doyle | (no subject)

gwyn_r's post on overuse of certain words in fanfic has got me scurrying around looking for writing resources. I was sure I had tons in my memories, but it would appear not. I'm going on a trawl through other people's memories now (sounds very sci-fi), I'll add anything interesting I find to this post. Anybody got links to posts about fanfic, Jossverse-specific or general?

mireille719 on fanon and canon

secondverse on commonly misused words.

secondverse talks about dialogue.

thebratqueen on canon vs fanon.

thebratqueen's two step theory of fanfic.

wisteria_ has a thread about characterization and OOC.
Dorothy Marley: The Seven Deadly Fanons of Characterization

I did find the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest for deliberately bad openings to stories. I don't think any of them can top this sentence by Danielle Steel: She wore a dress the same color as her eyes her father brought her from San Francisco.

Now, that's just *poetry*.

Another eta, but this one's too good: I found an online copy of Clive James's A Blizzard of Tiny Kisses, a review of the bestselling trashy romance novel Princess Daisy. I've bought two anthologies of essays because they had this one. It's almost as funny as the writing in the novel itself.

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She wore a dress the same color as her eyes her father brought her from San Francisco.

I am AWED.

And not only is she published, she sells bazillions of copies...

Maybe her father bought the eyes at a demon auction like the one where they tried to auction off Cordy's eyes...

She wore a dress the same color as her eyes her father brought her from San Francisco.

So, her father bought her eyes from San Francisco? Very considerate. If people keep paying for her books, they deserve what they’ve got. /end being evil.

selenak has an interesting link to multifandom fanon snark in her latest entry, and an interesting discussion not related to that link.

WOW.

That's beautiful, that is.

...so, did he leave his heart in exchange for the eyes?

For scariness in a different vein but still more flowery than a fresh gravesite, see the very last paragraph of the Worst 'Classic' Book Ever, Theodore Dreiser's Sister Carrie.

All the Usage and Writing posts are in my memories section, and I went on for a really long post about epithets, once, and I think I've also tackled some other similar topics. But now I think I need to make my next post about adverbs -- if I hear one more person tell me about the brilliant Mr. King and his proscription against adverbs, may actually kill someone. Which, you know, would be bad. Especially because then my "I preach tolerance" ethic would be shown for the sham that it is.

I've read the Stephen King book about writing, and while I enjoyed parts of it a great deal, I have to say that I don't agree with his position on adverbs. They're part of the fucking language. Like many other things, they can be woefully overused, and I think it's a good idea to be aware of how often one uses them, but to declare some sort of moratorium on them because he, for some reason, finds them abhorrent is, at the very least, odd. Especially since (and my husband reminds me that King does admit this) he breaks his own rule constantly.

That sentence would go great in a William Gibson novel, though.

Perhaps Danielle Steel IS William Gibson!

Have they ever been photographed together? I think not!

That Clive James' review is priceless. Thanks for linking it to it. I'm still giggling. :)

I read it for the first time years ago, and it still makes me laugh out loud. Especially the line about something resounding in her like a deep cello chord, and his only comment being "boing".