To express the second properly should be either A woman: without her, a man is nothing; or Woman: without her, Man is nothing. Both do not conform to what was said and meant as expressed in the first version that never required the bracketing commas. The proper answer for the professor is: Those who can, do; those who can't, teach.
Janet Taylor-Perry wrote:Or: A woman without; her man is nothing.
Ordinarily the two parts of semicolon phrasing can stand alone, and the above fails. The first half ends in a preposition, has no verb, and does not make sense.
My favorite: " Let's eat Grandma!" or "Let's eat, Grandma!"
Punctuation saves lives.
Sometimes, the pause function for punctuation applies.
Two questions run together or one question:
What that in the road ahead?
What's that in the road, ahead. [No]
What's that in the road? A head? [Maybe]
Commas for the purpose of dangling a word or phrase at the end of a sentence should be avoided, or just do not use those phrases, especially participles, at the end of sentence.
He stopped realizing he had already won the race.
He stopped, realizing he had already won the race.
I know that the definition of 'Literary Fiction' as a classification across genres has been done to death in the tNBW forums over the years;
Continental European (that is to say, to have also included Irish/U.K., James Joyce and Samuel Becket, et al.) literary fiction is 'experimental' and therefore non-commercial in the U.K and U.S. markets, and apart from Ayn Rand and John Updike, et al. in the the first half of the 20th century, I'd say there is no such thing as Literary Fiction, only commercial versus noncommercial to U.S. publishers. 'Literary Fiction' has to do, for the most part, with a diminished value of plot and 'characterization' and with exaggerated value of words for words' sake, theme and purpose. That is not 'literary' so much as ars gratia artis and certainly not so much 'experimental' (Updike, to a degree an exception) but standing in class different than a TV or movie script. Such novels do not, in fact, make good movies unless stripped down to typical plot and characterization elements. I just saw the 1972 movie of A Separate Peace, based on the John Knowles novel of the same name and Charly based on Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes, and all the characters and plot elements were there, but the movies were not up to the quality for the same appreciation.
My standard for Literary fiction:
The skillful literary-fiction author, one who might just also be commercial, is one who mimicks fiction to present to the intellectually intransigent the universe as it is, not how that obstinate ignoramus envisages it to be through his imprecise and distorted perceptions and self-delusions. This author will always fail to satisfy the ossified expectations of the intransigent but will incidentally leave behind a work of art for everyone else to enjoy. And yes, that is hierarchically 'good' over 'commercial'.
Are writers actually aware of the differences between paraliterature (or genre fiction) and literature of the recognized canon,
No.
I should add that mostly in the U.K in the 1960's there was an attempt to revive good versus commercial literature by that classification of 'Literary Fiction' somewhat by writing in the Olde Style meeting the criterion of strong theme and important rather than ordinary or believable characters. That failed by the end of the 1980's. The trend of increasing novel-purchasing readership by women to today's overwhelming proportions has much to do with this; even with the notable exception of Doris Lessing, but also whose best works ended by the 1980's.
Thanks, Tom. I tried it. It didn't work. I reset, then tried to submit and it told me to post the story again. There must be a way to do it without winding up with two postings of the same thing. Maybe not...
I believe you're being forced to post it twice because the entry must be made after September 23, 2015 even if you had posted it earlier. The two-copies can be solved by de-activating the first one.
vern wrote:Dill Carver wrote:True... and strange that I'd never thought of it before. Adverb and preposition. Is it the word with the most meanings?
According to The Guinness Book of Records:
The word with the most meanings in English is the verb 'set', with 430 senses listed in the Second Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, published in 1989. The word commands the longest entry in the dictionary at 60,000 words, or 326,000 characters.Take care. Vern
Vern, I'm sure we (as in not me) can find another one to add?! LOL You have to love English.
