I can't believe that somebody wants to turn a regular verb in an irregular verb.
All Americans should also have regular American names, too.
The 'irregular' verb is part of this thing called culture which is supposed to be messy and even archaic for every new generation to make even messier.
A short, easy-to read explanation on snuck, sneaked and a bunch of other grammatical concerns for writers. Written by Brian Klems.
http://www.writersdigest.com/online-edi … vs-sneaked
{“Sneaked” is the standard past tense and past participle form of “sneak.” }
false. Both are accepted. It's not like "bring,brang, brung" in a now-rare alternative to "bring, brought, brought" where there is a Germanic vowel change, and a more sensible one, actually, but not the standard one, "sneaked" is only the proper form if the target is to abolish all such vowel changes like "sing, sang, sung" into "sing, singed, singed."
Although "snuck" is now an accepted alternative to "sneaked,"
You have that backwards. "Snuck" is the original form closer to O.E. (snikan) that, like in German, there is a vowel change rather like stink, stank, stunk; but became "regularized" like "leak, leaked" by 19th-century prescriptivist grammarians for no other reason than Southerners tend to use the old style, and British English had already morphed beyond the English speaked in the New World at least a century before.
[...] I suggest a winter holiday theme where submissions are made to groups members to vote on by the last day of November, and then the site-wide winner is named and presented their grand prize by President Hilary Clinton on January 1, 2017 to bring in the New Year.
The sorceress Hecuba, desiring to be Queen of America, conjured a mighty demon of wind, Matthew, against her valiant foe, Donald MacLeod, Duke of Trumpf, at his magnificent Southern Palace, but she failed to thwart his march to make America Great Again surely as she had failed to annihilate African-Americans during the reign of George II in la Cité d’Orleans.
Well, Tolkien's 16 years was a trilogy.
The entire premise behind the assertion is ridiculous. Catcher in the Rye - 10 years & Les Miserables in 12 years are "facts" meaningless without context. What are we suppose to take from this; that, for example, Salinger was a slow word-per-unit-of-time writer and Hugo was fast?
Here's what it took to write major books, by the Huffington Post. A really interest likeartical.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/how … 8b2b5569d2
Leave it to the HuffPo to present "facts" in as convoluted manner as possible.
Like the "fact" of the diversity of its editorial board:
http://www.mediaite.com/online/people-a … his-tweet/
all white women ages 25-35 (maybe one oriental asian or mestizo in the back).
Not QM, ordinary boundary-condition waves.
Oh. I don't guess I read that into your chapter, too.
Charles_F_Bell wrote:rhiannon wrote:I agree with Fred Miller's definition of science fiction vs. fantasy. SF is in an orderly universe, governed by understandable natural laws. Fantasy isn't.
Anything vs. fantasy is an orderly universe, governed by understandable natural laws versus fantasy which isn't.
I'm not really eager to come into this debate, but I disagree with this point. Tolkien wrote Fantasy, but his world has its laws. They are rooted in myth rather than in modern physical science, but there are laws.
Of the distinction that there may be two sorts of fantasy (1) with its laws; (2) without laws, I think it is not possible to discuss on the merits of any facts because there is no research (and who would fund such research, military psy-ops?) of the believability-enjoyment level for the reader (Tolkien note below) for one or the other. Nevertheless, the distinction between sci-fi and fantasy still holds - fantasy, even with internal logic of its "laws", if any, does not follow natural law, and genuine sci-fi does. It is the blurring of the distinction that does not just effect my enjoyment level but I believe signifies a cultural rot/reversal within Western civilization. Tolkien, in fact, was one who might see the reversal as a good thing (his work taken as truth-containing fable) by identifying the 'rot' as a necessary reversal into RCC medievalism.
At a young age, and in a time where I held strongly onto English Protestant values, in strong contrast to RCC anti-liberalism and theological buffoonery, I reacted to The Hobbit unfavorably without knowing why, inasmuch as it was well written and fascinating, so it might be said that fantasy without "laws" would not have that factor acting on the intellect. However, there is no possible discussion on the facts.
