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I Want To Write A Book........


TheDeadApostle

I'm feeling gutsy so I'll prepare my heart for the onslaught .  

11 members have voted

  1. 1. How Was The Experience ?

    • 10/10 - Yeah right .Who am I ?Shakespeare ?
      0
    • 9/10 - Your pulling my leg here .*Blushes behind fingers*
      0
    • 8/10 - I sincerely hope it was this good .
      4
    • 7/10 - Off mark but a good start .
      3
    • 6/10 - *Tears scripts*
      3
    • 1-5/10 - *Commits seppuku*
      1

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Can we consider the following using "show, don't tell criteria"?

" For a long time I used to go to bed early. Sometimes, when I had put out my candle, my eyes would close so quickly that I had not even time to say "I'm going to sleep." And half an hour later the thought that it was time to go to sleep would awaken me; I would try to put away the book which, I imagined, was still in my hands, and to blow out the light; I had been thinking all the time, while I was asleep, of what I had just been reading, but my thoughts had run into a channel of their own, until I myself seemed actually to have become the subject of my book: a church, a quartet, the rivalry between François I and Charles V. This impression would persist for some moments after I was awake; it did not disturb my mind, but it lay like scales upon my eyes and prevented them from registering the fact that the candle was no longer burning. Then it would begin to seem unintelligible, as the thoughts of a former existence must be to a reincarnate spirit; the subject of my book would separate itself from me, leaving me free to choose whether I would form part of it or no; and at the same time my sight would return and I would be astonished to find myself in a state of darkness, pleasant and restful enough for the eyes, and even more, perhaps, for my mind, to which it appeared incomprehensible, without a cause, a matter dark indeed. "

It's certainly not showing much.


What about

"In that pleasant district of merry England which is watered by the river Don, there extended in ancient times a large forest, covering the greater part of the beautiful hills and valleys which lie between Sheffield and the pleasant town of Doncaster. The remains of this extensive wood are still to be seen at the noble seats of Wentworth, of Warncliffe Park, and around Rotherham. Here haunted of yore the fabulous Dragon of Wantley; here were fought many of the most desperate battles during the Civil Wars of the Roses; and here also flourished in ancient times those bands of gallant outlaws, whose deeds have been rendered so popular in English song.

Such being our chief scene, the date of our story refers to a period towards the end of the reign of Richard I., when his return from his long captivity had become an event rather wished than hoped for by his despairing subjects, who were in the meantime subjected to every species of subordinate oppression. The nobles, whose power had become exorbitant during the reign of Stephen, and whom the prudence of Henry the Second had scarce reduced to some degree of subjection to the crown, had now resumed their ancient license in its utmost extent; despising the feeble interference of the English Council of State, fortifying their castles, increasing the number of their dependants, reducing all around them to a state of vassalage, and striving by every means in their power, to place themselves each at the head of such forces as might enable him to make a figure in the national convulsions which appeared to be impending.

The situation of the inferior gentry, or Franklins, as they were called, who, by the law and spirit of the English constitution, were entitled to hold themselves independent of feudal tyranny, became now unusually precarious. If, as was most generally the case, they placed themselves under the protection of any of the petty kings in their vicinity, accepted of feudal offices in his household, or bound themselves by mutual treaties of alliance and protection, to support him in his enterprises, they might indeed purchase temporary repose; but it must be with the sacrifice of that independence which was so dear to every English bosom, and at the certain hazard of being involved as a party in whatever rash expedition the ambition of their protector might lead him to undertake. On the other hand, such and so multiplied were the means of vexation and oppression possessed by the great Barons, that they never wanted the pretext, and seldom the will, to harass and pursue, even to the very edge of destruction, any of their less powerful neighbours, who attempted to separate themselves from their authority, and to trust for their protection, during the dangers of the times, to their own inoffensive conduct, and to the laws of the land."

The former, I'm not utterly convinced shows or tells.  It reflects and thinks.  Neither does it propel the story forward.  The latter seems to do an awful lot of explaining and scene setting.  In an awful lot of words.  I think the entire passage would be excised on a modern writing course, yet it was written by a prestigious author and poet.

