes me think even more about the book, which can stir some amount of doubt, which can bring up more questions etc.

Why should graceful dialogue be all that’s good, when people from poor backgrounds don’t speak with graceful Received Pronunciation?

That’s big-ass hairy bollocks, so it is, man. Aye, yer talking pish if ye think that fuckin RP is the fuckin bee’s knees when it comes tae fuckin grace in a fuckin sentence, for the love of Christ. Ya blethering numpty.

With all due respect.

Seriously though, clunk is onomatopoeic, conjuring up a discordant sound somewhere between a clank and a heavy thud. Hell, for me it even has attached robotic imagery (I think of the Tin Man or those robots from early Flash Gordon serials). That conceptual richness makes it way more efficient than some convoluted descriptive blather about rhythmic disruptions rendering prose awkward in its articulation. It’s not that this is a subjective judgement, but that we’re talking about a general cack-handedness as evidenced in a disparate multiplicity of low-level fuck-ups. Bum notes. It’s not that the high C’s are all generally flat. It’s not that the semiquavers are all out of time. It’s just that there’s a clumsiness to the articulation throughout.

Would you say that someone constantly spills wine glasses, trips over their own feet, bumps into things, knocks over salt, fumbles rugby balls, and so on, and so on, and so on? Or would you just say they’re clumsy? In fiction, yeah, you’d show rather than tell, but in critique you’re looking for a concise encapsulation. It’s not lazy but ergonomic, gets the point across more effectively in one word than you might manage in ten.

Thing is, Spoken English does have natural rhythm patternings, irregular but discernible enough that you can largely tell when they go awry. Leastways, it sounds that way to me, and I have vague recollections of English Language lecturers going on about stress-timing and other such malarky, in detail that suggested this was pretty much at the level of “yeah, we’ve studied it and spoken English has these distinct patternings”. Those rhythms may be subtle enough it takes skill to replicate them, but I reckon that’s where the “read it aloud to see if it flows” maxim comes in.

Anyways, when someone hasn’t yet developed an ear for those rhythms they’re often guilty of *all* possible disruptions, in my experience. Some sentences are too long, others too short, while yet others simply trip over themselves halfway through. With a klutz, it would be misleading to simply say they have a specific problem with holding wine glasses, and it’d be over-egging the pudding to detail all their fluffs and bumblings, when you can just say that they’re a klutz.

It’s a little more complex than that, cause *all* written dialogue is formalised to some extent, with even the most “realistic” bearing little resemblance to the way people actually speak in real life, in terms of elisions, redundancies, pauses, interruptions, etc.. So, yeah, some writers going for a more realistic approach might well end up irking a reader who expects something more stylised, with all the rough edges smoothed off. But on the whole there’s a backbone of musicality, a fluidity to natural speech that you find in a Glaswegian drunk swearing at his missus as much as you find it in, say, Gore Vidal excoriating an opponent in a TV debate.

That’s the way I’d use the term clunky, at least. I’ve no doubt some would apply it to particular styles of dialogue/prose — the staccato rhythms of Noir which I’d say are *clipped*, for example — because that style is outside their comfort zone and they have a sodding tin ear. Those people are just wrong, IMHO. ;P

I agree that clunky is a ‘clunky’, lazy word choice. Very unspecific.

Another one I can’t stand is ‘edgy’. Talk about vague and overused.

You’re definitely wrong with equating “concise” as “lazy”, when it comes to reviews. A review is an attempt to clearly describe what the reviewer thinks of a book as ecomomically as possible. If a review of a book is longer than the book it is a guide not a review. I think you’re looking at reviews with your writer’s hat on.

I think you’re wanting an explanation for what makes something “clunky” goes far deeper than you may think. I’d tie it in with humanity’s ability to understand language in that we can instictively pick it out without necessarily explaining why. Think about it in terms of music (which is essentially the same thing as language). It’s very hard to explain exactly why we like a certain song but we can tell when something is music and when it’s just noise.

