AnneL
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I just ran across these, which are excellent. I was lucky enough to have dinner with Terry last week, and let me tell you, he's a smart guy.
Rules for Writers
Rules for Writers
No offense to anyone here, but this has got to be one of the stupidest advice lists for writing anything I've ever seen. Yes, yes, I know he's a published author known for his short stories. I'm glad it works for him. But it sounds like I'd absolutely hate all of his work.
I think Mythopoet takes a completely different route to learning writing than I do.
That's my view of the literary v. genre fiction conflict in general. Not saying that's the case here, since I don't know what stories Mythopoet has read, and they may very well have been pretentious. But as a fan of both literary and genre fiction, I feel the need to defend one or the other whenever I see labels like "pretentious" or "simplistic" thrown around.
Obviously I didn't apply those adjectives to any "genre" in general but only to the stories I was made to read in public school. I would not attempt to characterize any genre which I do not read and am not familiar with. The stories I read in school were enough to make me avoid "literary" fiction for the rest of my life. I'm sure there's good literary fiction out there, but I've never encountered any and life is simply to short for me to waste my time trying to search it out. All the literary fiction that I have been presented with tends to be about subject matter that I find boring, that's all I'll say about it and that is purely my personal opinion.
I am not objecting to "literary" short stories existing. Obviously they are well liked by many readers and that is enough to justify them. I simply object to the many authors who seem to think that short stories must meet some narrow, "artistic" criteria. That's all very well for the people who like that sort of thing. But it tends to leave the people who don't, like me, in the dust. I object to any view of fiction that focuses on one particular type of story that serves a particular group of readers and rejects all other types of story and thus, by extension, all other groups of readers.
Yes, that's probably true, but since you don't know me you've put words in my mouth that I would never say and which I do not think.
But then I strongly value "storytelling" above "writing" always and I don't think that's something you can learn from a list of rules or books of advice.
Just going by the way your posts come across. If that's not your intent, perhaps you should try to clarify your actual point.
There was a very specific point when I stopped caring about rules lists like this. I was reading Understanding Comics by Scott McCloud, keeping track of the various rules it describes for how a comic should be written. With each new rule, I realized "Hey, Johnny the Homicidal Maniac breaks this!" Once he got to the part about how comics should have simple art and simple dialogue*, I started trying to imagine what JtHM would actually be like if it followed all those rules, and I realized it would be a mess.
Perhaps you should stop trying to read more into a post than it is meant to convey. Or perhaps you should just stop grinding your axe at me.
This is an internet forum where we all express our opinions. If you put something out there that I disagree with, I'm going to state my opposition. Otherwise, what's the point of the forum?
That is an old and tired argument. Forums do not exist for people to communicate any opinion they have. (That's why you can get banned for breaking the rules and "but that was my opinion" is not a valid excuse. Believe me, I know.)
Furthermore, your "opinion" was to take a statement I made about one particular author's article and assume that I would have the same reaction to any author's advice. You then went even further to transform that particular opinion into what you imagine is apparently my entire worldview when it comes to learning from those with experience.
I feel like a lot of writing "rules" are really meant to push heavily plot-based stories with an overt conflict (which usually takes the form of violent conflict in SF/F). There is a lot more to the world of short stories than that.