I think that the show don't tell rule is an ok way of thinking, but like all rules in writing it's over-applied to the point of tedium, really and I don't find it a helpful way of analysing a passage - or at least, it's only really one way of approaching it .  Is your writing interesting, evocative, thoughtful?  There's no one way to open a novel (see above) but try and do something surprising or different (see Proust, above) unless you are Walter Scott - above - in which case you can afford to ramble on about detailing on men's tunics in the 16th century for 5 pages.  NB he can afford to do it because it's somehow interesting to the reader.

 

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The goals of the text I read were clearly in line with writing popular genre fiction, not with writing the next Recherche. I mean no negativity by that; I personally spend a lot more time reading genre fiction than I do reading highbrow literature, though I have spent plenty of time on both.

From what I can tell, the writing style in good genre fiction descends from the style blazed by Hemingway and Dos Passos in the early 20th century, so I'd encourage looking to them for guidance, rather than the ponderous musings of Proust. I went poking around for some such direct guidance from the masters and found this article. Most of it is irrelevant to the conversation at hand (though likely still good advice), but see points 5 and 7. Those are at the heart of writing a powerful text in this style.

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5 hours ago, juss100 said:

The former, I'm not utterly convinced shows or tells.  It reflects and thinks.  Neither does it propel the story forward.  The latter seems to do an awful lot of explaining and scene setting.  In an awful lot of words.  I think the entire passage would be excised on a modern writing course, yet it was written by a prestigious author and poet.

I think that the show don't tell rule is an ok way of thinking, but like all rules in writing it's over-applied to the point of tedium, really and I don't find it a helpful way of analysing a passage - or at least, it's only really one way of approaching it .  Is your writing interesting, evocative, thoughtful?  There's no one way to open a novel (see above) but try and do something surprising or different (see Proust, above) unless you are Walter Scott - above - in which case you can afford to ramble on about detailing on men's tunics in the 16th century for 5 pages.  NB he can afford to do it because it's somehow interesting to the reader.

I recognise the argument, it's something I hear all the time.

Firstly Proust writes psychological literature with different goals to genre fiction, in (secondly) French which may or may not have different rules for writing. Thirdly, writing has evolved in the past couple of centuries and so we don’t write in the same sorts of way. Anyway that’s not REALLY important.

Genre fiction, which is what the OP is writing in, has different goals to writing than literary fiction. Modern literary fiction doesn’t sell. Move a few thousand copies in the literary category and you’re a freaking superstar, but you’ll need to move hundreds of thousands for the same recognition as a genre writer.

Literary authors call attention to their prose because they can write well. Genre fiction authors seek to put zero boundaries (don't call attention to their prose) between the story and their reader for many possible reasons - firstly if you’re not Shakespeare then maybe you don’t want to call attention to what could be substandard prose, and secondly if the goal of genre fiction is the story then why would you put anything between the story and the reader? 

That’s not to say that literary authors can’t write genre fiction, they cross over because it’s a more lucrative market. But when they do, they’re probably instructed not to go on long paragraphs of exposition. Because a literary novel which is a stream of consciousness with the primary goal of getting people to think is a very different beast to an adventure novel with the primary goal to entertain.

‘Show don’t tell’ is a rule because too many beginner authors can’t write description in the required detail. That or they try and use ‘tell’ in an imaginative way without the necessary skillset to pull it off. Following this rule will put you on the path to solid prose, with which you will have a good base to branch into whatever technique you like. If you’re a beginner writer, please don’t bring up Hemingway or Proust, or your favourite genius author in the past and go ‘look at all the stuff he’s allowed to do that I’m not’. Yes, you're not, cause you’re not Hemingway or Proust (and in Proust's case you don't live in like ... 15th century France or wherever.) If you're a genius writer go nuts, but are you? Are you sure?

I’ve read authors who can use a single adjective to call up an image equal to 10 descriptive words. These authors can freely break the ‘limit adverbs and adjectives’ rule any time they want. Adverbs and adjectives generally give less detail, but when you have that sort of command over the English language, rules fades into insignificance. 

