You're right, Dirk.
And I would say 'I'. My teachers knew what they were doing.
227 2018-11-29 14:51:56
Re: As Darkness Gathers (the Connor series) - Dirk B. (1,438 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
From GK Chesterton's Ballad of the White Horse. Lots of good stuff there, especially at the beginning and the end. By all men bond to nothing/Being slaves without a lord/By one blind idiot world obeyed/To blind to be abhorred.
The end of the world alluded to is the fall of Rome. Might work for you.
"The gates of heaven are fearful gates/Worse than the gates of hell;/Not I would break the splendours barred/Or seek to know the thing they guard,/Which is too good to tell.
228 2018-11-29 10:02:19
Re: As Darkness Gathers (the Connor series) - Dirk B. (1,438 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
"For the end of the world was long ago ..."
229 2018-11-12 04:02:38
Re: Progressive aspect and dialogue tags (46 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)
Yes, but who is who? Don't answer that!
Aw, heck, go ahead and answer it.
You're not gonna move that horse with anything less than a come-along.
230 2018-11-11 23:46:34
Re: Progressive aspect and dialogue tags (46 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)
Fair enough, Temple. Charles has a fair argument. I don't think it invalidates mine, but we understand each other's and are not likely to convince each other.
But I would like Charles to explain why the sample from Ringoe does not make full use of the power of the progressive aspect. It seems to me that the mixture of progressive and what I read as copula-with-participle-for-predicate-adjective expresses a static, timeliss quality appropriate to the scene. I'd like to know why he thinks I'm wrong.
231 2018-11-11 22:29:05
Re: Progressive aspect and dialogue tags (46 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)
As you wish:
Why does this matter? The answer to this question has been provided by Hegel in his Master/Slave dialectic in The Phenomenology of Spirit, and was subsequently taken up as a fundamental theme of Marx's own thinking.
When people are forced to create their own material world through their own labor, they are certainly not setting out to achieve a greater insight into the nature of reality - they are merely trying to feed themselves, and to provide their children with clothing and a roof over their heads. And yet, whether they will or no, they are also, at every step of the way, acquiring a keener grasp of the objective nature of world. A man who wishes to build his own home with his own hands must come to grips with the recalcitrant properties of wood and gravity: he must learn to discipline his own activities so that he is in fact able to achieve his end. He will come to see that certain things work and that others don't. He will realize that in order to have A, you must first make sure of B. He will be forced to develop a sense of the realistic - and this, once again, is a cultural constant, measured entirely by the ability of each particular culture to cope successfully with the specific challenge posed by the world it inhabits.
But all of this is lost on the man who simply pays another man to build his home for him. He is free to imagine his dream house, and to indulge in every kind of fantasy. The proper nature of the material need not concern him - gravity doesn't interest him. He makes the plans out of his head and expects them to be fulfilled at his whim.
If we look at the source of the Arab wealth we find it is nothing they created for themselves. It has come to them by magic, much like a story of the Arabian nights, and it allows them to live in a feudal fantasyland. What Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein have in common is that they became rich because the West paid them for natural ...
The topic is the realistic and unrealistic ambitions of states, the causes, the results, and the dangers of such unrealistic ambitions. You may disagree with the analysis, but it's strong enough to call for refutation, not mere dismissal.
232 2018-11-11 18:09:23
Re: Progressive aspect and dialogue tags (46 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)
Bobbitt does come to some bad conclusions. He also comes to some stunning right ones, and the foundation notions of The Shield of Achilles qualify, IMO.
Marx came to a few good conclusions too. Lee Smith, in Our World-Historical Gamble (available on Scribed) builds from one of them (among other things).
I may have the exact wording wrong, but there's a quote from Patton: "Rommel, you magnifecent son of a bitch, I read your book." If your existential enemy invented calculus, would you refuse to use it against him?
