Shorter novels
Chad Ryan Thomas
Anyone know of a novel publisher in the US that prefers (or doesn't
automatically reject) novels in the 60,000 word range? Many of the houses I've
found that actually quote word counts use 65 or 70 thousand as a bare minimum,
and the ones that don't quote I suspect are probably in the same range.
(And yes, I do plan to follow all the rules about submitting to editors
that have bought similar stuff in the past, and query first, and so on. But it
can't hurt to know which places deal with stuff of comparable length, too.)
--
****** Chad Ryan Thomas *********** crth...@asu.edu ******
/ "I have learned, in whatsoever state I am, therewith to be\
\ content." -- St. Paul (Phil. 4:11, KJV) /
*********** http://www.public.asu.edu/~crthomas ***********
Lawrence Watt-Evans
wrote:
> Anyone know of a novel publisher in the US that prefers (or doesn't
>automatically reject) novels in the 60,000 word range? Many of the houses I've
>found that actually quote word counts use 65 or 70 thousand as a bare minimum,
>and the ones that don't quote I suspect are probably in the same range.
Don't know whether it's still the case that they'd consider it, but
Tor published Esther Friesner's _Yesterday We Saw Mermaids_ a couple
of years back, and that was just over 50,000 words.
--
The Misenchanted Page: http://www.sff.net/people/LWE/ Last update 10/1/99
DRAGON WEATHER is now available -- ISBN 0-312-86978-9
Robert B. Marks
news:1GFP3.133$pp1....@dfw-read.news.verio.net...
> On 21 Oct 1999 04:36:03 GMT, crth...@asu.edu (Chad Ryan Thomas)
> wrote:
>
> > Anyone know of a novel publisher in the US that prefers (or doesn't
> >automatically reject) novels in the 60,000 word range? Many of the
houses I've
> >found that actually quote word counts use 65 or 70 thousand as a bare
minimum,
> >and the ones that don't quote I suspect are probably in the same range.
>
> Don't know whether it's still the case that they'd consider it, but
> Tor published Esther Friesner's _Yesterday We Saw Mermaids_ a couple
> of years back, and that was just over 50,000 words.
I hate to tell everybody this, but I was on the telephone to one of the
editors at Tor a couple of days ago asking about my own work (as everybody
can guess, I'm getting my novel ready for submission), and I got to speak to
one of the junior editors who deals with the lion's share of the slush pile.
What he told me was that right now they really aren't buying anything under
85,000 words; apparently they just don't think it's saleable in the modern
market (now, just so I don't end up making Tor look bad unintentionally, I
was speaking to a junior editor, not Patrick Neilson Hayden, it is possible
that the editorial policy was misquoted to me).
At any rate, I was happy that my current novel is coming in between
100-110,000 words after hearing that.
Robert Marks
--
The future has not been written, / The past is set in stone,
And I am but a lonely wanderer / With time as my only home.
-- From Magus Draconum
Brenda
Robert B. Marks wrote: .
> What he told me was that right now they really aren't buying anything under
> 85,000 words; apparently they just don't think it's saleable in the modern
> market
Actually, this can be readily tested. Slide over to your nearest bookstore and
look at the recent offerings. Most of them are pretty fat. Are there any slim
little books in the genre any more, the equivalent of say CITY OF TRUTH by James
Morrow (104 p in 1990) or WHO'S AFRAID OF BEOWULF by Tom Holt (206 p in 1988)?
Not many.
Brenda
--
---------
Brenda W. Clough, author of HOW LIKE A GOD, from Tor Books
http://www.sff.net/people/Brenda/
Samuel Paik
> Actually, this can be readily tested. Slide over to your nearest bookstore and
> look at the recent offerings. Most of them are pretty fat. Are there any slim
> little books in the genre any more, the equivalent of say CITY OF TRUTH by James
> Morrow (104 p in 1990) or WHO'S AFRAID OF BEOWULF by Tom Holt (206 p in 1988)?
> Not many.
Ace seems to have published a bunch of thin books in the past few months.
--
Samuel S. Paik | http://www.webnexus.com/users/paik/
3D and multimedia, architecture and implementation
Solyent Green is kitniyos!
Lawrence Watt-Evans
Horton) wrote:
>On Thu, 21 Oct 1999 10:40:59 -0400, Lawrence Watt-Evans
><lawr...@clark.net> wrote:
>
>>Don't know whether it's still the case that they'd consider it, but
>>Tor published Esther Friesner's _Yesterday We Saw Mermaids_ a couple
>>of years back, and that was just over 50,000 words.
>
>Wasn't that originally bought for the Tor Doubles line? (Indeed,
>wasn't it going to be backed with _The Rebirth of Wonder_?)
Actually, it was going to back "The Final Folly of Captain Dancy."
But yes, it was half of the never-published Tor Double #37.
Richard Horton
<lawr...@clark.net> wrote:
>On 21 Oct 1999 04:36:03 GMT, crth...@asu.edu (Chad Ryan Thomas)
>wrote:
>
>> Anyone know of a novel publisher in the US that prefers (or doesn't
>>automatically reject) novels in the 60,000 word range? Many of the houses I've
>>found that actually quote word counts use 65 or 70 thousand as a bare minimum,
>>and the ones that don't quote I suspect are probably in the same range.
>
>Don't know whether it's still the case that they'd consider it, but
>Tor published Esther Friesner's _Yesterday We Saw Mermaids_ a couple
>of years back, and that was just over 50,000 words.
Wasn't that originally bought for the Tor Doubles line? (Indeed,
wasn't it going to be backed with _The Rebirth of Wonder_?)
It's a darn fine story, anyway. I like short novels. (In fact I just
read _Portrait of Jennie_ by Robert Nathan. 32000 words, and it was a
'40s bestseller.)
--
Rich Horton | Stable Email: mailto://richard...@sff.net
Home Page: http://www.sff.net/people/richard.horton
Also visit SF Site (http://www.sfsite.com) and Tangent Online (http://www.sfsite.com/tangent)
Richard Horton
>Actually, this can be readily tested. Slide over to your nearest bookstore and
>look at the recent offerings. Most of them are pretty fat. Are there any slim
>little books in the genre any more, the equivalent of say CITY OF TRUTH by James
>Morrow (104 p in 1990) or WHO'S AFRAID OF BEOWULF by Tom Holt (206 p in 1988)?
>Not many.
But some of this is white space and large print. Iain Banks' _A Song
of Stone_, for instance, published in 1997, is 280 pages long. It's
also 65000 words. In the '50s, that might have made a 170 page
paperback.
Chad Ryan Thomas
>Are there any slim
>little books in the genre any more, the equivalent of say CITY OF TRUTH by
James
>Morrow (104 p in 1990) or WHO'S AFRAID OF BEOWULF by Tom Holt (206 p in 1988)?
>Not many.
Such is my ultimate conundrum, having written a novel which I think holds
together really well at 60,000 words but would seem bloated at 70+.
Julian Flood
> Such is my ultimate conundrum, having written a novel which I think holds
> together really well at 60,000 words but would seem bloated at 70+.
Look, it'll be in good company if it's bloated, surely? Get out the word
pump. Whoosh. There you go.
I've found that a scene which demonstrates what's going on can be followed
by another in which a new character is told what's going on, and this works
well at upping the word count without actually upping the information
content, which is what you are after, I suppose, word count up, info content
the same, I mean, not the specific technique, but I have found it works
well. It's easy to do: after the scene where you show what is happening, you
just add another scene where two characters talk about the recent past and
explain things to each other. Or, of course, if you've got a scene where two
characters explain what's going on, you can insert a new chapter where you
actually show the action, but in this case you have to put the insert
_before_ the explanation, not the explanation _after_ the action as you had
to in case one.
And explaining something that has already been shown is a good trick. Hence
Show _and_ Tell, the new writing technique.
I believe the technique derives from TV. I saw a TV writer complaining that
he'd 'already given this' about some emotional impact in a scene which he'd
been told to beef up. 'Ah, but people don't pay much attention. You have to
tell them something really important three times.'
So, explain to them what has just happened and show it again. Or vice-versa.
Ups the word count and works amazingly well.
(Aka: repeat yourself)
--
Julian Flood (one of Nature's short story writers)
Life, the Universe and Climbing Plants at www.argonet.co.uk/users/julesf.
Mind the diddley skiffle folk.
Holly E. Ordway
<na.3ae6994954...@argonet.co.uk>:
> (Chad Ryan Thomas) wrote:
>> Such is my ultimate conundrum, having written a novel which I think
>> holds together really well at 60,000 words but would seem bloated at
>> 70+.
>
>Look, it'll be in good company if it's bloated, surely? Get out the word
>pump. Whoosh. There you go.
>
Hey, you forgot a word-pumping technique I've seen pretty often. For
every main character, add an entire sub-plot that depicts the character's
relationship with his spouse/co-workers/inner self/pet cat. Make sure to
add lots of details about daily life. A sub-plot about the protagonist
getting into a fight with his girlfriend about what kind of cat food to
buy for their cat, which makes him late to work and exposes him to
sniping from his hated cubicle neighbor, would be perfect. Note that
there's no need for these sub-plots to have anything to do with the
genuine plot of the novel. After all, if it's good enough for Benford in
_Timescape_, it's good enough for you!
I just bought a box full of older SF paperbacks (mostly from the 1970s)
that I am very much looking forward to reading. I've gotten so sick of
puffed-up, bloated, thick novels lately that it's a relief to see *short*
ones. There's a saying in Spanish that strikes me as appropriate, at
least for my tastes: "Lo bueno, si breve, dos veces bueno" -- "Something
good, if short, twice as good."
Cheers,
Holly
holly-...@home.com
Dorothy J Heydt
Holly E. Ordway <holly-...@home.com> wrote:
>Julian Flood <jul...@argonet.co.uk> wrote in
><na.3ae6994954...@argonet.co.uk>:
>>
>>pump. Whoosh. There you go.
>
>Hey, you forgot a word-pumping technique I've seen pretty often. For
>every main character, add an entire sub-plot that depicts the character's
I've never done that (yet), but in _Point_ I calculated about
halfway through that the thing was going to come out too short,
so I added a digression whereby, before going to point A, we
sidetracked along points B and C and then returned to the chase.
Nobody has complained yet that it bogged the plot down, and if I
hadn't done it, we would never have met Theodoric.
(who is becoming an increasingly important character in
subsequent plots....)
Dorothy J. Heydt
Albany, California
djh...@kithrup.com
http://www.kithrup.com/~djheydt
Theresa Wojtasiewicz
>
> (Chad Ryan Thomas) wrote:
> > Such is my ultimate conundrum, having written a novel which I think holds
> > together really well at 60,000 words but would seem bloated at 70+.
>
> pump. Whoosh. There you go.
>
> by another in which a new character is told what's going on, and this works
> well at upping the word count without actually upping the information
> content, which is what you are after, I suppose, word count up, info content
> the same, I mean, not the specific technique, but I have found it works
> well. It's easy to do: after the scene where you show what is happening, you
> just add another scene where two characters talk about the recent past and
> explain things to each other. Or, of course, if you've got a scene where two
> characters explain what's going on, you can insert a new chapter where you
> actually show the action, but in this case you have to put the insert
> _before_ the explanation, not the explanation _after_ the action as you had
> to in case one.
Isn't this Rod-and-Don - ism at its worst and to be avoided at all
costs? I just read a novel with a blatant Rod-and-Don in the middle of
it and I threw the book across the room. I couldn't believe what I was
seeing.
>
> And explaining something that has already been shown is a good trick. Hence
> Show _and_ Tell, the new writing technique.
Let's not encourage it, though...
>
> I believe the technique derives from TV. I saw a TV writer complaining that
> he'd 'already given this' about some emotional impact in a scene which he'd
> been told to beef up. 'Ah, but people don't pay much attention. You have to
> tell them something really important three times.'
Exactly why writers of novels shouldn't do it.
>
> So, explain to them what has just happened and show it again. Or vice-versa.
> Ups the word count and works amazingly well.
>
> (Aka: repeat yourself)
>
Thanks, no.
Chad Ryan Thomas
says...
>I've found that a scene which demonstrates what's going on can be followed
>by another in which a new character is told what's going on, and this works
>well at upping the word count without actually upping the information
>content, which is what you are after, I suppose,
Actually, the plot is so concept-driven, so internalized in the main character,
that this wouldn't work. Put simply: there isn't a whole lot that *happens*,
per se, but there's a lot of debate. Really, I'm pushing it taking 60,000
words to tell the story.
CATJA ALEXANDRA PAFORT
>pump. Whoosh. There you go.
The problem is that unless it's skillfully done, every reader will spot it
immediately. And get bored. I've shortened a four-week island-hopping
desperately chasing after a villain who isn't there to one page. I *could* have
written it out in great detail, leaving the protagonist to hope to find him
every time she turns a corner and getting disappointed just the same - but
since I already knew that it was completely pointless, I refrained from doing
so.
Dead ends must be one of the easiest ways to bloat your wordcount. You could,
of course, always infodump (including describing the heroine on three and a
half pages, see Gone With The Wind). You might introduce a prologue, and could
easily write two to three thousand words with any number of characters, and
telling the reader that you're sorry they invested their feelings, but that was
two thousand years before your story, but you felt they should know what
happened. Or introduce a few extra characters, and build up the background of
those that hitherto played only minor roles.