Beginner writers use WEAK adverbs and adjectives, and because of this they need to follow the rule. This is why the rule is there, the above is how you break it. In between, study hard :) 

While you do have a good point - much genre fiction sounds the same because everybody always follows the same techniques. I still wouldn’t advise authors clearly just beginning their journey to go wild with their techniques. A lot of study, care, and thinking is required. If you don’t know what rules and techniques are there for and how and why and where to use techniques, then just stick with the rules.

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21 hours ago, Darklord Rooke said:

It's more than that, actually. Light Novels use what's considered very ... shady techniques when it comes to English writing. As in, a lot of the stuff they do is considered 'bad' in the English market. The sheer amount of exposition, the amount of 'telling', the way sentences contain far too much information, and yet the lack of detail overall (relates to 'tell' but also relates to them just not bothering.) And if you read fan-translated stuff the issues are compounded. If you use Light Novels as inspiration for your work, it's much harder to make it work in English, and it wouldn't even be considered by publishers in English's young adult market. The techniques are just way too different.

That being said, there are some light-novel inspired self published stuff on Amazon which do reasonably well. And when you self-publish you can market niche demographics because you don't need to recoup huge costs. But not for a traditional publisher.

I think it's this.

If you're accustomed to reading LN's you likely don't care how much telling there is (the 'tell' is hype, or that slightly meta touch is amusing, or maybe you're just accustomed to receiving information that way and it's a drag to get it otherwise.), as long as the character hijinks are interesting and the stage gets set for epic stuff. ("I don't care how much details you tell me as long as I'm still interested.").

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Another thing with light novels is that the way they're structured is because of the Japanese language. They're written in simplified kanji in order to save young readers a lot of trouble of having to look up complex definitions from dictionaries, which actually works in Japan, but not so much when they're translated into English. When they get translated, the simplified kanji actually results in broken sentence structures of exposition and telling, which when compared to an actual OEL novel, is not really neatly organized. To someone who has read, say, Harry Potter or The Hobbit, if they switched to reading a light novel afterwards, the reader will find the difference between the literary quality glaringly obvious.

It should also be noted that a lot of more recent light novels are intentionally being written as scripts for possible anime adaptations, since a lot of Japanese authors nowadays really like to see their work get adapted. This causes their structure, when translated to English, to break up even more.

I'm not saying light novels are bad (I enjoy reading them myself), however from a literary standpoint in the English literature industry, they just don't amount to much. But if you still want the light novel feel in your story, then what I recommend doing is reading actual English novels to learn their more organized structures while still retaining that feel you're going for. Just be sure to avoid a lot of anime and Japanese references since a lot of English readers will never understand them, unless your target audience is the anime fanbase that is.

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12 hours ago, Darklord Rooke said:

I recognise the argument, it's something I hear all the time.

Firstly Proust writes psychological literature with different goals to genre fiction, in (secondly) French which may or may not have different rules for writing. Thirdly, writing has evolved in the past couple of centuries and so we don’t write in the same sorts of way. Anyway that’s not REALLY important.

Genre fiction, which is what the OP is writing in, has different goals to writing than literary fiction. Modern literary fiction doesn’t sell. Move a few thousand copies in the literary category and you’re a freaking superstar, but you’ll need to move hundreds of thousands for the same recognition as a genre writer.

Literary authors call attention to their prose because they can write well. Genre fiction authors seek to put zero boundaries (don't call attention to their prose) between the story and their reader for many possible reasons - firstly if you’re not Shakespeare then maybe you don’t want to call attention to what could be substandard prose, and secondly if the goal of genre fiction is the story then why would you put anything between the story and the reader? 

That’s not to say that literary authors can’t write genre fiction, they cross over because it’s a more lucrative market. But when they do, they’re probably instructed not to go on long paragraphs of exposition. Because a literary novel which is a stream of consciousness with the primary goal of getting people to think is a very different beast to an adventure novel with the primary goal to entertain.

