326

(16 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)

rhiannon wrote:

CJ:  I like your question, "Do we write for every idiot that wants to read our books...

Repeat your "facts" at least twice and keep them few. In court, circumstantial evidence is not numerous in quantity but can alone be enough for a jury to convict if placed in several different contexts. The gloves are proven to be purchased by the accused; the gloves were seen to be worn by the accused; forensic evidence shows the gloves found in the accused's apartment contained the victim's blood; etc.  The "fact" repeated in different contexts, the gloves owned by the accused were instrumental in the murder of the victim, is yet still a single fact, but perhaps only with another such "fact" can be proof beyond a reasonable doubt. An author creating the mystery would walk the reader through each of these aspects of the reality of this "fact."  Law and Order and CSI, limited in time and audience attentions spans, did a decent job of creating such solved mysteries.  Mystery-crime novels, on the other hand, spin too intricate a story in my opinion because (also in my opinion) female readers like a lot of senseless blather in their stories.


rhiannon wrote:

The nice thing about beta readers is that it reminds me of Fritz Leiber who, before he was a famous published author, corresponded with another would be fantasy writer.  They would exchange stories, and ended up writing for the other.  Leiber would go, "Wait until you see what Fafred did this time," or "What do you think of the Gray Mouser's new girlfriend?" It's nice to have interaction with readers.

There used to be a game played in some English-lit classes of every student in turn contributing a part to an on-going (in theory, never-ending) story. It was a great exercise in creative ad-lib story writing, in a sense like a mystery never solved, because the previous writer would often simply make a change for the sake of making a change.  The stories themselves ended up being pretty awful creation-by-committee art.

327

(16 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)

njc wrote:

Monty Python's typical humor involves the kind of stupidity that would cause its subject the sort of humiliation that leads the victim to search for the nearest beaker of cyanide.  Where bureaucrats meet the public I sympathize, but in general I'd rather expose children to bloody violence than to Python.  Once can only survive Python by a sense of superiority that requires total disconnection from the fate of others.

I am thinking then that you use 'farce' in a pejorative sense. Farce/satire/parody of the stupid is pointless as it constitutes a kind of cruelty, and it can have no beneficial effect on the object of its humor. Satire of the 'smart', rich, and powerful is the point even if farce has a directionless quality that causes it to miss its target. Only the 'smart', rich, and powerful would either see the humor over themselves or be rightfully the object of scorn. Even if political satire, like Monty Python's Agatha Christie genre-literature parody, has a specialized purpose, those objects in the know, like mystery writers, can take the humor or be wholly just objects. However, what does it say when the satirical humor over President George W. Bush was often about his alleged stupidity was thought funny, but humor about President Barack Obama oh-so-smart Harvard-education accomplishments is not even created? So, if you mean farcical humor about the stupid and under-educated (and people had to fabricate that lie about W) is in poor taste, I agree, and people cowed into humorless submission about a man who has power and money on little personal merit is wrong, too.

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(16 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)

njc wrote:

The same thing can happpen with character points.  The best thing is to make the point in question serve some immediate purpose, whether description or character.  Or humor: John Dickson Carr wrote two farces about murder, one with Dr. Gideon Fell--=The Blind Barber=-- and one with Sir Henry Merrivale--=The Punch and Judy Murders=.  (I had to look it up just now.)  A  lot of the HM stories have elements of farce, but this one runs from end to end.

They're both great stories.

Monty Python - Agatha Christie Sketch (Railway Timetables)

https://youtu.be/YuUb9lUWEDU

"How can anyone shoot himself and then hide the gun without first cancelling his reservation?"

329

(0 replies, posted in Literary Fiction)

I have invented a literary style of Serious Farce, though I think it exists unidentified in literary satire of the sort that a typical reader might not find as "funny" but only as absurd, perhaps, even annoying. It is modelled on Sterne's The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman and Swift's Gulliver's Travels and has currency in the modern novels of Muriel Spark, for example. I mean also to distinguish farce in drama where it originated from that which I call serious farce, not "humor," in narrative prose.

