Learn Writing with Uncle Jim, Volume 1

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aka eraser

Re: Another prologue to crit if you're not saded

I removed all but the intro and steered folks to SYW.
 

SpankyMcJedi

Re: First Two Pages

Completely off the current topic, but relevant to the thread nonetheless... for Chistmas I received a copy of Strunk & White 4th Ed and after reading it I have to say this little book is full of more helpful advice than any other 'How To' on writing that I've read (especially for a newb such as myself). Not to mention that the disdain for poor grammar and word choice that E.B. White demonstrates is absolutely hilarious at times. Thanks much for the recommendation Uncle Jim!
 

detante

Re: First Two Pages

So, what is the conclusion of our Chapter One experiment? Are we more judgmental of published works then we are unpublished works? Do we go easier on published authors because they are published?

Jen
 

reph

Re: Another prologue to crit if you're not saded

I'm still waiting to hear whether the Nesda excerpt is published or un-.
 

James D Macdonald

Re: First Two Pages

Do we go easier on published authors because they are published?


Due to Other Commitments (TM) I haven't yet commented on the excerpts presented here.

I think you'll find that I'm equally hard on both published and un-published.

(I have, in fact, been downright cruel to published works. Not to the authors -- to the works.)

The basic thing to know is that you don't have to be as-good-as currently published writers to break in. You have to be better. This is because the publishers already have writers who are exactly as good as their current crop.
 

reph

Re: First Two Pages

That one is drawer fodder.

Is it embarrassing when readers disagree on whether a work was meant to be humorous or serious?

Feel free to consult the writer and get back to us later on that. :)
 

detante

Re: First Two Pages

Is it embarrassing when readers disagree on whether a work was meant to be humorous or serious?

Feel free to consult the writer and get back to us later on that. :)


LOL It wasn't too bad. I was serious when I said it was tragically overwritten. I knew what I was getting into when I posted it.

Edited to add: It's drawer fodder for a reason. :)
 

Diviner

Reading List

Strunk and White is pure gold, indeed, but I have almost no ability to read _Logical Chess_. Would that have any relationship to my general inability to follow an outline even when I go to the trouble to create one? :eek

Help! What should I do with this book, or should I just give it to my son?
 

JimMorcombe

What is important in writing

I think that most advice about writing is written against a back-drop of other books and pieces of advice. An "authoritative author" will have read 150 other books on "How to Write" and this influences the advice he passes on.

He will reguard some books as "stating the obvious" and hence will not pass on any of this advice, even though there are would-be-writers out there that need the advice.

Other books will talk about topics that have been over done and he rants and raves against the advice. I think grammar usually falls into this area. It is rammed down the throats of some since they were five years old. They know grammar well enough to write. Hence the last thing they need to think about when writing a novel is grammar. So our authoritative author tells us that grammar doesn't matter. But it does matter, just not to him. To some would-be-writers this is their greatest stumbling block to publication.

After reading a lot of advice on writing, I was becoming quite upset that the "quality" of the prose didn't seem to bother anyone. I was really relieved when I picked up one of Sol Stein's books and he said "Writers write writerly prose." I felt that the sand had stopped shifting beneath my feet.

Later I realised that all the other writers assumed everyone knew that you had to write reasonably well. They were just emphasising the things they thought I didn't know and needed to be told.
 

HConn

Re: First Two Pages

At the end, I'd like to write out some thoughts on examining published work, but I don't want to start with that.

Let me start by quoting two works I would like to examine. The first is a little longer than usual, but I suspect that every writer who's ever read this book has wanted to write their own version of it.

<blockquote>Red Harvest
Dashiell Hammett

1-A Woman in Green and a Man in Gray

I first heard Personville called Poisonville by a red-haired mucker named Hickey Dewey in the Big Ship in Butte. He also called his shirt a shoit. I didn't think anything of what he had done to the city's name. Later I heard men who could manage their r's give it the same pronunciation. I still didn't see anything in it but the meaningless sort of humor that used to make richardsnary the thieves' word for dictionary. A few years later I went to Personville and learned better.