I eagerly set myself in front of the television set to watch one set of the tennis match, setting my feet on the table without disturbing the Thanksgiving set, but merely set myself up for disappointment in Chrissy Everett's loss five minutes before the setting sun cast a gloomy glow across the room, my mind set in melancholy, the world set about in both war and peace --- Cerberus set free, the gates of Hell left unguarded for the living as well as the dead.
420(ish) meanings left to fill out one heck of sentence! But, oh my, I've repeated one word and failed Miss Toth's English composition class.
Charles_F_Bell wrote:Dill Carver wrote:Another quick North American lingo question, please.
Generally speaking, would an East Coast, North American, 'get round to doing something' or 'get around to doing it?' or are the two interchangeable?
Thanks!
You could have it both ways and write for dialogue: 'round. "Round" (meaning it that way) is not standard English even if most Americans do not fully pronounce the "a". "Round" itself has many meanings enough without adding another one.
My guess is that the non-standard pronunciation of around (round) by eliding the a has been used for so long that it has become accepted and, thus, the ' is no longer needed. Sort of like till has become standard for 'til. Still using the ' before 'round in dialogue would capture a sense of the speaker's dialect.
But, I would use it also in the narrative thoughts of the speaker who spoke 'round in order to lend a conversational quality to the narrative. If there were an enunciator in the speaker's tribe, I'd consider using around in his speech and narrative POV.
Memphis
Cept to-day round ain't good spellin fer around and putting it in narration makes yous look like dumbasses.
My opinion is that till and until or 'til were different words with similar meaning. In Southern U.S. and Scottish (?) till can mean to. Afore he goes till church, he stops at Ma's and eats his biscuits and gravy.
Getting around to it is idiomatic expression and does not depend on the same meanings of around and round used as prepositions. Coming around (or round) the corner.
One might consider petting a scorpion as research for a futurist novel about a Hillary Presidency.
Another quick North American lingo question, please.
Generally speaking, would an East Coast, North American, 'get round to doing something' or 'get around to doing it?' or are the two interchangeable?
Thanks!
You could have it both ways and write for dialogue: 'round. "Round" (meaning it that way) is not standard English even if most Americans do not fully pronounce the "a". "Round" itself has many meanings enough without adding another one.
I have never had square brackets do anything in any forum/review I've given. In fact, I usually quote the sentence fully, using [xxx] to indicate the error and (yyy) to indicate the proper word. In this manner: "I see [your] (you're) happy now."
Works every time - even here on this site.
Yes, there are no BBcodes available for review, but there are such, like those enclosed by square brackets, in forums like this one. You have it right that writing, or accidentally importing from reviewed content, brackets or other code signals causes problems, and my suggestion was to avoid those problems for the machine or for the poor reviewed writer who must interpret a reviewer's personal code language which is never obvious.
Janet:
Try making the same comment WITHOUT the double angle-braces. This is because HTML interpreters "see" the angles as a precursor to HTML commands and try to interpret it. Since there are two, both facing the same way, the interpreter thinks they are nested and tries to find the ending angle-brackets facing the other way. Since it didn't find them, it tossed the remainder of your comment on the floor.
I've had this happen to me also. Don't use "< - -" either, because that can be a comment. I suggest using "[" and "]" to bracket your question.
It's easy enough to remember never use any brackets other than ordinary parentheses on a site that is designed for ordinary, not technical, writing. Square brackets "[" and "]" around BBcode (like b ... /b and i ... /i) here, for example, changes text from ordinary to emphasized bold or italics.
If you're writing it as an American speaking, use can. If it's the Brit speaking, use tin. If it's in narration, use what would be natural to you. In the UK, you might well grab a tin of cola. Here, we'd grab a can of cola. If your narrator is from the UK, it would be natural to use language appropriate to the narrator's origin. If your story is set in the UK, tin it is (Unless you have the American speaking.). If you set your story in the US, make it authentic to the area where the story takes place.