I love all the definitions of clunky that I’ve read here. As a tecknical word, I can see where many good dialogues could and should be “clunky”, which I think of as meaning chunky, lacking grace, perhaps having an irregular rythm, inconsistancies. Realistic dialogue, dialogue wherein the story actually progresses (requireing change and conflict) should not necessarily flow smoothly, poeticly.

On the other hand, the term “clunky” in all it’s vagueness usually is meant as a bad thing. I generally take it to mean that the flow of the dialog is uneven and interrupted in its presentation, not in the nature of the dialog itself, at least if the critic has any understanding of the literature, writing, the characters involved, etc. Factors that would make a dialog clunky, then, would be interrupting a phrase or sentence at an inappropriate location to describe an accompanying action or gesture, choppy sentences that come across as unnatural, overly formal, or otherwise inappropriate for the character, and having a character describe off-scene activity at length in a way that is more appropriate for a backflash than for dialog.

If a critic is using clunky to mean choppy, broken, irregular, even when it is perfect and consistent for the characters at a point when realistic is appropriate (sometimes it just isn’t, but that’s a whole different line of discussion), then the critic would probably do well to choose a more specific and meaningful a word to make clear whether they are objecting, and if so, what aspect of it they are really objecting to.

Mark, this is one of the few places polar views get discussed without things dissolving into a flame war ;.
I think we can both agree that size doesn’t matter Being concise/verbose does not make a review better/worse. Being to the point usually makes things easier to undertand though in terms of a review.

The discussion does seem to be drifting into one about review qualoity moreso than clunky dialogue, which i’m sure could make a good post in itself.
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Hello Mark,

I hope I’m not barred from this discussion or from your site. Certainly, I think I might have something useful to say on the subject, as I more than half suspect that in our emails, I have very likely used the word clunky. Let me be more clear.

I think clunky, while inherently and appropriately inelegant, is a perfectly serviceable word. Especially when applied with an eye (or an ear) to its definition as “clumsy or awkward.” And used in a critique of someone’s writing, it is not without value.

Fiction is in no small part the art of telling lies which sound like the truth. As writers, we use our prose, especially in dialog between characters, to convince the reader of things that haven’t happened, never have, and perhaps never will. If our writing is not carefully and thoughtfully constructed, it is all too easy to see the scenery of the real world poking intrusively through. Bad prose then, that is clunky, is a bit like driving a square wheeled jalopy with a rusted-through floorboard across a half-built bridge which dissolves into thin air before we reach the other side. It breaks us out of the story and exposes the kindly lies of the author to the harsh, unblinking light of day.

Smooth or flowing for me then, isn’t what marks out good prose. Nor does a lack of the same make its opposite number. But clumsy, cliched writing on the other hand, can drive the careful reader crazy, because we can sense that what is being said isn’t true, not true to the story, not true to the people who are speaking it, and not true to the story that is meant to unfold. By exposing the small lies (and obviously, sometimes characters are *meant* to be unreliable narrators, unpredictable, or even inconsistent in their diction, and certainly, some use speech that is rustic, ungrammatically polished, or otherwise far from formal, but we can tell this as well, generally, when penned by the hand of skilled author) we are shaken from our happy conceit, and the whole of the superstructure of outright fabrication becomes clear. This is in part, why it takes a very skilled writer to jump back and forth, breaking through the “4th dimension” of the printed page with a knowing wink at the reader. Many lesser try, and stumble.

And remember, words aren’t lazy. It’s just lazy people who are imprecise in their usage. But as others in this thread have pointed out, there is a fine line between useful brevity and a personal shorthand vocabulary that leaves other readers in the dark. In think that clunky has a place in both.

Best wishes,

Eric Edwards

I heartily agree with Eric’s fourth paragraph (not counting Hello Mark), that’s exactly what I was trying to get at higher up. It’s not so much about rhythm – jagged, staccato, brutal language can be just as effective as flowing, liquid language under the right circumstances. It’s lack of truth, lack of thought, lack of care that makes things clunky.

