From: mdhangton@gmail.com
On Friday, June 13, 2014 6:46:00 AM UTC-4, A. Tina Hall wrote:
> William Vetter wrote:
>
>
>
> > The first time I tried to write fiction was a bit into my second
>
> > doctoral program, and I generated a complete novel manuscript that
>
> > was (you can imagine) a sort of adult juvenilia.
>
>
>
> What's adult juvenilia?
>
Juvenilia is what children write when they start at 8 to 12. What I call
adult juvenilia is what adults write when they start older, and later are too
embarrassed to show anybody.
>
>
> > And then I found some of those books about writing fiction and it
>
> > dawned on me that there were a catalog of things that needed to be
>
> > controlled.
>
>
>
> ?
>
>
>
> Which things, controlled how?
>
Suspense level
Character's inner struggle
Science fictional idea
Description of setting
Realism and accuracy
Prose rhythm
Hook to force editor to read it
Impart reader with enough info in understand early enough without slowing down
opening
Make sure reader isn't blitzed with info
I could make this list much longer, include a lot a other things, like
everything in Turkey City Lexicon or whatever, but they all need to be handled
and integrated.
>
>
> > That was when I thought, "Holy shit! This is like another degree
>
> > program." And then I knew it was ridiculous that I could have ever
>
> > thought it would be anything else.
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>
>
> You lost me.
>
>
>
> > And I was involved in critters.org for a while then and I'd see the
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> > different levels there, and it became clear to me that somebody who
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> > was older than around 28 would need to spend something like four
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> > years doing it full time to have the control to reliably produce
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> > manuscripts that were publishable full time.
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>
>
> How would four years full time writing change anything? (Except how
>
> 'having to' write full time may affect a person.)
>
The bottom manuscripts in online workshops like critters with no entrance
requirements are totally incoherent. The next level is these narratives of
what happened the last time somebody played Doom, or me and my buddies buy a
case of beer, take our AR-
14s into the state forest and hunt Bigfoot. The next level they begin to be
readable, but the author is having a conversation in his head that a reader
can't follow. The next....
It is a cross-section of a magazine slushpile where semipro authors are at the
top.
I would say that it would take a full adult four years to work his way up if
he writes pretty consistently. Many won't stay with it that long.
>
>
> > And the teenagers that write these stories where all the characters
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> > interact like people in a freshman dorm are going to take a lot
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> > longer.
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>
>
> Oh, so they are who write all the published books, and all TV series.
>
I don't know what you're saying. I don't believe that doing what some staff
screenwriter for Warehouse 13 or whichever does is gonna get anybody on Nebula
ballot.
What I meant was that you will see young people in these workshops that don't
have the life experience to handle adult emotions much, and it's probably
gonna be some years before they can deal with that limitation.
>
>
> > Does anybody know anyone who sat down at a keyboard and never went
>
> > through that process,
>
>
>
> What process exactly?
>
What I described some of above, where they go from writing stuff that's
unpublishable, and they don't know it is, to a level where they can reliably
produce potentially publishable manuscripts.
>
>
> > who had talent from God like Mozart is believed to have?
>
>
>
> Which of the made-up gods are you refering to? Thor, Isis, Kali,... (The
>
> list is seemingly endlesss.)
>
I don't care what god. A lot of people say Mozart never took piano lessons,
that God whispered it all into his ear. If you want to say it was the two
muses that are involved with writing (and I don't remember which ones they
are) fine with me.
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
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