Re: Common First Author Mistakes - What are they, and are there SF speficic ones?

On Sat, 05 Jul 2008 10:11:24 GMT, "David Formosa (aka ? the Platypus)"
<dformosa@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Fri, 04 Jul 2008 10:58:19 -0400, Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)
<seawasp@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

[...]

Another common first author mistake is "overkill" in the background.
Sort of related to the Kitchen Sink problem, the author in this case is
afraid that the reader may miss some aspect of the background the author
thinks is important, and ends up with thousands of words of infodump and
As You Know Bobbing that turn out not to be really needed.

When I was slumming around a remaindered book store I found a SF noval
that suffered from something simmler. Our author lavished great
detail on describing a scout master's unform down to his gortex shoe
uppers. And then spent a single line to tell us about his near miss
with a meteor.

If you can find it again, that quote sounds worth forwarding to Dave
Langford's Ansible for inclusion in next month's Thog's Masterclass.

Jerry Brown
--
A cat may look at a king
(but probably won't bother)

<http://www.jwbrown.co.uk>
.

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