Looking for good stories in order to learn style

I feel it in my knees sometimes. If it's really good. (Tee hee!)
He uses 'And' to start sentences. And I like it.
:kiss:

I saw that and recall English teachers saying that you should never start a sentence with and or but.

But I've seen authors do it here. And honestly I don't care.
 
I saw that and recall English teachers saying that you should never start a sentence with and or but.

But I've seen authors do it here. And honestly I don't care.

English teachers have said many things including should, must, shouldn't, mustn't, but published authors frequently break all the 'rules' that English teachers advocate.

When teaching children, rules are helpful to show what the normal conventions are. Once the children are competent in English they can explore and cross the boundaries themselves.

The only rule should be "Does it work?"
 
English teachers have said many things including should, must, shouldn't, mustn't, but published authors frequently break all the 'rules' that English teachers advocate.

When teaching children, rules are helpful to show what the normal conventions are. Once the children are competent in English they can explore and cross the boundaries themselves.

The only rule should be "Does it work?"

Personally I have never started a sentence with and because the purpose of the word is to connect thoughts or add something to a list.

I have started sentences with But or occasionally However, which is along the same lines anyway.
 
Personally I have never started a sentence with and because the purpose of the word is to connect thoughts or add something to a list.

I have started sentences with But or occasionally However, which is along the same lines anyway.

LC you fibber! Two posts above:

And honestly I don't care.

:D

I think you were just trying to make the point there, though. LOL.

Anyway, I still like it in Lawrence. So much so that I have had to spend considerable effort training myself not to do it any more! I must try to model myself on the other Lawrence and write prose as dry and clean as the desert sands.
 
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Listen

All I can say is read lots and listen more. When listening to people one can work out the rhythms and then you have something wonderful.

For years people used the style of Holden Caulfield in JDSalinger's book, "Catcher in the Rye". When Salinger wrote it the style was captivating. After that the copies were transparent.

I think it's wise not to find one author. Find authors who suit you, and more- listen to how people talk and you'll not just be writing- you'll have the mood. It's the mood that I find important. It's how to write humour and, to my mind, if you can be good with humour you are a very good writer. I think it's by far the most difficult genre. Look at the competitions here and you'll find it is very rarely presented. That is because it is so difficult to do well.

Also formula writing isn't so endearing when one has read the same formula over and over in different stories. It is very tiresome. So, beyond the vocabulary, get out and listen, particularly when people aren't talking to you. Difficult to do with English in Russia I know. Sorry.
 
LC you fibber! Two posts above:



:D

I think you were just trying to make the point there, though. LOL.

Anyway, I still like it in Lawrence. So much so that I have had to spend considerable effort training myself not to do it any more! I must try to model myself on the other Lawrence and write prose as dry and clean as the desert sands.

It's like anything else. If you're good enough you can break the rules. Look at some major league hitters that have quirky unorthodox batting stances. You know damn well every coach from little league to their current batting instructors want them to break all those "bad habits" but if they can hit, they can hit.

We start a sentence with "And" we're hacks. If Stephen King does it he's just great.
 
What we're talking about is the ladder of abstraction. If the conditions are right things serve multiple purposes. The trick is awareness of existing conditions. Confounding is the soul of humor and surprise.
 
Perhaps films could serve..

All I can say is read lots and listen more. When listening to people one can work out the rhythms and then you have something wonderful.

For years people used the style of Holden Caulfield in JDSalinger's book, "Catcher in the Rye". When Salinger wrote it the style was captivating. After that the copies were transparent.

I think it's wise not to find one author. Find authors who suit you, and more- listen to how people talk and you'll not just be writing- you'll have the mood. It's the mood that I find important. It's how to write humour and, to my mind, if you can be good with humour you are a very good writer. I think it's by far the most difficult genre. Look at the competitions here and you'll find it is very rarely presented. That is because it is so difficult to do well.

Also formula writing isn't so endearing when one has read the same formula over and over in different stories. It is very tiresome. So, beyond the vocabulary, get out and listen, particularly when people aren't talking to you. Difficult to do with English in Russia I know. Sorry.