Consider my recent chapter A Lesson with Kirsey (sitting, for convenience, as ch 94 of The Sorcerer's Progress, Book 1: Children and Beasts). Does the introduction of wave functions turn it from magic into science? I don't think so, but you might.
The introduction of QM into sci-fi was a boon for sci-fi writers because it spread the range of possibilities beyond the neatly deterministic causal. I do, to a degree, find displeasure in taking that as license to introduce 'magic' into sci-fi as I do in taking AI into sci-fi to create 'androids' who are really supermen without any scientific underpinnings. From original ST to ST-TNG people in only a generation went from a healthy skepticism to an unhealthy acceptance of things that we do not know to be possible, so it is a matter of ars gratia artis for such sci-fi, and, in any case, there is a majority of people who find sci-fi just as silly as fantasy and don't read or watch it.
Charles: I disagree that you need a narrative as a prologue to what is happening in a fantasy or science fiction, unless you define the genres in such a way as, indeed, you have to have such a narration.
[...]
Yes, that is what I said.
I agree with Fred Miller's definition of science fiction vs. fantasy. SF is in an orderly universe, governed by understandable natural laws. Fantasy isn't.
[...]
Anything vs. fantasy is an orderly universe, governed by understandable natural laws versus fantasy which isn't.
Star Trek wasn't a critical or popular success because the critics and the sponsoring network hadn't done proper democraphics. The year NBC canceled it, they did run such a demographic analysis, and although ST: TOS didn't have the 30% of the viewing audience they were looking for, the engineers, professionals, and college graduates who watched it bought an awful lot of really big ticket items.
That is not the point of citing ST as an analogy. Too many people were turned off by what was poorly explicated and thus was hard to understand. There was the initial Wow! factor of just being in color (and that was what RCA which owned NBC wanted in the year of conversion to color of many shows), and it generally was action and not cerebral. So, once families that could afford to do so (the engineers, professionals. etc.) had bought their new color TVs, it was over. Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea when it went color tanked because it plotlines got goofier to compete with ST weirdness.
Anyway, back to helping Akhere, I would advise him *not* to have a long introduction, to sprinkle explanations through the dialogue in a natural way.
And I advise him to do otherwise if he goes omniscient POV as I think he should. {and by "long" I suppose you mean two paragraph, right?) There is no such thing as sprinkling explanations in the dialogue in a natural way.
"There's been a little problem in the cockpit."
"What is it?"
"It's a little room in the front of the plane."
Gimblyfart says, "Bo/bow, waddle here.
Bo/bow tweets, "O Gimblyfart, twaddly-do my bunsin!"
Less than 200 words in and I already know I'm in a completely alien world, filled with strange sights and sounds. The author doesn't info dump about how this colony was founded by a handful of humans .
Yes, indeed.
Charles: 1st person limited doesn't limit the universe. It's just that you encounter it through a character's POV. If the character is used to the environment, it does present a challenge to present the universe, but think of detective novels set in a city that most people don't live in--like LA, London, or New York. The detective glances at Big Ben. He knows that it's the central clock in London, knows what the Tower of London is, or Buckingham Palace, but possibly the reader, who's a high school student in a US public school, doesn't. How to convey it, without being ham-handed or over explaining it? Our hero shakes his head as a bird lands on Big Ben as he tries to make out the time. Wonders how the queen is doing as he walks by Buckingham Palace. Pauses to think about the way criminals are treated in jails now as opposed to when they were stuck in the tower. Has conveyed all the information needed about these structures w/o overexplaining and in 1st person.