Farce (n.) http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=farce
late 14c., "force-meat, stuffing;" 1520s, in the dramatic  sense "ludicrous satire; low comedy," from Middle French farce "comic interlude in a mystery play" (16c.), literally "stuffing," from Old French farcir "to stuff," (13c.), from Latin farcire  "to stuff, cram," which is of uncertain origin, perhaps from PIE *bhrekw- "to cram together," and thus related to frequens "crowded."
According to OED and other sources, the pseudo-Latin farsia was applied 13c. in France and England to praise phrases inserted into liturgical formulae (for example between kyrie and eleison) at the principal festivals, then in Old French farce was extended to the impromptu buffoonery among actors that was a feature of religious stage plays. Generalized sense of "a ridiculous sham" is from 1690s in English.

“My dear, I find farce delicious.” [Farce = A comedy characterized by broad satire and improbable situations.]
“Poulet ou la dinde?” [Farce = Stuffing of mixture of ground raw poultry and mushrooms with pistachios and truffles and onions and parsley and lots of butter and bound with eggs.]
“Molière.”

(1)    “Low comedy” of puns and confusion over words.

In theatre, a farce is a comedy that aims at entertaining the audience through situations that are highly exaggerated, extravagant, and thus improbable.  Farces are often highly incomprehensible plot-wise (due to the many plot twists and random events that occur), but viewers are encouraged not to try to follow the plot in order to avoid becoming confused and overwhelmed. [Wikipedia]

(2)    Time-slipping, to borrow a technique from fantasy and science fiction, which, in that sense means a person or group of people seem to travel through time by unknown means for a period of time, can be used for serious farce to convolute the plot to effect (a) universal meaning of events by juxtaposing timelines for the same cause-and-effect [see my “The Night of the Rising Sun Over Baghdad” for a simple example]; and (b) interpose fantasy upon reality and vice-versa [the Iliad myth in hallucination in my Remembrances and Reconciliation carried further in a completely different context/plot in its sequel as if it is all so logical, and serious, in fact].

(3)    Name-identity confusion. Shakespeare’s “Comedy of Errors” has masters/twins Antipholus’s and servants/twins Dromio’s. In simple farce this can be for laughs, but in serious farce the premise is built upon the so-called Problem of the Universals of there being a real Form/Essence of a thing-in-itself to match (we might hope) an epistemological thing which we call “thing” but anyone can call it anything.  Obviously, there is only something amusing in this application as a parody of the Problem of the Universals, that Wizards of Smart have been toiling over for millennia, if one can appreciate such, as no one can say that Elizabeth Pertwee misidentified as “Cathy” and called “Miss P.” or “Elspeth” by others [in my R&R] is knee-slapping funny unless there be funny plot confusions as in “Comedy of Errors,” and there are none. Its name-identity confusion is irrelevant to the plot, but neither is it just there. Amusing to those in the know, as much as I would say Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels and The Abbess of Crewe by Muriel Spark (The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie) are funny to the cognoscenti. These are only funny, or let’s say, funnier, in the context of knowing the background stories unwritten by the authors.

Election speech by Sister Alexandria in The Abbess of Crewe by Muriel Spark ---
A Lady has style; but a Bourgeoise does things under the poplars and in the orchard.
A Lady is cheerful and accommodating when dealing with the perpetrators of a third-rate burglary; but a Bourgeoise calls the police.
A Lady recognizes in the scientific methods of surveillance, such as electronics, a valuable and discreet auxiliary to her natural capacity for inquisitiveness; but a Bourgeoise regards such innovations in the light of demonology and considers it more refined to sit and sew.
A Lady may or may not commit the Cardinal Sins; but a Bourgeoise dabbles in low crimes and safe demeanours.
A Lady bears with fortitude that Agenbite of Inwit, celebrated in the treatise of that name in Anglo-Saxon by my ancestor Michel of Northgate in the year 1340; but a Bourgeoise suffers from the miserable common guilty conscience.
A Lady may secretly believe in nothing; but a Bourgeoise invariably proclaims her belief, and believes in the wrong things.
A Lady does not recognize the existence of a scandal which touches upon her own House; but a Bourgeoise broadcasts it urbi et orbi, which is to say, all over the place.