Using one of the phones in the station, I called the *Herald,* asked for Donald Willsson, and told him I had arrived.

"Will you come out to my house at ten this evening?" He had a pleasantly crisp voice. "It's 2101 Mountain Boulevard. Take a Broadway car, get off at Laurel Avenue, and walk two blocks west."

I promised to do that. Then I rode up to the Great Western Hotel, dumped my bags, and went out to look at the city.

The city wasn't pretty. Most of its builders had gone in for gaudiness. Maybe they had been successful at first. Since then the smelters whose brick stacks stuck up tall against a gloomy mountain to the south had yellow-smoked everything into uniform dinginess. The result was an ugly city of forty thousand people, set in an ugly notch between two ugly mountains that had been all dirtied up by mining. Spread over this was a grimy sky that looked as if it had come out of the smelters' stacks.

The first policeman I saw needed a shave. The second had a couple of buttons off his shabby uniform. The third stood in the center of the city's main intersection--Broadway and Union Street--directing traffic, with a cigar in one corner of his mouth. After that I stopped checking them up.

At nine-thirty I caught a Broadway car and followed the direction Donald Willsson had given me. They brought me to a house set in a hedged grassplot on a corner.

The maid who opened the door told me Mr. Willsson was not home. While I was explaining that I had an appointment with him a slender blonde woman of something less than thirty in green crepe came to the door. When she smiled her blue eyes didn't lose their stoniness. I repeated my explanation to her.

"My husband isn't in now." A barely noticeable accent slurred her s's. "But if he's expecting you he'll probably be home shortly."

She took me upstairs to a room on the Laurel Avenue side of the house, a brown and red room with a lot of books in it. We sat in leather chairs, half facing each other, half facing a burning coal grate, and she set about learning my business with her husband.

"Do you live in Personville?" she asked first.

"No. San Francisco."

"But this isn't your first visit?"

"Yes."

"Really? How do you like our city?"

"I haven't seen enough of it to know." That was a lie. I had. "I got in only this afternoon."

Her shiny eyes stopped prying while she said:

"You'll find it a dreary place." She returned to her digging with: "I suppose all mining towns are like this. Are you engaged in mining?"

"Not just now."

She looked at the clock on the mantel and said:

"It's inconsiderate of Donald to bring you out here and then keep you waiting, at this time of night, long after business hours."

I said it was all right.

"Though perhaps it isn't a business matter," she suggested.

I didn't say anything.

She laughed--a short laugh with something sharp in it.

"I'm not ordinarily so much of a busybody as you probably think," she said gaily. "But you're so excessively secretive that I can't help being curious. You aren't a bootlegger, are you? Donald changes them so often."

I let her get whatever she could out of a grin.

A telephone bell rand downstairs. Mrs. Willsson stretched her green-slippered feet out toward the burning coal and pretended she hadn't heard the bell. I didn't know why she thought that necessary.

She began: "I'm afraid I'll ha--" and stopped to look at the maid in the doorway.

The maid said Mrs. Willsson was wanted at the phone. She excused herself and followed the maid out. She didn't go downstairs, but spoke over an extension within earshot.

I heard: "Mrs. Willsson speaking....Yes....I beg your pardon?....Who?....Can't you speak a little louder?...*What?*... Yes....Yes....Who is this?...Hello! Hello!"

The telephone hook rattled. Her steps sounded down the hallway--rapid steps.

I set fire to a cigarette and stared it it until I heard her going down the steps. Then I went to a window, lifted an edge of the blind, and looked out at Laurel Avenue, and at the square white garage that stood in the rear of the house on that side.

Presently, a slender woman in dark coat and hat came into sight hurrying from house to garage. It was Mrs. Willsson. She drove away in a Buick coupe. I went back to my chair and waited.