Never once heard 'tin of cola' in the U.K. There is a distinction between a metal container of some liquid foodstuffs (soda, beer) from a metal container of solid foodstuffs like biscuits (cookies) and vegetables although it is a 'tin of soup.' I think the (aluminium) canning of drinks came late to England and calling it a 'can of coke' and 'beer can' came with the Americans. I heard 'a tin of condensed milk' so I assume anything in use prior to WWII remains 'tinned.'
Charles_F_Bell wrote:janet reid wrote:Hi to all writing romance novels, woman's fiction (that's read by both sexes despite the official genre classification), love stories, love scenes or anything remotely or not remotely (because you never know!) related to romance ...
Janet
You have that right. There is little sense in genre specification for fiction when all adult contemporary literature except sci-fi and porn is chick lit.
"When women stop reading, the novel will be dead." - Ian McEwan
Personally, I have quite a bit of sci-fi on my shelves and consider the genre to be "chick lit".
-Elisheva
But then sci-fi isn't what it used to be, too.
Hi to all writing romance novels, woman's fiction (that's read by both sexes despite the official genre classification), love stories, love scenes or anything remotely or not remotely (because you never know!) related to romance ...
Janet
You have that right. There is little sense in genre specification for fiction when all adult contemporary literature except sci-fi and porn is chick lit.
"When women stop reading, the novel will be dead." - Ian McEwan
For example, we've had vampires in literature for hundreds of years, but as recently as fifty years ago modern zombies didn't exist (I refer to the Romero version. I realize that purists will claim the Frankenstein monster was the first zombie, but he was hardly the product of a contagious disease, and far from a mindless eater of brains).
Romero's invention gives us countless zombie movies of the Resident Evil / Walking Dead / you-name-it type
Extending from that, you can have zombies take over the world as politicians... and zombies vs vampires and zombies in love. Eventually you'll get zombie robots and zombie celestial bodies... All these spin-off concepts must be explored before we'll get someone to come along and make something new. After that the process will repeat.
Appropriating imaginary-conceptual beings like Bram Stoker's Dracula into romantic (Twilight Saga) or comedic Grampa (The Munsters) characters are not spin-off concepts but rather rip-offs for entertainment. Only Nosferatu and Bram Stoker's Dracula (in part) are attributable to any originality (by Bram Stoker), whereas Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles may be what you are talking where she borrows the concept of vampires to frame original stories a little something about vampires -- but not 'exploring the concept of vampires' as you claim.
Betty White wrote:The audience today has heard every joke. They know every plot. They know where you're going before you even start. That's a tough audience to surprise, and a tough audience to write for. It's much more competitive now, because the audience is so much more - I want to say sophisticated.
The problem with this sort of comment is that it misjudges a typical audience as eager for something new, and that is untrue, but they would rather have rip-offs crafted originally, perhaps sophisticated, rather than creative original concepts. Few want to think about something heretofore unknown to them. I think the timeline for 'accepting audiences' for new ideas is in reverse as current civilization advances, not as implied by the above comment, and that may be a hypothesis about why civilizations ossify and collapse.
It's a parallel analogy. Here, I'll change for you...
My husband has dragged his feet for 30 years about getting involved in writing as a creative process. He believes "there are no true original works because all they've all been done before." My simple side of the argument was always; so what?
I believe....
There are an infinite combination of words & scenarios as there are dimensions to feelings, moods, and passions. And while we may in fact dutifully give a nod to those who have inspired us, originality is rooted in the self--and there isn't another person, ever, in the entire universe, who is exactly like you (I.E. they will never create a work exactly like yours unless plagiarizing).Better?
Sure, as you dropped 'pure fiction' because you don't want to talk about it like everyone else here who stuck his or her toe in the water on that. You also clarified that hubby had been thinking about 'writing' in general whereas I thought you had him talking about song writing/music. Okay.