‘Show don’t tell’ is a rule because too many beginner authors can’t write description in the required detail. That or they try and use ‘tell’ in an imaginative way without the necessary skillset to pull it off. Following this rule will put you on the path to solid prose, with which you will have a good base to branch into whatever technique you like. If you’re a beginner writer, please don’t bring up Hemingway or Proust, or your favourite genius author in the past and go ‘look at all the stuff he’s allowed to do that I’m not’. Yes, you're not, cause you’re not Hemingway or Proust (and in Proust's case you don't live in like ... 15th century France or wherever.) If you're a genius writer go nuts, but are you? Are you sure?

I’ve read authors who can use a single adjective to call up an image equal to 10 descriptive words. These authors can freely break the ‘limit adverbs and adjectives’ rule any time they want. Adverbs and adjectives generally give less detail, but when you have that sort of command over the English language, rules fades into insignificance. 

Beginner writers use WEAK adverbs and adjectives, and because of this they need to follow the rule. This is why the rule is there, the above is how you break it. In between, study hard :) 

While you do have a good point - much genre fiction sounds the same because everybody always follows the same techniques. I still wouldn’t advise authors clearly just beginning their journey to go wild with their techniques. A lot of study, care, and thinking is required. If you don’t know what rules and techniques are there for and how and why and where to use techniques, then just stick with the rules.

I do see what you're saying, but I honestly don't like a lot of these arguments.

Firstly, the "evolution" argument is very flawed for a lot of reasons.  What do you mean by "evolved"  Is writing better now than Conrad, Woolf, Proust or ever Shakespeare or Dickens.  Evolution implies adapted in a positive way and so you'd be arguing that literature now is somehow fundamentally better and I don't think that it is.  it *might* be more relevant on a cultural level ... but even so you'd be suggesting that one categorically shouldn't write in a stream of consciousness way or something like that.  As for the French having different rules of writing ... well, I could easily have picked Virginia Woolf or Thomas Pynchon or 100 other writers to make my point, I just picked Proust because I was reading it recently and I wanted to make the point that good writing comes from not following bog-standard rules, not the other way around.

The main crux of the argument seems to me, though, that writing literary fiction is fundamentally different from writing genre fiction.  Oh, and also that beginners shouldn't try to write like pros so they should follow rules.  This seems defeatist on both counts because, yes, I do think if you start out being a slave to rules you'll become a slave to rules and I think that you should be looking to develop your own style from the get-go.  I think that Walter Scott or Charles Dickens are excellent examples because they are popular genre authors but they both have intriguing and brilliant styles of expression.  Equally I think, say Asimov has an excellent writing style or Arthur C Clarke or Gene Wolfe.  I'm not convinced that any of these authors don't break boundaries somewhere or other yet they are genre authors.  it's not about being allowed or not-allowed, for me writing is about expressing - nay, exposing - oneself and I'm convinced that's as true for genre fiction as it is for "literary" fiction.  I don't even know where the boundaries are between the two, all I can say is that genre fiction with "ideas" i.e. PK Dick) is a whole lot more entertaining than adventure fiction without them, such as Edgar Rice Burroughs.  That said, I like a lot of pure action/adventure stories and obviously I'm on these boards because I love stuff that's called "genre fiction" at a pretty base level i.e it has a PLOT and it SURPRISES YOU!  But when I talk about expressing yourself, I think ... I dunno, you can't want to write novels unless you've read a shit-ton of them.  you must love them - if you don't that will shine through in your writing no-matter how many rules you follow.  If you do love them, I strongly believe you'll pick up how to do it as much by osmosis as rule following, and even if you write some terrible sentences, the passion will show through.

Don't get me wrong, I don't think "show don't tell" isn't a terrible rule, but I think underlining someone's paragraph and saying this is "tell, tell tell" I guess I find to be overkill when it comes to "rules"

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I'm going to split this post into two, and give you my thought processes as someone who writes and who thinks about language. Feel free to disagree, but by the end I hope to convey a better understanding of partly why things are different than before (whole books have been written on these issues,) and why beginners should start with the basics (honestly, would you introduce someone to physics with a grad level textbook?)

4 hours ago, juss100 said:

Firstly, the "evolution" argument is very flawed for a lot of reasons.  What do you mean by "evolved"  Is writing better now than Conrad, Woolf, Proust or ever Shakespeare or Dickens.  Evolution implies adapted in a positive way and so you'd be arguing that literature now is somehow fundamentally better and I don't think that it is.  

