50 Shades -- thesaurus version

[PennLady]

I found this link via Roger Ebert on Facebook. His quote: "The funny thing is, most of this snotty piece is WRONG, and the "improvements" would diminish the prose."

http://www.vulture.com/2012/05/50-worst-synonyms-in-fifty-shades-of-grey.html

Now, don't laugh at the last bit; I don't think he's saying it's a good book. But he's got a point -- I read over a lot of these and the suggested changes, to me, don't improve anything. In fact, I think they dumb it down.

 

[Stella_Omega]

The comments totally took her to school.

 

[lovecraft68]

Whether it took her to task or not, this book seems to prove that a lot of readers could give 2 shits about grammar and "good" writing.

The woman is going to make more money this year than Ebert has in his life.

And again, its getting it talked about.

 

[Stella_Omega]

Whether it took her to task or not, this book seems to prove that a lot of readers could give 2 shits about grammar and "good" writing.

The woman is going to make more money this year than Ebert has in his life.

And again, its getting it talked about.

The "corrections" the blogger made are a matter of her personal taste. And I disagree with pretty much all of them-- her thesaurus was missing the concept of "context," and would destroy the narrator's vernacular -- such as it is, of course, but there you are.

 

[SamScribble]

I haven't read the book; but, given that the 'offenses' all seem to be first person dialogue, surely the 'speaker' can say whatever she/he wants to say - tautologies and all.

 

[sr71plt]

I haven't read the book; but, given that the 'offenses' all seem to be first person dialogue, surely the 'speaker' can say whatever she/he wants to say - tautologies and all.

Yes, this is why I've got to growl at most e-book reviewers (and not a few commenters on Lit.). When they smugly say that what they are reviewing is riddled with mistakes, often what they actually are saying is that they themselves don't have a clue about how commercial fiction is written.

 

[TE999]

Well, that was a snarky load of crap! Those who can't do, criticize, I suppose.

Using 'edifice' instead of 'building' is worthy of criticism? All books need not be written for 8th Grade vocabularies, even best sellers. If 'big words' puzzle you, maybe you should stick to funny animal comic books.

 

[PennLady]

The "corrections" the blogger made are a matter of her personal taste. And I disagree with pretty much all of them-- her thesaurus was missing the concept of "context," and would destroy the narrator's vernacular -- such as it is, of course, but there you are.

That's what I thought, and also as I said, that it would be dumbing it down, essentially. There was nothing wrong with the words originally chosen. They might not have been the most common, but they were hardly esoteric or anything.

Well, that was a snarky load of crap! Those who can't do, criticize, I suppose.

Using 'edifice' instead of 'building' is worthy of criticism? All books need not be written for 8th Grade vocabularies, even best sellers. If 'big words' puzzle you, maybe you should stick to funny animal comic books.

Absolutely.

The woman is going to make more money this year than Ebert has in his life.

No, she will not, if only because Ebert's been at this probably as long as she's been alive.

 

[CarlusMagnus]

Well, that was a snarky load of crap! Those who can't do, criticize, I suppose.

Using 'edifice' instead of 'building' is worthy of criticism? All books need not be written for 8th Grade vocabularies, even best sellers. If 'big words' puzzle you, maybe you should stick to funny animal comic books.

I haven't read Fifty…, and I doubt very much that I will. So I have no feel for the large context into which the quotations this blogger gives must fit.

Generally speaking, I think that words that are shorter, or more common, or more nearly Anglo-Saxon, make for better style. But sometimes there isn't a short, or common, or Anglo-Saxon, word that carries the right meaning. Mark Twain said it: "The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug."

From what the blogger has written, I'm guessing that Fifty… is full of lightning bugs—and the blogger has seen that. But the blogger's suggestions are more often glowworms (hiding under bushels) than lightning.

But we have to remember that a good writer must maintain a delicate balance between, on the one hand, choosing the word that means the right thing and, on the other hand, mystifying the reader with an uncommon word. It pisses me off when a writer uses a word that sends me to a dictionary, where I discover that the word in question adds nothing that a more common word doesn't already bring.

I know some pretty good big words, and I'm not afraid to use them in my own writing. But they must fit. I use my thesaurus, but I know that I'm walking on thin ice when I do. If it suggests a word that I don't already know, I hear the ice cracking around me. Where did that word come from? What are its roots? What hidden meanings might it have? Is it really better than all of the words that I do know?

Sometimes the author of Fifty… got it close, or even right. Sometimes not. Sometimes the blogger got it right. Sometimes not.