Three-quarters of an hour went by. At five minutes after eleven, automobile brakes screeched outside. Two minutes later Mrs. Willsson came into the room. She had taken off hat and coat. Her face was shite, her eyes almost black.

"I'm awfully sorry," She said, her tight-lipped mouth moving jerkily, "but you've had all this waiting for nothing. My husband won't be home tonight."

I said I would be in touch with him at the *Herald* in the morning.

I went away wondering why the green toe of her left slipper was dark and damp with something that could have been blood.
</blockquote>
 

HConn

Re: First Two Pages

This next excerpt is from David Prill's first novel. This is shorter than the previous selection, but it actually comes *before* the preface. This section is somewhat equivalent to an "Encyclopedia Galactica" entry that so many readers scoff at.

But it's a good book and an interesting piece of exposition. And if you turned to the first page of the manuscript, this is the first thing you'd see.


<blockquote>The Unnatural
David Prill


*About the record*


In 1942 Janus P. Mordecai achieved immortality by embalming 1,215 victims of the Good War. This total, added to the 554 customers he had embalmed previously that year, gave him 1,769 for the season, breaking the old record of 1,616 set by Thomas H. Holmes in 1863 at the height of the Civil War. Although Holmes's record had been eclipsed, his legendary status in the annals of undertaking remained assured due to the fact that his work during the war marked the first wide-spread use of embalming, turning it into the publiclyacceptable art form it is today and placing funeral directors into the advance guard of civilization. In more primitive times, loved ones had been preserved in so-called "corpse coolers" until burial.

Mordecai's status after he broke the record was less certain. In 1955--his glory days long since behind him--Mordecau was given his unconditional release by Sunnyside Funeral Homes. Although *Shroud* magazine reported that Mordecai had a substance abuse problem, Griff Grimes, award-winning journalist at *Embalmer's Weekly,* wrote the following in his column, "Behind the Headstones":

Yes, Janus Mordecai was bedeviled by the demon schnapps. Yet I believe his real problem lies much deeper. Here was a man who found spectacular success very early in his career. After breaking Holmes's record, what was he to do for an encore? Look at the record book. His productivity in the years following his record-breaking season declined steadily; this "sophomore jinx" turned into a shortened career. Of course, events conspired against him as well; world wars dont' happen every day. The fact that he hung on so long is a tribute to the loyalty of P.T. Sunnyside. It's a sad story. We fear what the future holds for Janus Mordecai.</blockquote>
 

HConn

Re: Reading List

Here is my examination of Red Harvest.

<blockquote>Red Harvest
Dashiell Hammett

1-A Woman in Green and a Man in Gray

I first heard Personville called Poisonville by a red-haired mucker named Hickey Dewey in the Big Ship in Butte.
</blockquote>

We start right off talking about a place: Personville. And I don't know what a "mucker" is, but it sounds like a guy who mucks out stables. Also, "red-haired" makes me think of the proverbial stepchild. By the casual way he mentions Butte, I think the narrator travels often, and not in the highest social circles.

<blockquote>He also called his shirt a shoit. </blockquote>

A little humor, and it reinforces the low social circles idea.

<blockquote>I didn't think anything of what he had done to the city's name. Later I heard men who could manage their r's give it the same pronunciation. I still didn't see anything in it but the meaningless sort of humor that used to make richardsnary the thieves' word for dictionary. </blockquote>

More humor. And Hammett throws the word "thieves" in there. Not only does the narrator move among the working class, he knows the underclass, too.

<blockquote>A few years later I went to Personville and learned better. </blockquote>

There's the hook: What's the deal with Personville?

<blockquote>Using one of the phones in the station, I called the *Herald,* asked for Donald Willsson, and told him I had arrived.

"Will you come out to my house at ten this evening?" He had a pleasantly crisp voice. "It's 2101 Mountain Boulevard. Take a Broadway car, get off at Laurel Avenue, and walk two blocks west."
</blockquote>

Mr. Willsson is some kind of newspaper man, and he's immediately likable. He's even conscientious enough to give careful directions. And whatever Mr. Willsson needs the narrator for, he wants it handled at home. It's our first hint that the narrator is a private investigator.

