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We managed to run the previous thread way off topic. It's fun, but it destroys the value of the thread for reference. I'm opening this one ...
... with a link to a wide ranging comparison between Ingram's self-publishing platform and Amazon's CreateSpace (second of two linked articles). Even if you don't want to go down that road, the economics may be useful.
In defense of the adverb--what the durn'd things ARE good for. From The Passive Guy.
Worldbuilding, guest article on Sarah Hoyt's blog.
In defense of the adverb--what the durn'd things ARE good for. From The Passive Guy.
“their power is best spent in small doses"
When you hear Trump speak, doesn't the second and third and fourth "very" grate on you? Or is the grate very great a most awful lot of the time?
Everything the man does is YUUGE. Eversomuch Moreso.
From today's Mad Genius Club, By Dave Freer:
So: what did L’Amour do right? Besides appeal to a lot of people: why? I over-analyze everything – I looked L’Amour and the cowboy genre in general when I was setting out to be a writer. Several stick out points, stylistically, are worth noticing. Sentences are generally short, shorter on action. There is a lot of action, non-action is often covered by narrator-style ‘telling’ rather than showing (the books read well aloud. You can almost imagine parts as a fireside yarn). The books themselves are short – often as little as 130 pages or less. They’re usually single point of view (trust me this is actually hard to do well). The successful authors had distinctive ‘voices’ – some of which I pinned on dialogue choice.
(Italics mine ---NJC)
From today's Mad Genius Club, By Dave Freer:
So: what did L’Amour do right? Besides appeal to a lot of people: why? I over-analyze everything – I looked L’Amour and the cowboy genre in general when I was setting out to be a writer. Several stick out points, stylistically, are worth noticing. Sentences are generally short, shorter on action. There is a lot of action, non-action is often covered by narrator-style ‘telling’ rather than showing (the books read well aloud. You can almost imagine parts as a fireside yarn). The books themselves are short – often as little as 130 pages or less. They’re usually single point of view (trust me this is actually hard to do well). The successful authors had distinctive ‘voices’ – some of which I pinned on dialogue choice.
(Italics mine ---NJC)
Okay, because you were able to interpret the author's shoddy writing and rambling insinuations [he actually did write 'I looked L'Amour and the cowboy genre...' you quote] can you tell me what's his point? Write simply for simple people like them stupid cowboys who took deep pride in the country and people?
"So: what else made them work?" Hey go read this entire book [Grant/Brings the Lightening], I'm not telling, the author orders us.
The admonition for commercial success is so often given to write for your audience and “No one in this world, so far as I know — and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me — has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.” [H.L. Mencken]
njc wrote:From today's Mad Genius Club, By Dave Freer:
So: what did L’Amour do right? Besides appeal to a lot of people: why? I over-analyze everything – I looked L’Amour and the cowboy genre in general when I was setting out to be a writer. Several stick out points, stylistically, are worth noticing. Sentences are generally short, shorter on action. There is a lot of action, non-action is often covered by narrator-style ‘telling’ rather than showing (the books read well aloud. You can almost imagine parts as a fireside yarn). The books themselves are short – often as little as 130 pages or less. They’re usually single point of view (trust me this is actually hard to do well). The successful authors had distinctive ‘voices’ – some of which I pinned on dialogue choice.
(Italics mine ---NJC)
Okay, because you were able to interpret the author's shoddy writing and rambling insinuations [he actually did write 'I looked L'Amour and the cowboy genre...' you quote] can you tell me what's his point? Write simply for simple people like them stupid cowboys who took deep pride in the country and people?
"So: what else made them work?" Hey go read this entire book [Grant/Brings the Lightening], I'm not telling, the author orders us.
The admonition for commercial success is so often given to write for your audience and “No one in this world, so far as I know — and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me — has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.” [H.L. Mencken]
Actually Freer invites all of us who aren't sloppy readers and spellers to read Brings the Lightning.
Memphis Trace
Yeah, there is some self promotion in MGC. Isn't self-promotion every writer's responsibility?
Charles, Freer also notes that L'Amour maintained a single PoV, rigourously. This argues against lack of craftsmanship, and for the idea that L'Amour had a different sense of what is done well and what is done ill.
I can enjoy Beethoven's Grosse Fuge, and have enjoyed it immensely. I also enjoy the music from Les Miserable. It's not the same craftsmanship and art as Beethoven, and the composer made a big change of technique, building the whole work around the interval of the fourth instead of the fifth. The musical fate of that interval tracks the fate of the protagonist.
That more people rather than fewer can enjoy a thing, and will pay for it (giving up the fruits of their labor in trade for it) should not be taken to mean that the thing is a poorer piece of work. The Grosse Fuge is a greater work than the score for Les Mis, but this is in spite of its difficulty, not because of it.