If all else fails, have your characters listening to lots of songs and legends
in taverns, and note them down word for word.
There. *That* should fill 60K all on it's own. Who needs a plot?
Catja
Blanche Nonken
> > explain things to each other. Or, of course, if you've got a scene where two
> > characters explain what's going on, you can insert a new chapter where you
> > actually show the action, but in this case you have to put the insert
> > _before_ the explanation, not the explanation _after_ the action as you had
> > to in case one.
>
> Isn't this Rod-and-Don - ism at its worst and to be avoided at all
> costs? I just read a novel with a blatant Rod-and-Don in the middle of
> it and I threw the book across the room. I couldn't believe what I was
> seeing.
OK, that's a phrase with which I'm not familiar. What's a
"Rod-and-Don?"
Theresa Wojtasiewicz
Somewhere on the internet is the Turkey City Lexicon which lists all the
writing "no-no's" - among them Rod-and-Don-isms. Specifically, it's two
characters telling each other things they themselves know but the reader
doesn't. You can spot a typical Rod-and-Don by the opening dialogue, "As
you know, Rod...". "Yes, Don, and you did so and so..." etc. It's a sign
of poor writing technique. I came across a spectacular example of it in
a book called "Flesh and Silver" by Stephen L. Burns. Yowzers... it was
g'dawful.
Nancy Lebovitz
>Robert B. Marks wrote: .
>
>> What he told me was that right now they really aren't buying anything under
>> 85,000 words; apparently they just don't think it's saleable in the modern
>> market
>
>
>little books in the genre any more, the equivalent of say CITY OF TRUTH by James
>Morrow (104 p in 1990) or WHO'S AFRAID OF BEOWULF by Tom Holt (206 p in 1988)?
>Not many.
>
original short (200 page) novels. I'm not sure that "series anthology"
is quite the word I want--I'm thinking about anthologies like Damon
Knight's Orbit books which built up their own reputation in addition
to their contributor's reputation.
--
Nancy Lebovitz na...@netaxs.com
October '99 calligraphic button catalogue available by email!
Blanche Nonken
> Somewhere on the internet is the Turkey City Lexicon which lists all the
> writing "no-no's" - among them Rod-and-Don-isms. Specifically, it's two
> characters telling each other things they themselves know but the reader
> doesn't. You can spot a typical Rod-and-Don by the opening dialogue, "As
> you know, Rod...". "Yes, Don, and you did so and so..." etc. It's a sign
> of poor writing technique. I came across a spectacular example of it in
> a book called "Flesh and Silver" by Stephen L. Burns. Yowzers... it was
> g'dawful.
Oh, that. Yeah, it makes my toehairs curl and catch on my socks when I
see it on any of the Star Trek shows. I'm glad to know the technical
term. Thanks.
I'll have to find this site.
Joe Mason
>So, explain to them what has just happened and show it again. Or vice-versa.
>Ups the word count and works amazingly well.
>
>
>(Aka: repeat yourself)
<obvious>
Sorry, can you run through that again? I wasn't listening the first time.
</obvious>
Joe
Rez
> > > Isn't this Rod-and-Don - ism at its worst and to be avoided at all
> > > costs? I just read a novel with a blatant Rod-and-Don in the middle of
> > > it and I threw the book across the room. I couldn't believe what I was
> > > seeing.
> >
If I have to resort to that sort of thing, I at least try to disguise it
as an argument :) Like, "If your pa hadn't drank himself to death, we
wouldn't be living in this shack! <hits spouse with frying pan>" as
opposed to "As you know, dear, we live in this shack because your dad
drank up our inheritance <calm rational boringness>" :)
> > OK, that's a phrase with which I'm not familiar. What's a
> > "Rod-and-Don?"
>
> Somewhere on the internet is the Turkey City Lexicon which lists all
<goes off, does quick search, finds link on Clarion links page>
http://www.klab.caltech.edu/~ojvind/turkey.city.lexicon.html
the
> writing "no-no's" - among them Rod-and-Don-isms. Specifically, it's two
> characters telling each other things they themselves know but the reader
> doesn't. You can spot a typical Rod-and-Don by the opening dialogue, "As
> you know, Rod...". "Yes, Don, and you did so and so..." etc. It's a sign
> of poor writing technique. I came across a spectacular example of it in
> a book called "Flesh and Silver" by Stephen L. Burns. Yowzers... it was
> g'dawful.
Also sometimes called an Asimovism.
~REZ~
Karen Lofstrom
: Or introduce a few extra characters, and build up the background of
: those that hitherto played only minor roles.
But ... but ... all those minor characters are PEOPLE. With histories
and dreams and feelings. Are you suggesting that the reader doesn't
want to know all about them? How disconcerting!
--
Karen Lofstrom lofs...@lava.net
----------------------------------------------------------------------
So what it's 100,000 words and only 2/3 done. There are LOTS of
characters you haven't met yet :)
Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet
>Somewhere on the internet is the Turkey City Lexicon which lists all the
>writing "no-no's" - among them Rod-and-Don-isms. Specifically, it's two
>characters telling each other things they themselves know but the reader
>doesn't. You can spot a typical Rod-and-Don by the opening dialogue, "As
>you know, Rod...". "Yes, Don, and you did so and so..." etc. It's a sign
>of poor writing technique. I came across a spectacular example of it in
>a book called "Flesh and Silver" by Stephen L. Burns. Yowzers... it was
>g'dawful.
The Turkey City Lexicon just adores reinventing the wheel. It renames
a lot of things that already had perfectly good and often much better
names. What it calls Rod-and-Don-isms used to be called
maid-and-butler dialogue, and I'll just stick with that, thank you.
The Turkey City Lexicon should be taken with an enormous pile of salt,
in any case. It doesn't list absolute writing no-no's, of which in
any case there are very few. It delineates a particular kind of
taste, that's all, one which I emphatically do not share. I'd love to
write a book that broke every one of its dopey rules.
--
Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet (pd...@demesne.com)
"I will open my heart to a blank page
and interview the witnesses." John M. Ford, "Shared World"
David Langford
wrote:
[answering the question of what Rod-and-Don might signify]
>Somewhere on the internet is the Turkey City Lexicon which lists all the
>writing "no-no's" - among them Rod-and-Don-isms. Specifically, it's two
>characters telling each other things they themselves know but the reader
>doesn't. You can spot a typical Rod-and-Don by the opening dialogue, "As
>you know, Rod...". "Yes, Don, and you did so and so..." etc. It's a sign
>of poor writing technique. I came across a spectacular example of it in
>a book called "Flesh and Silver" by Stephen L. Burns. Yowzers... it was
>g'dawful.
The TCL does seem fond of cute rather than self-explanatory names for
familiar things.
As for this kind of infodump, my favourite recent example has a gaggle of
youngsters telling each other the family history they all know by heart in
Anne McCaffrey's =The Tower and the Hive= (which has already featured six
pages of What Has Gone Before):
`Had the Hivers but known they had met their match in Jeff Raven
and Angharad Gwyn aka the Rowan as partners, they might have quit while
they were ahead.'
`Not while there were Hiver queens needing planets to colonize,'
Clancy put in.
`And that, of course, brought the entire FT&T organization in at
the time of the Deneb Penetration with the Rowan as the focus for the Mind
Merge that helped Jeff Raven despatch the Hiver Scouts trying to depopulate
his home world.
`And why the Mrdinis decided to ask us, through Mother and Dad, to
join forces and defeat the Hivers,' Thian said, `since we could take out a
Hiver Sphere without having to resort to suicide missions.' He
leaned back again, pleased with his summation of the events leading up to
recent developments ...
One particularly savours the way Thian, who delivers the first speech,
refers therein to his own grandparents.
Dave
--
David Langford
ans...@cix.co.uk | http://www.ansible.demon.co.uk/
WooF
On Fri, 22 Oct 1999, Blanche Nonken wrote:
> Theresa Wojtasiewicz <tw...@sympatico.ca> wrote:
>
> > Somewhere on the internet is the Turkey City Lexicon which lists all the
> > writing "no-no's" - among them Rod-and-Don-isms. Specifically, it's two
> > characters telling each other things they themselves know but the reader
> > doesn't.
> I'm glad to know the technical
> term. Thanks.
The older technical term for this is "idiot lecture." And yes,
it's possible to write a story around almost all of the "rules"
for how not to write -- one of the most memorable is one we
bought and publihsed in (as it was then) Isaac Asimov's Science
Fiction Magazine, "Bat Durston, Space Marshal," as a result of
our having reprinted H.L. Gold's comment on his not wanting to
publish in Galaxy, wild-west stories tarted up as science
fiction.
George Scithers of owls...@netaxs.com
Helen Kenyon
<rrho...@prodigy.net> writes
>>look at the recent offerings. Most of them are pretty fat. Are there any slim
>>little books in the genre any more, the equivalent of say CITY OF TRUTH by
>James
>>Morrow (104 p in 1990) or WHO'S AFRAID OF BEOWULF by Tom Holt (206 p in 1988)?
>>Not many.
>
>of Stone_, for instance, published in 1997, is 280 pages long. It's
>also 65000 words. In the '50s, that might have made a 170 page
>paperback.
>
>
don't know whether it applies across all the genres, but a few months
ago, they were discussing book length on the Radio 4 Arts programme.
Someone commented that American books are getting longer and longer
while British ones are shrinking. They suggested that if this trend
continues, all US books will be the size of the Encyclopaedia Britannica
and all the British authors will be writing haiku...
Helen
--
Helen, Gwynedd, Wales *** For a virtual walk in Wales (with pictures),
the Hostel of Doom, piots and other bits and pieces, visit:
http://www.baradel.demon.co.uk
**Please delete the extra bit from e-mail address if replying by mail**
Wendy Shaffer
Dyer-Bennet) wrote:
> The Turkey City Lexicon just adores reinventing the wheel. It renames
> a lot of things that already had perfectly good and often much better
> names. What it calls Rod-and-Don-isms used to be called
> maid-and-butler dialogue, and I'll just stick with that, thank you.
Well, the version of the TCL that I remember calls this an "As You Know,
Bob". So apparently the wheel's been reinvented twice.
There is a strong strain of adoration of jargon for its own sake in
the Turkey City Lexicon.
> The Turkey City Lexicon should be taken with an enormous pile of salt,
> in any case. It doesn't list absolute writing no-no's, of which in
> any case there are very few. It delineates a particular kind of
> taste, that's all, one which I emphatically do not share. I'd love to
> write a book that broke every one of its dopey rules.
To be fair to the Lexicon, it's not really meant to be a list of writing
rules; it's a glossary of terms that a particular writing group has found
useful in critiquing. Admittedly, the choice of terms and the definitions
given do betray a certain aesthetic sensibility. But there's nothing
preventing one from taking the 4 or 5 definitions one finds useful and
leaving the rest. (Which is more or less what I did.)
It's probably wise, though, not to read the Lexicon until one has had a
fair amount of writing experience under one's belt. Because then you
read it and try to match it up against the kinds of problems you've
seen in your own and other's writing, and where it fits you say, "Ah, now
I've got a word for that really silly thing I kept doing in that story."
And where it doesn't fit, you shrug and say, "Well, maybe Lewis Shiner
thinks that's a problem, but I don't."
I can imagine a beginner trying to construct a set of writing rules
from the TCL, and that would be kind of scary.
(I'm having a sudden sense of deja vu. I can't remember if I made a post
like this or not the last time the Turkey City Lexicon came up, back when
some guy was trying to use the TCL as a hatchet to hack up one of Lois
Bujold's books. If I'm repeating myself, I apologize.)
---wendy
Dorothy J Heydt
Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet <pd...@gw.dd-b.net> wrote:
>
>The Turkey City Lexicon should be taken with an enormous pile of salt...
>....I emphatically do not share. I'd love to
>write a book that broke every one of its dopey rules.
Murray Leinster probably already did. Or several. Or all of
them.
TLambs1138
>and dreams and feelings. Are you suggesting that the >reader doesn't
>want to know all about them? How disconcerting!
--
>Karen Lofstrom lofs...@lava.net
----------------------------------------------------------------------
>So what it's 100,000 words and only 2/3 done. There are >LOTS of characters
you haven't met yet :)
This sounds quite normal to me, except possibly a little too short; the first
draft of my latest, _Dead Man's Hand_, was 196,000. Before I revised it (and
along with cutting unnecessary thoughs, buts, ands, and whatnot, I always end
up expanding when I revise). God only knows what it is right now...
Jean Lamb, tlamb...@cs.com
Ian
>In article <380FA374...@erols.com>, clo...@erols.com says...
>>Are there any slim
>>little books in the genre any more, the equivalent of say CITY OF TRUTH by
>James
>>Morrow (104 p in 1990) or WHO'S AFRAID OF BEOWULF by Tom Holt (206 p in 1988)?
>>Not many.
>
>Such is my ultimate conundrum, having written a novel which I think holds
>together really well at 60,000 words but would seem bloated at 70+.
They're selling a lot of bloated novels these days!
Would it be possible to add a new subplot or something, to round out some
of the characters or background a bit more? A 10-20% length increase to a
well-written novel can be done without seeming "bloat-y" if it's done by
adding some interesting new subplot or situation rather than just trying to
boost the word-count of what's already there.
