Reading with intention to crit
Nick Argall
expose themselves to my opinions. (Bwahahahaha.) I'm finding the process
of going over them a bit frustrating, because I keep finding myself doing
line edits.
I don't know if either of those authors would particularly benefit from
having me line-edit their work. And even if it is what they want, that's a
hell of a lot of effort on my part that I don't really want to commit myself
to doing.
This brings me to my question: What is the best way to read something so
that you can give a useful opinion afterwards, without spending half your
time thinking and saying "I didn't like this sentence for x, y and z
reasons" or "delete the comma"? Or, given the low likelihood of a 'best
way', what's your way?
Nick
S. Palmer
> This brings me to my question: What is the best way to read something so
> that you can give a useful opinion afterwards, without spending half your
> time thinking and saying "I didn't like this sentence for x, y and z
> reasons" or "delete the comma"? Or, given the low likelihood of a 'best
> way', what's your way?
IME, most critiquers tend to either be best at the line by line stuff,
or good at the big picture stuff. Some are good at both (and, alas, some
neither). As a writer, I tend to pick a mix of little-picture and
big-picture people as my beta readers. If you're not sure which type of
feedback to give and you feel capable of doing either/both, I'd say ask
the writer what 'levels' of feedback they are getting from their other
betas and try to fill in the gap.
-Suzanne
Kat R
Depends on what the writer asked for. I generally don't want or need
line-edits from first-readers. I have an editor, a copyeditor and a
proofer for that. So, when I'm reading someone else's work, the first
thing to determine is what they expect. If it's a first draft, I feel
you're wasting your time on line-edits and proofing--all that is going
to be changed and chopped long before the ms sees the light of
line-edits--unless the mistakes are so frequent and egregious that you
can't go on and that's a whole problem of itself.
Generally, I find that I prefer to both give and receive overall
reaction or notes about specific stoppers and problems with large-scale
points. Y'know: this character is an unsympathetic ass; that plot
point makes no sense in that location; this bit of exposition went on
too long; this theme was over emphasized/repeated until I wanted to
scream; the action starts too late; too much "tell" not enough "show;"
lack of basic information.... Those are the sorts of notes that are
most helpful to me, as well as notes about whole-story issues, like weak
sub-plots, or consistently vague description that assumes the reader
knows the writer's mind.
Anyhow, that's where I tend to go. YMMV, so ask the writer what they
want.
--
Kat Richardson
Greywalker (Roc, 2006)
Website: http://www.katrichardson.com/
Bloggery: http://katrich.wordpress.com/
Daniel Damouth
news:4565061a$1$16554$afc3...@news.optusnet.com.au:
Often, writers make the same kinds of mistakes, or suboptimal
decisions, repeatedly (nonstandard comma use being a good example). One
route for the critiquer is to give exemplars of the line-edits. Group
them into categories and give representative samples of your critiques,
for example, but don't critique all lines in the manuscript.
If you can save part of your brain for higher-level comments, so much
the better.
-Dan Damouth
Crowfoot
"S. Palmer" <cic...@speakeasy.net> wrote:
I'd suggest asking what the writer would like you to focus
on: pacing? effective character presentation? clarity of plot
or action? mood? emotional punch? etc. Give some
possibilities like these that come to mind, and remind the
writer that you can't read for *all* of that, so s/he should
pick some and make them your assignment. I've found that
it's nearly useless to ask one reader for general comments,
although in a writing group that's often a very effective
approach.
Suzy
Bill Swears
> This brings me to my question: What is the best way to read
> something so that you can give a useful opinion afterwards, without
> spending half your time thinking and saying "I didn't like this
> sentence for x, y and z reasons" or "delete the comma"? Or, given
> the low likelihood of a 'best way', what's your way?
I do a combination of critique styles. If I'm reading a longer piece,
I'll comment on writing details, and possibly do a critique of a
paragraph or two. I also comment on organization and appeal. That is to
say, how it appeals to me.
I also do something moderately unpopular here, in part because I'm a
relatively intuitive writer, and I can't really comment on structure in
the formal ways some others can. I often make suggestions in terms of
"this is how I would write that."
Since we all have different styles, my examples can't be used directly,
but they sometimes stir somebody to look at a different presentation. In
this, I have an advantage over, say Patricia C. Wrede. Since I'm not
all that good, most people reading my examples think, "I can do that
better," instead of being intimidated, which can happen when somebody
good is giving you alternative suggestions.
But I think the important advice is not to try a line by line edit of
any longer piece. It you have a book-length manuscript in front of you,
and an urge to do a line-by-line, the MS probably has problems that
require more than a line-by-line edit can accomplish. Tell your writer
the truth, and let him/her know where and why you lost interest. That
may well be the information the writer needs.
Bill
J.Pascal
You can make those things into a little check list... Sympathetic
character? Adequate conflict? Held my interest? *Where* did
my interest wander? What didn't make sense? And refer back
to them as you read to try to keep your mind off line edits.
I think that Kat's list is a very good one but I wanted to add my
comments on her post because it's also a very negative list, which
I'm assuming is because Kat has been doing this for a while and
is far less interested in having first readers stroke her ego than in
having them tell her what is wrong, which is far more useful.
You may, however, want to make a point of adding... What part
did I think worked well? Are there a phrase or two that I liked?
When did I feel most interested? Can I complement the idea?
The dialog? The description?
I find myself saying things like "I can tell you've got an incredible
imagination," and complementing some portion of the idea, either
the world building or character or *something* because it's very
scary to expose your writing for the first time. And sometimes
the writing truely sucks, but there's almost always something
about the idea that is good, or it wouldn't have moved the person
to try to write about it.
-Julie
R.L.
/snip/
> And sometimes
> the writing truely sucks, but there's almost always something
> about the idea that is good, or it wouldn't have moved the person
> to try to write about it.
On a slight tangent:
Iirc Lewis said some things vaguely to the effect that a critic should be
someone who likes the genre, understands what the author was trying to do,
is pleased where he succeeds and sorry where he fails, and will tell him
how and why he did so.
He was talking about critics who write in newspapers about published books.
Imo this sort of thing is even more important for a critiquer who is
shaping an unpublished work (and perhaps a novice's ambitions). Imo a crit
should begin with giving the critter's qualifications for commenting on
that sort of book. Of course critters who aren't in the target audience can
make many useful comments, but imo they should tell where they're coming
from, and what if any clues they have. :-)
R.L.
--
Hardware problems continue. Reinstalling everything.
delam...@alzum.com remove z
Nicola Browne
news:Xns9883D5F796C0...@66.75.164.120
If I ask for a crit and someone tells me about my comma use I'd be
pretty fed up.
These are my rules.
1)Don't do crits for friends unless they are pros and actually really
want to know your opinion. (or unless you have a reciprocal
arrangement.)
2) My advice is first: don't offer any unless you are
sure that is what is wanted. Some people just want you to say you
love it.
3)Find out what particularly they want to know ( if anything) see 2
4) Pitch your crit at the level of the story. If the plot stinks there
is no point in critting dialogue. Pick on the major flaw and find
something positive to say too.
5) If it is brilliant say so and don't look for faults just to be
helpful.
6) Don't do line edits.
7)Before you send it off imagine what it would be like to recieve it
and modify the form of words accordingly.
Pro editors normally give you an opening of all that they like before
politely suggesting areas of weakness, usually phrased, 'I got a little
confused when ...might it be possible to..'etc etc
8) Don't tell the recipient what to do to fix it.
9) Less is more. If the piece is bad -to delineate each and every fault
is unhelpful. If it's good you don't need to.
IMHO only
NIcky
--
Posted via Mailgate.ORG Server - http://www.Mailgate.ORG
David Friedman
friend to whom I have been reading chunks of _Salamander_ over the phone
as I write them, was "That lecturer sounds exactly like the other
lecturer" (setting is a college of magic), with the additional
conjecture "and perhaps sounds like you when you are lecturing."
Very useful, since the one thing I'm most unhappy about in my first
novel is that I did an inadequate job of distinguishing the voices of my
characters. Now I have to figure out how to avoid it in this one.
--
http://www.daviddfriedman.com/ http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/
Author of _Harald_, a fantasy without magic.
Published by Baen, in bookstores now
Tina Hall
> Nick Argall wrote:
[...]
>> This brings me to my question: What is the best way to read something
>> so that you can give a useful opinion afterwards, without spending
>> half your time thinking and saying "I didn't like this sentence for x,
>> y and z reasons" or "delete the comma"? Or, given the low likelihood
>> of a 'best way', what's your way?
> Depends on what the writer asked for. I generally don't want or need
> line-edits from first-readers. [...]
I wouldn't either. None of the suggestions would be valid, because they're
not my words, and therefore I won't use them. General comments on the
other hand can help me find my own words, and hopefully improve what I
come up with in the future.
> So, when I'm reading someone else's work, the first thing to determine
> is what they expect.
That's what I think, too.
> If it's a first draft, I feel you're wasting your time on line-edits and
> proofing--all that is going to be changed and chopped long before the ms
> sees the light of line-edits--unless the mistakes are so frequent and
> egregious that you can't go on and that's a whole problem of itself.
You're assuming that there always is something like a first draft, and by
what you say I can't even imagine what that looks like, except that
someone's not trying for good wording and just dumps random words onto the
page that are sorted out later.
> Generally, I find that I prefer to both give and receive overall
> reaction or notes about specific stoppers and problems with large-scale
> points.
Yep.
> Y'know: this character is an unsympathetic ass;
Well, as long as there's not a suggestion to change it (rather, just to
see whether the intent comes across). :)
> that plot point makes no sense in that location; this bit of exposition
> went on too long; this theme was over emphasized/repeated until I wanted
> to scream; the action starts too late; too much "tell" not enough
> "show;" lack of basic information....
<nodding vigurously> I completely agree with all of that. (If it ever went
past "I just want to know if there's any atmosphere, and if yes, what
kind".)
But as Julie said, pointing out things that worked is important, too.
(Even if that turns out to point at something that didn't work, because
the effect is different than what I had in mind.)
<snip more I agree with>
--
Tina
WIP: Some Fantasy thing, untitled so far.
WISuspension: Seasons & Elements trilogy | Magic Earth series
Posted to Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.sf.composition.
Patricia C. Wrede
"Nick Argall" <nar...@gmail.removethisbit.com> wrote in message
news:4565061a$1$16554$afc3...@news.optusnet.com.au...
Well, first you ask the writers whether they *want* microcrit. Many do.
The macro level is, after all, built up out of micro-level building blocks.
Sometimes, though, a writer will be confident in their ability to fix
micro-level stuff, but uncertain about some specific, larger aspect of a
story -- pacing or character development or plot or whether the ending is
too abrupt, or whatever -- and they don't want you to waste time on the
micro stuff.
What I do is, I read through a piece once, as a reader. Anything I notice
on that read-through gets mentioned, macro or micro, whether the author
asked or not, because anything I notice when I'm reading that way has been
sufficiently intrusive that it actively bounced me out of the story. It's
seldom that there's much, but "first-reaction" comments are often extremely
valuable, pro and con, because they usually represent the reader's (my)
uncensored and unconsidered reaction.
Then I read through a second time, more carefully. Then I start writing the
crit. I usually begin with general comments; if it's a short piece, as with
most of the stuff that gets posted for crit on rasfc, this is usually a
paragraph of general points, like "I liked your description; the dialog was
really realistic; I thought there were some problems with the characters and
setting." If it's a whole-novel, this can run anywhere from half a page to
two pages, depending of course on what the problems are.
Then I go into the main crit. When it's a short piece -- a rasfc 500-words
crit, a short story, a single chapter of a novel -- that means line-by-line,
generally including stuff like commas and typos (though if it becomes
obvious after a few paragraphs that the writer hasn't run the thing through
a spell check, I will simply make a sharp comment about wasting critiquers'
time by not doing such basic prep, and after that ignore all spelling
errors). But it also includes things like "This page has seventeen
semi-colons on it, which is a) too many, and b) indicates you need to pay
more attention to variation in sentence structure" (which, btw, is an actual
comment *I* got from one of my editors once).
If I'm doing a whole novel all at once, I usually don't do a thorough
line-by-line (*far* too time-consuming). Instead, I break down my comments
into general categories like "dialog and speech tags," "pacing," "plot,"
"character development," "style," "viewpoint," etc. I don't use the same
categories for everybody, because not everybody has trouble with
everything -- if somebody is rock-solid on viewpoint and characterization,
for instance, there's no need for a separate category for them because they
can just go in under "stuff I liked and/or thought you were doing right."
Within the categories, I stick as many specific examples as I think I need
to illustrate what I think the problem is (if the problem is amenable to
that sort of thing -- it's a lot easier to do with dialog problems than with
structure or pacing, for instance). Usually, a whole-novel crit ends up
being somewhere between ten and forty pages (single-spaced) unless the
author specifically asked me to limit comments to one particular area --
longer, if I do a line-by-line for even a chapter or two, which I do
sometimes if I think there are microwriting problems that need addressing
(or if the author asked).
I *always* mention the stuff I love about somebody's work, because I have
found that if I don't, the author sometimes edits it out during revision,
which is *really* counter-productive.
