See, that's so weird, Steph. (Are we dating the same guy?)
He's complained that he's gotted sidetracked for too long from, well, other more physical intentions toward My Fair Body, because he was enjoying talking to me too much.
I'm perverse: it's like the best compliment evah -- "I came over here intending to make crazy monkey love, but two hours later we're still talking! Stop being so interesting!"
Tie-in: he's written a book, and when we started dating, I did some editing for it, and...I don't know. I'm just trying to be slightly on topic.
O the fuck well.
And, k, Deb. Just making sure.
Liking Teppy's boy, more and more.
The example I always use from Angels and Demons is that horrible, horrible scene where Protagonist gets a fax that apparently contains shocking information. And how do we, the readers, know it has shocking information? Why, because the narrative reads as follows: "It was as if he had been hit by a truck."
I gave that example to The Boy, and he asked "What the hell does that *mean*? The guy read the fax and suddenly got flattened like Wile E. Coyote? And had tire marks on his ass?"
He gets it. Awww, yeah.
I have boycotted Dan Brown. I have just heard too, too many awful things to be interested.
I picked it up to look at it, got maybe 5 pages in and decided that 90% of the fanfic writers online have a better concept of "show, not tell" than he does. The only thing I can think is that there is a certain percentage of readers out there, like television watchers, who want things spoon-fed to them. Ugh.
And what's really scary is that it's generally conceded that Angels & Demons is a far, far better-written book than daVinci Code.
People are weird.
Whoops, I got confused. I
was
talking about The DaVinci Code. Hee.
My mother bought me one for a quarter.
I think she overpaid.
The only thing I can think is that there is a certain percentage of readers out there, like television watchers, who want things spoon-fed to them.
Well, exactly. That's why telling, rather than showing, is such bad, sloppy writing. In the example I gave above, Dan Brown is relying on his readers' cultural knowledge of a cliche, and using that cliche as a really crappy combination of shorthand and placeholder. And that's not good writing.
All Dan Brown would have had to do to *show* the protagonist's shock at receiving the Fax of Doom is to say something like "As Protagonist read the fax, he paled, and reached out a hand to steady himself against the desk."
That's not even a good snippet, but it still manages to *show* Protagonist's shock rather than just *telling* us he was shocked.
Bah.