I don't object to limited POV in contrast to omniscient, and you mention the detective/mystery/thriller story almost for which the limited 3rd style is designed. Doyle with Sherlock Holmes used Watson's tiny piece of the universe he inhabited and Holmes' role in it to weave his stories. But it is that tiny piece of the universe which every human being can himself experience and does not need much explaining other than Watson is a doctor and Homes is a deductive genius. On the other hand, if there's magic or faster-than-light travel through space and sentient creatures which are not like us, that universe needs explanatory introduction and helpful explanatory addendums from time to time from the author because these things do not and probably cannot exist and are therefore out of possible human experience. There is a phoney jump out of reality (even if the "reality" is fake) when a limited 1st or 3rd character tries to do such explanation when it cannot be possible for him/her to do so. The Romance in which the MC finds out her lover is cheating because she happens to be at the right secretive spot at the right time - a Romance author can do that once in novel, but a fantasy or sci-fi author cannot - unless it is a Romance subplot. Therefore when I say that "Sci-fi" when written outside of omniscient POV that cannot therefore be bothered to introduce through narration a universe outside of any human experience is not really writing about a universe outside of human experience but is using faster-than-light travel and such as theatrical tools to write a Romance or Mystery or whatever.
Star Trek the original aired for the first time fifty years ago this month, and it was not a critical or popular success because Kirk's short monologue at the beginning was not enough to overcome an ordinary what the hell is all this stuff. However, a generation later, with ST-TNG, all that "stuff" of Warp drive and Vulcans, etc. is a given as if real because those "facts" have been absorbed into a sort of urban legend. For sci-fi originality it is harder and harder to be "original" and authors have given up trying to be good sci-fi writers and prefer being writers of other stuff using hand-me-down sci-fi originality as a backdrop. There are exceptions - The Unincorporated Man - omniscient POV, with introduction, though tiny, and from 1962 Milton Friedman, of all things, and does go straight to characterization in modern style. Interesting, too, there isn't an MC who is likeable.
Asimov and Tolkien were very strong and skilled writers. Not everyone can follow their paths.
Aspiring to the lame is acceptable?
3rd person limited is a style developed for the small-range, intimate story, but obviously broader than 1st person limited. It makes no sense to limit a new universe created in sci-fi & fantasy, and only omniscient works for that, and unlike through 1st and 3rd limited, it is acceptable to step out of perspective into some other POV temporarily even if it takes a dialog tag or interstitial paragraph or chapter.
Akhere I. wrote:Don, if I alternate the main two MC POVs well, can I have one chapter from a side character? It's mostly so we can see the MC from the rest of the town's eyes and to introduce another problem the MC can't know about. Also, is present mandatory? My story is in past so converting it to present would get me all... tense *Ba boom tiss*
It doesn't HAVE to be present, but I have found that present tense really pulls the first person narrative into the immediacy of the action that is happening, rather than feeling like a narrative told later.
Sure, anything to avoid writing a good narrative introduction for sci-fi and fantasy. Tolkien wrote a strong narrative for The Hobbit, all of three pages, and Asimov did for Foundation. It was right then, and it is right now. Otherwise, the novel is another genre, Romance, Action,..., with sci-fi/fantasy dressings. The Hobbit and Foundation were not "Adult" as against "Y/A". They could be, and were, read and enjoyed by a ten-year-old and certainly by any teen.
Charles_F_Bell wrote:A mean, mean MAN using yucky logic dispelled any veracity to anti-conceptual NEWSPEAK in an apology of a sort called 1984. Give it a try.
I've not read Ayn Rand's work thoroughly yet,
Piaget. [and in the way he disputes Chomsky, for example, on the origin and purpose of words.]
(She is also a feminist.
Rand: "I don't believe that any good woman would want to be President."
That's 0 for 2, lil' lady.
http://orwell.ru/library/novels/1984/english/en_app
The purpose of Newspeak was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of Ingsoc {English Socialism}, but to make all other modes of thought impossible. It was intended that when Newspeak had been adopted once and for all and Oldspeak forgotten, a heretical thought — that is, a thought diverging from the principles of Ingsoc — should be literally unthinkable, at least so far as thought is dependent on words.