Lucy Kemnitzer
(Wendy Shaffer) wrote:
>In article <pddb.94...@gw.dd-b.net>, pd...@gw.dd-b.net (Pamela Dean
>Dyer-Bennet) wrote:
>
>> The Turkey City Lexicon just adores reinventing the wheel. It renames
>> a lot of things that already had perfectly good and often much better
>> names. What it calls Rod-and-Don-isms used to be called
>> maid-and-butler dialogue, and I'll just stick with that, thank you.
>
>Well, the version of the TCL that I remember calls this an "As You Know,
>Bob". So apparently the wheel's been reinvented twice.
>
>There is a strong strain of adoration of jargon for its own sake in
>the Turkey City Lexicon.
>
>> The Turkey City Lexicon should be taken with an enormous pile of salt,
>> in any case. It doesn't list absolute writing no-no's, of which in
>> any case there are very few. It delineates a particular kind of
>> taste, that's all, one which I emphatically do not share. I'd love to
>> write a book that broke every one of its dopey rules.
>
>To be fair to the Lexicon, it's not really meant to be a list of writing
>rules; it's a glossary of terms that a particular writing group has found
>useful in critiquing. Admittedly, the choice of terms and the definitions
>given do betray a certain aesthetic sensibility. But there's nothing
>preventing one from taking the 4 or 5 definitions one finds useful and
>leaving the rest. (Which is more or less what I did.)
>
>It's probably wise, though, not to read the Lexicon until one has had a
>fair amount of writing experience under one's belt. Because then you
>read it and try to match it up against the kinds of problems you've
>seen in your own and other's writing, and where it fits you say, "Ah, now
>I've got a word for that really silly thing I kept doing in that story."
>And where it doesn't fit, you shrug and say, "Well, maybe Lewis Shiner
>thinks that's a problem, but I don't."
>
>I can imagine a beginner trying to construct a set of writing rules
>from the TCL, and that would be kind of scary.
>
>(I'm having a sudden sense of deja vu. I can't remember if I made a post
>like this or not the last time the Turkey City Lexicon came up, back when
>some guy was trying to use the TCL as a hatchet to hack up one of Lois
>Bujold's books. If I'm repeating myself, I apologize.)
>
>---wendy
So I finally went over to the Turkey City Lexicon to check it out,
and it was an interesting object to read. I think Pamela's right:
at least a quarter of the things they object to are simply the
regular building blocks of any sort of fiction. Some of the
comments were interesting, even given that the thing being
objected to was not necessarily all that objectionable in real
writing. Does that make sense?
The oddest thing is that it seems to be part of a larger site
devoted to the role of Christians in art and art in Christianity,
which at first glance (I gave it no more because I have other
things on my plate at the moment, literally) appears to be quite
intelligent, maybe, at least worth checking out by those of us for
whom this type of question is relevant.
Lucy Kemnitzer
(I am now required to slice brandywine tomatoes very thin for
eating with salt bagels and cream cheese. -- it's Farmer's Market
day, and it's a little difficult because we also stopped off at
the tasting room of a winery whose vineyards are all named after
works of Robert Louis Stevenson: his widow started the place. I
have a _low_ capacity for alcohol, and the Merlot and the Petite
Sirah were good. Even the Chardonnay, though I'm not fond of
white)
Lisa A Leutheuser
Theresa Wojtasiewicz <tw...@sympatico.ca> wrote:
>Blanche Nonken wrote:
>>
>> OK, that's a phrase with which I'm not familiar. What's a
>> "Rod-and-Don?"
>
>writing "no-no's" - among them Rod-and-Don-isms. Specifically, it's two
>characters telling each other things they themselves know but the reader
>you know, Rod...". "Yes, Don, and you did so and so..." etc. It's a sign
>of poor writing technique. I came across a spectacular example of it in
>a book called "Flesh and Silver" by Stephen L. Burns. Yowzers... it was
>g'dawful.
I've always heard this called a "As you know Bob..."-ism.
Lisa Leutheuser
eal (at) umich.edu
http://www.umich.edu/~eal
Blanche Nonken
> (I am now required to slice brandywine tomatoes very thin for
> eating with salt bagels and cream cheese. -- it's Farmer's Market
> day, and it's a little difficult because we also stopped off at
> the tasting room of a winery whose vineyards are all named after
> works of Robert Louis Stevenson: his widow started the place. I
> have a _low_ capacity for alcohol, and the Merlot and the Petite
> Sirah were good. Even the Chardonnay, though I'm not fond of
> white)
Next time, try Striped German if you can get them. They have red,
orange and yellow striped skin, a rosy purply-red center with lighter
bands of red and yellow radiating out from the center, and a fuller,
richer taste than Brandywine. They can get rather large, larger than
the Brandywines.
If you're adding spiced meats to the assortment, Cherokee Purple goes
well with those.
Um.
Er, they came from outer space and I wrote a story about them.
Brenda
Ian wrote:
> Would it be possible to add a new subplot or something, to round out some
> of the characters or background a bit more? A 10-20% length increase to a
> well-written novel can be done without seeming "bloat-y" if it's done by
> adding some interesting new subplot or situation rather than just trying to
> boost the word-count of what's already there.
A subplot is the traditional way to make a book longer. The other way is dialogue.
Dialogue takes up much more space on the page than exposition. Have the characters
tell or say -everything-.
Brenda
--
---------
Brenda W. Clough, author of HOW LIKE A GOD, from Tor Books
http://www.sff.net/people/Brenda/
Eugenia Horne
> Somewhere on the internet is the Turkey City Lexicon which lists all the
> writing "no-no's" - among them Rod-and-Don-isms. Specifically, it's two
> characters telling each other things they themselves know but the reader
> doesn't. You can spot a typical Rod-and-Don by the opening dialogue, "As
> you know, Rod...". "Yes, Don, and you did so and so..." etc. It's a sign
> of poor writing technique. I came across a spectacular example of it in
> a book called "Flesh and Silver" by Stephen L. Burns. Yowzers... it was
> g'dawful.
Oh, bummer...
And after I wrote and rewrote the beginning of the
TCN a zillion times (okay, maybe 2 or 3 dozen) and
had decided the "technique" of "Rod-and-Don"
was the least painful method of introducing the
reader to a teenie, tiny slice of history that
they weren't familiar with.
Chad Ryan Thomas
iadm...@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca says...
>>Such is my ultimate conundrum, having written a novel which I think holds
>>together really well at 60,000 words but would seem bloated at 70+.
>
>They're selling a lot of bloated novels these days!
>
>of the characters or background a bit more?
In one sense, that would be temptingly easy. There's two entire worlds
involved directly in the plot. Maybe 1/6th of the novel is actually an
official ethnography of one of the worlds that, in the course of my writing it,
suggested about a thousand plot ideas.
On the other hand, I've really tried in writing this to let the *idea* drive
the story, rather than the characters or the action. (I understand that's
bucking current trends in character-driven plots, and I envisioned the project
that way.) As I said in another post, I might be pushing it by taking 60,000
words to tell a story that might well work at 30,000. (And, ironically, a
30,000 word piece might be more saleable as a typical-length novella.)
Bottom line: I'd much prefer not to have to expand the story any more just to
reach the bottom-line cut-off of the industry. If it comes down to selling it
or not selling it, I may or may not decide to make that sacrifice. Until then,
though, the muse won't allow me.
Theresa Wojtasiewicz
>
> On Fri, 22 Oct 1999 22:07:46 GMT, Theresa Wojtasiewicz <tw...@sympatico.ca>
> wrote:
>
> [answering the question of what Rod-and-Don might signify]
>
> >writing "no-no's" - among them Rod-and-Don-isms. Specifically, it's two
> >characters telling each other things they themselves know but the reader
> >doesn't. You can spot a typical Rod-and-Don by the opening dialogue, "As
> >you know, Rod...". "Yes, Don, and you did so and so..." etc. It's a sign
> >of poor writing technique. I came across a spectacular example of it in
> >a book called "Flesh and Silver" by Stephen L. Burns. Yowzers... it was
> >g'dawful.
>
> familiar things.
>
> As for this kind of infodump, my favourite recent example has a gaggle of
> youngsters telling each other the family history they all know by heart in
> Anne McCaffrey's =The Tower and the Hive= (which has already featured six
> pages of What Has Gone Before):
>
> `Had the Hivers but known they had met their match in Jeff Raven
> and Angharad Gwyn aka the Rowan as partners, they might have quit while
> they were ahead.'
> `Not while there were Hiver queens needing planets to colonize,'
> Clancy put in.
> `And that, of course, brought the entire FT&T organization in at
> the time of the Deneb Penetration with the Rowan as the focus for the Mind
> Merge that helped Jeff Raven despatch the Hiver Scouts trying to depopulate
> his home world.
> `And why the Mrdinis decided to ask us, through Mother and Dad, to
> join forces and defeat the Hivers,' Thian said, `since we could take out a
> Hiver Sphere without having to resort to suicide missions.' He
> leaned back again, pleased with his summation of the events leading up to
> recent developments ...
>
> One particularly savours the way Thian, who delivers the first speech,
> refers therein to his own grandparents.
>
Theresa Wojtasiewicz
>
> In article <3810DF...@sympatico.ca>,
> Theresa Wojtasiewicz <tw...@sympatico.ca> wrote:
> >Blanche Nonken wrote:
> >>
> >> OK, that's a phrase with which I'm not familiar. What's a
> >> "Rod-and-Don?"
> >
> >writing "no-no's" - among them Rod-and-Don-isms. Specifically, it's two
> >characters telling each other things they themselves know but the reader
> >doesn't. You can spot a typical Rod-and-Don by the opening dialogue, "As
> >you know, Rod...". "Yes, Don, and you did so and so..." etc. It's a sign
> >of poor writing technique. I came across a spectacular example of it in
> >a book called "Flesh and Silver" by Stephen L. Burns. Yowzers... it was
> >g'dawful.
>
>
local variation of the same theme. But the point is the same. Bad
writing technique.
Theresa Wojtasiewicz
>
> Theresa Wojtasiewicz <tw...@sympatico.ca> writes:
>
> >Somewhere on the internet is the Turkey City Lexicon which lists all the
> >writing "no-no's" - among them Rod-and-Don-isms. Specifically, it's two
> >characters telling each other things they themselves know but the reader
> >doesn't. You can spot a typical Rod-and-Don by the opening dialogue, "As
> >you know, Rod...". "Yes, Don, and you did so and so..." etc. It's a sign
> >of poor writing technique. I came across a spectacular example of it in
> >a book called "Flesh and Silver" by Stephen L. Burns. Yowzers... it was
> >g'dawful.
>
> a lot of things that already had perfectly good and often much better
> names. What it calls Rod-and-Don-isms used to be called
> maid-and-butler dialogue, and I'll just stick with that, thank you.
Diff'rent strokes...
>
> The Turkey City Lexicon should be taken with an enormous pile of salt,
> in any case. It doesn't list absolute writing no-no's, of which in
> any case there are very few. It delineates a particular kind of
> taste, that's all, one which I emphatically do not share. I'd love to
> write a book that broke every one of its dopey rules.
I take it along with some of John van Sickle's cliche lists, not with
salt, but as a reality check. When something works, it works, whether
some think of it as a "no-no" or not. But when I was re-reading Conan
Doyle and came across Watson "ejaculating" <ahem> I squirmed and could
hardly finish the story, love Holmes et al. tho' I do. And, let's face
it, most people who read stories read them for entertainment, so they
don't notice that certain things come up again and again and again
stylistically. Alas, I've been reading stories in critical mode for so
long that stuff like this simply jumps out at me, engendering the
response, "oh, puh-leeze, not again".
Lucy Kemnitzer
Killer tomatoes. right?
I am in the middle of a story which will probably be compost (I
mean I am going to finish it, but I may be finishing it in order
to figure out what I really ought to be writing) in which the
setting is the manufacturing and repair of those food replicators
you see in some sf books. As I'm doing this I'm thinking about
what sort of food you really could replicate, and what's involved
in it, and stuff.
So for me heriloom tomato varieties are on-topic, at the moment.
(that Strioed German has not been around this year, and the
Cherokee Purple seems to be done. The only big tomatoes are the
brandywine and the pineapple. All the others are small varieties,
and some, like the Green Zebra, seem smaller than last year. We
had a very cool summer and a very late Indian summer, maybe
that's it)
I'm having a little trouble with the science of the things.
I mean, on the one hand, I could do the Diamond Age thing, and
then you just have the whole thing done on the atomic level, and
nothing hardly matters. I mean, you could just have your feed
made by the nano assembler, but I can't figure out how it gets
started.
I'm imagining for some reason however something that's like the
great granddaughter of a glorified coffee-and-soup machine. Which
would have severe limitations on what it could do.
Since the thing I'm interested in is a plot about the social
structure of the place where they're made, and the character of
the fellow who finds himself there against his will, it's a little
hard to believe I'm paying enough attention.
I did figure that miso, athole, tofu, and bad hot chocolate such
as Daniel Pinkwater sticks into a lot of his books would be easy
and cheap to synthesize on the spot.