I completely agree with you about the spoken language. Although I'm not living in Russia, but in Northern Europe, it is hard to find spoken language. But when Robert Kincaid says "This kind of certainty comes but once in a lifetime" in the Bridges of Madison County, it really means something more than just words.

The problem of erotic movies is that I have never found very good dialogue in them. If anybody know a movie where I could pick a good dialogue about sex, it would be most helpful.
 
I heard some great dialogue the other day. A guy was screwing a black girl, and the camera operator asked her lotsa questions during the action. Females let it all hangout at such times. Like what she said when the camera guy asked her....YOU LIKE BLACK COCK OR WHITE COCK THE BEST? She said, MMMMMM I LIKE MY DADDYS COCK THE BEST.
 
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Oh no! I give up.

Movies with good dialogue about sex!

ROFLOL!

An erotic movie with good sex dialogue! How can you expect to get useful writing tips from something visual? A good dialogue in a movie would be: gasp, gasp, pant, groan, more groaning, because it's not supposed to distract from the picture.

Oh dear I'm going to start laughing again!

JBJ is good value too, on his usual form. I still miss the picture of the elephant though. There was a kind of eerieness about it that immediately said: Treat whatever's said here with the oven gloves on.

And I thought the white sheet over the elephant was very witty.
 
Oh no! I give up.

Movies with good dialogue about sex!

ROFLOL!

An erotic movie with good sex dialogue! How can you expect to get useful writing tips from something visual? A good dialogue in a movie would be: gasp, gasp, pant, groan, more groaning, because it's not supposed to distract from the picture.

Oh dear I'm going to start laughing again!

JBJ is good value too, on his usual form. I still miss the picture of the elephant though. There was a kind of eerieness about it that immediately said: Treat whatever's said here with the oven gloves on.

And I thought the white sheet over the elephant was very witty.

You can get good dialogue if you can get the female talking during the sex. I have my own theory about it, and had some good results.
 
I wonder if the mood of other languages can translate easily into English.

I don't think movie dialogue is wonderful because it's scripted and rehearsed. Some might be good but I wouldn't hunt for it exclusively. I'd prefer natural spontaneity.

I suspect that being able to incorporate brief body language descriptors with the language can add to the mood enormously. A book about body language is a huge help. It adds authenticity to dialogue and emotion particularly. Just a little is wonderful and grounds the story in a feeling of reality. But used too much it burdens the story. I find it useful but also find it difficult to be precise about. I also know that there are aspects of body language and manners that aren't universal.

For example, in my culture it's polite to have one's hands off the table and in one's lap if not eating while seated at a table. In Belgium though everyone else was having little peeks to see what I was doing. All their hands were on the table. Took me a while to realise. Funny. Fortunately the ideas about manners are changing.

I don't think there are easy ways to do it. Certainly some are easier than others but for the most part it's intuitive and demands keen observation.

I should say that I'm no master but a mere student and, like you, am doing my best to learn.
 
Seriously, women talk a lot during sex if you get them going. Things like... MY KIDS WOULDNT LIKE IT IF THEY KNEW WHAT A WHORE THEYRE MOM IS or YOU TRYING TO PUT A BABY IN ME, SUGAR? or WHAT NASTY WOMAN TAUGHT YOU TO DO THAT? Or this, MY HUSBAND CALLS ME SUZY THE SLUT, I WISH I COULD GET PREGNANT, I WAS PREGNANT BY HIS NEPHEW. I TOLD HIM I WAS PREGNANT. I'VE BEEN THINKING ABOUT SELLING MY PUSSY.
 
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One of my favorite methods of exposing the fraudulence of many language and style mavens is to find an example of one of the masters violating their arbitrary rules and ask where they get off thinking they know English style better.

Also language changes. The reason why so many people get lie/lay wrong is that the conjugations are irregular, some of the conjugations are homophonous, and the meanings are similar. Speakers of a language loathe such confusion and over time the speakers just leave the self-proclaimed guardians of grammar behind.

I don't like that passage from Lawrence, but it isn't because of sentences starting with "And". Instead, I find the imagery jarring. Lust circling a man's knees? Feeling compassion in your bowels? I read that and I am knocked out of the text, asking, "what the fuck?"
 