I try not to make suggestions for how to fix things (except for spelling and
grammar and punctuation, where There Are Rules) unless the author has
specifically asked for suggestions. If I do make suggestions, I always try
to have at least three alternative possible fixes, and I don't say which one
I like best, and I don't put the one I like best first (except on rare
occasions so I don't fall into an obvious pattern). I've only ever actually
rewritten a crit piece twice; once in my extreme youth when I didn't know
any better (and it was an utter disaster), and once very recently at the
explicit request of an author who simply *could not see* the difference
between what I was trying to get her to do and what she was actually doing,
down at the words-and-sentences level.
And that's about all I can think of for how I do it. It *is* a lot of work,
but I find I learn more than enough in the process to justify putting in the
time.
Besides, I think it's fun.
Patricia C. Wrede
Patricia C. Wrede
"J.Pascal" <ju...@pascal.org> wrote in message
news:1164270784.0...@m7g2000cwm.googlegroups.com...
>
> Kat R wrote:
>> Generally, I find that I prefer to both give and receive overall
>> reaction or notes about specific stoppers and problems with large-scale
>> points. Y'know: this character is an unsympathetic ass; that plot
>> point makes no sense in that location; this bit of exposition went on
>> too long; this theme was over emphasized/repeated until I wanted to
>> scream; the action starts too late; too much "tell" not enough "show;"
>> lack of basic information.... Those are the sorts of notes that are
>> most helpful to me, as well as notes about whole-story issues, like weak
>> sub-plots, or consistently vague description that assumes the reader
>> knows the writer's mind.
Oh, yeah, and I forgot to mention in that long post I just did -- I *also*
try to remember to mention it when something punches one of my hot buttons.
If I dislike a character because he is *just* like my obnoxious Uncle Morty,
well, that may not be a problem for the vast majority of readers who don't
*know* my obnoxious uncle. So when that happens, I say things like, "I
found this character really, really obnoxious and unsympathetic, but that
may be because he reminds me of an obnoxious family member, so you probably
want to check with other readers to see if they have the same problem."
<snip>
> I think that Kat's list is a very good one but I wanted to add my
> comments on her post because it's also a very negative list, which
> I'm assuming is because Kat has been doing this for a while and
> is far less interested in having first readers stroke her ego than in
> having them tell her what is wrong, which is far more useful.
>
> You may, however, want to make a point of adding... What part
> did I think worked well? Are there a phrase or two that I liked?
> When did I feel most interested? Can I complement the idea?
> The dialog? The description?
Saying what somebody has done well isn't mere ego-stroking. As I said -- we
found out really early in my first crit group that if we didn't say what we
liked in a chapter or a scene, the bit we liked often got edited out when
the writer went to revise. Which meant that a lot of bad stuff went away,
but so did a lot of good stuff, and the result was a move toward something
flatter and greyer, rather than an overall improvement in the story.
Prose that has no obvious flaw is not necessarily prose that is vivid and
compelling. Lack of negative qualities is not the same as being in
possession of positive qualities. So really, I think it's a good idea to
talk about both. Even with writers who've been at it for a while, and who
are quite comfortable and confident in their ability to handle various
aspects of writing. I almost took out the magic mirror in "Calling on
Dragons," because I thought it was too cutesy, except that fortunately I
went to lunch with my editor right about then, and she asked how the book
was coming, and I asked for her opinion, and when I told her the bit I
thought was too cutesy, she laughed so hard that she fell out of her chair
in the restaurant and scared the waitress half to death. So I decided it
really was funny after all, and not cutsey, and I left it in. :)
Patricia C. Wrede
Patricia C. Wrede
"David Friedman" <dd...@daviddfriedman.nopsam.com> wrote in message
news:ddfr-2CE000.0...@news.isp.giganews.com...
> Very useful, since the one thing I'm most unhappy about in my first
> novel is that I did an inadequate job of distinguishing the voices of my
> characters. Now I have to figure out how to avoid it in this one.
Learning to do different voices was hard for me and took quite a long time.
I think that what did it, in the end was a combination of two things: 1)
being in a play-reading group that read Shakespeare's plays aloud --all of
them, and we went through the whole canon twice before we moved on to other
things. Took us about two years. And 2) having two characters in the same
book who had *extremely* different, distinctive voices (this was in "The
Seven Towers"). This meant that whenever they opened their mouths, I had to
think about how *they* would say things, but because each of them was so
distinctly different from everyone else, I could tell right away whether I
had their dialog right or not.
If one doesn't wish to spend two years reading Shakespeare out loud, there
are some other tricks; part of the trouble is, I think, that you're already
using some of the stylistic tricks (like using lots of sentence fragments
and/or implied subjects) in your staccato narrative. That limits the degree
to which you can play with the dialog presentation and still have it sound
right. Normally, I'd suggest things like making up a few basic rules (this
character never uses contractions; that character never uses words less than
three syllables except for articles; this other one always speaks in iambic
pentameter), but I'm not at all sure what would fit with your narrative
style. Maybe you will just have to experiment and see.
Non-phonetic foreign accents can work well. Rene D'Auber, in the Mairelon
books, never actually speaks a word of French, and there's not one bit of
phonetic spelling in her dialog, but her syntax and idiom are so obviously
French that she sounds completely different from everyone else in the book.
Given your interests and background, you might give one of your lecturers a
sort of pseudo-thirteenth-century-middle-Eastern syntax or speech rhythm.
(He doesn't *have* to be from the Middle East or some analog for this to
work.) There are a bunch of similar possibilities involving different
dialects that wouldn't work in this instance (at least, I assume that it
really wouldn't work in this book to have one lecturer sounding like a Texas
cowboy and the other using jive or valley-girl-speak). You might, however,
be able to make up a dialect-marker phrase for one of them (the way "y'all"
marks people from the Southern states in the U.S.) that would work in a
lecture setting.
There's also dialog-as-it-expresses-personality. That is, one lecturer
sunds stuffy and formal and pretentious because that's how he is, while the
other is more down-home-folksy, because that's what *he's* like. This is
probably what you want to shoot for in the end, but unless you've already
made up characters with extremely different and distinct personalities, it's
usually hard to pull off right out of the chute. You already have a
situation -- lecturing -- that is going to impose a similar format/structure
on both speakers; the more similar their personalities are, the more alike
they're going to sound, and the fact that they're both giving lectures will
bring their speech patterns even closer. So they need to start farther
apart, if you're going to rely strictly on personality and personal style
for your differences.
Patricia C. Wrede
Patricia C. Wrede
"Bill Swears" <wsw...@gci.net> wrote in message
news:12mafj9...@corp.supernews.com...
> I also do something moderately unpopular here, in part because I'm a
> relatively intuitive writer, and I can't really comment on structure in
> the formal ways some others can. I often make suggestions in terms of
> "this is how I would write that."
There are people who *have* to do crit that way. We had one in one of my
crit groups; there were certain problems where he went straight from
"Something is wrong here" to "Ah, this is how I can fix that" without
stopping at "Oh, I see; *that's* what's wrong." Sometimes, he barely
stopped at "something is wrong here," and went straight to "This would be
better if it were like *this.*"
It took us a while to figure out that when he did this, we had to backtrack
to "Oh, *that's* what's wrong." Because a lot of the time, his suggested
fixes just weren't right for the story, and the initial temptation was to
ignore the comments altogether because he seemed to be so far off track.
But when we *did* start backtracking to "That's what's wrong," he was whang
in the gold every time, often with really serious, systemic problems that
were the root of a bunch of other things the rest of us had been fluttering
around complaining about. Fix 'em, and everything falls into place.
So if this is the kind of crit you have to do -- and he was an experienced,
much-published writer with years of crit-group behind him, and he still had
to do it this way -- it may help at some point to warn people about this, at
least the first time you do crit for them.
> Since we all have different styles, my examples can't be used directly,
> but they sometimes stir somebody to look at a different presentation. In
> this, I have an advantage over, say Patricia C. Wrede. Since I'm not
> all that good, most people reading my examples think, "I can do that
> better," instead of being intimidated, which can happen when somebody
> good is giving you alternative suggestions.
The intimidation factor is why I try to avoid doing examples, and if I *do*
do them, I try to offer three or more wildly varying alternatives.
Patricia C. Wrede
Jacey Bedford
<cic...@speakeasy.net> writes
Agreed - and much also depends on what the author needs. If I'm sending
out stuff for critique that's already been well-revised I'm often
grateful for in-line comments and corrections of typos, but if I'm
sending out first draft stuff to see if people like the concept and
general style then I'll often say don't bother with line edits because
there is still much revision to do.
Jacey
--
Jacey Bedford
jacey at artisan hyphen harmony dot com
posting via usenet and not googlegroups, ourdebate
or any other forum that reprints usenet posts as
though they were the forum's own
David Starr
entering my thoughts in the edit window as I read the piece and before I
get to the end. I try to let the author know the effect of his/her
writing as it goes along, rather than sum up my thoughts after I get to
the end and know how the story comes out.
I always comment on the effectiveness of the lead sentence. Good
ones draw me into the work, bland ones make it easier to put it down.
Other than that, I assume the author has computer spell check and
grammar check software to clean up minor boo-boos. Each criticism I
make of an author's work probably hurts a him/her little bit, so I
figure to let Microsoft Word inflict the pain for spelling, grammar and
punctuation upon the author, while I comment on characterization, point
of view, plot, dialog, and ending.
I make a point to comment on the effective parts of the tale on the
assumption that a writer needs feedback about the parts that work well
so that he/her can do more of it.
I try to comment upon the protagonist, how believable (realistic)
he/she is, how likable, how interesting. I like protagonists that go
forth and do things (make things happen). If the protagonist is a
passive observer to whom bad things happen and he/she doesn't do much
about it, I will mention this. Since dialog is key to understanding the
characters, I will mention effective bits of dialog as well as the
not-so-effective bits or anachronisms. For instance, the characters in
a medieval fantasy really should not say "OK". Arrows should be "shot"
rather than "fired". Stuff like that.
Endings make the short story. I try to say something about the
effectiveness of the ending, either good or bad. Point of view is
important, and changes of the point of view character should be done in
a logical way that enhances the tale. Plot consistency is important.
For instance if the protagonist goes out on horseback, he/she ought
return on horseback, or as a fall back we need to know what happened to
the horse.
David Starr
Kat R
erk. Sorry, Julie. Yeah, that's my thing--I find it annoying to be
soft-stroked when there's something ugly on my page. I had this problem
recently in that I kept seeing the same complaint about an issue in my
book and similar note from my editor about the new ms. When I mentioned
it to the first-readers they all nodded and said "yeah, I noticed that
but I didn't want to hurt your feelings." Their desire to be nice
allowed what I consider bad writing on my part to slip through to the
final version. I'm still cringing. I prefer my criticism straight,
though I often give much softer crits than I expect from others.
R.L.
> J.Pascal wrote:
>> Kat R wrote:
/snip/
>> You may, however, want to make a point of adding... What part
>> did I think worked well? Are there a phrase or two that I liked?
>> When did I feel most interested? Can I complement the idea?
>> The dialog? The description?
>>
>> I find myself saying things like "I can tell you've got an incredible
>> imagination," and complementing some portion of the idea, either
>> the world building or character or *something* because it's very
>> scary to expose your writing for the first time.
I'm afraid my personal reaction to that would be discouragement....
>> And sometimes
>> the writing truely sucks, but there's almost always something
>> about the idea that is good, or it wouldn't have moved the person
>> to try to write about it.
Which would be something worth excavating; and at least mention other works
that she might study.
> erk. Sorry, Julie. Yeah, that's my thing--I find it annoying to be
> soft-stroked when there's something ugly on my page.
Yes, I'd feel insulted, condescended to, embarrassed to even ask for
something more substantial.... "Oh dear, it was so bad it's hopeless, so
she doesn't think it's worth really critting, and she thinks I'm not even
worth being honest with...." Still I think 'soft-stroking' might be more in
the manner of the crit than its content: I liked what Patricia said about
making sure they know what parts are good, so they don't change them by
accident.
And I think it's good to make sure the writer knows what the strengths of
the work are: sometimes the cure for, eg, a bad description would be to
make a shorter description and spend the wordage on more (easily good)
dialog, or whatever the writer is really good at already.
> I had this problem
> recently in that I kept seeing the same complaint about an issue in my
> book and similar note from my editor about the new ms. When I mentioned
> it to the first-readers they all nodded and said "yeah, I noticed that
> but I didn't want to hurt your feelings." Their desire to be nice
> allowed what I consider bad writing on my part to slip through to the
> final version. I'm still cringing. I prefer my criticism straight,
> though I often give much softer crits than I expect from others.
To me it all depends on the situation, the writer's personality, where she
is on learning, whether work is about to be submitted for sale.... No point
in discouraging someone who isn't ready to profit by it, but certainly none
in letting a near-pro send out a near-pro level book without warning about
obvious flaws.
Patricia C. Wrede
"Kat R" <null....@lycos.com> wrote in message
news:49SdnRaBr8Rgk_vY...@comcast.com...
> When I mentioned it to the first-readers they all nodded and said "yeah, I
> noticed that but I didn't want to hurt your feelings." Their desire to be
> nice allowed what I consider bad writing on my part to slip through to the
> final version. I'm still cringing. I prefer my criticism straight,
> though I often give much softer crits than I expect from others.
