More Required Reading

[ann_leckie]

More from Hal Duncan!

How to Write a Paragraph

How to Write a Point of View

These are both very basic, like How to Write a Sentence, from the other day. But looking back on my younger writer-self, I think even with his explanations some of this would have been invisible to me five or ten years ago. If you're reading these--for the love of all that's good in the world, read them, particularly if you're struggling in slush--and you don't see what he's saying, print them out and tape them to the wall and read them every morning until it comes clear. This is essential stuff.

Comments

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

On the one hand, I love these articles because there's nothing more fascinating to me than watch people think through decisions most writers make at a subconscious level - when you don't have a skill it can be immensely frustrating to run into one writer after the next who wave their hands and say 'well, I just _write_ this.'

On the other, I'm still working through how relevant this is to me - Hal is sculpting things that are already on paper, and I'm not getting to his starting point from here.

But the more I see people use the Eye of Argon as an example of excruciatingly bad prose, the more uncomfortable I become, because no sixteen-year-old deserves to be ridiculed like this.

[ann-leckie.livejournal.com]

Well, except he's not sixteen anymore. He's not even alive anymore. Duncan has chosen a text that will not hurt anyone's feelings. Absolutely I wince to think of Theiss going through that ridicule while he was still alive, but now it makes the perfect text for this kind of deconstruction, I think.

[green-knight.livejournal.com]

now it makes the perfect text for this kind of deconstruction, I think

I'm not so sure, because holding up one text - whether the writer is alive or dead - as the epitome of bad writing - leaves a bitter aftertaste. I brought it up on Duncan's blog, and his response was

The best that can be said for it is that other dysfunctional works are even more misshapen

and I don't agree with that. Yes, it's dreadful, and dialled up to eleven, but I've seen worse. Some of it on my own hard drive. And yes, my own writing was _differently_ bad, but I always feel that as an editor it's my duty to point out what _works_ about a text, and what the writer can build upon. It's incredibly hard to do that with Eye of Argon because who *can* read it with a straight face... but now I *really* want to take a closer look at it.