Lucy Kemnitzer
Dorothy J Heydt
Crusader Rabbit <gp...@att.net> wrote:
> Screw those turkey-shooters and listen up: THERE ARE NO RULES!
Or as Mr. Kipling put it,
There are nine and sixty ways
Of constructing tribal lays,
And every single one of them is right.
As for the horrible example by McCaffrey a few posts upthread,
don't you think she did it on purpose just to rattle everybody's
cage?
joy beeson
technique that sold was
A. Write a bunch of short stories, no two in the same genre.
B. Give all the protagonists the same name.
C. Concatenate 'em.
--
Joy Beeson
j beeson at global two thousand dot net
CATJA ALEXANDRA PAFORT
>The Turkey City Lexicon should be taken with an enormous pile of salt,
>in any case. It doesn't list absolute writing no-no's, of which in
>any case there are very few. It delineates a particular kind of
>taste, that's all, one which I emphatically do not share. I'd love to
>write a book that broke every one of its dopey rules.
But that's just trying to be clever, and not the making of a real book. I think
experimenting with elements of style, especially if you just want to show that
you can pull it off, is a BAD reason to write a book.
A lot of the stuff in the TCL is a nice reality check. I've got real trouble
with the 'avoiding of saidisms' - if you do it all the time, you get loooong
dialogues that repeat 'he/she said' to a degree that it grinds on your nerves.
People DO answer, exclaim, whisper, sob, or even ponder. They just don't do it
ALL the time.
Catja
Lucy Kemnitzer
PAFORT) wrote:
Here's a bunch of the Turkey City Lexicon, with my gloss on what
they are being grumpy about:
EYEBALL KICK - That perfect, telling detail that creates
an instant visual image. The ideal of certain postmodern
schools of SF is to achieve a "crammed prose" full of
"eyeball kicks." (Rudy Rucker)
Your prose is too lush: there are too many details: I'm in danger
of forgetting that I'm a superior critic reading a piece of
inferior writing. I might just start thinking this is a
representation of a world, here.
PUSHBUTTON WORDS - Words you use to evoke an emotional
response without engaging the intellect or critical
faculties. Words like "song" or "poet" or "tears" ore
"dreams." These words are supposed to make us misty-eyed
without us quite knowing why. Most often found in story
titles
Oh my dog! Here's a writer who dares to use common evocative
words and phrases! This story shouldn't be called "Tears of the
Poet!" NO! It should be called "144th Street," because that's
not mainpulative.
TELLING, NOT SHOWING - Violates the cardinal rule of good
writing. You should allow readers to react, not instruct
them in how to react. Carefully observed details render
authorial value judgments unnecessary. For instance,
instead of telling us "she had a bad childhood, an
unhappy childhood," shows us specific incidents --
involving, say, a locked closet and two jars of honey
Better yet, give us an unadorned screenplay sans shooting
instructions.
DISCH-ISM - Intrusion of the author's physical surrounding
(or mental state) into the narrative. Like characters who
always light cigarettes when the author does, or who
think about how they wished they hadn't quit smoking. In
more subtle forms the characters complain that they're
confused and don't know what to do -- when this is
actually the author's condition
Make sure you don't write about anything you know about: anything
that comes from your actual experience is too mundane to be really
interesting.
BOGUS ALTERNATIVES - List of actions a character could
have taken, but didn't. Frequently includes all the
reasons why. A type of Disch-ism in which the author
works out complicated plot problems at the reader's
expense. "If I'd gone along with the cops they would have
found the gun in my purse. And anyway, I didn't want to
spend the night in jail. I suppose I could have just run
instead of stealing the car, but then. . ." etc. Best
dispense with this material entirely.
Right, we don't want to be burdened with the thought processes of
the characters, Give us that unadorned screenplay, and make sure
there's no explanation for anything the characters do.
FALSE INTERIORIZATION - Another Disch-ism, in which the
author, too lazy to describe the surroundings, inflicts
the viewpoint character with space sickness, a blindfold,
etc.
There's never any reason for a character to have any limitations
to what he or she knows, especially since we're getting that
unadorned screenplay, and there's not much to know anyway.
I'VE SUFFERED FOR MY ART" - (And now it's your turn.)
Research dump. A form of Info Dump in which the author
inflicts upon the reader irrelevant but hard-won bits of
data acquired while researching the story.
Remember about the details? We don't want any. Verisimilitude is
for the unimaginative.
REINVENTING THE WHEEL - In which the novice author goes to
enormous lengths to create a situation already familiar
to an experienced reader. You most often see this when a
highly regarded mainstream writer tries to write an SF
novel without actually reading any of the existing stuff
first. Thus, you get endless explanations of, say, how an
atomic war might start by accident. Thank you, but we've
all read that already. Also, you get tedious explanations
by physicists of how their interstellar drive works.
Unless it affects the plot, we don't care.
And we don't care if it does affect the plot either, because
essentially, we don't much like what anybody writes, any time.
CARD TRICKS IN THE DARK - Authorial tricks to no visible
purpose. The author has contrived an elaborate plot to
arrive at the punchline of a joke no one else will get,
or some bit of historical trivia. In other words, if the
point of your story is that this kid is going to grow up
to be Joseph of Arimathea, there should be sufficient
internal evidence for us to figure this out.
Actually, we're never going to figure anything out unless you hit
us over the head with it, in which case we have other grounds to
complain about it, so why bother writing anything for us to read,
ever? Go dig a ditch.
PLOT COUPONS - The true structure of the quest-type
fantasy novel. The "hero" collects sufficient plot
coupons (magic sword, magic book, magic cat) to send off
to the author for the ending. Note that you can
substitute "the author" for "the gods" in such a work:
"The gods decreed he would pursue this quest." Right,
mate. The author decreed he or she would pursue this
quest until sufficient pages were full to procure an
advance. (Alex Stewart)
We like to read formula-driven genres so we can bitch about them
and be superior to them. We like to read unconventional,
experimental, or slipstream novels so we can bitch about them and
be superior to them, too, though, so don't think you can win.
Lucy Kemnitzer
Theresa Wojtasiewicz
>
> In article <38159a0f...@netnews.worldnet.att.net>,
> Crusader Rabbit <gp...@att.net> wrote:
>
> > Screw those turkey-shooters and listen up: THERE ARE NO RULES!
>
> Or as Mr. Kipling put it,
>
> There are nine and sixty ways
> Of constructing tribal lays,
> And every single one of them is right.
>
> As for the horrible example by McCaffrey a few posts upthread,
> don't you think she did it on purpose just to rattle everybody's
> cage?
>
simply laziness.
Karen Lofstrom
: In one sense, that would be temptingly easy. There's two entire
: worlds involved directly in the plot. Maybe 1/6th of the novel is
: actually an official ethnography of one of the worlds that, in the
: course of my writing it, suggested about a thousand plot ideas.
Then write up those plot ideas. If the component stories are good
enough, I think there would be a market for a book of stories about
the X. It wouldn't have to be a novel on steroids, just stories with
perhaps a theme weaving through them. Or you could mixmaster the
stories and produce a novel as loosely woven as _China Mountain
Zhang_, which is actually one novella size main story and a bunch of
other little stories that cluster around it, in the same world. If you
haven't read the book already, read it and then consider the
structure.
--
Karen Lofstrom lofs...@lava.net
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged
demo.
Getteur
>with the 'avoiding of saidisms' - if you do it all the time, you get loooong
>dialogues that repeat 'he/she said' to a degree that it grinds on your
>nerves.
>People DO answer, exclaim, whisper, sob, or even ponder. They just don't do
>it
>ALL the time.
>
>Catja
The fact that I always seemed to have a hard time choosing a word to describe
how someone spoke something for a long time kept me from trying my hand at
writing fiction. Then I noticed how often Agatha Christie uses the simple and
to the point _he said_ or _she said_. Sometimes people just _say_ things too.
Gary
Getteur
>> don't you think she did it on purpose just to rattle everybody's
>> cage?
>>
>No. I've read some of her more recent work, and IMHO, I think it's
>simply laziness.
I believe it's called "resting on one's luarels."
Gary
Lucy Kemnitzer
wrote:
>Chad Ryan Thomas (crth...@asu.edu) wrote:
>
>: In one sense, that would be temptingly easy. There's two entire
>: worlds involved directly in the plot. Maybe 1/6th of the novel is
>: actually an official ethnography of one of the worlds that, in the
>: course of my writing it, suggested about a thousand plot ideas.
>
>Then write up those plot ideas. If the component stories are good
>enough, I think there would be a market for a book of stories about
>the X. It wouldn't have to be a novel on steroids, just stories with
>perhaps a theme weaving through them. Or you could mixmaster the
>stories and produce a novel as loosely woven as _China Mountain
>Zhang_, which is actually one novella size main story and a bunch of
>other little stories that cluster around it, in the same world. If you
>haven't read the book already, read it and then consider the
>structure.
A book which has the structure without the mixmastering is Arturo
Islas's _The Rain God_ (not, despite the title, particularly
sfnal, though it has a touch of magic realism in it)
Lucy Kemnitzer
Christopher Jorgensen
>Pamela wrote:
>>The Turkey City Lexicon should be taken with an enormous pile of salt,
>>in any case. It doesn't list absolute writing no-no's, of which in
>>any case there are very few. It delineates a particular kind of
>>taste, that's all, one which I emphatically do not share. I'd love to
>>write a book that broke every one of its dopey rules.
>
>But that's just trying to be clever, and not the making of a real book.
>I think experimenting with elements of style, especially if you just
>want to show that you can pull it off, is a BAD reason to write a book.
If someone were to set the wayback machine back to the days when
I still believed in writing courses and look at what I produced then
this person would find that half of what I wrote was in response to
some professor laying down a rule from on high like the big man to
Moses. In the end, I don't think there was any correlation between the
rules, whether I broke them, followed them, and the quality of the
work. It just didn't matter.
And I think this is because if you knowingly break a rule, you did it for
a reason, and you are a competent writer, you will pull it off.
And sometimes you can't understand a rule until you try to violate it.
>A lot of the stuff in the TCL is a nice reality check. I've got real
>trouble with the 'avoiding of saidisms' - if you do it all the time,
>you get loooong dialogues that repeat 'he/she said' to a degree that
>it grinds on your nerves. People DO answer, exclaim, whisper, sob,
>or even ponder. They just don't do it ALL the time.
The problem here is that "said" is as near invisible as you can get.
"Please stop," he said.
This sentence, to me, has a smaller mental footprint than even:
"Please stop."
As in the second place I probably spent some small amount of time
backtracking to see who said what. Now, start adding in the "whines,
whimpers, and wherefores," and you loose that invisibility. One or
two a in as many pages is probably even too many.
christopher....
--
El articulo es demasiado grande para su apartado.
Blanche Nonken
> On Sat, 23 Oct 1999 23:40:13 GMT, mombl...@bigfoot.com (Blanche
> Nonken) wrote:
> >If you're adding spiced meats to the assortment, Cherokee Purple goes
> >well with those.
> >
> >Um.
> >
> >Er, they came from outer space and I wrote a story about them.
>
> Killer tomatoes. right?
Not really. I was just trying to stay on topic. Then I was up all
night, worrying that someone would call me on it and thinking of a story
about tomatoes from outer space. I did get an idea for something; I
wonder if GreenPrints ever does sf?
> you see in some sf books. As I'm doing this I'm thinking about
> what sort of food you really could replicate, and what's involved
> in it, and stuff.
>
> So for me heriloom tomato varieties are on-topic, at the moment.
Next year I'll be judging the "Unusual Tomato Varieties" at the
Montgomery County 4H County Fair, if that's any help.
> (that Strioed German has not been around this year, and the
> Cherokee Purple seems to be done. The only big tomatoes are the
> brandywine and the pineapple. All the others are small varieties,
> and some, like the Green Zebra, seem smaller than last year. We
> had a very cool summer and a very late Indian summer, maybe
> that's it)
Could be. Did you guys have a problem with Late Blight? We had the
opposite problem. Long, hot drought. Lots of blossom end rot for those
who hadn't yet learned about watering and mulching. Lots of fruit abort
from the night heat. Lots of questions from frustrated tomato growers.
> I'm having a little trouble with the science of the things.
>
> I mean, on the one hand, I could do the Diamond Age thing, and
> then you just have the whole thing done on the atomic level, and
> nothing hardly matters. I mean, you could just have your feed
> made by the nano assembler, but I can't figure out how it gets
> started.
Would you have the produce output branded or marked in any way so that
"organic" (meaning carbon based life form, not pesticide free growth)
growers could continue to compete without replicator-based cheating?
> I'm imagining for some reason however something that's like the
> great granddaughter of a glorified coffee-and-soup machine. Which
> would have severe limitations on what it could do.
Tomatoes in cups with poker hands on them. <laugh>
> Since the thing I'm interested in is a plot about the social
> structure of the place where they're made, and the character of
> the fellow who finds himself there against his will, it's a little
> hard to believe I'm paying enough attention.
>
> I did figure that miso, athole, tofu, and bad hot chocolate such
> as Daniel Pinkwater sticks into a lot of his books would be easy
> and cheap to synthesize on the spot.
And tempe. Don't forget tempe.
