What makes it official? Asterisks, dummy. There were also capital letters.

We have a lot of readers in this forum, and, at least when a contest pops up and/or money is offered, it becomes clear we apparently a fair number of writers and people who care about good writing. Feel free to use this thread to simply discuss, or to ask for or give feedback on writing in this thread, either in regard to a specific bit of writing or on theory, principles and techniques; books, articles, and guidelines; etc. Or to just chat about or even dissect pieces of published writing we have found especially interesting, challenging, or worthwhile. Poetry, fiction, non-fiction, quirky trends in language -- all are welcome.*

Submit samples if you like. Be aware that doing so requires having a thick skin, and that there are levels even of high accomplishment. So please resolve to make the very most of any comments you are fortunate enough to receive and regard them as opportunities that might otherwise have not come your way.

Those who critique the work of others should also bear in mind that criticism that is not specific is difficult to profit from or form an opinion about, and it is hoped and requested that the criticism of pieces written by members of this forum be given in a helpful spirit, however strong or highly flavored it may be.





*This is not really a casual book review thread, so books discussed here should be specifically about writing or discussed very much to the purpose of examining their writing.

While most people know of Strunk and White, fewer people know of an even better book on basic prose. I recommend Joseph Williams's Style: Towards Clarity and Grace.

http://www.amazon.com/Style-Clarity-.../dp/0226899152

In addition, his essay, "The Phenomenology of Error," may prove enlightening:

http://www.stthomasu.ca/~hunt/williams.htm

Nice start. I'm unpacking from a move, but will go through some of my writing books and talk up one or two of them.

For anyone who hasn't read the beginning of the books thread, I also do a review of Stephen King's "On Writing" on the first page there, and the next page or two has some interesting exchanges about it.

+1. I teach this book to my college writers and it helps cure them of a lot of bad habits that "academic" writing can create.

I'm working on a story and running into problems with focus, character POV and transitions. I never realized how much thought went into this craft.

My first questions have to do with POV. I'm curious about your thoughts on 3rd person narrative. How difficult is it to effectively write a story from 3rd- person omniscient perspective? I have no experience with this kind of stuff and I don't read a lot so you can see why I am finding the entire thing to be quite a challenge. I guess you could say that my story is more of a limited omniscient POV. Can any of you tell me what the major problems and pitfalls are with this POV? Why do they say that third person is clumsy to read? Perhaps if I know in advance I can look out for the pitfalls.

When dealing with 3rd person omniscient, is the narrator supposed to be completely unbiased? Can the focus shift from one character to another within a passage or must it always stay focused on one main character at a time?

When writing in 3rd person, is it preferable NOT to reveal the minds of any of the characters or does this make it even worse? Is it helpful to reveal the mind of at least one of your characters?

thanks for any feedback.

3rd person doesn't mean you can't reveal the thoughts of your characters....just that it's being told in a "he said, she said" way and not a "I went to the store today" way.

I know it doesn't mean you can't reveal the thoughts of your characters. But which is more pleasing to read, 3rd person revealing thoughts, or 3rd person and not revealing any thoughts? The latter being more objective, where you just write action and dialogue but you never reveal your characters feelings. In other words, the reader is left to interpret those himself.

I think it'd be a pretty dry read if you never reveal a character's thoughts...you're not writing a screenplay, you're writing a story....although I guess it's possible to try.

Decide whose POV you're telling the story from - even if it's a 3rd person omniscient than you still have to engage the reader through your characters, right?

Is this thread a good excuse for me to quote Elmore Leonard?

His reported idea of good writing:

"I leave out the parts that people skip."

Katy, 3rd person omnisicent is the most common viewpoint. It works perfectly well. It sometimes doesn't have the immediacy and intimacy of first-person, but it isn't as limited either. Third person omniscient also doesn't make as much ride on whether you personally like a character.

You can certainly reveal thoughts and feelings, just try not to reveal motives for actions in a direct way. Let the reader come to their own conclusions from the characters actions, not from you explaining it to them.

Katy,

Most third person narratives use limited omniscience. Hemingway is one great short story writer who avoids it and almost exclusively relies on objective third person narration. You might want to sample a few first person and third person stories to see what sort of effects you can achieve with both. John Updike's classic "A&P" is a terrific first person narrative (and it's also in present tense). For third person omniscient, read the first paragraph of Joyce Carol Oates's "Where are You Going, Where Have You Been?" It's a great example of what can be done with third person.