By evolve I mean develop and grow more complex, evolution does not necessarily mean development for the better. I realise devolution is a word but it’s meaning is to grow less complex, not develop for the worse.

I guess I'll start with basic facts on language, because writing needs to use language, and so evolutions in language will naturally lead to evolutions in writing. How familiar are you with the English language? 

If you go back alllll the way to the 11th and 12th centuries, you would find that the current phase (back then) of the English language is inflected. Stress a word at different spots and you'd change the meaning of the sentence (fun). And because we had inflections in our words we had much less order in the language, and we needed much less order in our sentences. People theorise that foreigners could easily miss these inflections, and because of this a simpler version of the language arose, one without inflections, but one which was more able to be understood between different people. And only once inflections completely decayed did the WORD ORDER in English start becoming essential. In fact, this is where the S-V-O order of sentences cemented itself as the dominant order.

So writing before 11th century would be unable to be replicated today - you wouldn't want to write like that at all. That’s taking an extreme example. After this you filter on down through the centuries and you had the Norman influence, and of course, Latin, which was the church language.

What people need to understand is that the elite at the time, the people at court and so on, found both the French and Latin languages to be superior to the English language. And so all effort was made to try and make English more like those languages, and to replicate those languages. Much of 14th century poetry was influenced by the 'superior' French writing. In the trends, the style, and the content. (Norman scribes changed our language too. Want to know why English words are spelt with 'ou' and 'gh'? One guess.) English was viewed as unsophisticated in comparison. As an example, with the influx of new words into the English language, the Old English word would usually be viewed as the most crass, whereas the French and Latin forms more learned. 'Ask' vs 'Question/Interrogate'. 'Kingly' vs 'Royal/Regal.' 'Guts' vs 'courage'. 'Clothes' vs 'attire'.

And then came Latin, and the way they looked backwards on grammar to try and impose rigid forms. Shakespeare was relatively forward for his time, double negative usage, the word 'they' used in the singular, sometime after Shakespeare the Church with its Latin influence got more influence over the language, prescribing rigid grammar rules. You CANNOT split infinitives in Latin, but you can very easily do so in English. It's a rule shoe-horned into English because Latin was the superior language. English is full of these little traps, unless you know the language you sometimes don't know what to follow. That’s what the writing rules are there for, to make things easier for you. More on this later. 

And so children would rock up to grammar class and learn that the way they talked was inferior, and that the superior version would hence be taught to you by very superior people. Usually aided by the use of a whip. Austen and Woolfe were schooled rigidly in grammar and this comes across in their prose, a lot of which is useless and unnecessary for English. You see it in the way Austen would edit her books to be more correct, but would be a little looser in her letters. Let me show you something from Virginia Woolfe's books, and I will show you why she doesn't use solely 'tell' but you can definitely recognise the rigidity of language use of her time:

Quote

Had there been an axe handy, or a poker, any weapon on hand that would have gashed a hole in his father’s breast and killed him, there and then, James would have seized it. Such were the extremes of emotion that Mr. Ramsay excited in his children’s breasts by his mere presence ...

... standing as now, lean as a knife, narrow as the blade of one, grinning sarcastically, not only with the pleasure of disillusioning his son and casting ridicule upon his wife, who was ten thousand times better in every way than he was (James thought,) but also with some secret conceit at his own accuracy of judgement.

This is on page 2 of one of her novels, because it's easy for me to grab off Amazon. Here Ms Woolfe wasn't satisfied with just telling the reader how Mr. Ramsay caused the children to feel strong emotions, she showed what they wanted to do 'they wanted to gash a hole in his chest.' this SHOWS their strong emotions. In the next paragraph, she could have told the reader he was lean, but instead painted a clearer image through the use of a simile 'lean as a knife'. That shows you how lean through an image ... of a knife. Similarly 'narrow as the blade of one'. She told the reader he was grinning sarcastically, then showed what he was thinking while doing so. This is how writers paint an image for the reader, detail in the description. When someone says you use too much 'tell', it's a way of saying 'you don't use enough detail in describing events'. I will come back to this later. The OP uses too many words in the wrong places, and cuts words from the wrong places, they don't describe the action in detail. And when the story is the goal, and you're always chopping detail out of the story oriented bits, that's a problem. Obviously this depends on the goal of your story. Also, Woolfe is literary ... I think.