Jamie Rosen
Lucy Kemnitzer (rit...@cruzio.com) writes:
>
> TELLING, NOT SHOWING - Violates the cardinal rule of good
> writing. You should allow readers to react, not instruct
> them in how to react. Carefully observed details render
> authorial value judgments unnecessary. For instance,
> instead of telling us "she had a bad childhood, an
> unhappy childhood," shows us specific incidents --
> involving, say, a locked closet and two jars of honey
>
> Better yet, give us an unadorned screenplay sans shooting
> instructions.
Just to be snarky, a screenplay doesn't *have* shooting instructions --
that's the director/cinematographer/d.o.p.'s job. Unless you're a 'big
name', you're pretty much guaranteed of getting a negative response ("S/he
thinks I don't know how to do my job.")
--
"You dream me, I you/Don't worry, I won't wake you/Before you wake up
yourself/ You dream me, I you/Don't worry, I'll find you/Before you wake
up yourself." -- Einsturzende Neubauten, "Stella Maris" (translated from
the German)
WooF
> In article <38159a0f...@netnews.worldnet.att.net>,
> Crusader Rabbit <gp...@att.net> wrote:
>
> >Screw those turkey-shooters and listen up: THERE ARE NO
RULES!
There are so, but they are so obvious that people forget that
they are there:
You must put your work in a format that the editor can read, the
copyeditor can edit, and the compositor can typeset.
You must repay the editor's time and the readers' money by having
something interesting to write -- and writing it.
You must put your work before someone who might buy it.
. . . all else is merely commetary.
WooF
On Sat, 23 Oct 1999, Eugenia Horne wrote:
> Theresa Wojtasiewicz wrote:
[snip discussion of idiot lecture, aka "Rod-&-Don"]
>
> Oh, bummer...
>
> And after I wrote and rewrote the beginning of the
> TCN a zillion times (okay, maybe 2 or 3 dozen) and
> had decided the "technique" of "Rod-and-Don"
> was the least painful method of introducing the
> reader to a teenie, tiny slice of history that
> they weren't familiar with.
The solution can be (1) make it short, and (2) have a character
who knows the relevant data tell them (briefly!) to a character
who believably doesn't know those data and needs to know them.
George Scithers of owls...@netaxs.com
WooF
1: Don't confuse the reader -- except for those exceedingly rare
instances where you simply must do so, for effect.
2: Don't distract the reader from what's inside the quotations.
Hence:
1: identify the speaker often enough so the reader doesn't have
to count down from the last identification.
2: avoid such flowery "said-book*-isms" that the reader stops
reading to admire them.
* Once upon a time, there were said-books -- lists of
substitutes for "said" -- along with "story machines" -- which
were lists of (rather cliched) descriptions of the Hero, the
Heroine, the Villan, the initial Obstacle, the Complicating
Obstacle, and an assortment of ways to overcome the Obstacles. To
build a story, one assembled elements rather like ordering a
Chinese dinner, column a, . . . and so on. I actually saw one of
the damn things, back in the 1950s.
George Scithers of owls...@netaxs.com
Rachael Lininger
WooF <owls...@netaxs.com> wrote:
>The most important goals when writing dialog are, in order:
>
>1: Don't confuse the reader -- except for those exceedingly rare
>instances where you simply must do so, for effect.
And know that if you decide you're going to do this, even if it's
Absolutely Necessary for the story, you're going to lose _some_ readers.
But then, you will anyway.
Rachael
--
Rachael Lininger | "A sentence without syntax
lininger@ | is like an egg without salt."
chem.wisc.edu | --Noel Langley
Zeborah
>
> A lot of the stuff in the TCL is a nice reality check. I've got real trouble
> with the 'avoiding of saidisms' - if you do it all the time, you get loooong
> dialogues that repeat 'he/she said' to a degree that it grinds on your nerves.
> People DO answer, exclaim, whisper, sob, or even ponder. They just don't do it
> ALL the time.
You can get rid of a lot of the repetition of "he/she said" simply by a)
taking half of them out altogether (when there's only two people
talking, especially) and b) varying the point in the paragraph where it
comes (after the whole quote, or somewhere in the middle of it, frex; on
occasion right at the start of it works too). Also varying the length
of whatever's being said, but that depends a bit more on the character talking.
There's a lovely poem whose name and author I've got at home which
consists of:
"I found a hair," she said.
"A hair?" I said.
"On the bed," she said.
"From a head?" I said.
"It's black," she said.
"Oh dear," I said.
"I'm leaving," she said.
"Please don't," I said.
(and so forth.)
It works beautifully as a gag in this one, but you probably don't want
to be quite so monotonous in general prose, even with shouting and
laughing and explaining etc.
Zeborah
Christopher Jorgensen
In article <38133a5a....@news2.global2000.net>, xbe...@global1999.net
wrote:
>I have mercifully forgotten the title and author, but one lengthening
>technique that sold was
>
>A. Write a bunch of short stories, no two in the same genre.
>B. Give all the protagonists the same name.
>C. Concatenate 'em.
Michael Moorcock? Course, I wouldn't want to forget what I've read
of his (he's got some stinkers, but I love 'em). Heh, I even enjoyed
"The Fireclown." Just glad he saw no need to tie that one in to the
rest of his work.
Lucy Kemnitzer
wrote:
>The most important goals when writing dialog are, in order:
>
>1: Don't confuse the reader -- except for those exceedingly rare
>instances where you simply must do so, for effect.
>
>2: Don't distract the reader from what's inside the quotations.
>
>Hence:
>
>1: identify the speaker often enough so the reader doesn't have
>to count down from the last identification.
>
>2: avoid such flowery "said-book*-isms" that the reader stops
>reading to admire them.
>
>* Once upon a time, there were said-books -- lists of
>substitutes for "said" -- along with "story machines" -- which
>were lists of (rather cliched) descriptions of the Hero, the
>Heroine, the Villan, the initial Obstacle, the Complicating
>Obstacle, and an assortment of ways to overcome the Obstacles. To
>build a story, one assembled elements rather like ordering a
>Chinese dinner, column a, . . . and so on. I actually saw one of
>the damn things, back in the 1950s.
There are still English teachers who hand out papers with synonyms
for "said" and requirements to use them. (some who will punish
students for not using the synonyms enough!) I apologize profusely
for not challenging them when I discovered they were doing this:
I wasn't as sure of myself a couple years ago as I am now, and I
thought maybe I was wrong and they were right.
The rule about identifying the speaker sounds too simple to be
meaningful, but I have gotten lost in dialog -- including dialog I
wrote myself, once -- and I find it useful to remember to identify
the speaker, and what he or she or it is doing, now and then
during the conversation.
Lucy Kemnitzer
Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet
>Pamela wrote:
>>The Turkey City Lexicon should be taken with an enormous pile of salt,
>>in any case. It doesn't list absolute writing no-no's, of which in
>>any case there are very few. It delineates a particular kind of
>>taste, that's all, one which I emphatically do not share. I'd love to
>>write a book that broke every one of its dopey rules.
>But that's just trying to be clever, and not the making of a
>real book. I think experimenting with elements of style,
>especially if you just want to show that
>you can pull it off, is a BAD reason to write a book.
*rolling eyes* Oh, yeah, that's a grand way to persuade me I don't
want to do it, just a dandy one. My feelings when I wrote what you
are responding to were not, in any case, anything like as cool and
collected and intellectual as the word "experiment" somehow implies.
Initial motivation doesn't necessarily matter that much in the
writing of a book anyway, not if the book decides to take the bit in
its teeth and the writer has the sense to let it. Petty, mercenary,
vengeful, frivolous, trivial motives are often good goads to the
sluggish writer. Sometimes I think they are better than high splendid
lofty preachy ones. But not always. It depends. It's not the reason
that matters, in any case -- it's the book.
>A lot of the stuff in the TCL is a nice reality check.
Not for me. I don't want to write the kind of stuff they like.
>I've got real trouble with the 'avoiding of saidisms' -
>if you do it all the time, you get loooong
>dialogues that repeat 'he/she said' to a degree that
>it grinds on your nerves.
Not on everybody's. I think it's a silly rule to get excited about,
but "said" is invisible to me for the most part, as a reader. Then
again, a lot of writers I really like use said-verbs like "pursued"
(in the sense of "continued") and that's perfectly fine too.
>People DO answer, exclaim, whisper, sob, or even ponder.
>They just don't do it ALL the time.
I don't think "ponder" works as a said-verb, but I'm sure there exists
a writer who would put it in precisely the right place and make me
change my mind.
--
Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet (pd...@demesne.com)
"I will open my heart to a blank page
and interview the witnesses." John M. Ford, "Shared World"
Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet
[snipping beautiful, hilarious remarks on bits of the Turkey City
Lexicon]
I retain this, though, because I think this bit is particularly
pernicious.
> PLOT COUPONS - The true structure of the quest-type
> fantasy novel. The "hero" collects sufficient plot
> coupons (magic sword, magic book, magic cat) to send off
> to the author for the ending. Note that you can
> substitute "the author" for "the gods" in such a work:
> "The gods decreed he would pursue this quest." Right,
> mate. The author decreed he or she would pursue this
> quest until sufficient pages were full to procure an
> advance. (Alex Stewart)
>We like to read formula-driven genres so we can bitch about them
>and be superior to them. We like to read unconventional,
>experimental, or slipstream novels so we can bitch about them and
>be superior to them, too, though, so don't think you can win.
Thank you. I laughed until I cried. I don't say that these are the
things the compilers of the Lexicon were thinking or the things that
unconsciously drove them when they wrote it. I don't know what they
were thinking and I don't care about their unconsciuos minds. But
that's how it FEELS. That's why I dislike it. Hee. Thanks.
Theresa Wojtasiewicz
Which is no excuse, especially if you know better.
Theresa Wojtasiewicz
As in Haley's? <g>
hrj...@socrates.berkeley.edu
: The rule about identifying the speaker sounds too simple to be
: meaningful, but I have gotten lost in dialog -- including dialog I
: wrote myself, once -- and I find it useful to remember to identify
: the speaker, and what he or she or it is doing, now and then
: during the conversation.
My own, perhaps odd, preference for keeping track of the speaker is to
use descriptions of the speakers' actions during the conversation as
the signal. E.g.:
**********
Jane turned back to the desk. "I just can't find that paper anywhere."
Martha came up beside her and began picking through the wastebasket. "Are
you sure you brought it home from the office?"
***************
It tends to help me avoid falling into talking-head scenes, as well.
--
*********************************************************
Heather Rose Jones hrj...@socrates.berkeley.edu
**********************************************************
David Langford
wrote:
[quoting the Turkey City Lexicon]
> PLOT COUPONS - The true structure of the quest-type
> fantasy novel. The "hero" collects sufficient plot
> coupons (magic sword, magic book, magic cat) to send off
> to the author for the ending. Note that you can
> substitute "the author" for "the gods" in such a work:
> "The gods decreed he would pursue this quest." Right,
> mate. The author decreed he or she would pursue this
> quest until sufficient pages were full to procure an
> advance. (Alex Stewart)
This one has been credited to Alex because once upon a time he quoted it at
a UK Milford and, presumably, Bruce Sterling was taking notes. The
paraphrased source is Nick Lowe's article "The Well-Tempered Plot Device",
which began as a 1982 convention talk and which I published in =Ansible=
46. It's on line as part of that issue:
www.dcs.gla.ac.uk/SF-Archives/Ansible/oldascii/Ansible.46
(Boring old ASCI textI, alas.)
Dave
--
David Langford
ans...@cix.co.uk | http://www.ansible.demon.co.uk/
CATJA ALEXANDRA PAFORT
<snips>
>Here's a bunch of the Turkey City Lexicon, with my gloss on what
>they are being grumpy about:
>
>
> PUSHBUTTON WORDS - Words you use to evoke an emotional
> response without engaging the intellect or critical
> faculties. Words like "song" or "poet" or "tears" ore
> "dreams." These words are supposed to make us misty-eyed
> without us quite knowing why. Most often found in story
> titles
>
>Oh my dog! Here's a writer who dares to use common evocative
>words and phrases! This story shouldn't be called "Tears of the
>Poet!" NO! It should be called "144th Street," because that's
>not mainpulative.
I think it's entirely a style question, not a problem with individual words.
(Although Jordan naming a city 'Tear,' really ground on my nerves.) I've taken
that particular bit to avoid soppyness. And in a wider context, to be careful
about the way you are awakening associations. Certain social or political
concepts, any historical or geographical connection, as well as literary
connection will provoke different associations with different people. If you
are an animal rights activists, you and your friends might see certain concepts
positively, and you will instantly warm towards a character using them; whereas
the rest of the world, and the majority of potential readers will dislike that
person and sympathize with his antagonist! So if you *are* pushing buttons,
think which ones they are, and whether they do your story any good.
> TELLING, NOT SHOWING - Violates the cardinal rule of good
> writing. You should allow readers to react, not instruct
> them in how to react. Carefully observed details render
> authorial value judgments unnecessary. For instance,
> instead of telling us "she had a bad childhood, an
> unhappy childhood," shows us specific incidents --
> involving, say, a locked closet and two jars of honey
>
>Better yet, give us an unadorned screenplay sans shooting
>instructions.