Dill Carver wrote:

I've actually read some of James Patterson Ericson's work and I love it. This is the opener to 'The Fur Trader' (Chronicles of Lesbos - Book One).


She strutted into my office wearing a dress that clung to her like Saran Wrap to a sloppily butchered pork knuckle, bone and sinew jutting and lurching asymmetrically beneath its folds, the tightness exaggerating the granularity of the suet and causing what little palatable meat there was to sweat, its transparency the thief of imagination.

reads to me more like the madness of a vegan reprobate.

Romance-genre was fantasy until that word got taken over by dungeons and dragons. F/F romance is fantasy like any other romance fantasy in which any particular detail need not be true unless the fantasy morphs into erotica, a bit like outer-space-alien fantasy morphs into sci-fi, so that rocket scientists and astronauts might be allowed to be more picky than laymen, and lesbians might be more picky than those who aren't lesbians depending on  the detail the author decides to provide.  It is supposed that female authors do well with male homosexual storylines (Anne Rice, Annie Proulx) so perhaps male writer for lesbian romance would be the same assuming the male author has a feel for male sensibilities, knowing what it is like to be attracted to and loved .by a woman, in the same way a female might have for female sensibilities, knowing what it is like to be attracted to and loved by a man, and the details of what goes where is artistically irrelevant unless that element of eroticism is to be included.

332

(7 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)

Janet Taylor-Perry wrote:
max keanu wrote:

Great! But Dragons? I thought you wrote Crime & Mystery. Many talents!  Go girl!

Max, the first thing I ever posted on here was King Satin's Realm. It's actually the first novel I ever wrote. I write across genres. Stories come to me, I put them on paper.

First: how long did it take you to write (in draft) KSR?  Second, like Max I am a little confused on the apparent genre-shift between Raiford Chronicles Volumes 1 and 2. Third, A Sonnet for Satin that begins KSR is heart-rending even though I have mixed feelings about cats.

Yes, persons from your perspective say that, don't they? Oh, by the way, Mrs. Clinton would make a superbly feminist U.S. President.

corra wrote:
Charles_F_Bell wrote:

From my perspective your post was highly offensive; hate speech, if you like.

Yes, you've illustrated your perspective sufficiently, as I've already said.

To say the insulted one(s) 'perspective' is to have been insulted is a tautology of evasion and doesn't even go as far as to say: "I'm sorry you have been offended."

Norm d'Plume wrote:

Does anyone know what the effects would be on humans in a Star Trek-style shuttle (e.g., no space suits) if it sprung an air leak. The lack of oxygen will eventually knock them out (which is what I want). However, there is also loss of heat and pressure. Loss of heat I understand. Loss of pressure I don't.
What happens to the human body? And which effect(s) come first? If I can rescue the unconscious crew shortly after they pass out, will they suffer any injuries?

Thanks.
Dirk

The fantasy concept is that if the external to-the-human-body pressure is lowered to near-vacuum fast enough, the body would explode (explosive decompression).  I like the imagery of such on Mars in Total Recall

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_er_Nmxnv4TM/T … n+mars.jpg

Maybe there have been real experiments putting animals suddenly into vacuum but nobody wants to release the gruesome pictures/results or maybe no such obvious thing happens and death is more like asphyxiation, probably the latter. 

http://www.geoffreylandis.com/vacuum.html
says
you wouldn't explode

vern wrote:
Charles_F_Bell wrote:
vern wrote:

When "anywhere else" leaves a lot to be desired, then "enormous superiority" still has lots of room for improvement. To blindly deny that is to become part of the problem. But I'm sure your highness already knows that, right? Take care. Vern

And certainly, as you see the U.S.A. in 2016, words from a bitter man in the 1850's, probably more appreciated as a young slave in the South than a mature Negro in the "tolerant" North,  is the way to put things in perspective.