Actually Freer invites all of us who aren't sloppy readers and spellers to read Brings the Lightning.
Memphis Trace
What I mean is that it is shoddy and sh***y to offer help ("What a good Western is like") by example of an entire book without so much as a hint as to what to look for. I invite anyone to read Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes to read the best explanation of what are natural rights, but I should not just leave it at that inasmuch as many will have pre-conceived (and possibly wrong) notions on what a Good Western is like as many will have on what are natural rights. You might say he did so within the preceding exposition, and I say he wrote in such vague generalities about popular appeal ["JK Rowling managed it," but what "it" is, is not fathomable from anything of the context of what he wrote] and about a single point of view:
They’re usually single point of view (trust me this is actually hard to do well). The successful authors had distinctive ‘voices’ – some of which I pinned on dialogue choice.
and to the extent I can figure what he meant, I think he is wrong, but I might wrong about what he meant because he brings something up and then drops it to go on to something else.
Yeah, there is some self promotion in MGC. Isn't self-promotion every writer's responsibility?
Charles, Freer also notes that L'Amour maintained a single PoV, rigourously. This argues against lack of craftsmanship, and for the idea that L'Amour had a different sense of what is done well and what is done ill.
That was the most interesting opinion he had, but to the extent I understand what it means, he is wrong in several ways. The most extensive generality is that it is a rare thing for an author to ever write in anything but a single (his own) point of view (*). An egregiously fallacious multi-POV technique is head-hopping with italicized "thoughts." Nonsense. That is still the author merely telling the reader what that character is thinking at that moment in probably the most annoying way. If 'craftmanship' means strict omniscient narration with no internal dialogue, I'm fine with that, but it has been losing popular appeal among those who think reading offers something that the visual arts do not usually: head-hopping, internal dialog, etc.
(*) as a bit of self-promotion, I am doing multi-POV in my Remembrances trilogy where there is no author's POV (even in narration), but only rather a slight bias toward one of many co-equal POV's
I'd also recommend Flowers for Algernon for an author's successful genuine shifts in POV.
So if I suggest studying algebra, that suggestion must be accomanied by a lesson? Or if I suggest that doing original study of a field might be profitable, I must conduct the study myself instead of leaving it to those to whom I recommend it?
I will repond to any further discussion of these points on the Addional Writing Feedback group, so as not to ruin this thread.
Thanks for the Ingram reference. Back in the early 1980s I made lots of money in my bookstore when dealing with Ingram, I'm assuming it is the same company. Good read, reference. And, thanks for running a thread like this. If the old forums were to return the NBW would SO much better!
So if I suggest studying algebra, that suggestion must be accomanied by a lesson? Or if I suggest that doing original study of a field might be profitable, I must conduct the study myself instead of leaving it to those to whom I recommend it?
I will repond to any further discussion of these points on the Addional Writing Feedback group, so as not to ruin this thread.
The author has to say something relevant and comprehensible about the subject before he might suggest further study elsewhere. Moreover, Freer's suggestion is more like a suggestion to "study algebra" by reading a scientific paper that employs algebra -- useless and pointless. I can say Freer tried to explain what he meant, but maybe you should pick a blogger who can write.
Why don't you answer the question: So: what else made [the cowboy genre] work – what else that is missing in modern sf/fantasy? Brokeback Mountain (it is an excellent short story by Annie Proulx before the movie) a modern Western in the same way Howey's The Silo series is a modern sf/fantasy? I say perhaps because Proulx was in no way trying to depict the cowboy as the semi-mythical cowboy of old but rather as a kind of debunking of that cowboy, but isn't that modern? Leftist deconstructionism in the same way Howey and other alleged sci-fi writers do?
deconstructionism: a theory of textual analysis positing that a text has no stable reference and questioning assumptions about the ability of language to represent reality
I'm replying over in the Additional Writing Feedback group.
From The Passive Guy, studies that show that indeed you write as you read, in second languages as well as your milk tongue.
Link via The Passive Guy, 128 words to use instead of 'very'
Link via The Passive Guy, 128 words to use instead of 'very'
Someone in the Comments mentioned that often the suggested replacements do not have the same meaning. "Soaring" may not be what the writer of "very high" meant at all because soaring means the process of coming into a state of high altitude and not being there. The suggestion ought to be (1) drop "very" as a needless superlative and/or (2) use a more interesting adjective: hovering, steep, soaring, etc. have more precise meanings and shades of difference for "high."
Yes. The point is that English's brobdingnagian lexicon (did I spell that right?) often has a specific word for 'very X', and very often that specific word is a better choice.
Yes. The point is that English's brobdingnagian lexicon (did I spell that right?) often has a specific word for 'very X', and very often that specific word is a better choice.
Still, I had to notice the author did not actually say that. To say "very accurate," although not elegant, is to convey "almost exact" and not exact.
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