And all of this is beside the point. Right, wrong, or incomplete, Bobbitt's assertions together carry a subtlety that is only evident once one plumbs the full meanings in the concepts carried by the words To deny them because you believe the author dangerously wrong elsewhere seems dangerous itself. An argument can only be dangerously wrong if it is deceptively wrong, and in an argument of many parts, it is likely that some of the lemmas will be both correct and of import
233 2018-11-11 11:16:11
Re: Progressive aspect and dialogue tags (46 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)
If you consider the Shield of Achilles sample to be easy, then either you or I badly misread it.
The Monster Hunter: Memoir series seems to be aimed at people who enjoy adventure and fantasy, with a sense of humor for the great and small. And gruesome and gross (but not in the "worms come in, the worms come out" flavor. Education level has very little to do with it, except perhaps for people who refuse to enjoy spare ribs because hand-pampered Japanese beef is better.
234 2018-11-10 23:10:44
Re: Progressive aspect and dialogue tags (46 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)
I suspect Mr. Lee had some bamboo rat along the way. And the idea of a rat species being endangered by hunting pleases me. Their rattus cousins have wiped out any number of small-habitat species.
235 2018-11-10 17:38:43
Re: Progressive aspect and dialogue tags (46 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)
Charles, please credit IT people with a bit more depth than a seven-layer network model. One of my semi-regular web reads wrote this recently:
onecosmos-dot-blogspot-dot-com wrote:
Let's stop right there, because his point is somewhat orthoparadoxical: science and reason have allowed us to gain insight into the evolutionary process, but a deep understanding of evolution requires us to appreciate the limits of science and reason. If reason and science are limitless, then they enclose us in a kind of ultimate ignorance that the left uses as an ultimate control.
It's the difference between the reasonable use of reason vs. a tyrannical and totalitarian use of it. Evolution itself can be liberating or stifling, depending upon whether we see it as an open or closed system.
For example, no one "invented" our free market system. Rather, it evolved spontaneously as a result of a rule of law that placed limits on government interference. Only after the system was well underway did people consciously reflect upon it and give it a name: the "free market," or "capitalism." The main point is that the system not only evolved spontaneously, but never could have been created by conscious intent.
But don't tell that to the left: it is rooted in what Hayek calls "constructivist rationalism," a manmade intellectual system that "leads to the treatment of all cultural phenomena as the product of deliberate design" and insists "that it is both possible and desirable to reconstruct all [evolved] institutions in accordance with a preconceived plan." Again, notice how this encases us in the tyrannical pseudo-reason of the left.
It would be interesting to see if the Fletcher-Kinkaid algorithm survives contact with Kotzwinkle's The Fan Man
236 2018-11-10 17:25:12
Re: Progressive aspect and dialogue tags (46 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)
Temple Wang wrote:
Hardly. Season’s just getting started here, Chuck. Thursday’s Puppy Fritter night at the market downstairs. Three yuan per skewer. Alas, I prefer bamboo rat to either, though ... slow roasted with yams.
Been done before, Temple.
Lelia ... caught André and Rodney watching her. "The tomato ones are good."
"I like crickets better, thanks," Rodney opined. "Crunchy on the outside, chewy middles."
André covered his face with one hand. "I'm sorry. You cannot domesticate foxes, no matter how young you start."
"Whaaat? You're the one who grossed out everyone in the teachers' lounge with the joke about bad rat." Rodney shook his head. "You cannot translate from Army to teacher, especially not at lunch."
Mr. Lee snorted a little. "He's right. Fresh roasted rat's not bad, but it's got to be fresh." Lelia made a sort of unhappy noise. "Rat is the protein of choice in a number of places, Miss Chan. As long as it's cooked through and fresh, you're reasonably safe."
"Patrick, my love, not everyone has a stomach trained to survive third, fourth, and last world cuisine. Enough," Dolores stated firmly. "No roasted rodents today. The topic is closed."
Patrick Lee's gustatory history is a minor running gag in Alma T.C. Boykin's Familiar series.
237 2018-11-10 17:10:44
Re: Progressive aspect and dialogue tags (46 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)
I didn't know the origin of Fletcher-Kinkaid.
My 'bureaucrats' reply was flippant, but still on point. These are used to judge work WITHOUT the involvement of users.