Alas, the "tolerant" North is/was only a façade. Take care. Vern

No façade, assigning blame to the importation for slavery of all those "anomalous and troublesome strangers" in New England. {Joanne Pope Melish} Douglass made a conscious choice between living fat in a racist white society dangling at the end of strings directed by a corporate-lawyer President for his war of taxation that killed three-quarters of a million Americans or starving in a racist black society somewhere else.

vern wrote:
Charles_F_Bell wrote:
corra wrote:

Your shallow contribution here throws integrity into relief, serving as a living reminder of the horrific world this man spoke against. Your voice is small, your words hollow, your contribution like the scurrying of a rat too arrogant to realize he is insignificant.

Please, do go on. You serve as illustration.

"Swine" I wouldn't choose for you, but as to the sentiment of the "horrific world" Douglass spoke against is that but a shallow contribution on the 4th I can speak of here against those who despise the U.S.A. not from its human limitations but because of its enormous superiority to anywhere else.

When "anywhere else" leaves a lot to be desired, then "enormous superiority" still has lots of room for improvement. To blindly deny that is to become part of the problem. But I'm sure your highness already knows that, right? Take care. Vern

And certainly, as you see the U.S.A. in 2016, words from a bitter man in the 1850's, probably more appreciated as a young slave in the South than a mature Negro in the "tolerant" North,  is the way to put things in perspective.

corra wrote:
Charles_F_Bell wrote:

... as to the sentiment of the "horrific world" Douglass spoke against ....
... because of its enormous superiority to anywhere else ...

This is a matter of perspective.

From my perspective your post was highly offensive; hate speech, if you like.

corra wrote:

"Swine" then.

Your shallow contribution here throws integrity into relief, serving as a living reminder of the horrific world this man spoke against. Your voice is small, your words hollow, your contribution like the scurrying of a rat too arrogant to realize he is insignificant.

Please, do go on. You serve as illustration.

"Swine" I wouldn't choose for you, but as to the sentiment of the "horrific world" Douglass spoke against is that but a shallow contribution on the 4th I can speak of here against those who despise the U.S.A. not from its human limitations but because of its enormous superiority to anywhere else.

vern wrote:

Traitor or swine, like beauty, is often in the eyes of the beholder (along with the accompanying bias.) According to the relatively recently discovered Gospel of Judas, he was actually the most trusted of the disciples.

"Swine" then. Much like a self-freed slave (only possible in that country into which he was born and yet he scorned)  who could do nothing but whine about racism anywhere else he was not a slave, and like those who think  American Independence then or today has anything to do with the ramblings of a bitter man,  like MLK. Jr. exactly a century later, having no function after 1865 except to extract a living by agitation.

Who finds himself in Dante's Ninth Canticle with Judas, Cassius, and Brutus, traitor or swine?

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(2 replies, posted in Literary Fiction)

C J Driftwood wrote:

Or,
Perhaps the story is bigger than just one character. Sometimes things happen outside of one character's POV that the reader needs to be privy to, but not necessarily the character (I'm mainly speaking about First Person).
At least, that was why I used the multiple POV.
CJ

Yes, I think multiple first-person limited POVs (with omniscient mixed in) provides for something that neither single 1st person or omniscient does, but a sacrifice in plot advance through narration ("stage-direction") comes along, too, so the effect could be a sort of circling around the same event. Therefore, some other device is necessary.  I use what I call time-slipping, and I will post on this later.

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(0 replies, posted in Literary Fiction)

It might be inferred from the previous post as much that I am critical of what the authoress Tara K. Harper has to say, and that is not true.

She has much to say and says it well.

http://www.tarakharper.com/k_creatv.htm

I have never seen this analysis, but my instinct concords with it:

6.  Inner motivation

This is the driving force to create, not for reward but for its own sake.  For the enjoyment, satisfaction, challenge.  Research has consistently shown that work evaluation, supervision, competition for prizes, and restricted choices in how to perform an activity -- all these undermine intrinsic motivation and inhibit creativity in workers . Research on children has also supported these results.  A June 25, 1994 summary article in Science News magazine (which summarizes papers and publications in various science fields) reported that, in studies with children, creativity in artwork and written stories drops significantly for children who receive or expect to receive prizes or other rewards.

... or actually, another opportunity to flog the multiple-POV topic some more.