For the most part, I agree with your husband, and I think it is a waste of time venturing into the creative process -- and this applies to commercial novels and commercial (pop/Rock) music -- because he and I may have higher standards on the sort of things we wish to spend our time. Although I am a believer in radical individualism, I also know there is such a thing as mass hysteria in extremis of tastes, and fads in tastes, style, and even content on which the free market is built, so that individuals merely churn out over and over again this same crappy 'literature' and 'music' more or less within each generation when there may appear a paradigm shift in tastes-- like a factory worker who has his hand in the making of Oreo cookies. There is something unsatisfying in that, unless money as the measure of success is a goal.
Therefore, the standards are: to be the creative genius of the Oreo cookie or to be the factory drudge making them.
Writing is writing. We're talking about the creation of original works--be they song, poetry, or novel.
Umm... how is a novel created without writing, and how is a song created without music? What I said was that writing (novels) is not music; and the creation of both is apples and oranges. And indeed. you were talking about original works, but I thought everyone else was talking about 'pure fiction.'
The pure fiction argument has been going on in my house for decades. My husband has dragged his feet for 30 years about getting involved in the songwriting process because he believes "there are no true original songs because all the chords have been played a million times over". My simple side of the argument was always; so what?
There are an infinite combination of chords and progressions as there are dimensions to feelings, moods, and passions. And while we may in fact dutifully give a nod to those who have inspired us, originality is rooted in the self--and there isn't another person, ever, in the entire universe, who is exactly like you.
I don't make the connection you are making between 'pure fiction' and originality. Also, the difference between music making and writing is so much greater than the difference between prose and poetry/lyrics as to be apples and oranges, but I can see that conceptually 'pure fiction' in abstractive process is close to music making. Plain writing is barely abstract at all.
Charles_F_Bell wrote:Was your point somehow related to the allegation there is no such thing as pure fiction? That not stuffing real feelings and experiences into another guise is pure fiction that does not exist? Perhaps you or Mr. Carver like to explain that.
The original question posed for discussion and that I was addressing, was along the lines of 'what does it mean if you cry when reading your writing?' I surmised at the time that it was either superficial, over dramatic attention seeking or if genuine grief, an emotionally dysfunctional act that could be a symptom of mental illness depression, delusion (etc.).
My opinions upon the existence (or not) of 'pure' fiction is another kettle. A fascinating subject that I'd readily discuss if others feel the subject merits it?
Okay, while I disagree with the first premise, and I think you came around enough to explain the context of your original premise as not applying, I think that "not applying" is the issue of what sort of crap one stuffs into his fiction. That many authors and their readers want real emotion (and not that list of phony melodrama above in your original premise) the author would come up with that -- Janet's point, I suppose. What I have a problem with is that there is no literary necessity to include anything real at all: 'pure fiction' is possible and indeed would be stripped of those real emotions, real tragedies, real(istic) characters, etc. --or-- 'pure fiction that cannot exist' is an anti-concept against writing which is not naturalistic.
Dill Carver wrote:A touching story Linda and I am sorry for your loss. It kind of reminds me of a theory someone put forward on the old tNBW site; in that there is no such thing as pure fiction as we re-wrap our own real feelings and experiences into another guise.
Thank you, Dill, for finally seeing the point.
Was your point somehow related to the allegation there is no such thing as pure fiction? That not stuffing real feelings and experiences into another guise is pure fiction that does not exist? Perhaps you or Mr. Carver like to explain that.
Charles_F_Bell wrote:I’m “exceptional”- a democratic term used to avoid the damning labels of “gifted” and “deprived” (which used to mean “bright” and “retarded”) and as soon as “exceptional” begins to mean anything to anyone they’ll change it. The idea seems to be: use an expression as long as it doesn’t mean anything to anybody. -- Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon
Oh, this time, Charles, I'm doing the happy dance about this post. I could not have said it better! I had a high school mate "unfriend" me on Facebook b/c I used the word retarded.
That is the joke about "retarded" - it was invented to take away the stigma of "moron" and "idiot", but in time, so goes every such top-down euphemism invented by the likes of the wizards of smart at the NYT. "Gay" nows means to millennials and younger "lame" or everything negative about the homosexual stereotype except sexuality as it can be applied to male hetereosexuals.