Smack them, and if they ever do it again, find some new first-readers.
It is your choice whether you think you will get better results from
"smacking them" by complaining bitterly about how they've let you down, or
by harping incessently on how awful and horrible you feel about having such
a hideous error actually come out in print and letting them connect the dots
for themselves.
Patricia C. Wrede
Nicola Browne
news:ddfr-2CE000.0...@news.isp.giganews.com
>> Very useful, since the one thing I'm most unhappy about in my first
> novel is that I did an inadequate job of distinguishing the voices of my
> characters. Now I have to figure out how to avoid it in this one.
I don't think it's easy at all. It is one of the things I struggle with.
My solutions thus far have been to:
1) Try and find distinctive speech patterns for main characters - really
obvious
hit you in the face ones. In 'Basilisk' I had one character use a lot
of made up argot and swear a lot while his companion used more complex
language
and didn't swear much at all. There are many possiblities long v short
sentences,periphrasis and obfuscation against clarity. Hesitancy
against fluency eetc etc.
I sometimes borrow from welsh or northern speech patterns/word orders
to distinguish people. You can also drop aiches, introduce lisps,
stammers and other speech impediments, but it is a bit cheap.
In Spellgrinder my main charcter stammers a lot : )
2) Try and use specific vocab. My lead female character in Spellgrinder
is a fisherman and uses images from her work. She dosn't speak much
either.
Another character is obliged to talk about flowers and clothes as she
is under a spell and my main villain uses long words to show he can.
In 'Stone' my ancient fairy character only used metaphors drawn from
the land and natural world.She uses very short direct sentences
which focus on experience and sensation.
3)Try and express personality through each sentence - it can turn out
like the seven dwarfs if used badly ,but if one character is
particularly down beat tht will show through or if one is particularly
religious etc.
This is the subtlest approach and the hardest, if you are trying to
suggest a multi layered character, speech has to change to suit mood.
I would like to do this more.
It helps me to check for consistency at the end. I remember going
through 'Basilisk' and rephrasing a lotof Rej's later speeches
adding additional swear words and idiosyncratic argot because as
I got more into his character I forgot to keep his
voice as distinctive. I think it is easier to deal with those kind of
issues in revision if they don't come naturally.
'Would this character say this and would they say it this way?' is
quite a good question to use to examine all dialogue in the book.
It also helps to read them aloud and to hear them in your head.
I don't generally I have to make a special effort to think about
how they sound as I tend to notice visuals not voices. I listen to the
radio a lot and try and shut up sometimes when I'm out so that
I can listen to how people actually speak.(I find this very difficult.)
For any long exchange it probably should be clear who is
speaking from the language and content of a speech even without
context.
Nicky
Crowfoot
Kat R <null....@lycos.com> wrote:
Exactly; particularly if you're having a late-version read-through
by *readers* rather than writers (which I think is invaluable, if you
can point them where you want them to look), some people get very
modest and hesitant to criticize. After all, you're the Author, so
you've probably gotten it right, and what if they steer you wrong and
you change it and it's bad? Really; I've had it articulated in just
those terms.
To get at positives: which character did you want to see more of
(and the converse, of course). What part of the story went by too
fast? What part of it would you go back and read again? What
questions about the characters' future did the book leave you with?
If you could enter the world of the story, where would you like to
spend some more time?
SMC
David Friedman
"Patricia C. Wrede" <pwred...@aol.com> wrote:
> I try not to make suggestions for how to fix things (except for spelling and
> grammar and punctuation, where There Are Rules) unless the author has
> specifically asked for suggestions.
That, from the other end, is one of my rules for editors. I don't want
them to tell me how to fix it, I want them to tell me what is wrong.
One of the most useful crits I got for _Harald_ was a practically line
by line crit of the opening scenes. There's so much the author doesn't
see, because he already knows too much, at least in my experience.
David Friedman
"Patricia C. Wrede" <pwred...@aol.com> wrote:
> There are a bunch of similar possibilities involving different
> dialects that wouldn't work in this instance (at least, I assume that it
> really wouldn't work in this book to have one lecturer sounding like a Texas
> cowboy and the other using jive or valley-girl-speak). You might, however,
> be able to make up a dialect-marker phrase for one of them (the way "y'all"
> marks people from the Southern states in the U.S.) that would work in a
> lecture setting.
Lots of my dialog occurs in contexts other than lectures, so I can use
that there. One of the students is a farm worker who is at the college
because one of the masters persuaded another to spend his year off
wandering around the countryside looking for talent; normally students
at the college are middle class and above. I haven't seen much of him
yet, but that sort of approach might work. And an important character,
also a student, is the daughter of a duke; I should be able to figure
out ways of differentiating her speech.
> There's also dialog-as-it-expresses-personality. That is, one lecturer
> sunds stuffy and formal and pretentious because that's how he is, while the
> other is more down-home-folksy, because that's what *he's* like. This is
> probably what you want to shoot for in the end, but unless you've already
> made up characters with extremely different and distinct personalities, it's
> usually hard to pull off right out of the chute.
The two lecturers I know best are in fact quite different personalities.
The one who is a central character is a brilliant theorist, probably
entered the college a couple of years younger than normal and was doing
original work before he graduated. He is rather naive about people, in
part because they all seem so different from him, but on the whole a
well intentioned and nice person. Before he had a name my label for him
was "the good bad mage," because he is trying to do something bad out of
the best of motives.
The other is the much more practical and less brilliant--and much less
scrupulous--colleague who is helping him do the thing, but for bad
motives--the bad bad mage. I think I've distinguished them by the
content of what they say, but only a little by the tone. And we've only
heard the first one lecturing so far. The other lecturer we have heard
is someone I know nothing much about; as yet he plays no role in the
plot. I'm trying to make him sound more academic and ponderous--the
voice of someone teaching things he learned from authorities, not things
he thought up himself and thinks are fun. But I'm not sure it is working
and I may have to try a second pass at it.
In any case, thanks for the suggestions.
David Friedman
> Their desire to be nice
> allowed what I consider bad writing on my part to slip through to the
> final version. I'm still cringing. I prefer my criticism straight,
> though I often give much softer crits than I expect from others.
My daughter was very gentle and apologetic about telling me that the
intro to _Salamander_--I've been discussing the book with her as I write
it, and showing her what I've written--doesn't work, at least for her.
But she told me.
David Friedman
"Nicola Browne" <nicky.m...@btinternet.com> wrote:
> For any long exchange it probably should be clear who is
> speaking from the language and content of a speech even without
> context.
It should be. If I were a better writer it would be. But I'm working on
it.
One thing I did do, for one character, was to make a point of converting
all "it's" to "it is" and the like. I've just rewritten the lecture I
mentioned in my post to try to make the lecturer more formal and
academic, but haven't yet tried the revised version on my over-the-phone
critic. I did try it on Betty and Becca and they were both noncommittal,
which may mean it isn't adequate.
23 days into my version of NaNoWriMo (1700 words a day on all writing
projects combined), and only a few hundred words behind. And the day
isn't over.
For me, dividing it among projects makes it much easier. If I don't have
an idea for a new scene in Salamander I might have a new chunk for
_Future Imperfect_ (nonfiction) or _Aristos_ (working, almost certainly
temporary, title for Harald sequel).
Kat R
I have smacked two and dropped two from my first-read group. Now I'll
have to find some new first readers and make a request to my editor to
look for that particular weakness in other mss from me. I don't know
why she didn't catch it on the first book, but did on the second.
Trying not to obsess on this... I'm 3 chapters from finished with the
book 2 revision, which is due in a week and a half, and I'm not
confident my fixes were a net improvement. Better notes at an early
stage would have helped *a lot*.
Kat R
> In article <49SdnRaBr8Rgk_vY...@comcast.com>,
> Kat R <null....@lycos.com> wrote:
>
>> Their desire to be nice
>> allowed what I consider bad writing on my part to slip through to the
>> final version. I'm still cringing. I prefer my criticism straight,
>> though I often give much softer crits than I expect from others.
>
> My daughter was very gentle and apologetic about telling me that the
> intro to _Salamander_--I've been discussing the book with her as I write
> it, and showing her what I've written--doesn't work, at least for her.
>
> But she told me.
>
I hope you kissed her and told her she was wonderful. (but you would,
anyway.)
Dan Goodman
> There are a bunch of similar possibilities involving different
> dialects that wouldn't work in this instance (at least, I assume that
> it really wouldn't work in this book to have one lecturer sounding
> like a Texas cowboy and the other using jive or valley-girl-speak).
> You might, however, be able to make up a dialect-marker phrase for
> one of them (the way "y'all" marks people from the Southern states in
> the U.S.) that would work in a lecture setting.
Note that two kinds of dialect are hard to get right -- someone else's
and your own. The latter because you don't really know what yours
sounds like to other people. The former because you don't know what it
sounds like to speakers of that dialect or to speakers of any third
dialect.
Peter Trudgill's 'Acts of Conflicting Identity. The Sociolingistics of
British Pop-Song Pronunciation' (available in several collections) is
worth reading on this. It deals in part with the period in which
British rock singers were trying (consciously or not) to sound American
and how well they did at it -- not very. (Note: By now there are
American singers imitating Brits who were imitating Bob Dylan who was
imitating Woody Guthrie....)
And: People use different types of speech in different circumstances.
My vocabulary is different in the Twin Cities than it would be where I
grew up (Catskills area), New York City, or Southern California. It
took me a while to figure out that if I wanted plain, ordinary tea I
needed to ask for "black tea" rather than "regular tea," for example.
And I still slip every now and then by saying "string beans" rather
than "green beans." Formal speech is usually different from informal
speech. Family speech can be very different from speech outside the
family.
--
Dan Goodman
All political parties die at last of swallowing their own lies.
John Arbuthnot (1667-1735), Scottish writer, physician.
Journal http://dsgood.livejournal.com
Links http://del.icio.us/dsgood
Political http://www.dailykos.com/user/dsgood
Zeborah
> Kat R <null....@lycos.comPOST> wrote:
> > If it's a first draft, I feel you're wasting your time on line-edits and
> > proofing--all that is going to be changed and chopped long before the ms
> > sees the light of line-edits--unless the mistakes are so frequent and
> > egregious that you can't go on and that's a whole problem of itself.
>
> You're assuming that there always is something like a first draft,
No, she's saying "_If_ it's a first draft". That doesn't imply that
there's always a first draft, it just talks about what the situation
might be _if_ there is one and this happens to be it.
Zeborah
--
Gravity is no joke.
http://www.geocities.com/zeborahnz/
rasfc FAQ: http://www.lshelby.com/rasfcFAQ.html
David Friedman
Kat R <null....@lycos.com> wrote:
> David Friedman wrote:
> > In article <49SdnRaBr8Rgk_vY...@comcast.com>,
> > Kat R <null....@lycos.com> wrote:
> >
> >> Their desire to be nice
> >> allowed what I consider bad writing on my part to slip through to the
> >> final version. I'm still cringing. I prefer my criticism straight,
> >> though I often give much softer crits than I expect from others.
> >
> > My daughter was very gentle and apologetic about telling me that the
> > intro to _Salamander_--I've been discussing the book with her as I write
> > it, and showing her what I've written--doesn't work, at least for her.
> >
> > But she told me.
> >
>
> I hope you kissed her and told her she was wonderful. (but you would,
> anyway.)
I made it clear that truthful advice was appreciated. And I tell my
children that they are wonderful at frequent intervals--because they are.
The female protagonist of _Salamander_ has this exchange at one point:
(friend)
"Do you always tell people the truth?"
(Ellen)
"Almost always. It makes things easier. If I were cleverer than I am and
understood people the way you do, perhaps I could do better than that,
but I'm not. There is too much complication in the world; I don't want
to make any more."
Nick Argall
the 'unblocking' thread. This is the first time I've posted a question and
then not engaged actively in debate about the question immediately
afterwards (it helps that I stayed away from home last night). Lots of
great stuff.
Nick
Nick Argall
If I was writing those guys, I'd have the first one using a lot more
questioning, perhaps even using rhetorical questions a lot of the time. The
second one makes me think of a maths lecturer I once had who would talk
incomprehensibly for several minutes and then say "And so, clearly, we can
see..." Everything was clear to him, even if it wasn't clear to us. I'd
give the second one a lot of 'clearly' and 'obviously' and that sort of
language.
Nick
Nicola Browne
> In article <fd4f6b3eb80b55b330...@mygate.mailgate.org>,
> "Nicola Browne" <nicky.m...@btinternet.com> wrote:
>
> > For any long exchange it probably should be clear who is
> > speaking from the language and content of a speech even without
> > context.
>
> It should be. If I were a better writer it would be. But I'm working on
> it.
You and me both :)
Michelle Bottorff
>
> One of the most useful crits I got for _Harald_ was a practically line
> by line crit of the opening scenes. There's so much the author doesn't
> see, because he already knows too much, at least in my experience.
Amen.
My husband just went over my Blag Flag sketches, and except for one or
two bitty things, he only had problems with the first chapter and the
epilogue. In the first chapter I have failed to make things that are
perfectly clear to me, clear to the reader (again), and the epilogue
seems too hasty and/or abrubt (again). My usual problems are still my
usual problems even when I switch media. ::sigh::
--
Michelle Bottorff -> Chelle B. -> Shelby
L. Shelby, Writer http://www.lshelby.com/
Livejournal http://lavenderbard.livejournal.com/
rec.arts.sf.composition FAQ http://www.lshelby.com/rasfcFAQ.html
Michelle Bottorff
> "Do you always tell people the truth?"