Here are a few of the disagreements between the two that caught my eye as I scanned the blog entry.

8: The blogger suggests "forget" or "shake" for the author's "expunge". That's pretty clearly wrong if "expunge" carries a nuance important to the story. The substitutions aren't terrible but they mean different things, and "expunge" means something different from both.

25-26: The author's "enervating" is wrong—dead wrong. The phrase "excess enervating, energy" is an oxymoron. (Lookitup! The word "enervating," that is. And "oxymoron," too, if you don't know it.) But the blogger seems to think that "enervating" means "silly"; that's wrong, too.

41-42: The author's "jubilation has metamorphosed" seems to me to be a use of big words for big words' sake; "excitement has changed" is probably better. But "jubilation has changed" might be better than either, depending upon what Mom's mood really was before the change.

44-46: "…assimilate this morsel…"? The blogger seems to me to be dead on here. This time, the author was using fancy words for their own sake.

50: The blogger oversimplifies here. The phrases "tears course unbidden" and "tears course unwelcome" mean different things—some things bidden are unwelcome (you may bid your mother-in-law come for a visit), and some things welcome are unbidden (your mother-in-law may die before her scheduled visit—and leave your spouse a shitpot full of money). And both are different from the author's "tears course unbidden and unwelcome". Although I'd probably have written "flow" instead of "course". (But maybe "flow" or "fluid"—or even "floe"—appears in a nearby sentence.)

 

[Kurokami]

Do any of these suggested changes even matter? I mean, the entire book is first person, present tense narration; it's literally the main character relating the story. If the language fits the character's personality, and I think it does here, most of the time, then the actual appropriateness of the words is immaterial. If the character wants to be overly wordy- and by all accounts Fifty Shades' Ana is a verbose and melodramatic little waif- then that's perfectly acceptable in context. If it were a third person narration, then these criticisms would be warranted, but here, it could just be a good grasp on the narrator's idiosyncrasies.

 

[lovecraft68]

That's what I thought, and also as I said, that it would be dumbing it down, essentially. There was nothing wrong with the words originally chosen. They might not have been the most common, but they were hardly esoteric or anything.



Absolutely.



No, she will not, if only because Ebert's been at this probably as long as she's been alive.

That all depends will she get the money for the movie deal this year or next?

Christ I am so sick of hearing about this thing now. when the movie comes out I'll be ready to claw my eyes out before I'll watch even the trailer.

Good news is they don't need anyone with any type of bdsm experience to play Gray because he sure as hell didn't have any.

I'd like to spend a weekend with James. She'd be curled up in the fetal position.

In a dog crate.

 

[MaxSebastian]

I read the first third of 50 Shades before giving up as I just found the characters too irritating personally (like in Twilight. The movie versions).

But, this blogger is clearly a C*ck.

Sure, it could do with a little editing, but it was Indy published pretty much without editing! People still bought it in their thousands, which means she's doing something right.

Better than James Patterson who employs a legion of people to write his stuff, and probably a factory of editors to edit it, and then claims he wrote it. And James Patterson children's books? Really? James Patterson does chick lit. Seriously?

Anyway. The problem with the book is not in her use of a few supposedly fancy words. I'd like to see this same f*ckwit take a look at some classics of American literature.

The offense: "She was so deeply imbedded in my consciousness that for the first year of school I seem to have believed that each of my teachers was my mother in disguise." (First line of Portnoy's Complaint)

The fix: "I mean, like, she was on my mind, like, the whole time I was at school, I kept looking at my dumbass teachers and seeing my Mom. I mean God. What. Ever."

 

[estragon]

Of course the copy editor catches the flak, it goes with the territory. I expect I've been slammed as often as most. In first person narration, you have to let the character talk the way the character-narrator talks; you can't scrub the character out of the narration or you've killed the story. And that means letting slide the narrator's (and maybe even the author's) neologisms, malapropisms, grammatical blunders, diarrhea of the thesaurus, and all.

Must I cite Huckleberry Finn again? Mark Twain should have added to the prefatory warning in that classic: "Anyone who touches one syllable of Huck's narration will be buried alive under a stack of Chicago Manuals of Style, and entombed in the dungeon of Webster's Third International."

Commercial fiction is just that: commercial. It has to sell; that is its entire raison d'etre. I agree with Pilot, but George Bernard Shaw said it first, and said it better, 75 years ago: "No novel is too bad not to be worth publishing, provided it is a novel and not an ineptitude."