I’m surprised by people not understanding the term “liquid” applied to prose; it seems pretty simple to me. Clunky, liquid — they’re both metaphors, the one comparing prose to a mechanical system, the other comparing it to a dynamical system. On the one hand, you have language seen as an articulation of discrete components, words as nuts and bolts, cogs and gears, with the implication being that this machine isn’t working properly. On the other hand, you have language seen as a continuous process, prose as a system of meanings in motion, seamlessly transitioning from one state to the next. In the one, you have something so roughly put together that its jointedness becomes apparent in its ungainly movement. In the other, the jointedness is largely imperceptible, as words meld into phrases, phrases into clauses, clauses into sentences, sentences into paragraphs. We don’t really have an informal vocabulary for describing scansion *literally* in general terms, so we use metaphors. To me, clunky and liquid seem so conventional that not getting them just seems a bit… well, obtuse.

There’s a lot of “jagged, staccato, brutal” prose I think “clunky” would be a bad label for, btw, in the same way I wouldn’t say a song like Amanda Palmer’s “Bad Habit” has a “clunky” rhythm; that song is *awesomely* “jagged, staccato [and] brutal” but it’s far from clunky.

Seems like there might be different dimensions here though. I’d pretty much invariably read “clunky prose” as referring to scansion, but Joe and Eric seem to be talking about clunky phraseology (clichés, and maybe bathos.) Which does make sense — prose full of “clangers” (and not in a cute Oliver Postgate sense). Where others bring up things like genre conventions though, aren’t we talking about clunky *narrative* rather than clunky *prose*?

Without wishing to retread too much of what people have said on the subject of clunky prose, I’m in agreement with those that say it’s a comment on the execution rather than the intent. In critique, if we say a passage is clunky we really mean that we found it difficult to parse and possibly can see how a better way to present the same information, achieve the same effect. It’s not about people stammering or speaking in ‘orrible mockney argot (necessarily).

Some writers almost never commit the sin of clunkitude. Others clatter and clank their way from word one to The End. The question which interests me is: does it matter?

Sure it does to *us*. We who worship words and love language. But what of the majority of book buyers out there who don’t even notice the prose? I think it was Hal who said it’s just a means to an end; for some readers (I’d argue many, if not most, readers) it’s just the medium through which they experience story. And all that matters is the story. To linger (if we must) on Hal’s example of The DaVinci Code, I read it because of the word of mouth buzz. A number of friends had raved about it; my partner (who rarely reads fiction) devoured it. I read two pages and threw it across the room. She asked me why? The prose! I responded. I can’t believe anything so ugly, so horrible, so…clunky, got into print! She just shrugged and went back to what she was doing. My bad for getting all writery about it – it’s just a story after all.

I’m not saying there’s no point in including the quality of prose in book reviews. After all, those of us that do care about such matters are the going to be the same ones as read those reviews. But I’m interested in (and fearful for) the overall context. If an editor had to choose one or the other – great prose or a compelling story, I think there’s only one winner.

“Do people stop others in mid-conversation to inform them that what they are saying is clunky?”

Sure they do. The only time they use the word clunky though is when their working on their alibi. Most of the time though you stop them, point out what they said, mock them, laugh at them, and then let them continue.

What is clunky?

Think potholes.

Your driving home from the best day of your life, your heads in the clouds as your rehashing the events of the day when, “BOOM”, your jarred out of your seat back into reality. That to me is clunky. Of course what you consider a pothole depends on what your driving, are you driving a Hummer or one of those itty bitty bubble cars? However, when a driver of a bubble car talks to the Hummer driver about potholes, they both know what the other is talking about despite their differences of what a pothole is.

If I’m jarred out of an novel because of odd dialogue, names or events that to me is clunky. Of course this is a very generic term, and it covers a lot of ground. I bet when you talk about prose and rhythm and all that a lot of peoples eyes glaze over, but you say it’s clunky and a light goes off. In short, using the word, “clunky” is a very quick and easy way of explaining what you didn’t like about a book.