Numerous online articles say that simple writing is better. They say it is easier to read. They also say that people aim for complexity in their writing to show off.
However, I enjoy reading both simple writing and complex writing. I also would like to write prose in both styles.
Is it bad to write in a sophisticated prose style? Please elaborate.
It depends on whether you wish to make money from your writing.
Typically best selling novels are written at a 7th grade reading level (i.e. what an average 13 to 14 year old actively attending school can read without effort).
If you don't know what that is, I suggest you find some best-sellers in your genre (may be found free in a library, or cheap in a used book store), and try to analyze the writing by reading random pages in the book.
When analyzing the writing of others, it is best to not get immersed in the story, your imagination will interfere with your rational analysis. Just pick a page at random and see how complex the sentences are.
The more sophisticated your prose style, the more complex your sentences and paragraphs get, the more likely you are to be rejected by agents and/or publishers.
I'm not saying you cannot do it; but publishers do not like to take risks. They know their market, they know what people buy, they know what a bestseller looks like -- and they often don't care if they miss a gem, they stick to their knitting. Publishing a book that doesn't break any market rules of thumb is risky enough, thank you.
Them's the rules, brudda, if you want to sell.
There's a line, which differs across the spectrum of potential readers, where a writing style goes from satisfyingly complex to "just being clever because you can", for me Shakespeare falls into the latter camp. I love the subjects and themes and even the treatment Shakespeare often gives them but I won't read his work, he was panned by his contemporaries for being clever clever using pentameter verse and the way it stilted his characters and I find it excruciating. There are several other, generally older, writers that I also don't read, or possibly just don't reread because I find their work excessively dense.
I am, relatively speaking, highly educated, and have a broad vocabulary, my limit for "showing off" is probably higher than for most people. If you write in a style that people find too dense or clever clever your material will not find a broad audience. If your goal is to be read and/or sell books to a general audience this is bad. If you're writing for yourself to keep track of things and/or for a small group, like your RPG group who you know can handle it, then not an issue.
As someone with a really high IQ, I'd suggest keeping it for 3 different things:
Simple - Fiction novels and non-fiction novels, as well as some scientific research papers.
Complex - Scientific research papers, and very few novels.
A combination of simple/complex - Can actually be used for either novels or scientific research papers.
Basically, keep it simpler for the general audience, and more complex for audiences of higher reading level. "Know your audience." I may have a "super superior IQ," around in the 99th percentile or so, but I get bored from writing that is too complex. I read extremely fast, and want my brain to spend less time trying to imagine a scene when I spend more mental energy on reading research papers. You come in with a certain expectation that it is an escape from reality, and when it's more difficult than reality, it's not an escape, but rather a prison.
You can use complex writing for scientific research papers because it is expected - if it's too simple, then it doesn't look right/it looks like someone who does not know what they're talking about tried to write it.
However, you can add some complexity to your novel. As long as most of it is simple, then adding in some complexity does not make it harder than reality. It can help your reader learn.