Take for example the well-known passage from the Declaration of Independence:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among men, deriving their powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of Government becomes destructive of those ends, it is the right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to institute new Government...
It would have been quite impossible to render this into Newspeak while keeping to the sense of the original. The nearest one could come to doing so would be to swallow the whole passage up in the single word crimethink. A full translation could only be an ideological translation, whereby Jefferson's words would be changed into a panegyric on absolute government
Charles_F_Bell wrote:Language in which words have fixed meaning is indeed un-poetic, and thematic content based on words that have no fixed meaning is theme without meaning. There are black women who do believe the opposite of 'slavery' is not anarchy of subjectivism, and they have more to say in un-poetry than any poet who says otherwise.
"Why, look at the lines on this map! Lines on this map go places! And lines that are not on this map don't go to these places. Extremely tall men of Scandinavian heritage believe that the opposite of sitting is not standing, but they see more lines than any other people could say otherwise."
Okay. And...?
Charles, I'm hardly going to engage in a discussion with you about literature.
Yes, dear.
A mean, mean MAN using yucky logic dispelled any veracity to anti-conceptual NEWSPEAK in an apology of a sort called 1984. Give it a try.
I wanted to throw in my two cents here, because "What constitutes a strong start?" is such a critical question for aspiring writers in all genres. Charles -- I certainly agree that judging fiction is intrinsically subjective, but this doesn't necessarily mean there aren't some common traits that make some stories more compelling than others.
[...]
So that's how I'd down what draws me in: writing craft, voice, conflict. I realize this may be a simplification, but these same principles apply for all genres (with the possible exception of Children's picture books and early Middle Grade). What do you think? Gray
Somewhere within this discussion you will find that I prefer objective criteria, not subjective taste-satisfaction. There is, however, in the brief contest description a wholly subjective mission statement to the effect: "stuff that makes a reader go on past the first three chapters."
You have identified three such criteria that could be objective but choose to go in a different direction. (1) "craft," as you describe, I think is a given, but suppose one asserts that the technique of italicizing internal dialog -- a technique that infests TNBW like a virulent zombie virus -- is not in the CMS?
(2) Voice, as you describe, not quite the way I describe it in a narrower way, in a novel written wholly omniscient third has only the "voice" of the author in narration, and a reader liking or disliking any character is something removed from that. Moreover, a reader liking or disliking a character (in omniscient third or anything other than limited 1st, perhaps) is to me an irrelevancy, but that is a different topic. On the other hand, suppose a novel is about a psychotic gender dysphoric -- let's call zim Caityn Jenner -- whose personality dysfunctions and antics is loathsome to many readers, ought a judge base his SS criterion on that? Or only if he has a disliking for the MC but the hypothetical reader does not, or vice-versa?
(3) Conflict - yes, I cannot disagree with that, but that is objective. "Without conflict, there's no story." Indeed, there are basics of every story arc that should be in SS - except those that involve the quest/climax/resolution - that should be introduced in the first three chapters or 10% of the book. These can be objectively identified.
I say that SS should include indications of impending conflict (the trigger, the reason for making a critical choice), scene-setting (stasis), and finally the "surprise" - and the reader is off in journey to the resolution through the rest of the book.
What I find failing in many TNBW novels is a timely (if any) presentation of the stasis for the ensuing story -- all the bits of information a reader can set his mind to the context of what is and will happen. In fact, there are those who ridicule the notion as mere a "info dump." There is a right way and a wrong way to "info dump" a stasis, but it is always wrong to ignore the task in SS.
While I am interested in what constitutes a strong start beyond the obvious, this thread brings up something that I've always felt the SS contest needs: simple critique.
Or the very least a mission statement. All contests are like beauty contests to some degree or other where the winner shor do look mighty purdy.
Strong-start opening paragraph ... or not?
Or this one:
Who is John Galt?
Chesterton wrote that the essence of prose is that the words mean what they say, and the essence of poetry is that the words mean things they do not say.