You can obviously see how the prose of Woolfe was constrained by the rules at the time. You obviously wouldn't write the same way these days ... usually. English has evolved to be much more ... erm, teeny. Hooray, I guess.

Colloquial - writing has evolved (on the whole) to be a lot more colloquial. And closer. Third person omni has declined rapidly in the past few decades. A combination of it being difficult and people liking being closer to the characters. Also the need for a strong narrative voice, which is similar for first person but the difference is that the strong narrative voice needs to be an external person, which makes it difficult. Pratchett had no problems, but Pratchett is Pratchett.

Anyway in post 2 I will try and make sense of what I just wrote, then touch on why it's not defeatist to start from the basics, that I didn't say 'tell tell tell' but rather explained why his 'tell' was poor (not enough detail to paint an image, which is probably THE most common error in beginner writers, which leads to people getting bored saying the same things and short cuts appearing ... like saying 'tell, tell, tell',) and how you can very easily want to write novels when you haven't read a shit ton of them. People often do it.

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Also I never said you shouldn’t write stream of consciousness novels, I said you’d be advised against it if writing genre fiction. Generally because you’ll most likely end up with something incredibly confusing. Some writers can pull it off, the vast majority cannot, and if you’re one who can you’re not the sort of person hanging around asking people for advice … generally speaking. You can write bits of your novel in stream of consciousness quite easily, though.

Anyway more on this tomorrow. It's midnight here, which is officially 'getting too late for serious thought processes' and stuff.

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13 hours ago, juss100 said:

The main crux of the argument seems to me, though, that writing literary fiction is fundamentally different from writing genre fiction.

Well, what I was saying was you shouldn't apply literary fiction standards to genre fiction. I need to go to work soon, so I’ll just comment on the differences between literary and genre fiction here. That shouldn’t take too long, I think.

A clue as to the difference between the two forms can be found in Jonathan Jones critique of Pratchett titled “it’s more entertainment than art”. In it, he said:

Quote

That’s what I’ve felt previously when I looked at Pratchett’s prose, and following it for 397 pages has not suddenly transformed it into Henry James. The ordinariness of this writing is surely deliberate: it makes the book warm and friendly, like a normal chat with a normal bloke. 

Why would anyone confuse this with the kind of literary prose it so emphatically does not want to be?

This is the difference between entertainment and literature – the novel as distraction and the novel as art. You cannot divorce a literary novel from the way it is written. Sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph, literature is the words and nothing but.

Literature is the words and nothing but. That's the first point about literature novels, the language use. Literature is about language, and style, and innovative forms of language and style, and elegance of expression. If it doesn't excel in language use, it's not literary.

It's sometimes an experimental approach, where writers will abandon conventional rules designed to capture readers attention, in a bid to discover new and unique forms of ... stuff.

It sometimes communicates ideas, concepts, and themes that rise above the actual story (For example, the novel 1984.)

But it's always about character. Literary novels are almost always (I'm hesitant to flat out say always) character driven. What's the difference between plot and character driven novels? Plot novels are where the action drives events, and a character novel is where character's decisions drive events. Literature is interested in characters, not grand events, so it’s always about character and their internal struggles, and the human condition.

A genre novel is usually pure entertainment. It CAN have poignant themes, but they’re usually not key to the novel. Now, take a look at Dickens:

Quote

Samples of a people that had undergone a terrible grinding and re-grinding in the mill, and certainly not in the mill which ground old people young, shivered at every corner, passed in and out at every doorway, looked from every window, fluttered in every vestige of a garment that the wind shook. The mill which had worked them down, was the mill that grinds young people old; the children had ancient faces and grave voices; and upon them, and upon the grown faces, and ploughed into every furrow of age and coming up afresh, was the sign, Hunger.