 

[PennLady]

Christ I am so sick of hearing about this thing now. when the movie comes out I'll be ready to claw my eyes out before I'll watch even the trailer.

Good news is they don't need anyone with any type of bdsm experience to play Gray because he sure as hell didn't have any.

I'd like to spend a weekend with James. She'd be curled up in the fetal position.

In a dog crate.

If you're so sick of it, why do you keep reading and posting on threads about it? And if I may say, you have what seems a ridiculous amount of anger towards this woman that you have not met over books you haven't and won't read. Is it just jealousy that she got published by a mainstream publishers? Come on, get over it.

And given what I've read about it -- reviews, articles, etc. -- I think we all probably need to get past question of whether it's accurate BDSM or not. Because by all accounts it's not. And it's not even about that (from what I hear), it's about what a woman will endure to redeem her bad boy boyfriend. So if you don't like that,

Anyway. The problem with the book is not in her use of a few supposedly fancy words. I'd like to see this same f*ckwit take a look at some classics of American literature.

Could someone please revise Last of the Mohicans? It's Mr Penn's favorite movie and I decided to read the book. I got in on my Kindle and -- ye gods. It is, as I read in a review, nigh on unreadable. This is one book that could do with a vernacular translation.

 

[CarlusMagnus]

Could someone please revise Last of the Mohicans? It's Mr Penn's favorite movie and I decided to read the book. I got in on my Kindle and -- ye gods. It is, as I read in a review, nigh on unreadable. This is one book that could do with a vernacular translation.

Mark Twain, who has already been cited at least twice in this thread, had much to say about JFC's story-telling. You're in good company, PL.

 

[Stella_Omega]

I'd like to spend a weekend with James. She'd be curled up in the fetal position.

In a dog crate.

You sure do take things personal, dude. And you know damn well that BDSM is not a competitive sport. Her limits have nothing to do with you. Nobody's limits have anything to do with you, except your own and your partner's.

If you want to compete with a writer, write better.

But, this blogger is clearly a C*ck.
...
I'd like to see this same f*ckwit take a look at some classics of American literature. ...

Just to say, lit is a porn site. It celebrates activities that many people consider depraved, and does so in the most explicit of ways. On this site, you can type out all those words without asterisks in the middle. We do all the motherfucking time.

 

[CarlusMagnus]

If you want to compete with a writer, write better.

I'm trying, I'm trying!

(And my wife agrees—she says I'm very trying!)

 

[PennLady]

Mark Twain, who has already been cited at least twice in this thread, had much to say about JFC's story-telling. You're in good company, PL.

Well, whew. I think LOTM made Silmarillion look easy to read -- and I know it isn't. I have seen a couple of Twain quotes on JFC and he sure didn't pull any punches.

 

[lovecraft68]

If you're so sick of it, why do you keep reading and posting on threads about it? And if I may say, you have what seems a ridiculous amount of anger towards this woman that you have not met over books you haven't and won't read. Is it just jealousy that she got published by a mainstream publishers? Come on, get over it.

And given what I've read about it -- reviews, articles, etc. -- I think we all probably need to get past question of whether it's accurate BDSM or not. Because by all accounts it's not. And it's not even about that (from what I hear), it's about what a woman will endure to redeem her bad boy boyfriend. So if you don't like that,



Could someone please revise Last of the Mohicans? It's Mr Penn's favorite movie and I decided to read the book. I got in on my Kindle and -- ye gods. It is, as I read in a review, nigh on unreadable. This is one book that could do with a vernacular translation.

It pisses me off because it is now being considered by people who really have no idea about wat BDSM is to be accurate.

I spent a long time in the lifestyle and to me its the equivalent of someone telling you that they know everything about hockey because they saw 5 minutes of slapshot.

whats worse is that anything in this vein published now that has some success will be looked at as a rip off of what is essentially a rip off.

and I can say whatever I want so pffffffftttttttt!

 

[Kurokami]

We were all kinky before it was cool!

 

[Stella_Omega]

It pisses me off because it is now being considered by people who really have no idea about wat BDSM is to be accurate.

I think I've heard you say that, once or twice, yeah.

whats worse is that anything in this vein published now that has some success will be looked at as a rip off of what is essentially a rip off.

Worrying about being called ripoff? Dude, don't worry about that. The keystone to success in the Romance market is exactly "ripping off." Authors are celebrated for it. Seriously. Women want their romance just like they want their fashion-- different but exactly the same.

And you are NOT writing a romance. It's an erotic fantasy novel. If your book is successful, and from what I read it might possibly be, just rake in the nickles and dimes with a smile.