>
> (Ellen)
> "Almost always. It makes things easier. If I were cleverer than I am and
> understood people the way you do, perhaps I could do better than that,
> but I'm not. There is too much complication in the world; I don't want
> to make any more."
I personally would agree with that philosophy.
Not all my characters do however.
"I think that was the truest thing I said all morning, which probably
means that I shouldn't have said it at all." -- Isde Kide (protagonist
of Pavane in Pearl and Emerald)
>:)
David Friedman
"Nick Argall" <nar...@gmail.removethisbit.com> wrote:
> If I was writing those guys, I'd have the first one using a lot more
> questioning, perhaps even using rhetorical questions a lot of the time. The
> second one makes me think of a maths lecturer I once had who would talk
> incomprehensibly for several minutes and then say "And so, clearly, we can
> see..." Everything was clear to him, even if it wasn't clear to us. I'd
> give the second one a lot of 'clearly' and 'obviously' and that sort of
> language.
>
The problem is that the lectures are also being used to give the reader
information about how magic works in my world, and I don't want to
confuse the reader, or bore him. Which is an interesting problem, given
that your solution is in other respects an attractive one.
David Friedman
mbot...@lshelby.com (Michelle Bottorff) wrote:
> David Friedman <dd...@daviddfriedman.nopsam.com> wrote:
>
> > "Do you always tell people the truth?"
> >
> > (Ellen)
> > "Almost always. It makes things easier. If I were cleverer than I am and
> > understood people the way you do, perhaps I could do better than that,
> > but I'm not. There is too much complication in the world; I don't want
> > to make any more."
>
> I personally would agree with that philosophy.
>
> Not all my characters do however.
>
> "I think that was the truest thing I said all morning, which probably
> means that I shouldn't have said it at all." -- Isde Kide (protagonist
> of Pavane in Pearl and Emerald)
The protagonist of _Harald_ stretches the truth once or twice, for
tactical reasons, but I'm not sure if any readers have noticed. So far,
at least, Ellen is entirely truthful, although she sometimes misleads by
omission.
Patricia C. Wrede
> In article <12mblib...@corp.supernews.com>,
> "Patricia C. Wrede" <pwred...@aol.com> wrote:
> The two lecturers I know best are in fact quite different personalities.
> The one who is a central character is a brilliant theorist, probably
> entered the college a couple of years younger than normal and was doing
> original work before he graduated. He is rather naive about people, in
> part because they all seem so different from him, but on the whole a
> well intentioned and nice person. Before he had a name my label for him
> was "the good bad mage," because he is trying to do something bad out of
> the best of motives.
For a minute, I thought you meant lecturers in real life. :) But that,
too, is possibly useful. Even in lecturing, people have somewhat different
styles. One of my favorite lecturers in B-school was in my least favorite
subject; when he talked, he told long strings of illustrative real-life
anecdotes from his experiences in Washington with the legal system, and it
was just fascinating. Another was pretty obviously more interested in
getting through the material than in getting students fired up about it;
"dense" is the word that comes to mind about his lectures. And of course,
there were the grad students, many of whom had foreign accents or who were
exceedingly formal by American standards (calling all the students "Mr." or
"Ms." instead of by first names, for instance). You probably know even more
different lecture styles, if you stop to think about them; the question
would be picking one that fits each character.
The real trick will be staying "in voice" for the whole passage, which I
expect will be extra difficult because lecturing is something you do in real
life, and it's likely to be difficult not to keep slipping into your own
much-practiced, habitual style. When I've had to do similar sorts of
things, I have to do it kind of like method acting -- really *being* the
character in my head and then letting him/her write the passage. Which is a
lot easier, actually, the further from my "normal" voice the character is,
because it's easier to catch myself when I slip out of character.
Patricia C. Wrede
Patricia C. Wrede
> In article <49SdnRaBr8Rgk_vY...@comcast.com>,
> Kat R <null....@lycos.com> wrote:
>
>> Their desire to be nice
>> allowed what I consider bad writing on my part to slip through to the
>> final version. I'm still cringing. I prefer my criticism straight,
>> though I often give much softer crits than I expect from others.
>
> My daughter was very gentle and apologetic about telling me that the
> intro to _Salamander_--I've been discussing the book with her as I write
> it, and showing her what I've written--doesn't work, at least for her.
>
> But she told me.
When you have to live with the person you're critiquing, it puts a whole
'nother layer of complexity on the question of what to say and how to say
it, and adds a whole lot of potential irrelevant baggage to the writer's
response. It speaks well of you as a parent and a person that she was okay
with telling you there was something wrong with it, however gentle the
phrasing was.
Patricia C. Wrede
Patricia C. Wrede
> Patricia C. Wrede wrote:
>> "Kat R" <null....@lycos.com> wrote in message
>> news:49SdnRaBr8Rgk_vY...@comcast.com...
>>> When I mentioned it to the first-readers they all nodded and said "yeah,
>>> I noticed that but I didn't want to hurt your feelings." Their desire
>>> to be nice allowed what I consider bad writing on my part to slip
>>> through to the final version. I'm still cringing. I prefer my
>>> criticism straight, though I often give much softer crits than I expect
>>> from others.
>>
>> Smack them, and if they ever do it again, find some new first-readers.
> I have smacked two and dropped two from my first-read group. Now I'll
> have to find some new first readers and make a request to my editor to
> look for that particular weakness in other mss from me. I don't know why
> she didn't catch it on the first book, but did on the second.
Sometimes, you have to ask. One of my friends turned in a ms. with a bit
she wasn't sure about to an editor she trusted. When the revisions came
back without comment on that bit, she stewed for a couple of days, then
called the editor and asked for an opinion specifically on that bit. "Oh,"
said the editor, "I though it was a little peculiar, but you're so good I
figured you knew what you were doing, so I left it alone." The further
along in your career you get, the more likely this seems to be to happen to
you.
> Trying not to obsess on this... I'm 3 chapters from finished with the book
> 2 revision, which is due in a week and a half, and I'm not confident my
> fixes were a net improvement. Better notes at an early stage would have
> helped *a lot*.
Better notes from your readers, or better notes from your backbrain about
what you needed/wanted to do?
I've hit the First Veil on the thing I'm working on, two or three chapters
before the big mid-book turning point. I'm so close I can *taste* it, but
my backbrain wants more worldbuilding and backstory before I continue, and
when it gets this insistent, there's no help for it. So I have historical
maps spread all over my desk and a big stack of research reading that I
can't really get to until the living room furniture is back in place. (New
carpet.) And of course I'm fretting over whether the editor will take it on
portion, which always interferes with forward progress.
Sorry, didn't mean to hijack your post; I just felt suddenly cranky, staring
at these maps of 15-18th C. Africa...
Patricia C. Wrede
Patricia C. Wrede
> In article <4566aaf0$0$16556$afc3...@news.optusnet.com.au>,
> "Nick Argall" <nar...@gmail.removethisbit.com> wrote:
>
>> If I was writing those guys, I'd have the first one using a lot more
>> questioning, perhaps even using rhetorical questions a lot of the time.
>> The
>> second one makes me think of a maths lecturer I once had who would talk
>> incomprehensibly for several minutes and then say "And so, clearly, we
>> can
>> see..." Everything was clear to him, even if it wasn't clear to us. I'd
>> give the second one a lot of 'clearly' and 'obviously' and that sort of
>> language.
>>
>
> The problem is that the lectures are also being used to give the reader
> information about how magic works in my world, and I don't want to
> confuse the reader, or bore him. Which is an interesting problem, given
> that your solution is in other respects an attractive one.
Does it have to be omniscient viewpoint, or from the POV of the lecturer?
Because if you do it from the POV of one of the *students*, you can have the
lecturer's speech be mostly incomprehensible (or even just give the first
few lines, and then say "...and the rest was all but incomprehensible,
though she wrote it all down anyway." and then do a scene where the
student, either alone or with others, is figuring out just what the lecturer
actually *meant*, and how it applies to what they're doing. Of course,
whether this would work would depend on what sort of effect you want to
achieve overall, and if none of the students are otherwise-important
characters, it's probably not a good idea to introduce them just for this.
Patricia C. Wrede
David Friedman
"Patricia C. Wrede" <pwred...@aol.com> wrote:
> Does it have to be omniscient viewpoint, or from the POV of the lecturer?
> Because if you do it from the POV of one of the *students*, you can have the
> lecturer's speech be mostly incomprehensible (or even just give the first
> few lines, and then say "...and the rest was all but incomprehensible,
> though she wrote it all down anyway." and then do a scene where the
> student, either alone or with others, is figuring out just what the lecturer
> actually *meant*, and how it applies to what they're doing. Of course,
> whether this would work would depend on what sort of effect you want to
> achieve overall, and if none of the students are otherwise-important
> characters, it's probably not a good idea to introduce them just for this.
Mari originally makes friends with Ellen mainly because Ellen obviously
understands the lectures and Mari doesn't; I have several scenes where
Ellen is explaining things to other students. So that part isn't a
problem.
On the other hand, most of it is incomprehensible to Mari, and all of it
is clear to Ellen, so I might need a third student to follow out that
idea. At first glance it doesn't look like my sort of thing, but perhaps
it should be.
David Friedman
"Patricia C. Wrede" <pwred...@aol.com> wrote:
> Sorry, didn't mean to hijack your post; I just felt suddenly cranky, staring
> at these maps of 15-18th C. Africa...
Have you read Ibn Battuta? He is, I think, practically the only source
for 14th century east and west Africa. And interesting.
David Friedman
"Patricia C. Wrede" <pwred...@aol.com> wrote:
> The real trick will be staying "in voice" for the whole passage, which I
> expect will be extra difficult because lecturing is something you do in real
> life, and it's likely to be difficult not to keep slipping into your own
> much-practiced, habitual style.
Yes. My friend offered the speculation that the reason both lecturers
sounded the same was that they both sounded like me.
But of course, I don't attend my colleagues' classes, so don't have a
very clear idea of their style. And when I am at meetings and the
speakers are boring I mostly don't listen. And it's a long time since I
was a student.
But I'll try.
Patricia C. Wrede
> In article <12me56l...@corp.supernews.com>,
> "Patricia C. Wrede" <pwred...@aol.com> wrote:
>
>> Sorry, didn't mean to hijack your post; I just felt suddenly cranky,
>> staring
>> at these maps of 15-18th C. Africa...
>
> Have you read Ibn Battuta? He is, I think, practically the only source
> for 14th century east and west Africa. And interesting.
Sub-Saharan? This part is way-deep background for this book, but I may need
to make it more explicit for later books, so it needs to be solid enough to
stand up to further development as required.
Basically, the logic I'm following is: There were no people in the Americas
when Columbus arrived, so no nice stores of gold for the Spanish to loot.
So the Spanish didn't get terribly interested in conquest (nobody to
conquer) or colonization. But during the same period, there was a fair
amount of gold trade with the states in sub-Saharan West Africa, so those
kingdoms would have the mining know-how to exploit the South American gold
deposits, and a certain amount of interest in doing so. And there seems to
be an Africa-to-South America currents-and-prevailing-winds loop that would
be useful to sailors in the south Atlantic, once they get shipbuilding from
their European trading partners. So I'm looking at having my South
Columbian continent colonized by various Aphrikan states and empires (which
are advanced enough politically and socially to stand up to the Avrupan
countries because they've developed magic to fill in the resource and
technology gaps that made the real-life versions vulnerable to European
colonization/imperialism/exploitation).
I expect this to be all of about a three-line mention in the current book,
but it may become more relevant than I think, because one of the characters
is the daughter of two Aphrikan immigrants (one voluntary, one involuntary,
i.e., slave trade), and I suspect that Aphrikan style magic is going to play
a significant role in the plot development of the last half of the book. So
I'd really like something that won't fall apart if I have to develop it in
more detail, but I don't have an immediate need (I think) to root around in
primary sources. That way lies madness; if I start, I can just see that
I'll be re-inventing history, in detail, from the Pleistocene on forward,
and I'm just not up for that. Yet.
Patricia C. Wrede
Helen Hall
<pwred...@aol.com> writes
>
>For a minute, I thought you meant lecturers in real life. :) But that,
>too, is possibly useful. Even in lecturing, people have somewhat different
>styles. One of my favorite lecturers in B-school was in my least favorite
>subject; when he talked, he told long strings of illustrative real-life
>anecdotes from his experiences in Washington with the legal system, and it
>was just fascinating. Another was pretty obviously more interested in
>getting through the material than in getting students fired up about it;
>"dense" is the word that comes to mind about his lectures.
There are some lectures I still remember from my university days, some
because they were so good and a couple because they were so awful. Some
lecturers liked to use visual aids -- models or specimens or large
diagrams. There was another particularly good lecture given by a chemist
who had an experiment running on the front bench. He said something
like, "And after a while, it should turn blue. If it doesn't, I won't be
referring to it again." Which of course got a laugh.