How evocative is the imagery he creates here? Not only did he 'show' in this atmospheric piece, he ‘showed’ in such creative and imaginative ways that he spun an image for the reader which transcends reality. Because he’s one who can manipulate imagery to such an extent is surely one of the key reasons people love him. This is one of things writers should be taking away from Dickens, take a look at his description:

Quote

Hunger was pushed out of the tall houses, in the wretched clothing that hung upon poles and lines; Hunger was patched into them with straw and rag and wood and paper;

When something is important, Dickens doesn’t shy away from detail. He leaps right in.

Anyway, the point is Dickens is obviously literary. You need a certain command over the English language to be so. Literary fiction is the field wordsmiths and innovators play in to explore language, and themes, and the human condition. 

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I’m not gonna respond quote by quote as I’m a little pressed for time..  I don’t really accept your arbitrary distinctions between literary and genre fiction, art and non-art and I certainly don’t think that’s some kind of excuse for lazy-style Pratchett writing.  I mean, Terry Pratchett is just someone who … doesn’t write very well.  That’s fine, people like his books anyway (not me!) so he’s doing something correctly, but that doesn’t mean there’s suddenly a chasm between those who write “literary” and those who write genre fiction.  If your argument for genre fiction is “here’s a guy who doesn’t write good prose” then why are we critiquing the OP’s prose.  We may as well encourage him to write badly if that’s what we think works – so again, what has show vs tell got to do with anything?

All I’m saying is this obsession with one arbitrary rule doesn’t help get to the bottom of  why the OP’'s writing isn’t as good as it could be and for the most part it’s actually because he’s so keen to write genre fiction correctly that it lacks a little imagination and he moves through the scene in a fairly formulaic mode.  I like the opening about books, for instance, but then he sort of says “ok, I’ve mentioned the bookshelf thing, throws in a reference to Dr.Seuss for no-reason and then moves on to the characters as if to say “Ok, there’s your setup, let’s do the next bit writing school told me to do”.  It’s absolutely fine but I’m not compelled to read further because I’ve read 1,000 books and I need convincing to read another one – I may be being unfair … if he has a running idea about books throughout the novel then it could be the perfect opening, but I’ll guess that he probably doesn’t.

My point is – criticism of someone’s work, I think, should focus on how you really responded to it when you read it, and why.  If I were to post some writing I’d get so bored if people picked apart my word choices and sentences piece by piece … because it doesn’t matter.  One develops a style over time and when one writes – if one writes a lot – then you tinker with and fall in love with your word choices for very personal reasons that are almost critic proof anyway.  Actually I’m more inclined to agree with the whole Pratchett thing again, because you’ll always find some people like your prise, some find it too purple, or too simplistic etc.  But ultimately you have to ask yourself:

"are the ideas there"

… and that is as important if you are writing genre or literary fiction period.

If the ideas are there, people will allow for a bit of show and tell.  Or show or tell.  Or Show not tell.  Or whatever the fuck it is.  Look at J K Rowling – biggest writer ever, but she can’t write a proper fucking sentence half the time.

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21 minutes ago, juss100 said:

Look at J K Rowling – biggest writer ever, but she can’t write a proper fucking sentence half the time.

I thought her books were better when they didn't have a serious plot. Book 5 was almost unreadable at times *grimaces*

Also they aren't my arbitrary distinctions between literary and genre fiction. I'm actually repeating what comes out of the mouths of Publishing House editors (and critics), and what they consider good literary fiction compared with good genre fiction. It's fine to chuck aside their definitions, but that's what is considered literary, even though the boundaries tend to blur. Also genre fiction contains what I consider to be invisible prose a lot of the time, not really drawing attention to itself, it doesn't contain bad prose. 'Show' is the easiest way to increase detail in a scene that lacks detail. Writing that lacks detail is one of the most common complaints of beginner writers. 'Tell' is a technique often misused by beginner writers to the point that there's a lack of detail in key scenes, which is why the rule was created.

