That one would be a personal "is it a clever aside or does it stop the story and yell 'See! I paid attention in lit class!' and call attention to itself?" Case by case, naturally, the annoying things.

Not wanting to write a look-how-clever-I-am story is perfectly valid. It sounds silly, but you might want to sit down and just count how many references there really are. How many per paragraph? Per page? Pull out a few published romances for comparison.

Not everyone's going to get everything.

And you can't please everyone. t mememe I got a crit that said "Your characters are unsympathetic, your pacing is glacial and your dialog is boring because it sounds too much like real people." Aside from being the only person who said anything this stringent, it's not terribly helpful. I mean, what does that leave? The font I wrote it in? t /mememe

Hope the crits you get are more helpful.

Heh. I was just thinking about the phrase "too clever by half" the other day and decided that while I understood the complaint (and it's occasionally valid), that it usually reflects the speaker's insecurities. Because cleverness is a positive value. I guess it's problematic if its a kind of stunting. Preciousness I guess. But clever plotting and clever dialogue are big pluses with me.

You write for yourself first of all, and if you glory and take pleasure in being clever, then you should try to be as excellently clever as you can be. It may well be that a smaller, more specialized (Firefly-sized) audience is the only ones who are going to get it, but that's the breaks.

IMO, as long as the cleverness serves the story--i.e. drives the plot, characters, mood, and/or setting--you're fine. I only mind clever if I think the only reason the author is doing it is to show off.

Subjective, I know, but you'd probably be able to recognize it if you gave the section a rest before you read it again and come to it fresh.

(ask Teppy about my faux-James Joycean "Rain was general over Sunnydale" some time). I thought it was clever. Not everyone's going to get everything.

The fact that I didn't catch that ref was MY issue, not yours, sweetie.

I drop strange references into stuff all the time (ask Teppy about my faux-James Joycean "Rain was general over Sunnydale" some time).

But hadn't you not actually either read "The Dead" at this point? Or I could be getting my Bitch canon mixed up

I'm provincially pleased at having not actually read any Joyce, though I've seen many references to the man and his works. It's an atavistic (and admittedly silly) reaction to prose (at least in "Ulysses") that goes out of its way to be obscure.

But you go out of *your* way (using a construction that isn't at all or very standard in modern American English) to reference him.

Why?

And, oh, you really ought to read "The Dead". It isn't obscure at all, I don't think. It's a little experimental but only in the most meta and formal stylistic of ways.

And, oh, you really ought to read "The Dead". It isn't obscure at all, I don't think. It's a little experimental but only in the most meta and formal stylistic of ways.

"Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" has some interesting stylistic things going on, but isn't exactly what I'd call "opaque," either.