Then there was the maths lecturer who just wrote endless equations on
the blackboard, expecting us to copy them down. If someone timidly
raised a hand to say that they didn't understand, he would just wipe the
board clean and do exactly the same thing again. Of course what we
wanted was some additional steps because when he said "therefore
obviously blah blah blah", the leap he'd made wasn't at all obvious to
us.
But in any kind of educational establishment -- even a fictional one --
I would expect to see these sorts of differences amongst the lecturers.
Helen
--
Helen, Gwynedd, Wales *** http://www.baradel.demon.co.uk
_A Legacy of War_, a fantasy murder mystery, now on the web at:
http://helenkenyon.livejournal.com/413.html
Irina Rempt
> There was another particularly good lecture given by a chemist
> who had an experiment running on the front bench. He said something
> like, "And after a while, it should turn blue. If it doesn't, I won't be
> referring to it again." Which of course got a laugh.
But did it in fact turn blue?
Irina
--
Vesta veran, terna puran, farenin. http://www.valdyas.org/irina/
Beghinnen can ick, volherden will' ick, volbringhen sal ick.
http://www.valdyas.org/foundobjects/index.cgi Latest: 08-Sep-2006
Helen Hall
<ir...@valdyas.org> writes
>Helen Hall wrote:
>
>> There was another particularly good lecture given by a chemist
>> who had an experiment running on the front bench. He said something
>> like, "And after a while, it should turn blue. If it doesn't, I won't be
>> referring to it again." Which of course got a laugh.
>
>But did it in fact turn blue?
>
change was now, to be honest.) It was something to do with his research
into photochromic compounds, anyway.
Zeborah
> "I think that was the truest thing I said all morning, which probably
> means that I shouldn't have said it at all." -- Isde Kide (protagonist
> of Pavane in Pearl and Emerald)
>
> >:)
:-)
My villain-protagonist, otoh... I won't say enjoys, but is skilled at
and comfortable with telling the truth in ways that cause his listeners
to believe lies. Occasionally for a little variety he tells a lie in a
way that causes his listeners to believe the truth.
Zeborah
> Then there was the maths lecturer who just wrote endless equations on
> the blackboard, expecting us to copy them down. If someone timidly
> raised a hand to say that they didn't understand, he would just wipe the
> board clean and do exactly the same thing again. Of course what we
> wanted was some additional steps because when he said "therefore
> obviously blah blah blah", the leap he'd made wasn't at all obvious to
> us.
I still remember the guest lecturer we had in Antarctic Studies for two
classes (we had heaps of guest lecturers in that course, it being
interdisciplinary) who, the first class, stood up and literally read a
lecture. She'd prepared a paper in advance and just read it out like
you'd read out an announcement, except it was an hour long.
At the start of the second class she said that one of the students had
complained about her going too fast, so she was going to modify her
lecture style as a result, and she did: she stood up and read the day's
lecture, stopping after each sentence to repeat it. An hour-long
dictation exercise.
Dan Goodman
> I've hit the First Veil on the thing I'm working on, two or three
> chapters before the big mid-book turning point. I'm so close I can
> taste it, but my backbrain wants more worldbuilding and backstory
> before I continue, and when it gets this insistent, there's no help
> for it. So I have historical maps spread all over my desk and a big
> stack of research reading that I can't really get to until the living
> room furniture is back in place. (New carpet.) And of course I'm
> fretting over whether the editor will take it on portion, which
> always interferes with forward progress.
>
> Sorry, didn't mean to hijack your post; I just felt suddenly cranky,
> staring at these maps of 15-18th C. Africa...
I love worldbuilding. But I realized a while ago that critiquers
tended to think the stuff I'd done on the fly was the result of
worldbuilding, and the details which resulted from careful
worldbuilding were obviously hastily improvised.
Dan Goodman
> The real trick will be staying "in voice" for the whole passage,
> which I expect will be extra difficult because lecturing is something
> you do in real life, and it's likely to be difficult not to keep
> slipping into your own much-practiced, habitual style. When I've had
> to do similar sorts of things, I have to do it kind of like method
> acting -- really being the character in my head and then letting
> him/her write the passage. Which is a lot easier, actually, the
> further from my "normal" voice the character is, because it's easier
> to catch myself when I slip out of character.
Thanks -- I got from this the solution to a different problem. I need
to see places and events the way several characters other than the
protagonist do.
Helen Hall
<zeb...@gmail.com> writes
>
>At the start of the second class she said that one of the students had
>complained about her going too fast, so she was going to modify her
>lecture style as a result, and she did: she stood up and read the day's
>lecture, stopping after each sentence to repeat it. An hour-long
>dictation exercise.
>
before copying technology enabled teachers to give out handouts, but it
is an appalling waste of time these days.
Suzanne Blom
"Patricia C. Wrede" <pwred...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:12me8u4...@corp.supernews.com...
cat vacuuming?...frustrating--Yes, that's it.
Or should I just say, "There, there, it'll be all right."?
John F. Eldredge
<use...@delete.this.baradel.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>In message <1hpckmq.6ny4fkzqb7bN%zeb...@gmail.com>, Zeborah
><zeb...@gmail.com> writes
>>
>>At the start of the second class she said that one of the students had
>>complained about her going too fast, so she was going to modify her
>>lecture style as a result, and she did: she stood up and read the day's
>>lecture, stopping after each sentence to repeat it. An hour-long
>>dictation exercise.
>>
>Oh, dear. This was just possibly a valid way of lecturing in the days
>before copying technology enabled teachers to give out handouts, but it
>is an appalling waste of time these days.
When I was getting my computer-programming degree, the required
textbook for one of the classes had been written by the teacher.
Perhaps I should say, "so-called textbook": it turned out to be
nothing but a lecture outline, just a list of lecture topics, with
blank space below each topic, so that you could take hand-written
notes during the lecture. Also, she generally refused to cover any
topic beyond reading out her (evidently pre-written) notes, one time
through. Any requests for more information would be postponed until a
two-or-three minute period at the end of the lecture, and she wouldn't
answer any questions from previous day's lectures.
She was skilled as a programmer, but was one of the worst teachers I
ever had in terms of teaching ability. I rather got the feeling that
she resented having to work as a teacher, rather than directly in the
industry. The students ended up having to mostly teach themselves.
--
John F. Eldredge -- jo...@jfeldredge.com
PGP key available from http://pgp.mit.edu
"Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better
than not to think at all." -- Hypatia of Alexandria
Jonathan L Cunningham
> took me a while to figure out that if I wanted plain, ordinary tea I
> needed to ask for "black tea" rather than "regular tea," for example.
> And I still slip every now and then by saying "string beans" rather
> than "green beans." Formal speech is usually different from informal
Are either of those the same as "runner beans"?
Jonathan
Nick Argall
> In article <12me5hk...@corp.supernews.com>,
> "Patricia C. Wrede" <pwred...@aol.com> wrote:
>
>> Does it have to be omniscient viewpoint, or from the POV of the lecturer?
>> Because if you do it from the POV of one of the *students*, you can have
>> the
>> lecturer's speech be mostly incomprehensible (or even just give the first
>> few lines, and then say "...and the rest was all but incomprehensible,
>> though she wrote it all down anyway." and then do a scene where the
>> student, either alone or with others, is figuring out just what the
>> lecturer
>> actually *meant*, and how it applies to what they're doing. Of course,
>> whether this would work would depend on what sort of effect you want to
>> achieve overall, and if none of the students are otherwise-important
>> characters, it's probably not a good idea to introduce them just for
>> this.
>
> Mari originally makes friends with Ellen mainly because Ellen obviously
> understands the lectures and Mari doesn't; I have several scenes where
> Ellen is explaining things to other students. So that part isn't a
> problem.
>
> On the other hand, most of it is incomprehensible to Mari, and all of it
> is clear to Ellen, so I might need a third student to follow out that
> idea. At first glance it doesn't look like my sort of thing, but perhaps
> it should be.
Alternatively, you could have Mari having the occasional insight, and Ellen
having the occasional blind spot. They shouldn't be equal, but Mari will be
unsympathetic if (she?) seems stupid.
Nick
Dan Goodman
It's not "either" -- it's two regional names for the same thing.
A quick look in the rec.food.cooking FAQ: looks like in the UK they
would be French beans of haricots vert.
Nick Argall
> In article <4566aaf0$0$16556$afc3...@news.optusnet.com.au>,
> "Nick Argall" <nar...@gmail.removethisbit.com> wrote:
>
>> If I was writing those guys, I'd have the first one using a lot more
>> questioning, perhaps even using rhetorical questions a lot of the time.
>> The
>> second one makes me think of a maths lecturer I once had who would talk
>> incomprehensibly for several minutes and then say "And so, clearly, we
>> can
>> see..." Everything was clear to him, even if it wasn't clear to us. I'd
>> give the second one a lot of 'clearly' and 'obviously' and that sort of
>> language.
>>
>
> The problem is that the lectures are also being used to give the reader
> information about how magic works in my world, and I don't want to
> confuse the reader, or bore him. Which is an interesting problem, given
> that your solution is in other respects an attractive one.
This post was still in my mind while I walked to the ballot box and back
(there's an election in Victoria today), and I realise that you could
substitute 'weird' for 'incomprehensible'. Eg:
"Levitation spells, as everybody knows, reverse the attractive properties of
the Earth element. And so clearly, the best way to counter a levitation
spell is with the Water element." The information is conveyed, and the
idiosyncracy of the lecturer is too :)
Nick
Jonathan L Cunningham
> Jonathan L Cunningham wrote:
>
> > Dan Goodman <dsg...@iphouse.com> wrote:
> >
> > > took me a while to figure out that if I wanted plain, ordinary tea I
> > > needed to ask for "black tea" rather than "regular tea," for
> > > example. And I still slip every now and then by saying "string
> > > beans" rather than "green beans." Formal speech is usually
> > > different from informal
> >
> > Are either of those the same as "runner beans"?
>
> It's not "either" -- it's two regional names for the same thing.
I wondered if the same name might mean different things in different
places, as well as having different names for the same thing in
different places.
> A quick look in the rec.food.cooking FAQ: looks like in the UK they
> would be French beans of haricots vert.
I did my own googling, and found a picture of green beans. I would have
guessed they were the same, but the species name is different: your
beans are Phaseolus vulgaris, but runner beans are Phaseolus coccineus.
Now I'm wondering if they also taste the same. And what it is in my
freezer ... [looks] just says "green beans" without giving the species
name. How inconsiderate! Looks like in the UK they might be called
"green beans" too! :-)
Now I'll have to see if I can find some real runner beans and compare
them.
Jonathan
Nick Argall
"Patricia C. Wrede" <pwred...@aol.com> wrote in message
news:12me56l...@corp.supernews.com...
>
> I've hit the First Veil on the thing I'm working on,
Mind elaborating on that concept?
Nick
Nick Argall
"Helen Hall" <use...@delete.this.baradel.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
news:rZk+G7ER...@baradel.demon.co.uk...
> There are some lectures I still remember from my university days, some
> because they were so good and a couple because they were so awful.
I just got reminded of a lecturer who drove an entire class insane. He was
an acupuncture lecturer who didn't want to be associated with saying
"Acupuncture works" (he was terrified that we'd misunderstand or take
something out of context or make any kind of mistake at all). It was
excruciating to hear him say "Some people believe that if you stimulate
these so-called acupuncture points with a needle, you might get some sort of
an effect" (I think I'm quoting pretty accurately there).
He was also completely adorable, because you could tell that he was very
genuinely concerned for our welfare.
Nick
David Friedman
sp...@sofluc.co.uk.invalid (Jonathan L Cunningham) wrote:
> I wondered if the same name might mean different things in different
> places, as well as having different names for the same thing in
> different places.
>
Yes.
I'm pretty sure "yam" means "sweet potato" in some places and an African
root vegetable in others. A milk shake in some parts of the U.S. has ice
cream in it; in others, if it had ice cream, it would be called a frappe.
If we're allowed to use different times, blancmange, syllabub and harisa
all referred to quite different things at different times.
David Friedman
zeb...@gmail.com (Zeborah) wrote:
> I still remember the guest lecturer we had in Antarctic Studies for two
> classes (we had heaps of guest lecturers in that course, it being
> interdisciplinary) who, the first class, stood up and literally read a
> lecture. She'd prepared a paper in advance and just read it out like
> you'd read out an announcement, except it was an hour long.
>
Have you ever read _The Wealth of Nations?_ Smith has a wonderful
discussion of all the ways that lecturers can use to pretend to teach
without doing any real work.
David Friedman
"Nick Argall" <nar...@gmail.removethisbit.com> wrote:
> > On the other hand, most of it is incomprehensible to Mari, and all of it
> > is clear to Ellen, so I might need a third student to follow out that
> > idea. At first glance it doesn't look like my sort of thing, but perhaps
> > it should be.
>
> Alternatively, you could have Mari having the occasional insight, and Ellen
> having the occasional blind spot. They shouldn't be equal, but Mari will be
> unsympathetic if (she?) seems stupid.
>
Mari has already had an insight. Ellen hasn't had any blind spots about
magic, but I just wrote a scene in which Mari has a clearer idea of
someone else's likely motivation than Ellen does.