I was having a dream. A really odd one. Generally my dreams involved a blonde on a beach who was very open-minded. In this case, I was standing on a dock on a lake. The water was a perfect blue as was the sky. There were hills on the far side and they were such a perfect green it was literally unearthly. It was, easily, the most beautiful place I’d ever seen.
I wasn’t alone, either. There was a guy sitting at the end of the dock trying to get his reel to work. It was obviously snarled. Next to him, to his right, was a bucket presumably filled with bait. And another fishing pole. The guy was wearing a T-shirt and ball cap.
There's a great deal more going on in that paragraph that the grammar alone can descriibe. The word literally is used correctly. The narrator, Olivier Chadwick Gardenier (Chad) is very mostly dead, and that old fisherman named Pete in the Saints ballcap is about to ask Chad to go back, black out from pain, and complete a mission of unknown length (but with suffering included), all with just one clue to what he must do.
With that knowledge, read again the adante description. See how each note fits, sets the stage for what is about to happen.
Was it meant to be easy to read? Yes. Was crafted simply? No. Is there depth? Yes. Will the more careful or practiced reader find more to appreciate than the marginally literate? Yes.
Isn't this characteristic--that you appreciate it more as you understand more--one of the things we praise in music?
Here's the last third or so of a paragraph from The Shield of Achilles:
... Until the governing institutions of a society can claim for themselves the sole right to determine the legitimate use of force at home and abroad, there can be no state. Without law, strategy cannot claim to be a legitimate act of state. Only if law prevails can it confer legitimacy on strategic choices and give them a purpose. Yet the legitimacy necessary for law and strategy derives from history, the understanding of past practices that characterizes a particular society.
I expect that the Fletcher-Kincaid score of this paragraph will be very high, perhaps beyond four undergraduate years. Yet the difficulty of the paragraph would not be fully captured even by a PhD level score. This fragment shows that the already sophisticated notions of law, strategy, state, legitimacy, and history are far more subtle and far more interconnected than we ordinarily recognize. (For 'shows', you may read 'argues' I find the argument convincing.)
Extra credit: Consider Elsa's Song from Frozen as a short drama in itself. Ignore the frightful anachronism of the word 'fractals'. Can the complexity of the words or of the music describe the progression that is staged by the song's words?
238 2018-11-10 00:15:27
Re: Progressive aspect and dialogue tags (46 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)
It's one of a number of readability metrics, none of which considers the innate difficulty of the topics. It seems to be chiefly useful for improving the spew of regulation-writing bureaucrats.
239 2018-11-09 02:24:33
Re: Progressive aspect and dialogue tags (46 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)
Difficult grammar doesn't mean a sophisticated message. Easy grammar doesn't mean a simple message. Neither the grammar nor the message sophistication by itself tells whether the reader finds the story rewarding.
I wonder how Fletcher-Kincaid would score the opening of =A Tale of Two Cities= or of =The Napoleon of Notting Hill=.
It would be interesting to put =The Shield of Achilles= through some readability benchmarks and then to compare the results to what people actually find difficult. Ditto for the opening two pages of the preamble of Book 1 of =The Last Lion=, also asking what people find moving. "In London there was such a man."
240 2018-11-08 15:58:06
Re: Progressive aspect and dialogue tags (46 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)
To the Fuzzy Wuzzy example: The repetition of the 'uzzy' is not accidental. It's there for a specific musical/poetic effect. It's not sophisticated, but neither is its intended audience.
Notice that the very first thing Ringo's protag/narrator says is 'I was having a dream'. After that, he gives slow, smooth description. And by using the progressive aspect, he emphasizes that the protag/narrator is immersed in the experience
So is this written for a -special- effect? Or just for a -specific- effect?
The argument of audience versus art is a messy one. (Or should I just write ' is messy'?). I don't have a final conclusion on the question, but if your purpose is to reach the audience, you might make different choices than if you hope to write for the ages, or if you are writing to see how far you can press the technique, or to flaunt your virtuosity to other writers.