Tell, don't show is one of the older rules in the book. It depends how much
energy you want to spend on that character/incident, and how important he/it
is. If the bad childhood inhits the character's ability to have relationships,
then she will be frightened in the dark and break out in tears every time she
sees honey on the supermarket shelves. If she has moved on, she might feel
slight sadness. "She poured a spoonful of honey into her tea. It reminded her
of her childhood, and not all of those memories were good." might be perfectly
sufficient - but it beats 'Lisa, age 34, sat in her kitchen. She had a bad
childhood.' by miles.
However, I still feel compelled to say whether she is frightened or just
slightly sad when faced with honey, because two people with similar experiences
can act completely different, and if she starts out being frightened, by the
end of the story she might not be.
>
> DISCH-ISM - Intrusion of the author's physical surrounding
> (or mental state) into the narrative. Like characters who
> always light cigarettes when the author does, or who
> think about how they wished they hadn't quit smoking.
>Make sure you don't write about anything you know about: anything
>that comes from your actual experience is too mundane to be really
>interesting.
I didn't take it like that at all. Not every character in the book will share
your interests, emotions, or reactions - if you populate the book after book
with facets of yourself, you're not a very interesting writer. My characters
would violently protest, so I don't feel particularly endangered by that one.
It's just another thing to be aware of.
> BOGUS ALTERNATIVES - List of actions a character could
> have taken, but didn't. Frequently includes all the
> reasons why. A type of Disch-ism in which the author
> works out complicated plot problems at the reader's
> expense. "If I'd gone along with the cops they would have
> found the gun in my purse. And anyway, I didn't want to
> spend the night in jail. I suppose I could have just run
> instead of stealing the car, but then. . ." etc. Best
> dispense with this material entirely.
>
>Right, we don't want to be burdened with the thought processes of
>the characters, Give us that unadorned screenplay, and make sure
>there's no explanation for anything the characters do.
You *really* don't like the TCL, do you? When done like above, it sounds
abysmal. There's nothing wrong with inserting a little thought process into the
plot. But I've got a character who goes through half a book by reacting -
something happens, and he just goes along with the flow, and never ever stops
to think. At first, he believes it's completely normal, then he starts wishing
he *had* thought his actions through, but it takes a long time before he sets
out to plan. And even then I'm afraid he won't have much in the way of
contingency plans. The explanation of what a character does often lies in his
background, education, temperament etc. If you need to spell out in detail
*why* he does a particular thing, then maybe there is something wrong with the
characterisation? When faced with a particular situation, I would consider two
or three options - someone else might have a set of three completely different
'solutions' to the situation, based on who he is.
> I'VE SUFFERED FOR MY ART" - (And now it's your turn.)
> Research dump. A form of Info Dump in which the author
> inflicts upon the reader irrelevant but hard-won bits of
> data acquired while researching the story.
>
>Remember about the details? We don't want any. Verisimilitude is
>for the unimaginative.
I thought that was a very good point. I can talk horses all day, but I've got
this horrible feeling that my readers don't want me to. Verisimilitude is nice
enough, but you can take it TOO far - and being clever and putting information
into a story that is not necessary TO the story doesn't help. Just because you
spent the last ten years studying astronomy doesn't mean that I want to read
about it while your spacer character boards a shuttle service and gets from A
to B.
> REINVENTING THE WHEEL - In which the novice author goes to
> enormous lengths to create a situation already familiar
> to an experienced reader.
There are too many books with too many variations on the theme to assume that
your reader 'knows' - and I think the advice above still holds, only impart the
information that's necessary. Every atomic desaster will be different - so yes,
you DO need to give background of your own, but only as much as is necessary to
understand.
I neither think the TCL is gospel, nor that it should provide a framework for
writing. But it tells you what kind of things people find irritating - and
that's nothing short of helpful IMHO.
Catja
CATJA ALEXANDRA PAFORT
>The problem here is that "said" is as near invisible as you can get.
>
> "Please stop," he said.
>
>This sentence, to me, has a smaller mental footprint than even:
>
> "Please stop."
>
>As in the second place I probably spent some small amount of time
>backtracking to see who said what. Now, start adding in the "whines,
>whimpers, and wherefores," and you loose that invisibility. One or
>two a in as many pages is probably even too many.
I've recently read a book where almost *every* piece of dialogue had 'he/she
said behind it. Somewhere about a third into it, I noticed what had been
grating on my nerves. From thereon, it started to become EXCEEDINGLY
irritating. From almost invisible, the word 'said' started to jump out at me,
at the expense of the story. So, where something isn't just 'said' but
communicated with stronger undertones, use a matching word to describe it.
Catja
Richard D. Latham
> On 24 Oct 1999 17:21:16 GMT, ca...@aber.ac.uk (CATJA ALEXANDRA
> PAFORT) wrote:
>
> >Pamela wrote:
> >
> >>The Turkey City Lexicon should be taken with an enormous pile of salt,
> >>in any case. It doesn't list absolute writing no-no's, of which in
> >>any case there are very few. It delineates a particular kind of
> >>taste, that's all, one which I emphatically do not share. I'd love to
> >>write a book that broke every one of its dopey rules.
> >
> >But that's just trying to be clever, and not the making of a real book. I think
> >experimenting with elements of style, especially if you just want to show that
> >you can pull it off, is a BAD reason to write a book.
> >
> >A lot of the stuff in the TCL is a nice reality check. I've got real trouble
> >with the 'avoiding of saidisms' - if you do it all the time, you get loooong
> >dialogues that repeat 'he/she said' to a degree that it grinds on your nerves.
> >People DO answer, exclaim, whisper, sob, or even ponder. They just don't do it
> >ALL the time.
> >
> >Catja
> >
> >
> >
>
> Here's a bunch of the Turkey City Lexicon, with my gloss on what
> they are being grumpy about:
>
[ deleted all Lucy's commentary ]
Entertaining . :-)
A shame that you didn't actually clean this up and send it off to
something like "Analog", (instead of throwing your pearls before the
swine that hangs out here in r.a.s.c ) because IMHO, this was good
enought to expect to get paid for .
It appears that you don't have much future as a critic ... but I'm
looking forward to some very good things from your yet to be
published novels .
--
#include <disclaimer.std> /* I don't speak for IBM ... */
/* Heck, I don't even speak for myself */
/* Don't believe me ? Ask my wife :-) */
Richard D. Latham lat...@us.ibm.com
Karen E. Leonard
objection isn't necessarily to words that mean "said," it's to words
that DON'T mean "said."
After all, reading about someone who "smiles" his/her comments, unless
they're a telepath, is a little disorienting. Seeing an occasional
"growled, muttered, whispered, murmured," and so on shouldn't be that
bad. My personal jury is still out on "offered," which seems to be
trendy these days.
"Cutting" one's eyes at people, also, is a little odd--not that that's
on-topic for this thread. (What does "cutting" mean in connection
with the vocabulary of glances?)
Best of luck to all.
Karen
Helen Kenyon
<ca...@aber.ac.uk> writes
>
>But that's just trying to be clever, and not the making of a real book. I think
>experimenting with elements of style, especially if you just want to show that
>you can pull it off, is a BAD reason to write a book.
>
finished product that matters. I wrote three stories last summer around
the titles of the Babylon 5 episodes for the first four seasons.[1] One
of them has polished up nicely and is now being submitted to
magazines.[2] I think at least one of the others has potential. I have
a story in my To Write pile that's a fantasy version of the type of
Doctor/Nurse romance that Dorothy once said that Marion Zimmer Bradley
kept being sent for her FANTASY magazine. The inspiration came from
Dorothy joking that she liked finding out what Marion *didn't* want,
then writing a story that contained it, in such a way that the story was
exactly right for the magazine.
>A lot of the stuff in the TCL is a nice reality check. I've got real trouble
>with the 'avoiding of saidisms' - if you do it all the time, you get loooong
>dialogues that repeat 'he/she said' to a degree that it grinds on your nerves.
>People DO answer, exclaim, whisper, sob, or even ponder. They just don't do it
>ALL the time.
>
>Catja
As Heather says somewhere else in this thread, one way around this
problem is to use little bits of stage business to keep who's talking
clear in the reader's mind.
Helen
[1] It was silly season on uk.media.tv.sf.babylon5 while we were waiting
for the final series to show up. Someone suggested this as a game to
while away the weeks.
[2] I think there are actually one or two titles still embedded in it,
but most were edited out.
--
Helen, Gwynedd, Wales *** For a virtual walk in Wales (with pictures),
the Hostel of Doom, piots and other bits and pieces, visit:
http://www.baradel.demon.co.uk
**Please delete the extra bit from e-mail address if replying by mail**
Christopher Jorgensen
In article <3814A3C6...@hiline.net>, "Karen wrote:
>Um, this may be a Dumb Observation, but I thought that the pertinent
>objection isn't necessarily to words that mean "said," it's to words
>that DON'T mean "said."
"No," he exclaimed, "You missed the point."
He then muttered to himself. "It's simple,"
he observed, "In fact, one could almost say
overly so."
"How so?" she asked.
"Well, the more you avoid using an easy
'said,' where an easy 'said' will do, the
odder it starts to seem," he informed.
"Oh," she said.
>After all, reading about someone who "smiles" his/her comments,
>unless they're a telepath, is a little disorienting. Seeing an occasional
>"growled, muttered, whispered, murmured," and so on shouldn't be that
>bad. My personal jury is still out on "offered," which seems to be
>trendy these days.
There's nothing wrong with an occasional anything, but where you
get the objection is when they're used too often.
"I will kill him!"
or
"I will kill him!" he screamed.
You judge. Either is probably fine, though I'll take the former. And used
too much, the "non-said tags" can ruin an otherwise good piece. You'll
know an over-done piece when you read it. My rule of thumb, "When in
doubt, use 'said.'"
>"Cutting" one's eyes at people, also, is a little odd--not that that's
>on-topic for this thread. (What does "cutting" mean in connection
>with the vocabulary of glances?)
It's the same thing as a flick of one's wrist. I've never flicked a wrist
in my life, let alone done anything cool while doing so. I've also never
screamed like a banshee.
Lucy Kemnitzer
<ken...@baradel.demon.co.uk.please.delete.this> wrote:
>In article <7uvf6c$paq$2...@dyfi.aber.ac.uk>, CATJA ALEXANDRA PAFORT
><ca...@aber.ac.uk> writes
>>
>>But that's just trying to be clever, and not the making of a real book. I think
>>experimenting with elements of style, especially if you just want to show that
>>you can pull it off, is a BAD reason to write a book.
>>
>I don't actually think it matters *how* the story came about. It's the
>finished product that matters. I wrote three stories last summer around
>the titles of the Babylon 5 episodes for the first four seasons.
I remember objecting to a story written by a friend in which a
woman is thinking about how her family used to function better by
flashing back on making cookies, and thinking the image was cheap
the way it was used, and then going home to write a whole story
where making cookies is what the protagonist is trying to get
done, and meanwhile she has a scare that her son has had a Bruce
Lee marijuana reaction and her daughter brings home a very drunk
boyfriend who's been thrown out of the house, and the cookies get
made anyway.
I have no objection to marking some techniques as questionable, or
hardly ever helpful, but the Turkey City Lexicon is pretty sure
that any writing technique or approach you might use is just going
to seem so old and tired to them, and I would think that a writer
who's not very self-confident would resort to the most desperate
novelties in the fear of being scorned like that.
Lucy Kemnitzer
Dan Goodman
Or do what De Camp did in "An Elephant for Aristotle" and Cherry Wilder
did in the trilogy which begins with "The Luck of Brin's Five" -- explain
what would be familiar to the reader, because it's something very strange.
Like celebrating birthdays, for example.
--
Dan Goodman
dsg...@visi.com
http://www.visi.com/~dsgood/index.html
Whatever you wish for me, may you have twice as much.
Kristopher/EOS
>
> In article <3814A3C6...@hiline.net>, "Karen wrote:
>
>>Um, this may be a Dumb Observation, but I thought that the pertinent
>>objection isn't necessarily to words that mean "said," it's to words
>>that DON'T mean "said."
>
> "No," he exclaimed, "You missed the point."
> He then muttered to himself. "It's simple,"
> he observed, "In fact, one could almost say
> overly so."
> "How so?" she asked.
> "Well, the more you avoid using an easy
> 'said,' where an easy 'said' will do, the
> odder it starts to seem," he informed.
> "Oh," she said.
Anything written like that is horrid to read whether you
use "said" or any other tag. That's far too many pauses
in the quotation, even if you only ever use said. Don't
confuse the issue.
> "No," he said, "You missed the point."
> He then said to himself. "It's simple,"
> he said, "In fact, one could almost say
> overly so."
> "How so?" she said.
> "Well, the more you avoid using an easy
> 'said,' where an easy 'said' will do, the
> odder it starts to seem," he said.
> "Oh," she said.
See, it's still rotten.
Kristopher/EOS
Karen Lofstrom
: The rule about identifying the speaker sounds too simple to be
: meaningful, but I have gotten lost in dialog -- including dialog I
: wrote myself, once -- and I find it useful to remember to identify
: the speaker, and what he or she or it is doing, now and then
: during the conversation.
Recently I reread some dialogue I'd written and found that I had
slipped into a strange method of attributing dialogue: including the
name of the addressee in the dialogue. I was writing things like this:
"I'm always missed you, X, even when I was involved with Z."