<blockquote>I promised to do that. Then I rode up to the Great Western Hotel, dumped my bags, and went out to look at the city.

The city wasn't pretty. Most of its builders had gone in for gaudiness. Maybe they had been successful at first. Since then the smelters whose brick stacks stuck up tall against a gloomy mountain to the south had yellow-smoked everything into uniform dinginess. The result was an ugly city of forty thousand people, set in an ugly notch between two ugly mountains that had been all dirtied up by mining. Spread over this was a grimy sky that looked as if it had come out of the smelters' stacks.
</blockquote>

Our first view of "Poisonville." The mines have not only ruined the city, but the natural environment around it, reinforcing the poison motif.

<blockquote>The first policeman I saw needed a shave. The second had a couple of buttons off his shabby uniform. The third stood in the center of the city's main intersection--Broadway and Union Street--directing traffic, with a cigar in one corner of his mouth. </blockquote>

I like how this is done. The officers here go from one sloppy guy, to a second, more careless officer, to a third cop who openly contemptuous of his uniform

<blockquote>After that I stopped checking them up.</blockquote>

Our narrator is decisive.

<blockquote>At nine-thirty I caught a Broadway car and followed the direction Donald Willsson had given me. They brought me to a house set in a hedged grassplot on a corner.

The maid who opened the door told me Mr. Willsson was not home.
</blockquote>

Mr. Willsson has money. Not a beat reporter, then.

<blockquote>While I was explaining that I had an appointment with him a slender blonde woman of something less than thirty in green crepe came to the door. When she smiled her blue eyes didn't lose their stoniness. I repeated my explanation to her. </blockquote>

The unfriendliness of the city is reflected in her.

<blockquote>"My husband isn't in now." A barely noticeable accent slurred her s's. "But if he's expecting you he'll probably be home shortly."

She took me upstairs to a room on the Laurel Avenue side of the house, a brown and red room with a lot of books in it. We sat in leather chairs, half facing each other, half facing a burning coal grate, and she set about learning my business with her husband.
</blockquote>

More evidence that they have money. And maybe this is my prejudice, but they have books. That means I like them.

But Mrs. Willsson is going to pry, and I'm ready to learn something about our mysterious narrator.

<blockquote>"Do you live in Personville?" she asked first.

"No. San Francisco."

"But this isn't your first visit?"

"Yes."
</blockquote>

We aren't learning anything about our narrator, and I'm already suspecting that we won't.

<blockquote>"Really? How do you like our city?"

"I haven't seen enough of it to know." That was a lie. I had. "I got in only this afternoon."

Her shiny eyes stopped prying while she said:

"You'll find it a dreary place."
</blockquote>

Back to Poisonville again. The city and the kind of city it is keeps coming up in the text. It's going to play a major part in the book.

<blockquote>She returned to her digging with: "I suppose all mining towns are like this. Are you engaged in mining?"

"Not just now."

She looked at the clock on the mantel and said:

"It's inconsiderate of Donald to bring you out here and then keep you waiting, at this time of night, long after business hours."

I said it was all right.

"Though perhaps it isn't a business matter," she suggested.

I didn't say anything.

She laughed--a short laugh with something sharp in it.

"I'm not ordinarily so much of a busybody as you probably think," she said gaily. "But you're so excessively secretive that I can't help being curious. You aren't a bootlegger, are you? Donald changes them so often."

I let her get whatever she could out of a grin.
</blockquote>

After trying several different tactics, Mrs. Willsson hasn't managed to extract any information from the narrator. She has managed to reveal that the Willssons are not without their underworld connections.

<blockquote>A telephone bell rand downstairs. Mrs. Willsson stretched her green-slippered feet out toward the burning coal and pretended she hadn't heard the bell. I didn't know why she thought that necessary. </blockquote>

Anytime a narrator notices something strange going on, it catches our attention.