Fine to the extent that it leaves out the possibility of a growing culture of acceptance of the anti-concept (essentially that words are alleged to mean the opposite of what they mean) that outside of religion did not exist in Chesterton's time. .
Charles_F_Bell wrote:You are confused on the meaning of genre. It is a predictor of the story arc and to a lesser extent the sorts of characters and thematic content...
You say that I am confused.
I say that I disagree.
And, unfortunately I may not have the time to carry this discussion with you through. But you deserve to know that I have not accepted your definitions and instruction.
Strong-start opening paragraph ... or not?
Before he entered that intersection of X and Y, in a moment—so brief as to be unremarkable to the conscious mind— a flicker of light, a light so small but so intense, distracted him from the traffic light ahead that had turned green in his favor. He did not enter that intersection after the light turned green as was his right to do; and at that moment, so brief and insignificant to the driver of the semi that he should think the light having turned red against him before entering the intersection of X and Y of no consequence, did a semi-trailer truck and a car not collide.
Why I think it is objectively SS is that it (1) shows there will be strong thematic content to the book and (2) foreshadows the sort of characters and story and style (effectively genre-less construction ) which will follow. Clearly.
What a subjective judge may say: This is confusing sh**.
A subjective judge hanging on to some objective criterion may say: although does this does show (1) strong thematic content to the book (to those who have the intellectual capacity to discern) and (2) foreshadows the sort of characters and story which will follow, it is unsellable.
I just love her writing. It's so poetic and vocal.
For me, this is pure gold. Hurston personifies the words that come from these people so that the words grow larger than the speakers: they become the slaves freed of their chains and charge forward as one entity in the harmony of violent and sudden freedom. My goodness, that is thematically powerful.
Language in which words have fixed meaning is indeed un-poetic, and thematic content based on words that have no fixed meaning is theme without meaning. There are black women who do believe the opposite of 'slavery' is not anarchy of subjectivism, and they have more to say in un-poetry than any poet who says otherwise.
Charles_F_Bell wrote:njc wrote:A start can be strong in many ways. It can make us curious about a character. It can create a personal or global jeopardy. It can convince the reader that the writer has something to offer. ...
All of which leads to subjective judgement. The hardest part of review/comment on TNBW for a reader who has particular tastes--and I am not sure there are any readers who don't--is fairly judge something of a genre which is uninteresting to him. The best author of X genre cannot make an X-genre hater like his stuff unless his "strongest start" is to fool the reader into thinking it is not in X genre, only later to disappoint.
It is possible for a work to transcend its genre. It is possible for a work to avoid the genre's excesses and use what remains as part of a larger whole. To take extreme examples, compare Tolkien with Craig Shaw Gardener. Both write 'fantasy', but Gardener writes humorous camp. Morals tomorrow, comedy tonight! For a more up-to-date example, Dave Freer's Tom is glorious camp. If it's not your thing, fine. Not everybody can taste the difference between Nathan's Famous and Hot Dog Johnny's. (Both are good, and if you're near Hackettstown NJ, so is Johnny's, on US 46 in Butzville.) And not everyone likes hot dogs. Enjoy your omlette, sir. But I'm sure that if a true cordon bleu chef ever stuffed seasoned meat into a sausage casing and called it a frankfurter you would be wise to try it.
AJ Reid has a story on this site that she styles a Romance (modern meaning). It's also a period mystery/adventure. I've been pounding her on the ROMANCE!!! excesses, principally on the puppy-piled participles smothering the subjects and predicates, and I think she's now got a story that can be enjoyed by ROMANCE!!! readers and non-ROMANCE!!! partisans alike. It's not Ellery Queen, but I've read far weaker mysteries published by major houses.
You are confused on the meaning of genre. It is a predictor of the story arc and to a lesser extent the sorts of characters and thematic content: sci-fi has a story based on fantasy of what science (to date) has given us in purported facts and theory, well-drawn heros and villains, and some-to-much thematic content; fantasy, ditto, except no scientific (fact-based) content. Romance contains relationship and romantic love between two people, characters less drawn between good and evil, and little or no thematic content.