"I understand, Y. I've missed you too."
"X, do you think you can forgive me?"
"Yes, Y, of course."
It handles the attributions without he-saids and she-saids, but when
you stop and listen to it ... it isn't the way we really talk. We know
who we're talking to. We don't throw in the addressee's name every
sentence, or every other sentence.
So I had to go back, hack and slash, and put in a lot of he-saids and
she-saids.
--
Karen Lofstrom lofs...@lava.net
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
That may be ... but I have a running tab on a
pedal steel bar chord. You can listen later. -- Bill Bill
Dorothy J Heydt
Helen Kenyon <ken...@baradel.demon.co.uk.please.delete.this> wrote:
> ....I have
>a story in my To Write pile that's a fantasy version of the type of
>Doctor/Nurse romance that Dorothy once said that Marion Zimmer Bradley
>kept being sent for her FANTASY magazine.
I have too....
>The inspiration came from
>Dorothy joking that she liked finding out what Marion *didn't* want,
>then writing a story that contained it, in such a way that the story was
>exactly right for the magazine.
Or the anthologies. I wrote a story for the last Friends of
Darkover anthology that did *the very thing* that Marion most
wanted us not to do. Only I did it a little differently.
(Spoilers and explanation will follow below.*)
SPOILERS
*There's a character in the Darkover saga named Jaelle. She dies
young. Marion got to the point that she would rage in the
pageant and the street if another fan sent in another story
bringing Jaelle back to life. So one year (while at her house,
signing the contract for the *previous* story), I told her, "Next
year I'm going to write a story that brings Jaelle back." Marion
said, "I won't buy it." I said, "Oh, yes, you will, wait and
see." One year later there was the story, and she bought it.
(It's "The Wind Man" in _Towers of Darkover._) I brought Jaelle
back, but not to life: she's a ghost, and her story is a
combination of those well-known folk themes, the Grateful Dead
and the Vanishing Hitchhiker.
<chortle>
Dorothy J. Heydt
Albany, California
djh...@kithrup.com
http://www.kithrup.com/~djheydt
Brian Pickrell
> It's the same thing as a flick of one's wrist. I've never flicked a wrist
> in my life, let alone done anything cool while doing so. I've also never
> screamed like a banshee.
No, but people cooler than you do these things all the time.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Brian Pickrell.................What does not kill me only makes
...............................me stranger.
...............................
Patricia S. Bowne
>
> > >Somewhere on the internet is the Turkey City Lexicon which lists all the
> > >writing "no-no's" - among them Rod-and-Don-isms. Specifically, it's two
> > >characters telling each other things they themselves know but the reader
> > >doesn't. You can spot a typical Rod-and-Don by the opening dialogue, "As
> > >you know, Rod...". "Yes, Don, and you did so and so..." etc. It's a sign
> > >of poor writing technique. I came across a spectacular example of it in
> > >a book called "Flesh and Silver" by Stephen L. Burns.
For those collecting them, there's an egregious one in the first
episode of "Angel." I checked it out because of all the buzz
about how "Buffy" etc. was cleverly written, and within the first
ten minutes we have someone repeating the protagonist's own history
to him ... that's what I get for paying attention to newspaper
reviews.
Pat
Richard A. Brooks
>
> (Chad Ryan Thomas) wrote:
> > Such is my ultimate conundrum, having written a novel which I think holds
> > together really well at 60,000 words but would seem bloated at 70+.
>
> Look, it'll be in good company if it's bloated, surely? Get out the word
> pump. Whoosh. There you go.
>
> I've found that a scene which demonstrates what's going on can be followed
> by another in which a new character is told what's going on, and this works
> well at upping the word count without actually upping the information
> content, which is what you are after, I suppose, word count up, info content
> the same, I mean, not the specific technique, but I have found it works
> well. It's easy to do: after the scene where you show what is happening, you
> just add another scene where two characters talk about the recent past and
> explain things to each other. Or, of course, if you've got a scene where two
> characters explain what's going on, you can insert a new chapter where you
> actually show the action, but in this case you have to put the insert
> _before_ the explanation, not the explanation _after_ the action as you had
> to in case one.
>
> And explaining something that has already been shown is a good trick. Hence
> Show _and_ Tell, the new writing technique.
>
> I believe the technique derives from TV. I saw a TV writer complaining that
> he'd 'already given this' about some emotional impact in a scene which he'd
> been told to beef up. 'Ah, but people don't pay much attention. You have to
> tell them something really important three times.'
>
> So, explain to them what has just happened and show it again. Or vice-versa.
> Ups the word count and works amazingly well.
>
> (Aka: repeat yourself)
I believe it was Mike Chomko, editor of PURPLE PROSE (a pulp mag
fanzine) who told me that he was working on an article on Edmond
Hamilton. He told me that Hamilton pulled that trick on stories he
wrote for a lower paying market (AMAZING I think) back in the thirties.
His WEIRD TALES sf was about half as wordy as the other stories for
AMAZING. Mike was amused to find that in his reading. An interesting
way of getting more for the story.
And in those days, Hamilton wrote roughly the same story.
--Rick
>
> --
> Julian Flood (one of Nature's short story writers)
> Life, the Universe and Climbing Plants at www.argonet.co.uk/users/julesf.
> Mind the diddley skiffle folk.
Richard A. Brooks
>
> I just bought a box full of older SF paperbacks (mostly from the 1970s)
> that I am very much looking forward to reading. I've gotten so sick of
> puffed-up, bloated, thick novels lately that it's a relief to see *short*
> ones. There's a saying in Spanish that strikes me as appropriate, at
> least for my tastes: "Lo bueno, si breve, dos veces bueno" -- "Something
> good, if short, twice as good."
>
> Cheers,
> Holly
> holly-...@home.com
Getting so I hate to pick up one of those thick novels. Years ago, I
admired Poul Anderson's novels and thought he was one of the best at
the craft of writing. But the last few of his have been so bloated
that I hate to try another.
I have 6 or 7 diskettes of Walter Gibson's Shadow novels (about 60,000
words) from the 30's and 40's that I need to print out to read. I find
them much more reliable storytelling than the sf of today.
--Rick
Richard A. Brooks
>
> Theresa Wojtasiewicz <tw...@sympatico.ca> writes:
>
> >Somewhere on the internet is the Turkey City Lexicon which lists all the
> >writing "no-no's" - among them Rod-and-Don-isms. Specifically, it's two
> >characters telling each other things they themselves know but the reader
> >doesn't. You can spot a typical Rod-and-Don by the opening dialogue, "As
> >you know, Rod...". "Yes, Don, and you did so and so..." etc. It's a sign
> >of poor writing technique. I came across a spectacular example of it in
> >g'dawful.
>
> The Turkey City Lexicon just adores reinventing the wheel. It renames
> a lot of things that already had perfectly good and often much better
> names. What it calls Rod-and-Don-isms used to be called
> maid-and-butler dialogue, and I'll just stick with that, thank you.
>
> The Turkey City Lexicon should be taken with an enormous pile of salt,
> in any case. It doesn't list absolute writing no-no's, of which in
> any case there are very few. It delineates a particular kind of
> taste, that's all, one which I emphatically do not share. I'd love to
> write a book that broke every one of its dopey rules.
>
>
> Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet (pd...@demesne.com)
> "I will open my heart to a blank page
> and interview the witnesses." John M. Ford, "Shared World"
I just took a look at the Turkey City Lexicon.
Until it pushed one of my buttons. It said basically that Show, Don't
Tell was the most important rule.
I think that bloated books as we were discussing above are mainly due to
too much Show and too little Tell.
Why bog the story down in a batch of vaguely related incidents when, as
in the pulps, you can quickly summarize them and go on with the story?
--Rick
Richard A. Brooks
>
> Would you have the produce output branded or marked in any way so that
> "organic" (meaning carbon based life form, not pesticide free growth)
> growers could continue to compete without replicator-based cheating?
If it is an exact copy, then it would be "organic" too. So how could
the replicator be cheating?
--Rick
Richard A. Brooks
>
> rit...@cruzio.com (Lucy Kemnitzer) writes:
> [snipping beautiful, hilarious remarks on bits of the Turkey City
> Lexicon]
>
> I retain this, though, because I think this bit is particularly
> pernicious.
>
> > fantasy novel. The "hero" collects sufficient plot
> > coupons (magic sword, magic book, magic cat) to send off
> > to the author for the ending. Note that you can
> > substitute "the author" for "the gods" in such a work:
> > "The gods decreed he would pursue this quest." Right,
> > mate. The author decreed he or she would pursue this
> > quest until sufficient pages were full to procure an
> > advance. (Alex Stewart)
>
> >and be superior to them. We like to read unconventional,
> >experimental, or slipstream novels so we can bitch about them and
> >be superior to them, too, though, so don't think you can win.
>
> Thank you. I laughed until I cried. I don't say that these are the
> things the compilers of the Lexicon were thinking or the things that
> unconsciously drove them when they wrote it. I don't know what they
> were thinking and I don't care about their unconsciuos minds. But
> that's how it FEELS. That's why I dislike it. Hee. Thanks.
>
>
> Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet (pd...@demesne.com)
> "I will open my heart to a blank page
> and interview the witnesses." John M. Ford, "Shared World"
It is people like those who created the Lexicon that have all but ruined
sf for me. It's great to see Lucy take them on.
I think yearningly of boiling oil. It's a pity I'm too civilized. Too,
I could never afford all that oil.
--Rick
Richard A. Brooks
>
> Theresa Wojtasiewicz wrote:
>
> > writing "no-no's" - among them Rod-and-Don-isms. Specifically, it's two
> > characters telling each other things they themselves know but the reader
> > doesn't. You can spot a typical Rod-and-Don by the opening dialogue, "As
> > you know, Rod...". "Yes, Don, and you did so and so..." etc. It's a sign
> > of poor writing technique. I came across a spectacular example of it in
> > a book called "Flesh and Silver" by Stephen L. Burns. Yowzers... it was
> > g'dawful.
>
>
> And after I wrote and rewrote the beginning of the
> TCN a zillion times (okay, maybe 2 or 3 dozen) and
> had decided the "technique" of "Rod-and-Don"
> was the least painful method of introducing the
> reader to a teenie, tiny slice of history that
> they weren't familiar with.
I rather think if I did a "Rod and Don," I'd have them argue about what
the facts meant. Get in the summary and show the two characters
different outlooks.
--Rick
Richard A. Brooks
>
> CATJA ALEXANDRA PAFORT (ca...@aber.ac.uk) wrote:
>
> : Or introduce a few extra characters, and build up the background of
> : those that hitherto played only minor roles.
>
> But ... but ... all those minor characters are PEOPLE. With histories
> and dreams and feelings. Are you suggesting that the reader doesn't
> want to know all about them? How disconcerting!
Karen, if it gets in the way of the story, I don't want to know about
them. I remember reading Ben Bova's MARS and skipping all the character
flashbacks after I found out from the first two what they were.
Ditto the ones in STARPLEX. They were in italics, which made them easy
to avoid.
--Rick
David Given
rit...@cruzio.com (Lucy Kemnitzer) writes:
[...]
> The rule about identifying the speaker sounds too simple to be
> meaningful, but I have gotten lost in dialog -- including dialog I
> wrote myself, once -- and I find it useful to remember to identify
> the speaker, and what he or she or it is doing, now and then
> during the conversation.
I've seen dialogue where the *author* has gotten lost. A conversation
between two people; alternating speeches; all speeches unattributed. By
the end of the conversation the two characters have switched places.
The conversation was fairly incoherent to start with.
Steve Patterson
says...
>
>It's the same thing as a flick of one's wrist. I've never flicked a wrist
>in my life, let alone done anything cool while doing so.
Same here. Flicking a wrist sounds painful.
>I've also never screamed like a banshee.
*That* I have done, and it *is* painful without the application of throat
spray or lozenges immediately afterward.
--
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
Note: My "from:" address has been altered to foil mailbots.
Remove the "no_spam_" to get in touch with me by email.
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
Steven J. Patterson no_spam_s...@wwdc.com
"Men may move mountains, but ideas move men."
-- M.N. Vorkosigan, per L.M. Bujold
See my refurbished webpage! http://www.wwdc.com/~spatterson
Lynn Calvin
wrote:
>In article <9eQDSDAF...@baradel.demon.co.uk>,
>Helen Kenyon <ken...@baradel.demon.co.uk.please.delete.this> wrote:
>
>> ....I have
>>a story in my To Write pile that's a fantasy version of the type of
>>Doctor/Nurse romance that Dorothy once said that Marion Zimmer Bradley
>>kept being sent for her FANTASY magazine.
>
>I have too....
Ye ghods. Look up the thread on this in Rosemary Edgehills group on
sff.net on this very topic. I see a series. . .
Lynn Calvin
lca...@interaccess.com
UU Discussion also available on:
news://alt.religion.unitarian-univ for unmoderated discussion
UU-Community email list for moderated discussion on uua.org
UUS-L mailing list
Holding Rich Puchalsky, Gene Douglas, Richard Kulisz in my thoughts.
Russell Wallace
> > Killer tomatoes. right?