<blockquote>She began: "I'm afraid I'll ha--" and stopped to look at the maid in the doorway.

The maid said Mrs. Willsson was wanted at the phone. She excused herself and followed the maid out. She didn't go downstairs, but spoke over an extension within earshot.
</blockquote>

Combined with "I didn't know why she thought that was necessary" I suspect Mrs. Willsson is putting on a performance. But then:

<blockquote>I heard: "Mrs. Willsson speaking....Yes....I beg your pardon?....Who?....Can't you speak a little louder?...*What?*... Yes....Yes....Who is this?...Hello! Hello!"

The telephone hook rattled. Her steps sounded down the hallway--rapid steps.
</blockquote>

The word "rattled" works nicely here, using the sound to suggest a character state that the narrator can't see.

But is Mrs. Willsson putting on a performance? I'm not so certain anymore. Or if it was a performance, something has changed.

<blockquote>I set fire to a cigarette and stared it it until I heard her going down the steps. Then I went to a window, lifted an edge of the blind, and looked out at Laurel Avenue, and at the square white garage that stood in the rear of the house on that side. </blockquote>

Character stuff about our narrator. Notice that there's no expression of concern from him. He calmly spies on her from her own house.

<blockquote>Presently, a slender woman in dark coat and hat came into sight hurrying from house to garage. It was Mrs. Willsson. She drove away in a Buick coupe. I went back to my chair and waited.</blockquote>

He's even cooler here, sitting in someone else's house when they aren't home.

And Hammett is building suspense. What could the caller have told Mrs. Willsson that she'd run off and leave a stranger--a secretive stranger at that--in her house?

<blockquote>Three-quarters of an hour went by. At five minutes after eleven, automobile brakes screeched outside. Two minutes later Mrs. Willsson came into the room. She had taken off hat and coat. Her face was white, her eyes almost black.

"I'm awfully sorry," She said, her tight-lipped mouth moving jerkily, "but you've had all this waiting for nothing. My husband won't be home tonight."
</blockquote>

He's still analytical and aloof. She's trying to retain her manners, but she's obviously shattered.

<blockquote>I said I would be in touch with him at the *Herald* in the morning.

I went away wondering why the green toe of her left slipper was dark and damp with something that could have been blood.
</blockquote>

To answer Uncle Jim's question--I want to read further.
 

HConn

Re: What is important in writing

Here's the second exerpt with my examination

<blockquote>The Unnatural
David Prill


*About the record*


In 1942 Janus P. Mordecai achieved immortality by embalming 1,215 victims of the Good War.
</blockquote>

Whoa. The title makes me think this will be a horror story, but this sentence has put me in all new territory. I'm not sure where I am.

<blockquote> This total, added to the 554 customers he had embalmed previously that year, gave him 1,769 for the season, breaking the old record of 1,616 set by Thomas H. Holmes in 1863 at the height of the Civil War.</blockquote>

Embalming as sport? "Good War?" My satire alarm has gone off. And I'm wondering how dark it will get.

<blockquote> Although Holmes's record had been eclipsed, his legendary status in the annals of undertaking remained assured due to the fact that his work during the war marked the first wide-spread use of embalming, turning it into the publicly acceptable art form it is today and placing funeral directors into the advance guard of civilization.</blockquote>

Ho-kay. The setting is an alternate universe. And I'm curious.

<blockquote>In more primitive times, loved ones had been preserved in so-called "corpse coolers" until burial.</blockquote>

I'm not sure what this means. I'm looking forward to seeing something about it in the book.

<blockquote>Mordecai's status after he broke the record was less certain. In 1955--his glory days long since behind him--Mordecau was given his unconditional release by Sunnyside Funeral Homes.</blockquote>

So the big star fell on hard times and was cut from the Sunnyside team. I'm guessing that Mordecai isn't the protagonist here--he's been down the path the actual protagonist might follow if things go badly.

<blockquote>Although *Shroud* magazine </blockquote>

For filling out of the story world.

