Re: At Last! Novel Writing Made Easy!
- From: No 33 Secretary <terry.notaniceperson@xxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Wed, 27 Jun 2007 23:35:35 -0000
David Tate <dtate@xxxxxxx> wrote in
news:1182986440.231029.285730@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx:
On Jun 27, 5:19 pm, Lawrence Watt-Evans <l...@xxxxxxx> wrote:Design is easy. Implementation is the bitch.
On Wed, 27 Jun 2007 14:01:04 -0700, David Tate <d...@xxxxxxx>
wrote:
I mean, Sylvia Burack's _Writer's Handbook_, available at
any good library, used to have an opening essay by Stephen
King, where he gave the Secret to Success in Writing in a
single sentence: Leave out the boring parts.
That seems to be neither a necessary nor a sufficient
condition. After all, David Weber is a successful novelist[1],
and Barry Hughart is not[2].
Ah, but the trick is in defining "boring." Different people
are bored by different things.
Sure; I was taking that into account. I chose Weber because
I've yet to mean any Weber fan (with the possible exception of
our own SeaWasp, though even there I'm not sure) who isn't bored
by SOME recurring aspects of his writing. And that's among
people who continue to read his books.
In the Harrington series, some fans could do without the techno-
bafflegab. Some are bored by the backstory infodumps. Some are
bored by the magic telepathic hexakitties. Some are bored by
the political machinations. Some are bored by the
moustache-twirling villains. Some are bored by the slo-mo
spatter-filled battle scenes. Some are bored by the
self-flagellating internal monologues. Some are bored by the
attempts at bantering dialog. I'd venture a guess that most
people who consider themselves David Weber fans are bored by one
or more of these types of thing, and thus wouldn't say that he
"leaves out the boring parts".
But he apparently puts in enough of the Right Stuff (tm) for
each of those people to continue buying his books. I still did,
up through... _Echoes of Honor_, I think it was. Long past the
point where I knew, prior to purchase, that there were going to
be chunks of each book that would bore me.[1]
Dave Tate
[1] It's an interesting question whether I would have bought all
of those books had the proportion of boring-to-me stuff in _On
Basilisk Station_ or _The Honor of the Queen_ been as high as in
the later books. Hard to design an experiment to test that...
--
"What is the first law?"
"To Protect."
"And the second?"
"Ourselves."
Terry Austin
.
- References:
- At Last! Novel Writing Made Easy!
- From: samurai
- Re: At Last! Novel Writing Made Easy!
- From: Lawrence Watt-Evans
- Re: At Last! Novel Writing Made Easy!
- From: David Tate
- Re: At Last! Novel Writing Made Easy!
- From: Lawrence Watt-Evans
- Re: At Last! Novel Writing Made Easy!
- From: David Tate
- At Last! Novel Writing Made Easy!
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