Heh, that brings back fond memories. The very first piece of work I
ever got paid for (I'm a programmer by profession) was a simple video
game about mutant tomatoes invading the Earth. I still remember the
delight as a teenager of holding up that cheque marked 'Russell
Wallace... fifty pounds'.
(Hey, I'd heard of the movie though I hadn't seen it, and it sounded
like a neat idea. Besides, in those days games were one-man jobs, and
tomatoes struck this graphically-challenged programmer as easier to draw
than bug-eyed monsters :))
> > you see in some sf books. As I'm doing this I'm thinking about
> > what sort of food you really could replicate, and what's involved
> > in it, and stuff.
> >
> > I mean, on the one hand, I could do the Diamond Age thing, and
> > then you just have the whole thing done on the atomic level, and
> > nothing hardly matters. I mean, you could just have your feed
> > made by the nano assembler, but I can't figure out how it gets
> > started.
I actually don't think it'd matter.
With nanotech, you could produce any kind of food you wanted (including,
as Arthur Clarke once pointed out, long pig if your inclination runs
that way... say, hands up who *wouldn't* try it at once, just as an
experiment? :))
With present-day or near-future technology, you'd get tasteless sludge
(albeit with all required nutrients), at many times the cost of the
naturally produced stuff.
I really don't think there's much of a middle ground. Okay, there'd
probably be an intermediate phase in which some things could be produced
and not others - but it'd still, IMO, be much cheaper to use traditional
methods (even if you had to do it inside pressurized greenhouses).
(I'm reminded of a scene by Mary Kuhner where a first-time passenger on
a starship expresses surprise to see a crew member cooking dinner the
traditional way. The captain replies: yes, but who wants to eat out of
a tube? A nice touch.)
--
"To summarize the summary of the summary: people are a problem."
Russell Wallace
mano...@iol.ie
Lucy Kemnitzer
She means farmed rather than replicated, but honestly I hadn't
thought about this one, I'm still having too many gorks about
exactly how the thing goes about replicating. It either looks too
easy, and like magic (and not fun, with no limitations or
anything), or too hard, and a stupid way to make food. I'm
thinking of recasting the story around some other technology
entirely.
Lucy Kemnitzer
Lucy Kemnitzer
Depends. Supposing you had one of those replicators?
Just a bunch a carbon atoms with oxygens and hydrogens tasked on
here and there.
Lucy Kemnitzer
CATJA ALEXANDRA PAFORT
>It's the same thing as a flick of one's wrist. I've never flicked a wrist
>in my life, let alone done anything cool while doing so. I've also never
>screamed like a banshee.
The only banshee a writer would emulate is Mr.Ixolithe. He who writes 'ooee
oooooee' on a piece of paper and pushes it under your door. Try being creative
with a limited vocabulary like that...
Catja
CATJA ALEXANDRA PAFORT
>I just took a look at the Turkey City Lexicon.
>
>Until it pushed one of my buttons. It said basically that Show, Don't
>Tell was the most important rule.
>I think that bloated books as we were discussing above are mainly due to
>too much Show and too little Tell.
>Why bog the story down in a batch of vaguely related incidents when, as
>in the pulps, you can quickly summarize them and go on with the story?
I fully agree - but I think it is *entirely* a question of where you start out,
and HOW and WHAT you show.
My first drafts were all telling, no showing. I had to take that rule very much
to heart, because what I wrote was along of the lines of 'he went there, then
this happened.' If you JUST tell, your characters will be lifeless, and you
will have a hard time creating believeable motivations for them.
I've always take 'show, don't tell' to be the necessary antidote to infodumps.
Why describe the society a character lives in when you can watch him go about
his daily business? That way, you can do your worldbuilding and character
description in one, and you might even advance the plot a bit.
I quote Pat Wrede:
: There are three things a writer can do with a scene: advance
: the plot, deepen characterization, or provide background/backstory
: (which includes setting, surroundings, history, etc.)
:
: A scene which does none of these things should be thrown away.
:
: A scene which does one of the 3 is mediocre, and could probably
: be improved by either adding one of the missing two things-you-can-
: do, or combining the one-note scene with some other scene.
:
: A scene which does two of the three is a good, solid scene -- a
: keeper.
:
: A scene which does all three is the gold at the end of the rainbow.
If all a scene does is up the word count, then there is something wrong with
it. I have a personal dislike of too many red herrings, too. If something
happens that after a long and epic struggle leaves the characters in exactly
the same situation they were in before, then I tend to regret ever reading it.
Catja
Geoff Wedig
> Theresa Wojtasiewicz wrote:
> >
> > > >Somewhere on the internet is the Turkey City Lexicon which lists all the
> > > >writing "no-no's" - among them Rod-and-Don-isms. Specifically, it's two
> > > >characters telling each other things they themselves know but the reader
> > > >doesn't. You can spot a typical Rod-and-Don by the opening dialogue, "As
> > > >you know, Rod...". "Yes, Don, and you did so and so..." etc. It's a sign
> > > >of poor writing technique. I came across a spectacular example of it in
> > > >a book called "Flesh and Silver" by Stephen L. Burns.
> For those collecting them, there's an egregious one in the first
> episode of "Angel." I checked it out because of all the buzz
> about how "Buffy" etc. was cleverly written, and within the first
> ten minutes we have someone repeating the protagonist's own history
> to him ... that's what I get for paying attention to newspaper
> reviews.
Yeah, that was pretty bad. Only thing I can say for it is that it was the
first episode of the new series, they wanted to hook new viewers, and they
needed to get on with the story. I forgave them that one. For the most
part, though, they're not too bad. In fact, the writing on the show is
pretty good. Mind you, they're going for camp a lot of the time, so if you
like that, you will probably like the show. That case was abberant, really.
Geoff
CATJA ALEXANDRA PAFORT
>Initial motivation doesn't necessarily matter that much in the
>writing of a book anyway, not if the book decides to take the bit in
>its teeth and the writer has the sense to let it. Petty, mercenary,
>vengeful, frivolous, trivial motives are often good goads to the
>sluggish writer. Sometimes I think they are better than high splendid
>lofty preachy ones. But not always. It depends. It's not the reason
>that matters, in any case -- it's the book.
I think that a book should want to be written. Whether it's the story or the
characters that are your starting point is irrelevant - but the form arises
from the content. I dislike writing first person - yet I have two characters
who *insist* on telling their own stories, in their own distinctive voices -
what's a woman to do? (Both, incidentally, are male...)
>>A lot of the stuff in the TCL is a nice reality check.
>
>Not for me. I don't want to write the kind of stuff they like.
I don't want to write things for them to like. I don't know whether they would
like my stuff or not - I don't know 'them' and I don't really care.
But there were a few things in the TCL that made me reexamine my own writing.
As with all 'rules' - especially those that only a small part of the total
readership creates, they are not 'rules', but they may be seen as guidelines. I
saw the entries in the TCL as 'things to take note off' - with my own work
somewhere along those particular continua. Extremes should be avoided (unless
you can pull them off) - so if your characters *always* act like you would,
you're in trouble, if you *always* invent a motivation that you would never
consider yourself, you probably are, too.
Catja
Geoff Wedig
Of course, sometimes, like in one of the more recent Jhereg books (Orca, I
think), the writer does this intentionally, just to screw with you. What's
interesting about it is the characters can almost always be identified by
their speech patterns elsewhere.
Geoff
Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet
>Pamela Dean Dyer-Bennet wrote:
>>
>> The Turkey City Lexicon should be taken with an enormous pile of salt,
>> in any case. It doesn't list absolute writing no-no's, of which in
>> any case there are very few. It delineates a particular kind of
>> taste, that's all, one which I emphatically do not share. I'd love to
>> write a book that broke every one of its dopey rules.
>>
>I just took a look at the Turkey City Lexicon.
>Until it pushed one of my buttons. It said basically that Show, Don't
>Tell was the most important rule.
*rolling eyes* Yeah, I know.
>I think that bloated books as we were discussing above are mainly due to
>too much Show and too little Tell.
*shrug* A lot of bloat is in the eye of the beholder.
>Why bog the story down in a batch of vaguely related incidents when, as
>in the pulps, you can quickly summarize them and go on with the story?
Maybe the story isn't the most important thing. Maybe the story isn't
what you think it is. Maybe some readers like to bask a little.
Maybe the vaguely related incidents make a pleasing structure, or a
thematic structure. Maybe they are far more than vaguely related and
you don't get it because you're in too much of a bloody hurry.
Your tastes are obviously more in line with those of the Lexicon's
creators, but there's nothing absolute or splendid about them.
They're just preferences. If the Lexicon helps you write the way you
want to, fine, go with it. But it's not the Word From On High and
it does not describe the only way to write.
Jamie Rosen
Uh, you've either misread his post, or misread the Lexicon. The Lexicon
says "Show, Don't Tell" is an important rule (although they confused the
issue by phrasing it as "Tellin, Not Showing" being a mistake), and
Richard is arguing against that. So he's (presumably) in agreement with you.
--
"You dream me, I you/Don't worry, I won't wake you/Before you wake up
yourself/ You dream me, I you/Don't worry, I'll find you/Before you wake
up yourself." -- Einsturzende Neubauten, "Stella Maris" (translated from
the German)
Lucy Kemnitzer
PAFORT) wrote:
>Rick wrote:
>
>>I just took a look at the Turkey City Lexicon.
>>
>>Until it pushed one of my buttons. It said basically that Show, Don't
>>Tell was the most important rule.
>
>>I think that bloated books as we were discussing above are mainly due to
>>too much Show and too little Tell.
>
>>Why bog the story down in a batch of vaguely related incidents when, as
>>in the pulps, you can quickly summarize them and go on with the story?
>
However. I have come to the conclusion after reading rejection
slips and being in a class and briefly being part of a writers'
group (many people here recommend them, but I'd have to say no
group is better than the wrong group), unthinking people who want
to sound superior will say "show don't tell" to mean "I don't like
this but I'm not going to bother to figure out what I don't like
about it."
It's often a meaningless phrase. In essentials, all writing is
telling. You're using words to convey a thing, not pictures. You
may be assembling those words into images, but there has to be a
narrative too, or you don't have a story, you have a (probably
badly constructed, because unwitting) poem. And narrative is
told.
I have loved that bit of Patricia's you quote, because it says
clearly the thing I figured out inchoately as I was figuring out
how to write. It's probably the closest thing to a hard-and-fast
rule _for a novelist_ (oh, and Chekhov's thing about the gun, if
prominently not firing is taken as a variation of firing). But
it's not about the issues that "show don't tell" is about.
"Show don't tell" is _supposed_ to be about being immediate and
involving, using the senses to deliver information. It's supposed
to be about writing like a twentieth-century person -- though, get
it, soon, we're going to be twenty-first century people. This
because if you read, oh, Austen, Dickens, Elliot, you get these
summaries of character, and interpretations of events, that
twentieth-century readers, particularly ones schooled in film,
don't need or want.
Supposedly.
On the other hand, Patrick Nielsen Hayden points out that as sf
writers, we write about things which may be completely new to our
readers -- notice that the TCL assumes that nothing we write about
will be -- or which may have a completely new significance in
_our_ writing, and he says "the infodump is the crown jewel of sf
writing."
It was like a thunderclap to me when I read that. I finally
figured out what I needed to do to the piece I was working on, and
almost everything I had written till then. See, my earliest
fiction training had been screenplays (film program at UCSC many
years ago), and there just is no place for very much incluing in a
screenplay, even if you're, say, Bunuel or Eisenstein, and you
write fancy ones. And so my stories had less incluing than they
needed for stories.
I have decided that "Show don't tell" is misleading advice at
least for sf readers. It's a clever and snarky way of saying
something that _is_ true:
"Inclue judiciously, and use action and the senses to convey as
much as possible. Allow story elements to explain a lot. Don't
be afraid to explain things: but respect the difference between
fiction and travelog, fiction and social history, fiction and
scientific dissertation." Now that doesn't swing, and it has no
snap, but it's better advice than "show don't tell"
Sorry this is so long, I'm kind of in a hurry, so I don't have
time to cut it down. And the cat (the young pink one not the old
black one) is making me nervous playing with things that oughtn't
to be played with.
Lucy Kemnitzer
Doctor Witch
ALEXANDRA PAFORT) wrote:
[massive snip]
> I neither think the TCL is gospel, nor that it should provide a
> framework for
> writing. But it tells you what kind of things people find
> irritating - and
> that's nothing short of helpful IMHO.
But the thing that you and Lucy both are missing, IMHO, is that the
TCL is a *lexicon*. It is meant to provide a useful critical
vocabulary for discussing the unique problems encountered by
writers of speculative fiction. Lots of SF writing workshops use
those terms as convenient shorthand. It's a lot easier to say
"The first half of the story is full of Dischisms" than to say
"The first half of the story has all these bits where the characters
sit around and think and smoke and drink cherry Cokes, just like
you do, Tom."
That's all the TCL is. Using it prescriptively is like using the
DSM-IV as a manual of mental hygiene, or the Model Penal Code
as a guide to good citizenship, or... or... <mumbles incoherently>
Anyway. I think most rules on "how to write" boil down to
"It's really annoying when people do this badly."
Doc W.
* Sent from RemarQ http://www.remarq.com The Internet's Discussion Network *
The fastest and easiest way to search and participate in Usenet - Free!