Here's the opening of Heminway's "Cat in the Rain," written in third person objective point of view. When I teach Introduction to Literature, I usually spend a class period on just this one paragraph:

There were only two Americans stopping at the hotel. They did not know any of the people they passed on the stairs on their way to and from their room. Their room was on the second floor facing the sea. It also faced the public garden and war monument. There were big palms and green benches in the public garden. In the good weather there was always an artist with his easel. Artists liked the way the palms grew and the bright colors of the hotels facing the sea. Italians came from a long way off to look up at the war monument. It was made of bronze and glistened in the rain. It was raining. The rain dripped from the palm trees. Water stood in pools on the gravel paths. The sea broke in a long line in the rain and slipped back down the beach to come up and break again in a long line in the rain. The motor cars were gone from the square by the war monument. Across the square in the doorway of the cafe a waiter stood looking out at the empty square.

Third person omniscient: Is there a name for when the writer actually breaks narrative and comments on the story? I'm thinking of Thackeray's Vanity Fair, but I believe the Lemmony Snicket stories also use this device (as does Kipling in some of his stories).

Often called an intrusive narrator.

What I enjoy about this prose is that you can break it up into stanzas if you wish, and make a "poem" out it.


Here is another example that most should recognize (though done in first person).


When I wrote the follwing pages, or rather the bulk of them, I lived alone, in the woods, a mile from any neighbor, in a house which I had built myself, on the shore of Walden Pond, in Concord, Masschusetts, and earnd my living by the labor of my hands only. I lived there two years and two months. At pesent I am a sojourner in civilized life again.


-Zeno

Don't forget my favorites who do this -- Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and Woody Allen.

Not to mention Bob Hope, but he's not one of my favorites.

Slightly different, though, with film characters who talk directly to the audience. The novel Tom Jones makes the best use of this kind of narrator, and the film version does a good job, too, of imitating the intrusive narrator.

I think I'm with you on favorites, Blarg. Duck Amuck should be on everyone's list of great "films."

Thanks for the advice John Cole. I'm excited that you gave me some examples to read. I can see the advantages in writing both ways. Limited omniscient gives you the power to explore the characters thoughts and feelings which, when you think about it, is a very cool thing because it opens up a lot of possibilities. You don't have to work as hard to convey your ideas or paint a picture of your hero. On the other hand, 3rd person objective is more of a challenge but I love the way it is clean and pure. You only write what they see or do, you can't impart feelings or motivations. Everything has to be gleaned by the reader. What a cool form. I kind of like this approach, though it does sound really difficult to me because you would have to be awfully good to avoid ending up with a "dry" product, as Dominic commented earlier.

I really like your example for The Cat in the Rain. Gives me a lot to think about.

I don't know what this means, so I'll just put it out there and maybe someone with insight can comment:

I have a very difficult time staying in one tense when I write. Typically, as with the majority of fiction, I begin writing in the past tense. But as I pick up steam, I'm very apt to switch into the present tense. I find it very easy to write in the present tense, as if I'm describing what I'm seeing as it occurs.

It's not that one is inherently better than the other, but switching back and forth is no good of course. And it leads to a lot of irritable editing afterwards, as I go back and change "says" to "said" and so on.

I wish I knew why I did this.

Sounds like you are switching from written to oral storytelling. Using the present tense is typical of oral storytelling.

how is empathy for characters created?

take strong, straight forward statements like... I loved her... I was lonely... I am the spirit of the city...
when are those cliched and terrible, and when are the powerful?

you usually want to show the characters show their emotions through actions, other than just saying how they feel. stories or little things that happen reveal emotion carry empathy with them, depending on the medium

I'm not sure if this is the right place for this, so any Mod feel free to move/delete this if it's not.

But I usually just hang out in the STTF, but have been trolling around here lately. A few guys have approached me about writing stories for them, so I figure make myself a little more public if anyone wants any help.

I primarily work in screenplay/play/TV format, but I've written short stories, poems, speeches, etc. Right now I'm waiting to hear back about a few projects, so I have some down time and am looking to freelance. I'm trying not to spam myself, even if that's how it comes out. So if anyone wants to talk, feel free to PM me.

Thanks

To this must be appended Mark Twain's famous, funny, and very illuminating eassy "Fenimore Cooper's Lteratary Offenses". It contains some very useful information on writing. The full essay is here: http://www.online-literature.com/twain/1317/

The first part of the essay is presented below as it contains some pithy comments:

__________________________________________________ __________________



The Pathfinder (1840) and The Deerslayer (1841) stand at the head of Cooper's novels as artistic creations. There are others of his works which contain parts as perfect as are to be found in these, and scenes even more thrilling. Not one can be compared with either of them as a finished whole.



