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Post by Dr. Jar on Oct 5, 2013 10:11:23 GMT -8
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Post by Thy Dungyeon Maestyr on Oct 6, 2013 1:20:53 GMT -8
Is tumblr all caps like that? Thanks for pointing that out. They really seem very horror-averse, but maybe we can come up with something they wouldn't hate.
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Post by Thy Dungyeon Maestyr on Oct 21, 2013 19:36:08 GMT -8
Hey all.
I was thinking about writing because I've been reading a lot of peeps talking about it on internet lately. A few thoughts.
One, people will say the exact opposite things about the same books - the characters were shallow vs. the characters were "alive." And the way I figure it, the life or lack thereof that people read into characters seems proportional to how much they enjoy the story or the concepts more than the actual way the characters are written. Does that seem true?
And I was looking at genre definitions and a rather controversial one came up: "Literary Fiction." Some peeps say it's not a real classification, just what critics decide after the fact in the court of public opinion. Which made me think about what constitutes good writing. Which reminded me of movies about writing like "Finding Forrester," which are always weakest when the time comes to hear the words that all the fuss is about. But the other question is more interesting to me.
What the hell actually constitutes good writing? I don't know. I know one metric in English - word choice - is badly tainted by our language's hard-on for synonyms. The literature of many other languages sounds much simpler when translated to English, because they don't play that game - and is often more powerful for it. Still, I feel peeved by using the same noun or verb twice in one paragraph, y'know? What do you all think?
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Post by Kristi is prescribed skeletons on Oct 22, 2013 0:04:22 GMT -8
My sister would be the first person to jump on that question about idealizing characters based on enjoyment of story. She watches and reads for character near exclusively, and will drop almost any title lacking good dialogue (Exceptions include highly visual media such as Pocoyo.).
I personally notice sexually inclined folks will be much more attached to a character or story involving said character if they have that sort of attraction to him/her. Other times people will go far as excusing bad things a character does if he or she sees the character as "cool", "badass", or whatever the kids are saying nowadays, and even disregard anything outright ridiculous with the plot/dialogue if it's "cool" enough. Thinking of the Joker from "The Dark Knight" here. Meh. >:-p
I personally remember liking characters in shows and whatever with stories and plots I didn't enjoy.
That thing about synonyms is interesting. I always say I enjoy children's literature because the good stuff doesn't get to rely on shock value and junk, over-complicating things while trying to be smart, but has to tell a good story bare bones with no cheating. Like when Beatrix Potter didn't get too cutesy she would portray even briefly mentioned characters as interesting figures just by describing their actions. This excerpt I rather love from "The Roly Poly Pudding" uses no synonyms and I certainly find it to be good writing:
While Tom Kitten was left alone under the floor of the attic, he wriggled about and tried to mew for help.
But his mouth was full of soot and cobwebs, and he was tied up in such very tight knots, he could not make anybody hear him.
Except a spider, which came out of a crack in the ceiling and examined the knots critically, from a safe distance.
It was a judge of knots because it had a habit of tying up unfortunate blue-bottles. It did not offer to assist him.
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Post by Dr. Maneep Pamplemousse on Oct 22, 2013 2:46:41 GMT -8
Still, I feel peeved by using the same noun or verb twice in one paragraph, y'know? What do you all think? I know we've grown apart lately, but despite the fact that we never wrote collaboratively or discussed our writing before this month, we seem to have a lot of the same hang-ups about our own writing prose. Or maybe there are just certain hang-ups that are particularly common among most writers and I'm deluding myself. The first time I got synonym crazy was in a fifth grade writing assignment that had a word count requirement (the first time I ever remember having one) but that was mostly using no less than two adjectives to describe every noun throughout the paper. Still, since I first took a German class, I've felt that one of the strengths of English was that there was more than one word for most verbs that all had a different feel or flavor. One of my favorite examples is "to walk." Walk, saunter, mosey, meander, amble, stroll, stride, trudge, slog, and so forth. German, on the other hand, mostly relies on making compound words (oh, they love their compound words, I'm looking at you Fahrvergnügen). For example, if you wanted to say mosey in German you would say abhauen or dahinlatschen which would literally translate into the English idiom "knock about" and (no real literal translation) toward or thither (by?) slippers (as in the things you wear on your feet when at home). The more you use German, you see that they also have some more obscure phrases that can say the same thing as you want in English, but most of them are compound words or multiple word constructions. I still think English has a leg up on (at least) the Germans in this way.
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Post by ∆§Indea§∆ on Oct 22, 2013 3:26:07 GMT -8
Yeah, I like synonyms because they add flavour to an action. I don't like using the same word in the same sentence unless it's for a certain effect. Simple can be more effective though.
As in my list I tend to like characters with shades of grey. If a character is just a vehicle I dislike it. I tend to prefer bad guys / anti-heroes but I don't excuse their behaviour, I just find them more fascinating usually. That being said, the writer of American Psycho should be seek serious mental help.
@kristie- I totally agree with you on Dark Knight, that movie was weak but people tended to forgive way too much for The joker. Myself I preferred Jack Nicholson's joker.
EDIT: I think what makes a story good, is the flow and mix of good story line and characters that you actually care about.
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Post by Dr. Maneep Pamplemousse on Oct 22, 2013 4:55:51 GMT -8
Out of curiosity, what do you see people forgiving in the Dark Knight Joker? I avoid the kinds of places where people analyze or criticize films. I thought it was a great performance of a uniquely twisted evil sonofabitch. Were people feeling sad about Ledger's death imagining onion layers in the character that some how justified or made understandable the evil actions of the character? Evil apologists so to speak?