Mari is, in modern terms, mathophobic; when Ellen asks her how she is at
math her response is that when she adds up a column of numbers twice,
she usually gets the same answer. She is also bright. So when the
question involves being clever rather than being good at dealing with
abstract ideas, she does just fine.
---
(lecturer)
łWe start with a simple problem. The king is sieging Northpass castle
and you are with him. The defenders have sent a messenger off and he is
already several miles down the road, too far for pursuit to catch him.
If he and his message get safe to the enemy army on the far side of the
pass they will come to the rescue of the defenders and the siege will
fail. Perhaps the war will be lost.
łYou are a fire mage. You do not have a great deal of power-no mage
does-and the greater the distance over which you must work the less the
power you can apply. What are the ways in which you might stop the
messenger? How can you use fire to keep the message from reaching its
destination? ˛
...
The third hand raised was a tall girl, very well dressed. [Mari]
łTwelve miles north of Northpass castle the road forks. The main road
goes on to Berio, which is where the enemy army probably is, or at least
its commander. The other branch ends at the village of Efkic, thirty
miles away. There are wooden sign posts at the fork with the names of
the towns burned into them.
łIt should take the messenger at least an hour to reach the fork; that
gives you plenty of time to burn a few extra lines, changing EFKIC into
BERIO, and BERIO into BEKTOL. Send a squad of cavalry to the fork to
intercept the messenger when he finally discovers he has gone the wrong
way and turns back.˛
(later)
As the students drifted out of the lecture hall, Ellen and Mari were
joined by a third girl.
łThat was very clever of you. Did you make it up? Is there really a
signpost twelve miles north of the castle?˛
Mari smiled and said nothing, then relented.
łAs a matter of fact there is. My horse went lame there last year, when
we were guesting with the Castellan. I had to walk him back. Twelve
miles.˛
[Question for horse people. Would "threw a shoe" make more sense here?
Is it safe to walk a lame horse for a substantial distance?]
David Friedman
"Patricia C. Wrede" <pwred...@aol.com> wrote:
> "David Friedman" <dd...@daviddfriedman.nopsam.com> wrote in message
> news:ddfr-6FF87C.1...@news.isp.giganews.com...
> > In article <12me56l...@corp.supernews.com>,
> > "Patricia C. Wrede" <pwred...@aol.com> wrote:
> >
> >> Sorry, didn't mean to hijack your post; I just felt suddenly cranky,
> >> staring
> >> at these maps of 15-18th C. Africa...
> >
> > Have you read Ibn Battuta? He is, I think, practically the only source
> > for 14th century east and west Africa. And interesting.
>
> Sub-Saharan?
Yes. He went on Hajj and caught the travel bug, becoming a 14th century
North African world traveler. You've probably heard of his 13th century
Italian imitator. He travelled down both the east and west coasts of
Africa as well as spending some time in India and beyond.
...
> Basically, the logic I'm following is: There were no people in the Americas
> when Columbus arrived, so no nice stores of gold for the Spanish to loot.
> So the Spanish didn't get terribly interested in conquest (nobody to
> conquer) or colonization. But during the same period, there was a fair
> amount of gold trade with the states in sub-Saharan West Africa, so those
> kingdoms would have the mining know-how to exploit the South American gold
> deposits, and a certain amount of interest in doing so. And there seems to
> be an Africa-to-South America currents-and-prevailing-winds loop that would
> be useful to sailors in the south Atlantic, once they get shipbuilding from
> their European trading partners. So I'm looking at having my South
> Columbian continent colonized by various Aphrikan states and empires (which
> are advanced enough politically and socially to stand up to the Avrupan
> countries because they've developed magic to fill in the resource and
> technology gaps that made the real-life versions vulnerable to European
> colonization/imperialism/exploitation).
Realistically, I wonder if the characteristics of European civilization
that led to its pulling ahead in technology in our time line wouldn't
apply in that one with a magical technology. But there's no reason you
have to assume that.
Alma Hromic Deckert
From where I'm sitting, Zelazny's Amber series - when you Walked The
Pattern - and only those of the Blood could do it and live - you went
through several "veils", places where the going got tough or
difficult, like walking through air suddenly turned the consistency of
water, or molasses.
THAT First Veil. The first obstacle, the one you HAVE to get through
in order to get on with the rest of the task in hand.
A.(but read Zelazny. He explained it so much better. Start with "Nine
Princes in Amber")
Dan Goodman
> Dan Goodman <dsg...@iphouse.com> wrote:
>
> > Jonathan L Cunningham wrote:
> >
> > > Dan Goodman <dsg...@iphouse.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > > took me a while to figure out that if I wanted plain, ordinary
> > > > tea I needed to ask for "black tea" rather than "regular tea,"
> > > > for example. And I still slip every now and then by saying
> > > > "string beans" rather than "green beans." Formal speech is
> > > > usually different from informal
> > >
> > > Are either of those the same as "runner beans"?
> >
> > It's not "either" -- it's two regional names for the same thing.
>
> I wondered if the same name might mean different things in different
> places, as well as having different names for the same thing in
> different places.
Some people do use "string beans" for the ones which have strings and
"green beans" for the non-stringy variety. Which makes sense. But in
some parts of the US, they're both called "string beans" -- just as
"broom" is used for besoms which don't contain any trace of broom
plant, "glass" is used for plastic tumblers, etc.
> > A quick look in the rec.food.cooking FAQ: looks like in the UK they
> > would be French beans of haricots vert.
>
> I did my own googling, and found a picture of green beans. I would
> have guessed they were the same, but the species name is different:
> your beans are Phaseolus vulgaris, but runner beans are Phaseolus
> coccineus.
>
> Now I'm wondering if they also taste the same. And what it is in my
> freezer ... [looks] just says "green beans" without giving the species
> name. How inconsiderate! Looks like in the UK they might be called
> "green beans" too! :-)
>
> Now I'll have to see if I can find some real runner beans and compare
> them.
>
> Jonathan
--
Patricia C. Wrede
"Dan Goodman" <dsg...@iphouse.com> wrote in message
news:45679062$0$44180$8046...@newsreader.iphouse.net...
> Jonathan L Cunningham wrote:
>
>> Dan Goodman <dsg...@iphouse.com> wrote:
>>
>> > took me a while to figure out that if I wanted plain, ordinary tea I
>> > needed to ask for "black tea" rather than "regular tea," for
>> > example. And I still slip every now and then by saying "string
>> > beans" rather than "green beans." Formal speech is usually
>> > different from informal
>>
>> Are either of those the same as "runner beans"?
>
> It's not "either" -- it's two regional names for the same thing.
Actually, it depends on whether you're cooking them or growing them.
Beans can be eaten green, as the long pods with immature beans inside
("green beans," haricots vert, etc.) or fully mature and dried, as navy
beans, pinto beans, etc. And some, like lima beans, are eaten mature but
not dried, only shelled. Some varieties of green beans have a "string"
down one side of the pod, which has to be removed in preparation for
cooking, hence, "string beans." (Rather like the difference between sugar
snap peapods and shelling peas).
When you grow beans in your garden, you can get varieties that are
determinate or indeterminate, that is, where the plants grow to a certain
(knee-high, usually) point and then stop or where they keep growing and
growing into really long vines that only stop when the frost kills them.
The shorter, determinate varieties are referred to as "bush beans;" the long
vine ones are "pole beans" or "runner beans," because they run all over the
poles that are usually used to support the vines. Bush beans are usually
eaten as green beans, in the varieties I'm familiar with, and some of them
have been bred to be "stringless"; runner beans may be eaten either as green
beans or as shelled, dried beans, depending on when you pick them.
This is probably far more about beans than anyone actually wanted to know.
Patricia C. Wrede
Bill Swears
> In article <1hpc3iq.itrk1g12eg4akN%sp...@sofluc.co.uk.invalid>,
> sp...@sofluc.co.uk.invalid (Jonathan L Cunningham) wrote:
>
>> I wondered if the same name might mean different things in different
>> places, as well as having different names for the same thing in
>> different places.
>>
>
> Yes.
>
> I'm pretty sure "yam" means "sweet potato" in some places and an African
> root vegetable in others. A milk shake in some parts of the U.S. has ice
> cream in it; in others, if it had ice cream, it would be called a frappe.
>
have seen milk shakes that do not have ice cream, but not in some years.
Bill
--
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Dan Goodman
> sp...@sofluc.co.uk.invalid (Jonathan L Cunningham) wrote:
>
> > I wondered if the same name might mean different things in different
> > places, as well as having different names for the same thing in
> > different places.
>
> Yes.
>
> I'm pretty sure "yam" means "sweet potato" in some places and an
> African root vegetable in others.
So far as Twin Cities groceries are concerned, there are "sweet
potatoes" and "yams" which are another kind of sweet potato.
> A milk shake in some parts of the
> U.S. has ice cream in it; in others, if it had ice cream, it would be
> called a frappe.
And there are regional differences in what "regular coffee" means.
>
> If we're allowed to use different times, blancmange, syllabub and
> harisa all referred to quite different things at different times.
--
Patricia C. Wrede
"Nick Argall" <nar...@gmail.removethisbit.com> wrote in message
news:4567a7e1$0$5747$afc3...@news.optusnet.com.au...
It's a term Steve Brust made up, ages ago when we were all still in the
Scribblies together. For a lot of writers, there's a point somewhere
between chapter two and chapter ten (the exact spot varies, depending on the
writer and the particular book) where the writer has to shift gears. The
initial setup is done, and things have to start making progress; one can't
simply continue saying "See, there's this cool thing going on, and this
other cool thing, and oh, yes, this nifty bit of business and those really
fascinating people." Things have to begin coming together and making
connections. And this point is frequently the first major sticky spot,
where the writing slows to a crawl or stops altogether. The first surge of
energy has worn out. The things that were insufficiently thought out begin
to show, and have to be rationalized and dealt with. One begins to feel a
need for some hint of a logical connection, or even an illogical one,
between the sign painters who are having tea in the London spaceport bar
before their shuttle to the Moon leaves and the scenes with the mutant
octopus that's terrorizing the Indonesian fishermen.
It's not "writers block" as that term is generally understood; it's just
part of the normal ebb and flow of the writing process. There are other
spots where the work predictably bogs down. The exact spots vary, depending
on the writer, but there are always several of them, hence the term "the
*first* veil." After you've done a couple of books, you start to notice
what your particular pattern of sticky bits is (if you are sufficiently
analytical and/or introspective), and you can compensate to some extent, or
at least remind yourself that this, too, will pass.
It still makes me cranky when it happens, though. But that's part of my
pattern. :)
Patricia C. Wrede
Julian Flood
> guessed they were the same, but the species name is different: your
> beans are Phaseolus vulgaris, but runner beans are Phaseolus coccineus.
>
> Now I'm wondering if they also taste the same.
Just to confuse matters, you can get climbing french beans. Proper
runner beans (ie the ones we grow) are much bigger and coarser than
french, but the flavour is just sort of greenish in both types. Straight
from the frame, runners are more flavoursome, but if they're picked too
old they're stringy and full of bits of flat, tough, transparent skin.
I would guess, judging from the supermarket's shelves, that runner beans
are best when you grow your own, and french beans are easier to grow,
pick, transport and store in a commercial setting.
JF
Patricia C. Wrede
> In article <1hpckmq.6ny4fkzqb7bN%zeb...@gmail.com>,
> zeb...@gmail.com (Zeborah) wrote:
>
>> I still remember the guest lecturer we had in Antarctic Studies for two
>> classes (we had heaps of guest lecturers in that course, it being
>> interdisciplinary) who, the first class, stood up and literally read a
>> lecture. She'd prepared a paper in advance and just read it out like
>> you'd read out an announcement, except it was an hour long.
>>
>
> Have you ever read _The Wealth of Nations?_ Smith has a wonderful
> discussion of all the ways that lecturers can use to pretend to teach
> without doing any real work.
Well, geez, David! You didn't tell me you had a *list* handy. Pick one of
your lecture characters and assign him whichever method of pretending fits
his character, and I bet that however he comes out, he won't sound like the
other one.
Patricia C. Wrede
Julian Flood
> This is probably far more about beans than anyone actually wanted to know.
Beans are like drains.
JF
Patricia C. Wrede
Oh, they have a lot of the same physical technology, and their approach to
magic is similarly engineering-oriented. But they haven't worked down to
the real theoretical basis of magic yet, to get a sort of Unified Field
Theory of magic. There are three very different approaches to magic in this
world -- the Aphrikan, the Cathayan (which includes China and whatever I end
up calling Japan), and the Western Avrupan. They're all working with the
same thing, but they get significantly different results because their
approaches are so different, to the point where a lot of people still think
it's three totally different kinds of magic, rather than just different
approaches. Kind of like the point in biology where they still thought that
goose-necked barnacles developed into barnacle geese because nobody had ever
found barnacle geese nesting anywhere. And the Aphrikan version of magic is
really, really strong on countering a) the kinds of spells and technology
the Avrupans use and b) big hungry dangerous critters. b) is what gives
them the big advantage in the colonization land-grab, since the New World is
crammed full of big hungry dangerous critters. (Also little hungry
dangerous critters and medium-sized hungry dangerous critters.)
Patricia C. Wrede
Kat R
> "Kat R" <null....@lycos.com> wrote in message
> news:HsGdnetK0tCZ8vvY...@comcast.com...