Anyway, I think your idea of critique is a completely fine one, but the OP wants to be published by a traditional publisher. Traditional publishers are dying, they're behind the times, they arbitrarily raise ebook prices to keep their draconian hold over distribution alive, but if the OP wants to get published by a traditional publisher then he needs to listen to more traditional advice. I dunno what else to say, he's not going to convince these people to change their standards because he's thinking about word count.

If you seek to encourage him to write in whatever style he wants, however he wants, as long as the ideas are there regardless of his ability, I genuinely believe you're not actually doing him any favours if he seeks to get published in a traditional way. But I could be dreadfully wrong, who knows. The traditional writing world is actually an incredibly harsh place. G R R Martin used to get rejected by a certain magazine every time he submitted there. It's not really a place for egos TBH, until you're being courted by Hollywood that is. Chances are your ego will get crushed again and again. Going easy on people now just means you don't prepare them very much for later on. One of the first things a writer needs to do is to cultivate a thick skin, and prepare for a lot of rejection.

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Of course, all of this is why one of the first things an aspiring writer should do is to join a writing circle with at least one published author in it. This gives feedback from someone within the industry. That way they won’t have to trust what random people on the internet tell them about 'show', 'tell', or anything else.

Of course, ignore their advice and chances are they'll just walk away and not bother. 

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22 hours ago, Darklord Rooke said:

I thought her books were better when they didn't have a serious plot. Book 5 was almost unreadable at times *grimaces*

Also they aren't my arbitrary distinctions between literary and genre fiction. I'm actually repeating what comes out of the mouths of Publishing House editors (and critics), and what they consider good literary fiction compared with good genre fiction. It's fine to chuck aside their definitions, but that's what is considered literary, even though the boundaries tend to blur. Also genre fiction contains what I consider to be invisible prose a lot of the time, not really drawing attention to itself, it doesn't contain bad prose. 'Show' is the easiest way to increase detail in a scene that lacks detail. Writing that lacks detail is one of the most common complaints of beginner writers. 'Tell' is a technique often misused by beginner writers to the point that there's a lack of detail in key scenes, which is why the rule was created.

Anyway, I think your idea of critique is a completely fine one, but the OP wants to be published by a traditional publisher. Traditional publishers are dying, they're behind the times, they arbitrarily raise ebook prices to keep their draconian hold over distribution alive, but if the OP wants to get published by a traditional publisher then he needs to listen to more traditional advice. I dunno what else to say, he's not going to convince these people to change their standards because he's thinking about word count.

If you seek to encourage him to write in whatever style he wants, however he wants, as long as the ideas are there regardless of his ability, I genuinely believe you're not actually doing him any favours if he seeks to get published in a traditional way. But I could be dreadfully wrong, who knows. The traditional writing world is actually an incredibly harsh place. G R R Martin used to get rejected by a certain magazine every time he submitted there. It's not really a place for egos TBH, until you're being courted by Hollywood that is. Chances are your ego will get crushed again and again. Going easy on people now just means you don't prepare them very much for later on. One of the first things a writer needs to do is to cultivate a thick skin, and prepare for a lot of rejection.

 

I think that these are some of your best points.  You're right, the publishing world is harsh and you'll face rejection if you don't follow the rules.  To that end, if he wants to go down a traditional route, I'd suggest that the OP listen to what you say quite closely and it will serve him as well as anything.  I should say that I have a personality that wanted to defy that a long time ago.  I don't personally ever expect to publish or sell any writing self-publishing, but I do think that writing, if you're going to do it, should be something you have a passion for and something that rewards you and anyone who reads it.  The world really doesn't need any more bog-standard genre authors and works pushed out by traditional publishers.  Sure, I say that even though I'm inclined to read that kind of thing often ... but what I mean is that we shouldn't be pushing for that, we should want more from ourselves and others than saying "write this book, do it in an average way, make money.'  That said, I suppose that everything has a formula and it wouldn't be a formula if 1,000 people didn't follow it.

Also, btw, I think that literary fiction contains a lot of invisible prose.  brilliantly written books are often not-so because every page has 20 stunning sentences, it's because the book has real vision and purpose.  Ok, great authors write better prose without thinking about it, but it's not necessarily their best for 600 pages + 

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