There is no genre style only perhaps a style of writing that is typical of authors within a genre. So that if Janet Reid diverges in style from what a typical writer of Romance commits to (usually for no particular reason) or sometimes sticks to (also for no particular reason) does not mean she is or is not writing Romance, and on he subject of the strongest start: she draws a strong line of distinction on how her Romance story and characters conform to the Romance genre, and not. That, to my mind, is an objective meaning to SS. I think generally Romance writers on TNBW do a better job at SS: where's this going in plot;. what sort characters will there be; will the reader be much bothered by thematic content?
'Literary Fiction' writers have a harder time at SS because both story arc and character-set is nuanced and not direct and the reader is told he will be bothered by strong thematic content. Moveover, style is content, especially to the degree the writing resembles post-modernist.
Charles_F_Bell wrote:jack the knife wrote:FYI re Doubleday/Knopf accepting unsolicited manuscripts - it doesn't. Agents only, dudes. It's on their website.
Still trying to prove Darwin wrong, are you?
http://knopfdoubleday.com/contact-us/
FOR KNOPF ONLY — Knopf usually only accepts manuscripts submitted by an agent. There is an excellent listing of literary agents in a book called The Writer’s Market, which you should be able to find in a local bookstore, from an online retailer, or a library. You can also visit their Web site at www.writersdigest.com for more information. If you still want to give us a try, though, even with that caveat, please send a sample of your work, 25-50 pages, and a stamped, self-addressed envelope, to THE EDITORS / Knopf / 1745 Broadway / New York, NY 10019. It will be reviewed with other unsolicited work. Allow approximately 9 months for a response. Please also be aware that we are unable to accept manuscripts submitted via email.
That's an ad for The Writer's Market.
That's a statement on the website of the Alfred A. Knopf division of Doubleday where they will accept unsolicited manuscripts directly from the author of 10% or so of his work.
cite from Wikipedia on Alfred Knopf:
Knopf (1892-1984) had little enthusiasm for most of the changes that took place in the publishing industry during his lifetime. "Too many books are published, and they are overpriced," he told The Saturday Review. These are things "about which all publishers agree, and about which no publisher does anything." The most fundamental change he noted was the increased importance of the editor. "In the early days, things were quite simple. The books came in; we published them as written... A publisher was regarded—and so, in turn, was the writer—as a pro. A writer's job was to write a book and give it to you." And he remarked to Shenker: "I guess business became more complicated and publishers less literate. It ceased to be the fact that publishers publish and authors write. Today authors submit manuscripts and editors write books." The editor is now hired largely to acquire books, "and if he can't get good books, he usually takes what he can get--books that are not so good. And then he sometimes wrecks himself trying to make a silk purse out of what can never become anything but a sow's ear."
A start can be strong in many ways. It can make us curious about a character. It can create a personal or global jeopardy. It can convince the reader that the writer has something to offer. It can make the reader curious about what is to follow. It can be the voice of a first-person narrator that makes the reader wonder what sort of story this character will tell. (Think of the opening of Huckleberry Finn, or of the best of the hard-boiled first-person detective stories.)
All of which leads to subjective judgement. The hardest part of review/comment on TNBW for a reader who has particular tastes--and I am not sure there are any readers who don't--is fairly judge something of a genre which is uninteresting to him. The best author of X genre cannot make an X-genre hater like his stuff unless his "strongest start" is to fool the reader into thinking it is not in X genre, only later to disappoint.
Or supposing it was my plan to have the first chapter something which is poorly (or, at best, merely competently) written to fool the reader. Well, what a bad plan that is for any literary agent or contest holder to judge, and yet in an objective sense that plan is the strongest start for what the book is.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times ...
So you think that an ironic statement on the conflict of social conditions in ancien régime vs. revolution is the same as blathering on speech which has no direction and yet harmonizes? The first is ironic truth, and the second is farcical falsity.