I can't think of too many examples of good movie sex dialogue. They usually just trust the visuals. One of the few examples I can think of is in Jerry Maguire, a movie I didn't otherwise like, when Kelly Preston is flailing on top of Tom Cruise and demands "Don't you ever stop fucking me!"
 
Seriously, women talk a lot during sex if you get them going. Things like... MY KIDS WOULDNT LIKE IT IF THEY KNEW WHAT A WHORE THEYRE MOM IS or YOU TRYING TO PUT A BABY IN ME, SUGAR? or WHAT NASTY WOMAN TAUGHT YOU TO DO THAT? Or this, MY HUSBAND CALLS ME SUZY THE SLUT, I WISH I COULD GET PREGNANT, I WAS PREGNANT BY HIS NEPHEW. I TOLD HIM I WAS PREGNANT. I'VE BEEN THINKING ABOUT SELLING MY PUSSY.

Yeah, that is true. I had once lover, with whom I spoke my mother tongue, because she mastered it better than I spoke hers mother tongue, but when she got an orgasm, she began to talk her mother tongue. By the way: she was a wonderful lover with alabaster skin. Unfortunately I couldn't continue with her.
 
The "and" and "but" "rule" was never a "rule" for commercial fiction. Lawrence wasn't "breaking" anything that applied to anyone who made it past secondary school essays.
 
Yeah, that is true. I had once lover, with whom I spoke my mother tongue, because she mastered it better than I spoke hers mother tongue, but when she got an orgasm, she began to talk her mother tongue. By the way: she was a wonderful lover with alabaster skin. Unfortunately I couldn't continue with her.

Wow, way too much use of the word mother and tongue, I was going to send you over to the incest is best thread:D

But, there is a lot to be said for women of very fair complexions.
 
Okay, guys, knock it off, with the rules. According to post #43 none of us must have made it past middle school.
 
Matvei, I think you should go on the Writers' Challenges and Exercises sub-discussion board. We go on there and have a lot of fun writing silly things which are about sex. In that way you could collect lots of vocabulary being used in quite casual ways and you could also practice writing sexy bits of dialogue and description without worrying too much about getting it right.

You can check out this site, too, where members of my Facebook writing group (many published authors) put up short extracts of explicit writing in order to try them out and get some feedback from each other and any visitors:
(Sorry! I've tried three times but the link won't upload. The site's called Behind Closed Doors, PM me if you really want the link.)

I've remembered one famous example of early erotica in movies.

It's in the adaptation of E.M. Hull's The Sheik (1919), a stormy desert romance which was all the rage in the strange era between the two World Wars. The film starred Rudolph Valentino and Agnes Ayres. It was a silent movie. The Sheik kidnaps the Ayres character and she is sitting on the rugs in his tent. She waves her arms and then the dialogue screen comes up saying: "Why have you brought me here?" (or words to that effect) and the Sheik replies: "Are you not woman enough to know?" And she looks down.

This film was significant because Ayres was an actress who played good women, not vamps and whores. When she looked down instead of saying something, she let the audience know that she - an unmarried woman - knew about sex. This was the first time mainstream cinema showed a good woman knowing about sex.

As you know, Valentino was so major a sex symbol that women committed suicide when he died, but there was no dialogue in that scene to convey Ayres's understanding of sex, it was all done through her bowing her head.
 
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Wow, way too much use of the word mother and tongue, I was going to send you over to the incest is best thread:D

But, there is a lot to be said for women of very fair complexions.

Please don't be nasty with me. I'm living in a very northern corner of Europe, where languages mix. Swedish, Russian, Finnish, English, Germany and Spanish. And then there are Estonian and Ukranian that I don't speak. You English spekers can't imganine what it is to live in a world like that.
 
Please don't be nasty with me. I'm living in a very northern corner of Europe, where languages mix. Swedish, Russian, Finnish, English, Germany and Spanish. And then there are Estonian and Ukranian that I don't speak. You English spekers can't imganine what it is to live in a world like that.

I'm not being nasty, it was a joke.

I understood what you mean I was just having some fun with you, it wasn't meant as an insult.
 
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