What it means for an author to write in a “literary-fiction” style is, at least, contained within the description for this forum, but also more: works that offer deliberate commentary on larger social issues, political issues, or focus on the individual to explore some part of the human condition, and this mission is not accomplished within the rules for genre fiction that only has events, and people, animals or things doing things that make events. The advice that “simply wanting to get into the heads/thoughts of more than one person is not a good reason” is wrong. This advice is taken from TARA K. HARPER WRITER'S WORKSHOP: Multiple Points of View [http://www.tarakharper.com/k_pov.htm] and it is to say that every prescription from her therein is wrong from the point of view of an author wishing to write literary fiction. She makes assumptions about readers that suggest, unbeknownst to her, that there are better readers than she supposes and better authors for them.

There are four main issues with multiple POVs:
    1.    Readers usually identify best with one point of view.

And other readers, the best kind, get bored with one POV, on and on and on for 300 pages, whether it is the author’s in omniscient or the author’s in first-person limited.


Presenting more than one POV denies the reader the ability to live the story.

No.

With multiple POVs, readers must constantly reset their thinking to adjust to yet another main character. 

Sure.

They must try to remember the action, the points made, and the issues brought up for each character while they read on to the next.

Okay, literary fiction is not for those on marijuana.

With each shift, the readers who have made an emotional investment in one character, are torn away to yet another viewpoint--a viewpoint which may not be their favorite.  After a while, your readers could easily stop caring about any of the characters.

Characters, probably most – and in a story with a strong protagonist in conflict, all -- have nothing about them that is lovable, but that is not what makes them important.
               
    2.    Switching back and forth between two points of view is acceptable, if a) the characters are different enough,

True.  That is one reason for POV change: to relieve the tedium of having the author go and on in his single voice.

and b) there is a good reason for switching back and forth.  Simply wanting to get into the heads/thoughts of more than one person is not a good reason.

Yes, it is good reason, or certainly it is not as simple as to say “simply wanting.”
               
    3.    The omniscient point of view is obtained by the third person, not by being in more than one place at one time.  Omniscience does not mean that everyone's thoughts should have equal weight.

Actually omniscience would mean the author intends to give all relevant POVs equal weight.
               
    4.    Separated characters must continue to move toward the same goal:  the end of the story. 

No. Multiple POVs can give meaning to the end of the story. This is a concession by the author that his “omniscient” POV is not God’s.


Without common threads linking their actions and goals, the plot and characters will appear disjointed, cluttered with extraneous ideas and actions, or unclear.

Yes, that is possible with a nonproficient, inept author who has had no acquaintance with original thought. Many people can tell a good story, and advice to stay away from literary-fiction style flourishes is good advice for an author who knows only grammar, spelling and punctuation and the elements of plot and characterization.

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(0 replies, posted in Literary Fiction)

“Elena!”
Oh, the sound of her words is always like chalk on a board. I’ve missed a stitch. Yes. My quinceañera. His kiss. Yes. The kiss, only nearly a proper kiss; that is, a most improper kiss, almost on the mouth, just slyly off the cheek onto my lips, lingering. Yes. I felt his breath across my nostrils. Eager Paris. Yes.
“Alexandros.”
Yes. I answer Andrea.
“Your husband, my husband’s brother, cuñado, your Paris.”

         Instead of, for example:

“Elena!” Andrea yelled as she entered the room.
I was sewing when I heard her, and she made me miss a stitch Oh, the sound of her words is always like chalk on a board.  I was just remembering my quinceañera and the first time Paris kissed me.
“Alexandros.”
"Yes," I answer Andrea.
“Your husband, my husband’s brother, cuñado, your Paris.”

             has no head hopping and an absolute single POV - that of Elena who throughout is thinking onto which the sounds of Andrea's words (explicit in quotation) impose. Elena only once "speaks to the reader" in narration to provide context for the reader by Yes. I answer Andrea. but this is thought-blended, and not explicit in quotation, with previous "Yes"s of a different context -- having the effect of offering no specific line between what Elena thinks and what she says.