See the bogus controversy about "anchor babies." It was never intended to be a disparaging phrase against babies -- the persons themselves -- born to illegal aliens ("undocumented immigrants") intent to find a loophole to stay as parent-guardians of minors but rather softly disparaging against those illegal aliens themselves who for financial gain commit a crime and loophole their way out of a just remedy.
When there is political intent to made-up words and phrases that of themselves have no natural meaning or have anti-meaning, like "undocumented immigrants" and "latino", with vague or just plain false meaning -- such undocumented immigrants are no more "immigrants" than the Germanic tribes invading the Roman Empire -- that is Orwell's Newspeak.
I’m “exceptional”- a democratic term used to avoid the damning labels of “gifted” and “deprived” (which used to mean “bright” and “retarded”) and as soon as “exceptional” begins to mean anything to anyone they’ll change it. The idea seems to be: use an expression as long as it doesn’t mean anything to anybody. -- Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon
Charles_F_Bell wrote:Janet Taylor-Perry wrote:I'd have to say the writer has written on level to elicit an emotional response--in this case, grief. At other times, I would hope to tug other emotions to the surface--joy, anger. If your writing doesn't get some sort of response from your reader, you need to go back to the first word and start over.
Do you honestly think there is something wrong in not getting an emotional response from some readers who do not emotionally respond to things as the author does? For example, the author is an alcoholic and lover of matchbox cars, and his MC is an alcoholic and lover of matchbox cars. His careless daughter, who is spoiled by his wife, accidently destroys one of his cars, and he is enraged -- the author shows us this by the MC's words and actions -- terrifying the girl. Just whose emotional response is the reader supposed to respond to; the alcoholic or the girl? Why is it not reasonable not to be responsive to either?
You just proved my point. Though you strive to be the ultimate stoic, you did respond.
Well, I probably annoy 90% of readers who begin to read my stuff, but I don't strive for that emotion. Of course, then there's cause to please no one to prove a point some truths don't please anyone. Still, I have been disappointed in sharing the grief over a loss of a dog, a particular dog, only to find most just say get another dog.
I'd have to say the writer has written on level to elicit an emotional response--in this case, grief. At other times, I would hope to tug other emotions to the surface--joy, anger. If your writing doesn't get some sort of response from your reader, you need to go back to the first word and start over.
Do you honestly think there is something wrong in not getting an emotional response from some readers who do not emotionally respond to things as the author does? For example, the author is an alcoholic and lover of matchbox cars, and his MC is an alcoholic and lover of matchbox cars. His careless daughter, who is spoiled by his wife, accidently destroys one of his cars, and he is enraged -- the author shows us this by the MC's words and actions -- terrifying the girl. Just whose emotional response is the reader supposed to respond to; the alcoholic or the girl? Why is it not reasonable not to be responsive to either?
Back to the subject of the thread....
Although I was somewhat flippant within my first post, it turns out that I was actually very near the truth. Within a binder I found this quote from an old author of note, Jane Austen.
Jane Austen wrote:I like to maintain a high ratio of female characters within my writing. I feel this provides me with far more scope for my characters to be irrational, illogical and emotionally flawed. You can have them distracted from key aspects of the plot by; say a new petticoat or an impending visit to the haberdashery shop. There is the opportunity for humourist sub-plots where they’ll get lost by reading a parchment map upside-down or baffled by (or fumbling with) technological devices like a spinning-wheel or circular saw. The image of a female character running in her bustle is also great imagery as is their inability to invent anything or park the horse without gross inefficiency and episodic behaviour.
Such female characters provide the opportunity for the author to yakety-yak about this and that, for there to be dialogue having little or nothing to do with plot, theme, or the historicity behind the story, if any, though perhaps with characterization, humor, and verbal divertimento in mind.