>> ... make a request to my editor to
>> look for that particular weakness in other mss from me. I don't know why
>> she didn't catch it on the first book, but did on the second.
>
> Sometimes, you have to ask. One of my friends turned in a ms. with a bit
> she wasn't sure about to an editor she trusted. When the revisions came
> back without comment on that bit, she stewed for a couple of days, then
> called the editor and asked for an opinion specifically on that bit. "Oh,"
> said the editor, "I though it was a little peculiar, but you're so good I
> figured you knew what you were doing, so I left it alone." The further
> along in your career you get, the more likely this seems to be to happen to
> you.
>
I've noticed that with a lot of writers--they receive less editing as
their career advances. I shall just have to keep on asking, I guess. I
know I'm not going to catch everything because I *hope* I'm going to
keep on changing and improving, but that also means I'll continue to
make errors, sometimes in new ways.
>> Trying not to obsess on this... I'm 3 chapters from finished with the book
>> 2 revision, which is due in a week and a half, and I'm not confident my
>> fixes were a net improvement. Better notes at an early stage would have
>> helped *a lot*.
>
> Better notes from your readers, or better notes from your backbrain about
> what you needed/wanted to do?
From readers. My backbrain goes happily to sleep after draft 1.
>
> I've hit the First Veil on the thing I'm working on, two or three chapters
> before the big mid-book turning point. I'm so close I can *taste* it, but
> my backbrain wants more worldbuilding and backstory before I continue, and
> when it gets this insistent, there's no help for it. So I have historical
> maps spread all over my desk and a big stack of research reading that I
> can't really get to until the living room furniture is back in place. (New
> carpet.) And of course I'm fretting over whether the editor will take it on
> portion, which always interferes with forward progress.
>
> Sorry, didn't mean to hijack your post; I just felt suddenly cranky, staring
> at these maps of 15-18th C. Africa...
No apologies, please. Sounds like an interesting problem to have,
though frustrating, indeed. I love maps. Sometimes you just have to
give in to the bug in the brain saying "no, no.... do this, first!" or
you'll never get on.
--
Kat Richardson
Greywalker (Roc, 2006)
Website: http://www.katrichardson.com/
Bloggery: http://katrich.wordpress.com/
Julian Flood
For a lot of writers, there's a point somewhere
> between chapter two and chapter ten (the exact spot varies, depending on the
> writer and the particular book) where the writer has to shift gears. The
> initial setup is done, and things have to start making progress;
I'm not doing nano, just writing, but....
I've found one of the ways to actually write a novel, rather than write
the first part, is to get past the tipping point which is several veils
along IME. It seems to make the story gel, even though there's no plot
to carry me forward. I think what happens is that at each veil a lot of
possibility branches are pruned and, at the tipping point, there are so
few left that I can come back and continue the job later if need be. The
book will then stop writhing greasily or flaming red hot under my hand
and settle down to being a beautiful witch*.
So I'm writing every day in November, which should get me up to
thirtyish thou. Experience, however, teaches me that this may not be
quite enough.
JF
Here's mine:
<>
"It starts off 'A late royal progress through East Anglia. Kings!
Queens and black murder!'"
Killick sat up with a jerk.
"Black murder? That looks promising. Let me see. Yes. Odd way of
phrasing it, though. It looks like the queens did the black murder. And
the black murder's something to do with the queens only."
"Then... First find the parsee sitting with his hat of more than
oriental splendour, watching while a short distance away a cat does
something no cat ever does.' Then there's a bit about the high street
and numbers. You manipulate the numbers and get a lat and long for the
GPS. Easy."
"Which high street?"
"Hang on, I'm making a note." She typed busily. "That," said Milly
snapping shut her computer, "is the question. It's in East Anglia which
should mean Norfolk and Suffolk, or, if you believe those people in the
BBC it could be Essex and Herts and Cambridge as well. What's a parsee?"
"It's some sort of religious sect, I think. Indian?"
"No," said Milly, smiling at him. "Ma's bum."
Killick gave her a long stare.
"I can always get a new sergeant, you know."
"No you can't" she said briskly. "I'm all the sergeants there are."
I wonder if anyone could guess from that who the queens might be.
Probably not. I'll have to add in some more clues.
*Or a hideous hag. But the beautiful witch point is prettier.
Dan Goodman
>
> "Dan Goodman" <dsg...@iphouse.com> wrote in message
> > Jonathan L Cunningham wrote:
> >
> >>Dan Goodman <dsg...@iphouse.com> wrote:
> > >
> >>> took me a while to figure out that if I wanted plain, ordinary
> tea I >>> needed to ask for "black tea" rather than "regular tea," for
> >>> example. And I still slip every now and then by saying "string
> >>> beans" rather than "green beans." Formal speech is usually
> >>> different from informal
> > >
> > > Are either of those the same as "runner beans"?
> >
> > It's not "either" -- it's two regional names for the same thing.
>
> Actually, it depends on whether you're cooking them or growing them.
>
> Beans can be eaten green, as the long pods with immature beans inside
> ("green beans," haricots vert, etc.) or fully mature and dried, as
> navy beans, pinto beans, etc. And some, like lima beans, are eaten
> mature but not dried, only shelled. Some varieties of green beans
> have a "string" down one side of the pod, which has to be removed in
> preparation for cooking, hence, "string beans." (Rather like the
> difference between sugar snap peapods and shelling peas).
However: In at least two dialect areas -- New York Metropolitan and
Hudson Valley -- they're _all_ called string beans. For example, in
the New York Times.
And I gather they used to all be called string beans in the Twin Cities
and nearby parts of Minnesota. Which is why, when I slip up and say
"string beans" rather than "green beans," I'm usually understood.
> When you grow beans in your garden, you can get varieties that are
> determinate or indeterminate, that is, where the plants grow to a
> certain (knee-high, usually) point and then stop or where they keep
> growing and growing into really long vines that only stop when the
> frost kills them. The shorter, determinate varieties are referred to
> as "bush beans;" the long vine ones are "pole beans" or "runner
> beans," because they run all over the poles that are usually used to
> support the vines. Bush beans are usually eaten as green beans, in
> the varieties I'm familiar with, and some of them have been bred to
> be "stringless"; runner beans may be eaten either as green beans or
> as shelled, dried beans, depending on when you pick them.
>
> This is probably far more about beans than anyone actually wanted to
> know.
Then again, someone here might want to know why people whose ancestors
came from malarial areas may need to avoid eating broad beans.
Dan Goodman
> "Nick Argall" <nar...@gmail.removethisbit.com> wrote in message
> >
> >"Patricia C. Wrede" <pwred...@aol.com> wrote in message
> >
> > > I've hit the First Veil on the thing I'm working on,
> >
> > Mind elaborating on that concept?
>
> It's a term Steve Brust made up, ages ago when we were all still in
> the Scribblies together. For a lot of writers, there's a point
> somewhere between chapter two and chapter ten (the exact spot varies,
> depending on the writer and the particular book) where the writer has
> to shift gears. The initial setup is done, and things have to start
> making progress; one can't simply continue saying "See, there's this
> cool thing going on, and this other cool thing, and oh, yes, this
> nifty bit of business and those really fascinating people." Things
> have to begin coming together and making connections. And this point
> is frequently the first major sticky spot, where the writing slows to
> a crawl or stops altogether. The first surge of energy has worn out.
> The things that were insufficiently thought out begin to show, and
> have to be rationalized and dealt with. One begins to feel a need
> for some hint of a logical connection, or even an illogical one,
> between the sign painters who are having tea in the London spaceport
> bar before their shuttle to the Moon leaves and the scenes with the
> mutant octopus that's terrorizing the Indonesian fishermen.
And, of course, there are probably writers who need to _keep_ too many
things from being connected. To refrain from having the sign painters
use paint with an ingredient which causes mutations in octopusses, and
the head of the sign painter's union actually being a mad scientist
from Atlantis, which happens to be undersea near Indonesia, and there
being something inherent in the structure of human languages which was
introduced by aliens as part of their plot to make Earth suitable for
octopus hunting, and....
Cyli
If it was in the US, he had good cause to put in those qualifiers. I
think it's loosening up now, but it might still be the case that he
could be accused of illegally practicing, or advocating the practice
of, medicine in some way if he said it worked.
If you go into an herb store and ask for a cure for your sinus
problem, the clued in among the sales people will show you some books
you can leaf through and then you can ask them for whatever herb or
vitamin or whatever the book you've chosen advocates. But if they
outright tell you how to cure your stuffy nose, they're liable for
fines and / or jail time. Weird. Very. Keeps the store open and
solvent and the employee from legal penalties that might involve jail.
If another customer tells you that golden seal has always worked for
her, that's probably okay. Certainly if she says she's not a doctor
and it's just personal advice.
There are ways alternative practitioners in some states, and the laws
vary by state as well as under the FDA, can be licensed to limited
practices of medicine, but it's all very tricky.
--
r.bc: vixen
Speaker to squirrels, willow watcher, etc..
Often taunted by trout. Almost entirely harmless. Really.
Cyli
<dd...@daviddfriedman.nopsam.com> wrote:
>[Question for horse people. Would "threw a shoe" make more sense here?
>Is it safe to walk a lame horse for a substantial distance?]
It'll make more sense to people than "...got a stone in his frog and
when after I dug it out, I had to walk him home."
It may or may not be safe depending on what lamed the horse. With a
lost shoe, almost certainly. With a stone in the frog, probably. With
a twisted fetlock, best to leave the horse at the first safe farm or
inn to be seen to and rent a horse or walk to get home, as it probably
would if it threw a splint (I don't know what that one means, btw, but
I know it requires care and gradual return to exercise.).
Cyli
Indeed. Anyone writing SF of any kind should read Zelazny and the
Nine Princes book is excellent.
He probably got the veils from knowing about the Quaballah, where
after one has the material stuff down, one must pass the mysterious
veils, the Ain, the Ain Soph, and the Ain Soph Aur, which I hope I've
put in the right order and spelled fairly well. I think that because
of the similarity of the cards in Amber to the Tarot and know how
intimately the Tarot is tied to the Quaballah.
And when you've read Nine Princes (and probably gotten sucked into the
whole series) read Lord of Light. Then try not to curl up and snivel
because you think you could never write that well. Instead, remember
how the Amber series falls off in most of the last of it, where
Corwin's out of the picture and his son, Merlin is the protag. Not
that I could be as good as even his Merlin stuff, but I've uncurled
and stopped sniveling so much about it and am willing to write my
silly cozy a bit farther.
Nick Argall
"Cyli" <cyl...@gmail.com> wrote in message
news:fvvfm2l4vncatoe7i...@4ax.com...
> On Sat, 25 Nov 2006 12:26:43 +1100, "Nick Argall"
> <nar...@gmail.removethisbit.com> wrote:
>
>>
>>"Helen Hall" <use...@delete.this.baradel.demon.co.uk> wrote in message
>>news:rZk+G7ER...@baradel.demon.co.uk...
>>> There are some lectures I still remember from my university days, some
>>> because they were so good and a couple because they were so awful.
>>
>>I just got reminded of a lecturer who drove an entire class insane. He
>>was
>>an acupuncture lecturer who didn't want to be associated with saying
>>"Acupuncture works" (he was terrified that we'd misunderstand or take
>>something out of context or make any kind of mistake at all). It was
>>excruciating to hear him say "Some people believe that if you stimulate
>>these so-called acupuncture points with a needle, you might get some sort
>>of
>>an effect" (I think I'm quoting pretty accurately there).
>>
>>He was also completely adorable, because you could tell that he was very
>>genuinely concerned for our welfare.
>>
> If it was in the US, he had good cause to put in those qualifiers. I
> think it's loosening up now, but it might still be the case that he
> could be accused of illegally practicing, or advocating the practice
> of, medicine in some way if he said it worked.
This was in Victoria (Australia) - the first legal jusristiction outside
China to have government registration of acupuncturists.
Nick
sherry
I ran into your message quite accidentally while researching about some
details on 'Exercise' and thought of sharing some of my findings.
I've read at
'http://medical-health-care-information.com/Health-living/exercise/index.asp'
that Swimming, cycling, jogging, skiing, aerobic dancing, walking or
any of dozens of other activities can help your heart. Whether it's
included in a structured exercise program or just part of your daily
routine, all physical activity adds up to a healthier heart.
I hope the above is of some help to you as well.
Helen Hall
Friedman <dd...@daviddfriedman.nopsam.com> writes
>
>³As a matter of fact there is. My horse went lame there last year, when
>we were guesting with the Castellan. I had to walk him back. Twelve
>miles.²
>
>[Question for horse people. Would "threw a shoe" make more sense here?
>Is it safe to walk a lame horse for a substantial distance?]
>
seriously lame horse is not a good idea, though what would the
alternatives be? Leaving the animal to be eaten by wolves or stolen by
bandits would be worse.
But it depends on how lame. If it's a slight strain, e.g. due to a
stumble on rough ground, then gentle walking without the weight of the
rider would be fine. The animal might not even show lameness unless
trotted or ridden. That's why in endurance riding and eventing, the
horse has to be trotted up before the judges. Mild lameness won't show
at a walk.
Basically lameness is just a reaction to pain. It's merely the horse
limping, just as a human would do with a sprained ankle.