241 2018-11-07 02:28:26
Re: Progressive aspect and dialogue tags (46 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)
Vern, that's not the start of the story. The protag has already been introduced. That fisherman? He's named 'Pete' and he's wearing a Saints cap.
242 2018-11-06 18:27:11
Topic: Progressive aspect and dialogue tags (46 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)
I get dinged in reviews over my use of the progressive aspect ("was standing", "were sitting") and my use of more-than-anorexic-minimum dialogue tags. Without claiming that I'm perfect, I'd like to present two paragraphs of a modern, successful genre novel for study.
I was having a dream. A really odd one. Generally my dreams involved a blonde on a beach who was very open-minded. In this case, I was standing on a dock on a lake. The water was a perfect blue as was the sky. There were hills on the far side and they were such a perfect green it was literally unearthly. It was, easily, the most beautiful place I’d ever seen.
I wasn’t alone, either. There was a guy sitting at the end of the dock trying to get his reel to work. It was obviously snarled. Next to him, to his right, was a bucket presumably filled with bait. And another fishing pole. The guy was wearing a T-shirt and ball cap.
This opens Chapter 2 of =Grunge=, by John Ringo, set in Larry Correia's Monster Hunter universe. Later in this chapter you'll find dialogue tagged almost as heavily as mine is, and only a little more gracefully
In some of the predicates in this sample you can argue, as I will, that the 'was' or 'were' is not an auxiliary verb indicating the progressive aspect, but a copula followed by a present participle acting as a predicate adjective. In which case, you're adding to the number of copulas, and everybody seems to teach that copulas, if not actually as evil as the passive voice, have no place in good society.
I claim John Ringo's successful work as evidence on my side.
Will someone argue the opposite side?
243 2018-11-02 04:08:51
Re: The Sorcerer's Progress (1,528 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
Okay. It's outline marerial for me, not a full narrative.
244 2018-10-31 08:53:45
Re: Series on horses (7 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)
Okay, article by different author: https://ricochet.com/566728/that-peach-colored-horse/
245 2018-10-30 12:00:52
Re: The Sorcerer's Progress (1,528 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
Got about 2/3 the way through typing it up. I found I had something else to do first. Got Lortimer, Irvat, Arlain, Sonshou, Vanshou, and started on Thorodeus. Pausonallie comes last. Looks like the ensemble I wanted, but we know why they are who they are.
246 2018-10-29 10:04:37
Re: The Sorcerer's Progress (1,528 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
Okay, after finding holes and glitches in the story, I think I have backstory for these characters worked out. I need to type it up and see if it still looks good. I may put it up here, though perhaps not as a chapter Then we can see about moving the story forward.
247 2018-10-26 02:12:26
Re: The Sorcerer's Progress (1,528 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
I can't write about these characters without knowing them, and I don't want a reader to say "That can't work. How do they pay for their food?"
248 2018-10-25 23:06:13
Re: The Sorcerer's Progress (1,528 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
I've got a couple hundred words ready to go, but they depend on a few hundred not written, which in turn depend on the ensemble I've been trying to move Merran in with. I finally saw that I needed to get a full picture of them, nailed down, and to get that I needed both their current economics and their backstory. I've spent three days on that, and the think-engine doesn't seem to work until I've had the question back-burnered for four to six hours while I contemplate other problems, like heat flow through stainless steel struts. I'm reviewing my solution now, looking for obvious implausibilities ind inconsistencies, especially involving ages. I expect that no later than Friday morning I'll be writing about characters named Lortimer, Irvat, Sharna, Sonshue, and (provisionally) Arlain, as well as Pausonallie and Thorodeus. And Merran goes on informal trial. Oh, did I forget to mention Valto?
Correction: Sharva.
249 2018-10-22 09:45:54
Re: The Sorcerer's Progress (1,528 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
I have a few hundred more words to write on Monday, and a few notes to make for previously written chapters. And a few more names to invent. Then I'll have probably about 2100 words to type up and edit.
250 2018-10-21 16:39:22
Re: Maiden and other stuff (52 replies, posted in Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi)
Get Well Soon!
