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Thursday, March 25, 2010 ...where do the good ideas come from?...
H ere's a quote from someone's Facebook wall,  Just when I think of a great script idea...I search and find out it is already 'in production' for 2012! 
I know the feeling. I once started work on a story only to plop a DVD into the player and discover the story I started, the great idea I molded, was already a movie and before that a successful novel in hardcover. Ugh! There was no point continuing with the same idea because it had been done--even though I had thought it up on my own--it didn't matter. I had to move onto another premise, another idea. After I soaked in enough frustration from being deflated, I felt better when I realized I had come up with a clever idea for a story and others thought enough it to publish a book and make a feature film. That was something. Much better than no ideas or tired ones. But any idea, clever or derivative, is nothing until it is formed into its being as a novel, script, prototype, beta version, or business plan in action. There are lots of ideas, what matters is the execution of it. Many people fail to understand this later part. Darwin didn't come up with the notion of evolution, others had the idea. What Darwin did was develop the mechanism to explain how it happened, natural selection, and spent decades compiling the evidence to support his theory. (It's a theory that stands to this day. After 150 years, mountains of research and evidence support Darwin's work. Remarkable.) So for our frustrated blogger on Facebook, keep at it, there will be many more ideas and some of them will make it into your next story or the one after that. Speaking of which, I have a novel to write. It's about a doctor possessed with the notion of creating life out of... Posted 2010/03/25 at 19h30ET in Writing. [View single entry] Wednesday, April 1, 2009 ...is there a rule to follow?...
I was reading an article from The New Yorker when I noticed all uses of the parentheses had a period inside the closing parentheses. Then while reading The Atlantic they always had it outside. e.g., Here at The New Yorker (They are known for...well...pick a word.) we do things differently. Over The Atlantic (I thought it was The MONTHLY Atlantic. Oh well). I went back over The Atlantic article. More often the period was outside, but it wasn't consistent. I'd go with the inside approach. It looks right to me. (Even when done this way.) There could be a case for this using this method (a small closing phrase). Posted 2009/04/01 at 19h08ET in Writing. [View single entry] Friday, June 22, 2007 ...Why do people like it?...
I decided that I should read some novels of writers I wouldn't normally read and this time around it's Ruth Rendell and Thirteen Steps Down. I knew nothing about her or her work, but it was clear she's popular (number of copies at the library and hold list) and successful (long, long list of credits). I'm a quarter of the way through and I want to throwing it back at the library. There are two main characters--an eighty-something spinster and a twenty-something male border named Mix. The spinster spends her time reading and reliving the past. Mix is delusional about some fashion model and obsessed with a serial killer who was hanged fifty years ago. I don't find either of them interesting. Nothing they do or say interests me. I'm tired of serial killers stories so I don't care who he was or who he killed or why he did it or how it did it. There is a narrative but it laced with backstory, exposition, and telling. So much telling that's it's a wonder anything actually happens in the moment. What do people get from this kind of book? It baffles me. I will read to the end, somehow, but the chance I'll read anymore of her work is zero. Posted 2007/06/22 at 17h45ET in Writing. [View single entry] Tuesday, May 1, 2007 ...Of crosue you can raed tihs...
T he mnid can do smoe fnuny tinhgs. Oaky. Smoe anamizg tgnhis. Tkae any wrod with fuor ltetres or mroe and jmlube the ltetres bweeten the fsirt and last ltteer and you can raed it. Too bad the wrod peosrscor I'm unisg wtnas to corerct me all the tmie. And so much for spelling. Posted 2007/05/01 at 19h51ET in Writing. [View single entry] Wednesday, April 25, 2007 ...the power of the comma...
I f you've ever thought that punctuation doesn't matter, is too restrictive, too pedantic then consider these two sentences. A woman, without her man, is nothing.
A woman: without her, man is nothing.
The same words in the same order. Replace a comma with a colon, move the other comma and the meaning is startling different. Posted 2007/04/25 at 13h32ET in Writing. [View single entry] Monday, March 12, 2007 ...words, words, words...we got words...
I started reading Words, Words, Words by David Crystal (Oxford University Press, 2006) and I was surprised by his statement that there is no definitive word count for the English language. On a number of occasions I've read and heard that the English language has so many million words and the French language this many or Swedish a much smaller number. I took it that someone went to the trouble of counting the words and came up with a total, but it's not that easy. Compare a British dictionary to an American dictionary and there are numerous differences—differences that extend beyond simple spelling variations. Words are included in one dictionary but not the other and vice-versa. Then there is the issue of scientific words. Do you include all those Latin-derived mouthfuls used to name plants and animals? Lawyers may use stare decisis and economists, ceterus paribus, but should they be counted as words, included in a dictionary, or should they be kept in textbooks? What about words from four hundred years ago that are either archaic or have evolved in their spelling or meaning. When was the last time you read or heard Sirrah outside of Shakespeare? Is it, as he questions, flower-pot or flower pot or flowerpot? Does it count as one word or two? What about three words? Flower, pot and flowerpot. Plus the English language is seemingly everywhere in the world--both proper English, or near to it, and comical misuses such as seen with commercial signs in Japan. Do unintentional misuses count? Should I mention slang? It seems to me that a consensus could be reached to define word for the purposes of creating the set of words that make up the English language. With the definition in hand, the word count could begin. A year from now, the English Lexicon Association of the Galaxy could announce the results to thousands of journalists as if at Canne: and the winner is three million, four hundred and sixty-five thousand, seven hundred and nineteen words. That's a lot of words. But to what end? A week later, the total increases by one because in South Africa a judge rules that the word wiggletax means tax evasion and sentences someone to six months in jail. Now I hear it increased by another word and another. At least it's not going to start a war. Religion—freedom—vengeance—what you will,
From Lara by Lord Byron. Posted 2007/03/12 at 20h45ET in Writing. [View single entry] Thursday, March 8, 2007 ...Me went to the movies ... Hollywood can't write as good as I....
M e or I and I am me. I hear it all the time. Me and my friend went to the show...
He's not that smart. He's certainly not as smart as I.
The misuse of I and me is so common I ignore it, but then I read this from page 8 of While Europe Slept by Bruce Bawer published by Doubleday. How often had I stood in a New York subway surrounded by men, many of them smaller than I...
Would you say: Me went to the show? No, but every day people say: me and fill in the partner went to the show. And as smart as I may be, I'm not as smart as I think I am or as smart as me. Posted 2007/03/08 at 01h09ET in Writing. [View single entry] |
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