(no subject)

[doyle]

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.

Comments

[gwyn-r.livejournal.com]

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.

[wesleysgirl.livejournal.com]

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.