In prose writing for novels, I find it hard to deal with exposition. It's kind of easy with short stories but the enemy of the novel is that the freedom of length actually requires higher precision in detail.

anyone with tips?

Think like a poet, perhaps? They're masters of maximizing what little they use.

Jan Jahre : That's the thing. I'm as far from being a poet as can be. If anything, I'm more of an essayist. But I feel novel prose is more symbolic and figurative than essays.

Some of the best literary works out there espouse detail in such creative ways. They may be describing a character, but in doing so, they actually describe how the parents were deported or something like that.

Then I suggest reading some good poetry - it might help, who knows?

I can do that but I find some of the best poetry kind of difficult to understand I think that's my problem in writing because most of the classical literature I started reading were immediately SF.

You get used to it when it comes to reading - or even writing - poetry. But since you're not writing poetry, just reading it is fine.

And SF is notorious for their "information dumps." Right now, the easiest transitions I'm looking into are the SF works that are acclaimed to be more "literary" in nature. Works such as those by Heinlein

which I sheepishly admit to not having read yet.

oh glob

Whoops. Sorry. I meant Bradbury. Then again, I haven't read either

I think the exact opposite way. Since a short story is limited by its length, the writer has to be more discerning with what details s/he puts. In a novel, as long as the writing is good & you don't stray

too far from the storyline, readers will keep reading. Stephen King, for example, likes to ramble a LOT in his books, but people still read them. I myself don't like his rambling style but others do.

Mia Sativa : That's true. But a novel can't just be all ramble. I know of authors who've used all kinds of strange literary devices which just seem to ramble on a point and critics have mocked them for it.

What exactly makes a good novel, then? It's all so... screwy...

There's no standard.

Art is too subjective to have standards.

But there are some general guidelines concerning art - other than that, it's anything goes. Do your thing, The Jake .