<blockquote>reported that Mordecai had a substance abuse problem, Griff Grimes, </blockquote>

Like Janus P. Mordecai, that sounds like a fakey name. So the satire will be leavened with a little silliness. That's a reassuring note.

<blockquote>award-winning journalist at *Embalmer's Weekly,* wrote the following in his column, "Behind the Headstones":

Yes, Janus Mordecai was bedeviled by the demon schnapps. Yet I believe his real problem lies much deeper. Here was a man who found spectacular success very early in his career. After breaking Holmes's record, what was he to do for an encore? Look at the record book. His productivity in the years following his record-breaking season declined steadily; this "sophomore jinx" turned into a shortened career. Of course, events conspired against him as well; world wars dont' happen every day. The fact that he hung on so long is a tribute to the loyalty of P.T. Sunnyside. It's a sad story. We fear what the future holds for Janus Mordecai.
</blockquote>

So we take a moment to rehabilitate the name of Sunnyside and hit a little harder on the sports metaphor. Considering that the story is a satire of the all-American sports hero tale, (note that title again), this is a good thing.

-------------------------------------


Have I learned something from studying these opening? Mebbe. I'm a slow thinker, so anything I've learned will take a while to sink in.

But the point is not to go "easy" or "hard" on published authors--it's to look at them objectively to see what they're doing. Not what they should be doing. Not what we should be doing. Just what's there.

It seems to me that the Grisham excerpt was pretty strong storytelling. To look at that work and banter about a POV violation (I'm not singling anyone out for criticism--I don't remember who said what and I'm only picking that conversation as a convenient example) is akin to racing around a track in a sports car and then mentioning that the numbers on the speedometer are a little small.

Sure, it's good to see those little numbers. Let's make sure that happens.

But I don't want to lose focus on the things that matter. That POV comment was like a bee sting--sharp and sudden. I know there's honey around here somewhere, but I've been going about it the wrong way.

The kicker is that Uncle Jim has been pointing out the important stuff all along. He's been going through the texts of published works, showing how the authors have been creating and keeping the reader's interest. I've been reading them, nodding my head and thinking "That's cool."

But I've lately become convinced that's what I really need to study.

Yes, POV and style matters. Sure, let's get that right, too. But it's not the crucial part, and I think we should be closely examining the crucial part of writing novels.

Creating and keeping interest. Telling the story.

That's all.
 

HConn

Re: First Two Pages

And it only took me 2,716 posts to figure it out!

I'm such a thick-head. <img border=0 src="http://www.ezboard.com/images/emoticons/tired.gif" />

My next plan is to examine the opening of a book I haven't read, then compare my expectations to what really happens. Now I just have to pick the book.
 

maestrowork

Re: Reading List

The funny thing, though, is that if you take 10 readers and give them the same book, they may come out with 10 different opinions. Some may love it, some may like it, and some may hate it. Some may say "it really works; it keeps me interested" and another person may say "the story sucks, bores me to death from the first sentence." So in a way, if it's not total "slush material," it's a subjective thing.

For example, I just saw the movie "Clerks." I've heard so many great things about it, how excellent and funny it is, etc. Although I enjoyed some moments and some of the dialogue was funny, the whole thing actually bored me to tears. It didn't work for me. The same can be said about "Lost In Translation." I personally loved it, but many of my friends hated it, kind of like: WTF is so great about this bore with no plot?

So who's to judge? Are there universal standards? Or simply if a million people love it, it doesn't matter if the other million hate it?
 

Crusader

Re: Reading List

So who's to judge? Are there universal standards? Or simply if a million people love it, it doesn't matter if the other million hate it?

Intuition suggests to me that it's a matter of "common denominators." And while that concept has been tarnished in some cases of usage, i'm still willing to take a neutral and objective shot with it anyway.

So... for every book, perhaps there's a sort of virtual checklist of common denominators, and they start out very common but become rarer they go. Like, the rarer the denominator, the fewer readers will like the book.