One solution would be to have the horse pick up a stone in his shoe,
have the rider dismount and remove the stone, but when she trots on
again she finds that he's slightly lame, due to bruising. Walking him
would be fine in those circumstances.
Helen
--
Helen, Gwynedd, Wales *** http://www.baradel.demon.co.uk
_A Legacy of War_, a fantasy murder mystery, now on the web at:
http://helenkenyon.livejournal.com/413.html
Helen Hall
<pwred...@aol.com> writes
>One begins to feel a
>need for some hint of a logical connection, or even an illogical one,
>between the sign painters who are having tea in the London spaceport bar
>before their shuttle to the Moon leaves and the scenes with the mutant
>octopus that's terrorizing the Indonesian fishermen.
>
I just wanted to admire that sentence again. :-) I wish my mind could
come up with such wonderful examples on the spur of the moment. (At
least I assume it's a throwaway, and not a project on the back burner
somewhere.)
>It's not "writers block" as that term is generally understood; it's just
>part of the normal ebb and flow of the writing process.
I think your "First Veil" must correspond approximately to Lars
Eighner's "Plot Point A". That is, the point after the "Hook" when the
first real, deep complication occurs and the protags begin to see that
they're part of something much bigger.
In other words, to hijack your example, it's the point where the
apprentice sign painter begins to realise that there might be a
connection between the strange craft he sees through the spaceport bar
window and the mutant octopus. Though as yet he still has no idea that
the solution lies in the mysterious artefact currently being held by
archaeologists in a secure establishment on the moon or that the key to
unlocking the secret of the mysterious artefact is the object that his
Auntie Megan has been using as a tea-strainer back in her little cottage
in Dorset.
Irina Rempt
[nonsense showing that (s)he has not read Cyli's post at all]
Is someone going to do something about this clueless person, or does
everybody else think it's a robot too?
Irina
--
Vesta veran, terna puran, farenin. http://www.valdyas.org/irina/
Beghinnen can ick, volherden will' ick, volbringhen sal ick.
http://www.valdyas.org/foundobjects/index.cgi Latest: 08-Sep-2006
Michelle Bottorff
> sherry wrote:
>
> [nonsense showing that (s)he has not read Cyli's post at all]
>
> Is someone going to do something about this clueless person, or does
> everybody else think it's a robot too?
Well, if it isn't a robot, the level of reading comprehension shown is
such that there seems no point in writing a message asking her to stop.
Figuring out where sherry lives and sending over a thug with a great big
clue-by-four, which would then be applied with diligence to the relative
portions of sherry's anatomy is probably about the only thing that has a
hope of working. :(
--
Michelle Bottorff -> Chelle B. -> Shelby
L. Shelby, Writer http://www.lshelby.com/
Livejournal http://lavenderbard.livejournal.com/
rec.arts.sf.composition FAQ http://www.lshelby.com/rasfcFAQ.html
Jonathan L Cunningham
I think the runner beans I've eaten are ones we've grown (or my dad did,
I don't have a garden). And probably supermarket beans have always been
french beans. Home grown runners definitely approach inedible as they
get older.
I seem to recall a difference in the actual bean (as opposed to the pod)
being purple, or is that just a variety/age thing?
Jonathan
Julian Flood
> I seem to recall a difference in the actual bean (as opposed to the pod)
> being purple, or is that just a variety/age thing?
French beans come in green, purple or pink... fleshy bits, not the bean.
Pod, that's the word. Runners come in green or yellow.
Runner beans are generally purple and pink mottled. I have vague
memories of one called the Scotch bean, a variety of runner which has
particularly colourful beans, but the details are hazy. Some french
beans are purple, some are green.
That's it!
JF
Patricia C. Wrede
"Julian Flood" <jul...@ooopsfloodsclimbers.co.uk> wrote in message
news:4567d118$0$133$7b0f...@reader.news.newnet.co.uk...
There is no group of people who can't manage an amusing conversation on the
subject?
Patricia C. Wrede
Patricia C. Wrede
> Patricia C. Wrede wrote:
> For a lot of writers, there's a point somewhere
>> between chapter two and chapter ten (the exact spot varies, depending on
>> the writer and the particular book) where the writer has to shift gears.
>> The initial setup is done, and things have to start making progress;
>
> I'm not doing nano, just writing, but....
>
> I've found one of the ways to actually write a novel, rather than write
> the first part, is to get past the tipping point which is several veils
> along IME.
Oh, yes. But you make is sound so easy...
Patricia C. Wrede
Patricia C. Wrede
> In message <12mfkdj...@corp.supernews.com>, Patricia C. Wrede
> <pwred...@aol.com> writes
>
>>One begins to feel a
>>need for some hint of a logical connection, or even an illogical one,
>>between the sign painters who are having tea in the London spaceport bar
>>before their shuttle to the Moon leaves and the scenes with the mutant
>>octopus that's terrorizing the Indonesian fishermen.
>>
> I just wanted to admire that sentence again. :-) I wish my mind could come
> up with such wonderful examples on the spur of the moment. (At least I
> assume it's a throwaway, and not a project on the back burner somewhere.)
It's a throwaway. And it's a matter of practice. Fifteen years of online
advice-giving and one novel with Amberglas in it, and you, too, will be able
to generate apparently-disconnected examples at the drop of a question. :)
>>It's not "writers block" as that term is generally understood; it's just
>>part of the normal ebb and flow of the writing process.
>
> I think your "First Veil" must correspond approximately to Lars
> Eighner's "Plot Point A". That is, the point after the "Hook" when the
> first real, deep complication occurs and the protags begin to see that
> they're part of something much bigger.
It *can* be that, and it often is for some writers, but it's not always.
It's not really tied to plot structure; it's tied to the way the writer's
brain works.
In my books, for instance, the protagonists generally spend about the first
third figuring out that something major is wrong; that third generally
contains between one and three sticky bits, which are often related more to
character development than plot. When they *are* plot-related, it's not
usually the point where existing stuff begins to need explaining that gets
sticky, for me, because I usually have a pretty good idea what the
connections are before I start writing. That is, *I* know that that sign
painters in the spaceport bar are going to have a malfunction in their
shuttle that requires an emergency landing in Indonesia, where they will get
sucked into the mutant-octopus problem when they have to track down some
mysterious interference with their nifty new high-tech paint (which of
course is due to the octopus's proximity). What throws me is the stuff that
suddenly crops up and needs development added, like the taxi driver who was
*supposed* to be a spear carrier, but who obviously, after just one scene,
has important secrets of his own, or the stuff that I *thought* was the
right plot development, but that my backbrain insists are no such thing.
> In other words, to hijack your example, it's the point where the
> apprentice sign painter begins to realise that there might be a connection
> between the strange craft he sees through the spaceport bar window and the
> mutant octopus. Though as yet he still has no idea that the solution lies
> in the mysterious artefact currently being held by archaeologists in a
> secure establishment on the moon or that the key to unlocking the secret
> of the mysterious artefact is the object that his Auntie Megan has been
> using as a tea-strainer back in her little cottage in Dorset.
<admiringly> And you implied you couldn't come up with good whacky examples
on the spur of the moment! Hah!
Patricia C. Wrede
Nicola Browne
>
> "Nick Argall" <nar...@gmail.removethisbit.com> wrote in message
> news:4567a7e1$0$5747$afc3...@news.optusnet.com.au...
> >
> > "Patricia C. Wrede" <pwred...@aol.com> wrote in message
> > news:12me56l...@corp.supernews.com...
> >>
> >
> >> I've hit the First Veil on the thing I'm working on,
> >
> > Mind elaborating on that concept?
>
> It's a term Steve Brust made up, ages ago when we were all still in the
> Scribblies together. For a lot of writers, there's a point somewhere
> between chapter two and chapter ten (the exact spot varies, depending on the
> writer and the particular book) where the writer has to shift gears.
That's when I stop and plot, do my circular diagram, write a synopsis
and leave the damn thing alone for months.
snip There are other
> spots where the work predictably bogs down. The exact spots vary, depending
> on the writer, but there are always several of them, hence the term "the
> *first* veil."
The second one I get through via deep breathing, long dog walks and
excessive chocolate consumption.
The third one is where I decide the book is not worth finishing
and I'm going to abandon it and do something else. Obstinacy
gets me back to it after I've bored several friends almost to
the point of no return with my 'problems.'
The fourth one is where I decide that I'm giving up writing all
together and I start looking at teaching jobs and management jobs for
which I no longer qualify. A quick reality check gets me back to
my desk. Red wind consumption goes up.
The fifth one is so close to the end - bugger it - I just might as
well get it done for the sake of completeness, but I probably
won't send it out - ever or indeed write anything else because
writing is, as everybody knows, a fools game.
And then it begins again...
>
> It still makes me cranky when it happens, though. But that's part of my
> pattern. :)
>
'Cranky' is an understatement in my case -'vile beyond all reason'
just begins to cover it : )
Nicky
--
Posted via Mailgate.ORG Server - http://www.Mailgate.ORG
Patricia C. Wrede
The scarlet runner beans I grew one year (named for their flower color) had
plain, evenly-green pods. I need to find a good sunny spot for a trellis or
an archway in my new yard, so I can grow them again; they weren't anything
special as far as eating (except the way fresh-from-the-garden is always
better than the supermarket), but the flowers were spectacular.
Patricia C. Wrede
James Eades
<jul...@ooopsfloodsclimbers.co.uk> wrote:
>
>*Or a hideous hag. But the beautiful witch point is prettier.
I just boggled at the thought of a beautiful hag, a phrase which has
stuck to my attention like a deep-woods tick and won't let go. It
causes little sparkles in the muse, and sparklies need to be
investigated. Darn it, I've got other fish to fry. ;)
__
JamesE
Thomas Lindgren
> "Nick Argall" <nar...@gmail.removethisbit.com> wrote in message
> news:4567a7e1$0$5747$afc3...@news.optusnet.com.au...
> >
> > "Patricia C. Wrede" <pwred...@aol.com> wrote in message
> > news:12me56l...@corp.supernews.com...
> >>
> >
> >> I've hit the First Veil on the thing I'm working on,
> >
> > Mind elaborating on that concept?
>
> It's a term Steve Brust made up, ages ago when we were all still in the
> Scribblies together. For a lot of writers, there's a point somewhere
> between chapter two and chapter ten (the exact spot varies, depending on the
> writer and the particular book) where the writer has to shift gears. The
> initial setup is done, and things have to start making progress; one can't
> simply continue saying "See, there's this cool thing going on, and this
> other cool thing, and oh, yes, this nifty bit of business and those really
> fascinating people." Things have to begin coming together and making
> connections. And this point is frequently the first major sticky spot,
> where the writing slows to a crawl or stops altogether. The first surge of
> energy has worn out. /.../
An excellent term, at least if one is familiar with Zelazny's Amber
books. I also suspect this is the point where my own incoherent little
efforts tend to collapse, and that the diagnosis is correct. You learn
something every day.
Best,
Thomas
--
Thomas Lindgren
"Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better."
Patricia C. Wrede
"Nicola Browne" <nicky.m...@btinternet.com> wrote in message
news:f7413fb2a5de66f026...@mygate.mailgate.org...
> "Patricia C. Wrede" <pwred...@aol.com> wrote in message
> news:12mfkdj...@corp.supernews.com
>
>>
>> "Nick Argall" <nar...@gmail.removethisbit.com> wrote in message
>> news:4567a7e1$0$5747$afc3...@news.optusnet.com.au...
>> >
>> > "Patricia C. Wrede" <pwred...@aol.com> wrote in message
>> > news:12me56l...@corp.supernews.com...
> snip There are other
>> spots where the work predictably bogs down. The exact spots vary,
>> depending
>> on the writer, but there are always several of them, hence the term "the
>> *first* veil."
>
> The second one I get through via deep breathing, long dog walks and
> excessive chocolate consumption.
> The third one is where I decide the book is not worth finishing
> and I'm going to abandon it and do something else. Obstinacy
> gets me back to it after I've bored several friends almost to
> the point of no return with my 'problems.'
> The fourth one is where I decide that I'm giving up writing all
> together and I start looking at teaching jobs and management jobs for
> which I no longer qualify. A quick reality check gets me back to
> my desk. Red wind consumption goes up.
> The fifth one is so close to the end - bugger it - I just might as
> well get it done for the sake of completeness, but I probably
> won't send it out - ever or indeed write anything else because
> writing is, as everybody knows, a fools game.
>
> And then it begins again...
I don't believe I've ever sat down and laid all mine out that way. I should
do it some time, if only for the entertainment value. "Complaining on
rasfc" comes in there for at least a couple of them, as does "embarking on
some new and unrelated, non-writing project, like refinishing a bookcase or
embroidering a set of placemats," but I'm not sure about the others. I
should ask Lois and Caroline and Beth and Pamela; I be that among them, they
could lay out my process a whole lot better than I can.
>> It still makes me cranky when it happens, though. But that's part of my
>> pattern. :)
>>
> 'Cranky' is an understatement in my case -'vile beyond all reason'
> just begins to cover it : )
Well, I don't live with other people, and the cats won't take any back-talk
from a mere human, so perhaps it just doesn't have as much opportunity to
show on me.
Patricia C. Wrede