Post by Lady Hammer on May 6, 2007 17:24:04 GMT -5
Here are some tips to [not] follow when writing your story! ^^
Readability Doesn't Matter![/color]
Don't get hung up on learning how to use the English language correctorately. If you spend any time studying grammar then your artistic spirit will be crushed and your writing will be stale. Use words in whatever way pleases you, this will allow the reader to enjoy the sport of choosing their own meaning for each of your sentences. In particular, avoid Strunk's Elements of Style at all costs.
Always tear down "the fourth wall," that separation between reader and writer. For example, in chapter one Janey gets shot. "No," screams Janey. "I can't die! I'm the main character and we're only five pages in!" This kind of self-referencing trick is clever, original and very post-modern. The critics will be quite impressed.
Don't bore the reader with a straightforward narrative voice. Mix it up a little! Go from first-person to second, from past, to present. Go from thick Irish accents to Jamaican street slang. Let the story zig-zag back and forward through history by hundreds of years at a time. Keep the readers on their toes.
Golden Rule: the bigger the vocabulary, the better the book. Every now and then you should beflabbergastimate your reader with a shimmerglitzering showray of innovational superlatative cogitations.
Sometimes when you're redrafting a book you might find that there's a whole section that doesn't really belong. One way to deal with this is to carefully cut it out and see if the story is improved without it. According to that line of thinking 'if it's a good idea, you can always use it later.' Well in response to that theory let me say this: BALLS! That's all it is. A load of balls! It ignores the vital fact here: by removing a section from your book you are decreasing the size of the book, and therefore making your book worse. And besides, the parts of a book that readers enjoy the most are the parts that are completely irrelevant to the plot. This is a fundamental concept of story writing and if you don't understand it then you really don't know a thing about anything, you idiot. This exmple only reinforces the important notion that it is wrong, wrong, wrong! to revise your work.
The Blue Rule: Description takes precedence over action. A character crashes into the room, with a gun in his hand. Before telling me he's got a gun in his hand, or that he crashed into the room, give me a five hundred word description of what he's wearing and what he had for breakfast last night.
I'll say this for jokes: too much is never enough! Why put in a few mediocre jokes when you can pile in a hundred of them.
And I'll say this for cliches too: too much is never enough! Cliches provide a handy sublanguage between the reader and you. When you say 'hung like a horse' you know that the reader understands exactly what you mean.
Stick to the facts. Readers like to be free to imagine scenes any way they see fit. Rather than say 'Captain Hirsuit walked into a big green room', just say 'Captain Hirsuit walked into a room.' That way the reader can picture anything they want. Maybe they'll picture a small blue room with flying ducks nailed to the wall. Or a Spanish banquet hall bedecked with sixteenth century mahagonny timber and dappled in rich medieval tapestries. See what happens when you let the reader's imagination run free? Literary dynamite!
Metaphors are like cocktails: they're better when they're mixed. Can you hear what I'm showing you? Do you see what I'm telling you?
If there's an important point in the story and you don't want the reader to miss it, then say it twice. If you're very clever you can introduce some subtle changes in the way it is said the second time. Also, if there's an important point in the story and you don't want the reader to miss it, then say it more than once.
I want lots of tautologies and plenty of them.
The Green Rule: Don't worry about inconsistencies! If Jenny is a Jewish left-handed circus midget on page one and a Portugese right-footed carnvial geek on page twenty-six, who's gonna notice?
Modern audiences are sick of books. What they demand is an interactive multimedia experience. Even if your novel is a serious work of historical fiction concerning the spread of the plague throughout Avignon, it will benefit from having a few cartoons. And throw in lots of emoticons. Example: "Bijoux's boils were getting really serious now. :+(". And instead of a final chapter just leave an empty box, with the caption. "How do you think it ended? Give your feedback here."
More in the next post! ^^
Readability Doesn't Matter![/color]
Don't get hung up on learning how to use the English language correctorately. If you spend any time studying grammar then your artistic spirit will be crushed and your writing will be stale. Use words in whatever way pleases you, this will allow the reader to enjoy the sport of choosing their own meaning for each of your sentences. In particular, avoid Strunk's Elements of Style at all costs.
Always tear down "the fourth wall," that separation between reader and writer. For example, in chapter one Janey gets shot. "No," screams Janey. "I can't die! I'm the main character and we're only five pages in!" This kind of self-referencing trick is clever, original and very post-modern. The critics will be quite impressed.
Don't bore the reader with a straightforward narrative voice. Mix it up a little! Go from first-person to second, from past, to present. Go from thick Irish accents to Jamaican street slang. Let the story zig-zag back and forward through history by hundreds of years at a time. Keep the readers on their toes.
Golden Rule: the bigger the vocabulary, the better the book. Every now and then you should beflabbergastimate your reader with a shimmerglitzering showray of innovational superlatative cogitations.
Sometimes when you're redrafting a book you might find that there's a whole section that doesn't really belong. One way to deal with this is to carefully cut it out and see if the story is improved without it. According to that line of thinking 'if it's a good idea, you can always use it later.' Well in response to that theory let me say this: BALLS! That's all it is. A load of balls! It ignores the vital fact here: by removing a section from your book you are decreasing the size of the book, and therefore making your book worse. And besides, the parts of a book that readers enjoy the most are the parts that are completely irrelevant to the plot. This is a fundamental concept of story writing and if you don't understand it then you really don't know a thing about anything, you idiot. This exmple only reinforces the important notion that it is wrong, wrong, wrong! to revise your work.
The Blue Rule: Description takes precedence over action. A character crashes into the room, with a gun in his hand. Before telling me he's got a gun in his hand, or that he crashed into the room, give me a five hundred word description of what he's wearing and what he had for breakfast last night.
I'll say this for jokes: too much is never enough! Why put in a few mediocre jokes when you can pile in a hundred of them.
And I'll say this for cliches too: too much is never enough! Cliches provide a handy sublanguage between the reader and you. When you say 'hung like a horse' you know that the reader understands exactly what you mean.
Stick to the facts. Readers like to be free to imagine scenes any way they see fit. Rather than say 'Captain Hirsuit walked into a big green room', just say 'Captain Hirsuit walked into a room.' That way the reader can picture anything they want. Maybe they'll picture a small blue room with flying ducks nailed to the wall. Or a Spanish banquet hall bedecked with sixteenth century mahagonny timber and dappled in rich medieval tapestries. See what happens when you let the reader's imagination run free? Literary dynamite!
Metaphors are like cocktails: they're better when they're mixed. Can you hear what I'm showing you? Do you see what I'm telling you?
If there's an important point in the story and you don't want the reader to miss it, then say it twice. If you're very clever you can introduce some subtle changes in the way it is said the second time. Also, if there's an important point in the story and you don't want the reader to miss it, then say it more than once.
I want lots of tautologies and plenty of them.
The Green Rule: Don't worry about inconsistencies! If Jenny is a Jewish left-handed circus midget on page one and a Portugese right-footed carnvial geek on page twenty-six, who's gonna notice?
Modern audiences are sick of books. What they demand is an interactive multimedia experience. Even if your novel is a serious work of historical fiction concerning the spread of the plague throughout Avignon, it will benefit from having a few cartoons. And throw in lots of emoticons. Example: "Bijoux's boils were getting really serious now. :+(". And instead of a final chapter just leave an empty box, with the caption. "How do you think it ended? Give your feedback here."
More in the next post! ^^