In that vein, the least common denominator for most any book, would probably be something like "it was part of my school's curriculum". i suggest that, because:
-adults avoid books they don't like, whereas children are often compelled to read books, thus any book can have crossgenre appeal to far more children than adults
-any book that can meet school board restrictions has a high chance of being widespread

Another possible least common denominator, would be "it speaks to the common man, using common language". i base that on the thought that there are far, far more people of 'low-to-average' literacy than there are people of 'above-average-and-greater' literacy. So a book that is written in "plain English" about "basic stuff" (e.g. romance, family, comedy, everyday life) can be very accessible.

So, as far as our panel of 10 readers... much of any "universal standards" they might use to rate a given book, would come from the common denominators among themselves.

Of course, bear in mind that the book in question would have to hit the denominators accurately, believeably, compellingly, and fluidly, in order to get a good rating. Anything that blatantly pandered to or tried to manipulate common threads among readers, might well have the opposite effect. (Ironic, as this itself is a common denominator, but i digress.)

In the end, i guess that if a book managed to strike common ground in 10 out of 10 readers, while hitting enough uncommon ground to let each take something unique from it, that book would be the gold standard of "a good book"...

... and oddly enough, the only books i can think offhand that come anywhere near that gold standard, are the religious texts of major theological beliefs like Islam, Hinduism, et al.
 

detante

Re: First Two Pages

Many thanks to those that commented on the Alrak piece. You were kinder than it deserved.

Ignoring the spelling, grammar and tense issues, there are a number of reasons why Weber's piece is a more successful opening than my Alrak piece.

The biggest reason is that Weber's character is doing something. The character in the Alrak piece is contemplating action that has already happened, which promises flashbacks of past action instead moving the story forward.

The Alrak piece starts too far into the story. The reader is asked to feel for the character without getting to know the character first. The only thing the reader knows is that she has a guilt complex. Maybe she deserves it or maybe she's just whiny.

Another issue is setting. Weber gives enough details to imagine where the character is and how he is moving through his environment. The Alrak story does not have a sense of location, except that it is underground. The reader is floating around in the void listening to a character think. By the end of the piece, the character is still not doing anything. There's not even any indication that she will do something. Not a good way to start a story.

There is also the problem of starting with a preface. The preface helps establish the setting and the situation, but there is the problem that many folks skip the preface. Also, the shift in tone and tense is too drastic.

There are other problems with the Alrak piece, but I think those are the key issues that make it a bad beginning.

Jen
 

Crusader

Re: First Two Pages

Another issue is setting. Weber gives enough details to imagine where the character is and how he is moving through his environment. The Alrak story does not have a sense of location, except that it is underground.

This reminds me of an incident a long time ago, in critiquing someone else's work. The person gave me their story and i read it, then tore it apart for not establishing any sort of description about the characters or setting whatsoever. Turns out the piece was fan fiction, though. [slaps forehead]

i do recall Mr Macdonald suggesting (cue a bad paraphrase) that fan fiction is fine for fun but not necessarily good practice for writing. My experience (and later, similar incidents) all bear that out, for one reason: a fanfic author and audience have the benefit of knowing the characters and their setting beforehand. So there's no reason to flesh out Superman in my Metropolis fanfic, since most everyone knows what he looks like... yet that can lead me to bad habits of not practicing good description.

i note that this phenomenon isn't restricted to fanfic authors; some beginning authors in general make the same mistake. They see the scene in their head clearly, but then forget to transfer any of that clarity onto the paper (i.e. the hero is a carbon copy of Russell Crowe in their mind, but on the paper they just say "tall, good-looking white guy with dark hair").

And so all of this would seem to pertain strongly to the Testimony of Alrak piece, now that i know its origin. It isn't fan fiction, per se, yet it was written directly towards a small audience that already understood the characters and setting. The author could therefore be forgiven for not putting in fresh descriptions, since it would have been redundant to the intended readers. Likewise, any comparison to Weber's piece is somewhat unfair, since that piece obviously was starting from scratch.
 

