SamScribble
Yeah, still just a guru
- Joined
- Oct 23, 2009
- Posts
- 38,862
I think that a good start for anyone wanting to become a writer might be to work out how to avoid terms like narratology.
I think that a good start for anyone wanting to become a writer might be to work out how to avoid terms like narratology.
sunandshadow
Cocksnail!
- Joined
- Jan 1, 1970
- Posts
- 3,863
*highly skeptical look* Being a good writer includes always using the right word for the right situation. If you're talking about the situation of graduate-level literary theory, narratology is one of those right words. Being afraid of technical terms doesn't do a writer any good. Technical terms, historical terms, foreign words, and slang are all like spices in our literary spice rack, a good cook knows that even a weird and rarely-used spice is essential to a few dishes.I think that a good start for anyone wanting to become a writer might be to work out how to avoid terms like narratology.
jomar
chillin
- Joined
- Nov 7, 2006
- Posts
- 27,831
That's where Patrick O'Brian comes in...pitch perfect word choice, truly outstanding.
SamScribble
Yeah, still just a guru
- Joined
- Oct 23, 2009
- Posts
- 38,862
Tsotha
donnyQ
- Joined
- Aug 4, 2013
- Posts
- 1,462
I can't recommend any "how-to" book, but I like books where an author tries to explain how he goes about creating characters, settings, plots, and so on. For one who has experience in writing, this insight can lead to an epiphany on how to write better, even if the experience being described doesn't exactly apply to her situation.
I agree with this. But I'll go one step further and say that, unless you want to write your scenes like a technical report, it's important to know different ways to use words. Being a non-native English speaker, I feel this is my greatest challenge: I stumble with creative sentences, and I'm wary of sounding pedestrian.
I'd recommend anyone working up from a very basic level of writing to read a lot. Read poetry, too, since that is where you can get a lot of those abstract word associations. Get a Thesaurus...Oh, and do crosswords. Even the simplest ones in English feel like they've been set on nightmare mode for me.
I agree with this. But I'll go one step further and say that, unless you want to write your scenes like a technical report, it's important to know different ways to use words. Being a non-native English speaker, I feel this is my greatest challenge: I stumble with creative sentences, and I'm wary of sounding pedestrian.
I'd recommend anyone working up from a very basic level of writing to read a lot. Read poetry, too, since that is where you can get a lot of those abstract word associations. Get a Thesaurus...Oh, and do crosswords. Even the simplest ones in English feel like they've been set on nightmare mode for me.
I would recommend the last paragraph of The Road, by Cormac McCarthy. I'd award him the Nobel Prize for Literature just for that single paragraph, which I have included below. It won't teach you how to write, but it shows a great writer absolutely at the top of his game.
“Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.”
“Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.”