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Post by ∆§Indea§∆ on Oct 22, 2013 14:14:54 GMT -8
I'm not sure if you were addressing me but I meant more in the sense of forgiving the movie and I'm pretty sure you don't want to hear more on that subject.
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Post by Thy Dungyeon Maestyr on Oct 22, 2013 14:29:20 GMT -8
Indea - Haha, oh, it's true. Brett doesn't want the bitter cynics of the world tainting his enjoyment of things he enjoys, which I understand completely. Let's not dog on the movie much, but I think you and Brett had a different understanding of what Kristi was saying about the Dark Knight. I think she was saying people forgive the Joker for doing horrible things because he was sexy action cool, not that people are giving the movie too much props for the presence of that character. Either that, or Brett and I had a similar misunderstanding of Kristi's point there. Assuming for a moment that is what she was talking about, I would refer to Loki in The Avengers as Exhibit B. The babies on tumblr all have boners for Hiddleston, so they ignore his character's glaring faults. Honestly, I think even the director of the movie wanted people to know he is an evil annoying dickweed, but the boners are powerful enough to override even Whedon's say-so. I wonder if we're all misunderstanding each other tho. Back on the subject of synonyms, I thought Kristi gave a very good example of what I'm talking about. Often playing the vocabulary game adds nothing to a story. That bit was simple and powerful. All that said, I don't see myself being able to kick the habit. Sometime, it might be informative to find a sample paragraph of my prose and dissect my word choices and grammar, see what revelations fall out.
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DKender
Only One Skeleton has the Power to Control both Life and Death, Light and Dark, Words and Blank Space, Our Humble Lives Continue Only by the Grace and Magnanimity of This Skeleton
Nay, let us walk from fire unto firey skeleton ...
Posts: 9,204
Gender: Unknown Skeleton
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Post by DKender on Oct 22, 2013 14:29:38 GMT -8
Ramble time. Here is a stream of consciousness.
On the subject of Literary Fiction as a genre, one reason I switched my focus from English to the sciences as an undergrad = the uni I attended had a rigid definition of "literary fiction"/"high literature" - it was pretentious. I insult Yale often in the RP, but at least that place teaches a creative writing course called "Writing Fantasy and Science Fiction" - these genres, as well as horror, are considered "low" by many people. In fact, my undergrad creative writing instructor said she didn't want to read anything fantasy/horror/sci fi during our first class. Hm, I've noticed that science fiction is often held in higher esteem than the other genres, though. Maybe that's because STEM folks love it so much. Who knows!
To me, good writing provides a service (maybe service isn't the right word - benefit might be better). Some people benefit from thought-provoking literature that's grounded in reality and unafraid to examine the painful parts of life, but I'm all about escapism. It's hard to pinpoint what qualities help me immerse in a fictional piece, though. That's something I intend to think about. I do have to sympathize/empathize with at least one of the characters.
I did not proofread this. Hope it makes sense. ;D
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Post by ∆§Indea§∆ on Oct 22, 2013 14:34:37 GMT -8
It makes sense Deek.
Oh I got what Kristi meant, I kinda meant I agreed it wasn't so good as a film, which I thought she sort of implied.
I think the best example of people forgiving a disgusting character due to 'attractiveness' is the scorn of all literature ' 50 shades'. That guy is the worst but all the mums and the impressionable swoon over him. "He just so damn misunderstood blah blah blah..."
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Post by Thy Dungyeon Maestyr on Oct 22, 2013 14:39:55 GMT -8
DeeK- You know, I didn't identify with the main character of Shadow Over Innsmouth at all, but when the action scenes started, I could project myself into his shoes by merit of the description. Not sure, for me, if empathizing/sympathizing with the main character is necessary, BUT
A lot of "high minded" storytelling these days (cinema and literature) does its best to make you hate the main characters. I can't hate the main character and give a shit about the story. That's pretty annoying.
Also I'm definitely with you in preferring escapism. I just don't relate to people who want the drama. I classed my NaNoWriMo story with LitFic just because it was the best fit, but you can bet I'm not going to play it depressing. I just cannot get interested in that.
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Post by ∆§Indea§∆ on Oct 22, 2013 14:48:20 GMT -8
Yeah, I'm on the escapism train too, which is why I tend to refrain from reading fiction that is based too far in reality and prefer fantasy/science fiction/horror. Why would you want to read about real life to escape real life?
That being said I do enjoy studying 'classic' literature such as ' Wuthering heights' when it's part of a class and I'm discussing and understanding it as a reflection on it's the period in which it was written.
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Post by Thy Dungyeon Maestyr on Oct 22, 2013 14:50:11 GMT -8
Another thought on "dark" writing. When we started the SUBPAR game, people weren't all on the same page (haha, assuming they are now), so some people were pushing the way they RPed in the direction of drama, cynicism about humanity, and so on. As you could probably tell, Kelly & I resisted and subverted that drama at every point where we felt it was getting depressing. It seems relevant to the conversation.
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Post by ∆§Indea§∆ on Oct 22, 2013 14:59:51 GMT -8
I totally didn't do that *cough cough*, ahem at all. Nope. Not me. Haha I won't say I don't occasionally go dark with Micah but yeah it's definitely less there now. At least not depressing, I hope. I'm open to criticism though and am really glad I listened when you mentioned he was too much of a bastard. Seriously I've read back the earlier posts and I'm kinda embarrassed by how much he was a tool earlier on. Although some would argue he still is but I think he's alright, he's just mostly a tool instead of completely lol.
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