DarkHaven80

Re: back problems

<<<1. Does anybody else suffer back pain when writing too long? Or did you already have back problems before deciding to be a writer? How do you cope, remedy, or avoid back pain? Certain furniture, ergonomics, exercise, medication?>>>>

Back pain can be a horrendous deal. If it gets too bad it can hinder you in many ways. I would invest in a good chair, it's worth the money if it helps. If your posture is really bad, try one of those things that you put on to help posture (the name escapes me at the moment - sorry) Perhaps some loosening up exercises as well? I know stretching and cooling down before aerobics feels nice.
 

dblteam

Re: The First Two Pages

Crusader said:

"i do recall Mr Macdonald suggesting (cue a bad paraphrase) that fan fiction is fine for fun but not necessarily good practice for writing. My experience (and later, similar incidents) all bear that out, for one reason: a fanfic author and audience have the benefit of knowing the characters and their setting beforehand. So there's no reason to flesh out Superman in my Metropolis fanfic, since most everyone knows what he looks like... yet that can lead me to bad habits of not practicing good description."

This is a valid observation about fan fiction, but I disagree that it isn't good practice for writing fiction. Fan fiction makes a fine arena in which to practice things like plot, story pacing, characterization, and the simple discipline of completing stories.

When it comes to describing characters and sometimes settings, weaving back story into the narrative, and the like, fan fiction authors do tend to skip all but the most basic details for the reasons you state.

However, it's still not a bad way for a new author to get their toes wet. After all, they already have a ready made world, populated with well-developed characters with existing conflicts.

Just my two cents (and yes, I have written fan fiction 8) ).

Valerie
 

Crusader

Re: The First Two Pages

@dblteam:

i don't find that our posts disagree, really... it's more that we're looking at the same thing from different angles.

The angle i'm seeing, shows that fanfic is possibly a way to develop bad writing habits, as far as description, and thus is not necessarily good practice in writing overall. Note the lack of any absolutes in my tone; no attempt is made to imply or state that the positive angles are invalid or miniscule.

Your points all make sense; it would just be wise for a beginning writer, or any writer, to keep in mind that hitting the individual elements of writing (as per your examples of plot, story pacing, characterization, etc.) is definitely different practice than tackling all the elements at once.

i suppose my quibble is with method; two methods might teach the same basic skills, but the methods themselves may cause different results.

[ramble mode] Like, working on individual elements is an analytic method: take apart an element or two, focus on them, then move on to another. Whereas working on the whole shebang at once is an example of synthesis: grab the whole mess and run with it, improving every element at roughly the same time as you go.

One pitfall of analysis, is that it can lead to an excellent grasp of the parts but a weak understanding of how to put them together into a whole. Likewise, one pitfall of synthesis is that it can leave a person understanding how to get from A to B as a whole, but not truly being good in any one part.

And one clear difference between the pitfalls is that a lifetime of analysis without ever graduating to synthesis, seems likely to result in a writer who can't really write a whole book. They can write sparkling dialogue here, make brilliant plot twists there, but they never quite figure out how to put it all together.

By contrast, a lifetime of synthesis seems like it would yield a writer who can get a whole, complete story on a shelf, even if it is a bit rough. And as they progress, they are likely to eventually become proficient at the individual bits.

(So maybe this is why some people object so strongly to analysing other works for defects, or to caring about what defects other people see in their work. Perhaps some people are by nature inclined to focus on the story as a whole, instead of mastering each part individually and then gluing them all together later?)

As such, the bottom line might depend on the goal. If someone is just messing around with or learning about writing, the analytic method is a good tool. If someone is aiming to become a commercial writer, the method using synthesis might be best.

[ramble off] What do you think?
 

maestrowork

Re: First Two Pages

We're training ourselves to think like an editor here, with all this analysis. And that editing skill -- to be able to step back from your own work and analyze what works and not -- is invaluable to a writer.
 
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