"The defects in both of these tales are comparatively slight. They were pure works of art."--Prof. Lounsbury.

"The five tales reveal an extraordinary fulness of invention. . . . One of the very greatest characters in fiction, Natty Bumppo . . . ."

The craft of the woodsman, the tricks of the trapper, all the delicate art of the forest, were familiar to Cooper from his youth up."--Prof. Brander Matthews.

"Cooper is the greatest artist in the domain of romantic fiction yet produced by America."--Wilkie Collins.



* * * * * * *


It seems to me that it was far from right for the Professor of English Literature in Yale, the Professor of English Literature in Columbia, and Wilkie Collies to deliver opinions on Cooper's literature without having read some of it. It would have been much more decorous to keep silent and let persons talk who have read Cooper.

Cooper's art has some defects. In one place in Deerslayer, and in the restricted space of two-thirds of a page, Cooper has scored 114 offences against literary art out of a possible 115. It breaks the record.

There are nineteen rules governing literary art in the domain of romantic fiction--some say twenty-two. In Deerslayer Cooper violated eighteen of them. These eighteen require:



1. That a tale shall accomplish something and arrive somewhere. But the Deerslayer tale accomplishes nothing and arrives in the air.

2. They require that the episodes of a tale shall be necessary parts of the tale, and shall help to develop it. But as the Deerslayer tale is not a tale, and accomplishes nothing and arrives nowhere, the episodes have no rightful place in the work, since there was nothing for them to develop.

3. They require that the personages in a tale shall be alive, except in the case of corpses, and that always the reader shall be able to tell the corpses from the others. But this detail has often been overlooked in the Deerslayer tale.

4. They require that the personages in a tale, both dead and alive, shall exhibit a sufficient excuse for being there. But this detail also has been overlooked in the Deerslayer tale.

5. They require that when the personages of a tale deal in conversation, the talk shall sound like human talk, and be talk such as human beings would be likely to talk in the given circumstances, and have a discoverable meaning, also a discoverable purpose, and a show of relevancy, and remain in the neighborhood of the subject in hand, and be interesting to the reader, and help out the tale, and stop when the people cannot think of anything more to say. But this requirement has been ignored from the beginning of the Deerslayer tale to the end of it.

6. They require that when the author describes the character of a personage in his tale, the conduct and conversation of that personage shall justify said description. But this law gets little or no attention in the Deerslayer tale, as Natty Bumppo's case will amply prove.

7. They require that when a personage talks like an illustrated, gilt-edged, tree-calf, hand-tooled, seven-dollar Friendship's Offering in the beginning of a paragraph, he shall not talk like a negro minstrel in the end of it. But this rule is flung down and danced upon in the Deerslayer tale.

8. They require that crass stupidities shall not be played upon the reader as "the craft of the woodsman, the delicate art of the forest," by either the author or the people in the tale. But this rule is persistently violated in the Deerslayer tale.

9. They require that the personages of a tale shall confine themselves to possibilities and let miracles alone; or, if they venture a miracle, the author must so plausibly set it forth as to make it look possible and reasonable. But these rules are not respected in the Deerslayer tale.

10. They require that the author shall make the reader feel a deep interest in the personages of his tale and in their fate; and that he shall make the reader love the good people in the tale and hate the bad ones. But the reader of the Deerslayer tale dislikes the good people in it, is indifferent to the others, and wishes they would all get drowned together.

11. They require that the characters in a tale shall be so clearly defined that the reader can tell beforehand what each will do in a given emergency. But in the Deerslayer tale this rule is vacated.



In addition to these large rules there are some little ones. These require that the author shall:



12. Say what he is proposing to say, not merely come near it.

13. Use the right word, not its second cousin.

14. Eschew surplusage.

15. Not omit necessary details.

16. Avoid slovenliness of form.

17. Use good grammar.

18. Employ a simple and straightforward style.



Even these seven are coldly and persistently violated in the Deerslayer tale.

__________________________________________________ _________________

Sam pulled no punches in reference to Cooper and we are all better for it.


-Zeno

It pains me to read someone rip apart Cooper like that because I love his work.

I think I'll re-read a bunch of stories and see if this critique holds true, though it certainly won't change my opinion of him.