346

(6 replies, posted in Literary Fiction)

You claim to provide a key to unlock the thought/dialogue, I see no such key.  I might add:

"You have a pretty face," Joe said to Jill.
And a mighty fine ass.
"Thank you," Jill replied.

also provides no key, but there is a common literary context by which one's spoken words might be followed in thought with unspoken related words, but it is really a literary device, not something which really happens.

On the other hand, also literary and not real, but contextually driven:


“Elena!”
Oh, the sound of her words is always like chalk on a board. I’ve missed a stitch. Yes. My quinceañera. His kiss. Yes. The kiss, only nearly a proper kiss; that is, a most improper kiss, almost on the mouth, just slyly off the cheek onto my lips, lingering. Yes. I felt his breath across my nostrils. Eager Paris. Yes.
“Alexandros.”
Yes. I answer Andrea.
“Your husband, my husband’s brother, cuñado, your Paris.”

The speaker of quoted words is Andrea, Elena shortly tells us that, and the narrator is Elena, Andrea has told us that. The words themselves provide for that context. A third character is introduced but with two different names according to each of the two principle characters, one (Andrea) explicitly speaking and providing detail on Alexandros/Paris, and the other internally speaking/narrating and implicitly saying "Yes" to Andrea.

347

(18 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)

max keanu wrote:
Charles_F_Bell wrote:
max keanu wrote:

Cato - Ted Cruz
Brutus - Mitt Romney
Pompey - Harry Reid
Crassus - Mitch McConnell
Chris Hemsworth as Thor as Marc Antony
Kim Kardashian as Cleopatra

Where does Chris Christie fit into this cast of renowns? Warren Buffet, the Koch Bros. Stephen Hawking, etc. It would be a wonderful to be able to equate famous figures of antiquity to contemporary persons with a simple click of the mouse. History's lessons of evil and dastardly might be repeated less and less it this were possible. Perhaps I need to shine up my coding skills and write the WHO WAS THIS PERSON LIKE IN HISTORY app... or perhaps this already exists outside of the study of humanities.

I must apologize for ever having underestimated your keenness to grasp the obvious, for you did understand that I absolutely did mean to implicate Mitt Romney with intent to stab Donald Trump on the floor of the U.S. Senate.

Acta est fabula, plaudite.

348

(18 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)

njc wrote:

I wasn't thinking of that, though OSCard used it in the later books of the Enderverse.  I was thinking more of politicians determined to gut this or another piece of law or public policy, or perhaps their political opponents.

That's far from salt-the-earth policy.

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(1 replies, posted in Writing Tips & Site Help)

Norm d'Plume wrote:

Should "sir" be capitalized in the following case:
    "You're out of uniform, cadet!" the admiral said.
    "Yes, Sir!"

Replace Sir with Mom or Dad and it clearly should be capitalized. I've seen "son" written both ways (with or without caps). A grammar site I use says to capitalize when the word replaces a name, but not for nicknames (e.g., sonny boy).

In the example above, cadet is lowercase, even though it stands in for a name. Therefore I think Sir should be lowercase as well, for consistency.

What then to do about Son?

Thanks
Dirk

"Cadet" is a simple noun as if the admiral addressed him as "bug" and therefore never capitalized except at  the beginning of a sentence. "Sir" is not a simple noun except in the instance of "dear sirs and ladies" or other archaic forms - therefore some say it should never be capitalized because of its archaic origin as a simple noun - but others, because it has special meaning as a proper noun in most circumstances in which it is used, say it should always be capitalized except in "dear sirs and ladies." I think the "replaces a name" is a red herring for this word. Dear Sir: salutation; Sir Arthur Clarke; Yes, Sir.

350

(18 replies, posted in TheNextBigWriter Premium)

njc wrote:

Is there a parallel to Carthago delenda est! ?

In reality there is no such thing as historical determinism. Even the extent of Total War has been altered by the known knowns and the known unknowns of Nuclear War. Making Mecca and Medina Hiroshima and Nagasaki to extirpate Islam somehow doesn't fit Carthago delenda est! as a practical solution. Making the aftermath of such a war the subject of scifi fiction I can see as publishable, but of that fictional war and the reasons and effectiveness for it not publishable.