--------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 159 WRITING Ref: F5G00080 Date: 04/20/98 From: BARBARA SHAFFERMAN Time: 07:33pm \/To: MICHAEL NELLIS (Read 2 times) Subj: A NEW THREAD! MN> Hmmmm. I wonder if it might not be easier to write from the POV of MN> the opposite sex because it is so different. We might have MN> difficulty doing same sex POV simply because we are inside it and MN> don't see it so much. Or, we might not want to put too much of ourselves into the character. Barbara --- * RM 1.3 03095 * barshaff@juno.com * Origin: PC BBS : Massapequa, NY : (516)795-5874 (1:2619/110) --------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 159 WRITING Ref: F5G00081 Date: 04/20/98 From: BARBARA SHAFFERMAN Time: 07:43pm \/To: MICHAEL NELLIS (Read 2 times) Subj: PROFANITY MN> Mixing cliches or metaphors? Heinlein did that with one of his MN> characters in _Starman Jones._ Here are some samples: It's pretty much the same thing, since most cliches are usually metaphors or similes. Those were very good. Most of them, though, were proverbs rather than cliches. Great idea to have a character like Sam Anderson who mixes things up like that. Really makes him stand out. Barbara --- * RM 1.3 03095 * barshaff@juno.com * Origin: PC BBS : Massapequa, NY : (516)795-5874 (1:2619/110) --------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 159 WRITING Ref: F5G00082 Date: 04/21/98 From: BARBARA SHAFFERMAN Time: 08:30pm \/To: CURTIS JOHNSON (Read 2 times) Subj: PROFANITY CJ> Actually, there was a fictional character in a 19th-century English CJ> play who did just that: Mrs. Malaprop, who gave us our word CJ> malapropism. That was a play by William Sheridan. I couldn't remember the name and it started bugging me, so I looked it up. It was "The Rivals". CJ> Some writer in the '40s and '50s used to do Q & A "interviews" with CJ> a "Cliche Expert," who spoke in nothing but. . . There are probably a lot of clever ways to use cliches. I once saw a dictionary of cliches on a remainder table. Now I'm sorry I didn't buy it. Barbara --- * RM 1.3 03095 * barshaff@juno.com * Origin: PC BBS : Massapequa, NY : (516)795-5874 (1:2619/110) --------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 159 WRITING Ref: F5G00083 Date: 04/21/98 From: BARBARA SHAFFERMAN Time: 08:33pm \/To: CURTIS JOHNSON (Read 2 times) Subj: PROFANITY CJ> The languange centers in the brain are a bit more specialized than CJ> are "right" and "left" brain--one is Werniecke's area, the other CJ> Broca's, but I can never remember them straight. Oh. I only know the popular stuff about left/right brain. For a while I was reading a couple of books and doing exercises to try to develop my right brain and stifle the left brain. I finally gave up in disgust. I'm a left brain person and that's all there is to it. Barbara --- * RM 1.3 03095 * barshaff@juno.com * Origin: PC BBS : Massapequa, NY : (516)795-5874 (1:2619/110) --------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 159 WRITING Ref: F5G00084 Date: 04/22/98 From: JAMES WALTON Time: 02:03pm \/To: RICH VERAA (Read 2 times) Subj: A NEW THREAD! RV> Male: I wanna Coke. RV> Female: I'd like a Coke. RV> Male: I need a new car. RV> Female: I think I ought to get a new car. It probably depends on the neighborhood, but you have this very wrong. I don't think any of the women in my Science Fiction club are this passive. --- * Origin: Up in James' Attic, (412)-431-2891, (1:129/260) --------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 159 WRITING Ref: F5G00085 Date: 04/22/98 From: CURTIS JOHNSON Time: 12:01pm \/To: MICHAEL NELLIS (Read 2 times) Subj: Unbalanced biosphere /I -=> Quoting Michael Nellis to Carl Thames <=- CT> MN> Ten to the eighteenth power is a billion billion. Lot of rice CT> MN> krispie squares in that order. MN> That scenario would make a good bar bet though. Another good one is MN> Zeno's Paradox. You bet some sucker that he can't get from one side MN> of the room to the other by moves of one half progression, and double MN> the bet at each move. Allow him to buy out the bet at whatever the MN> rate is for that current move and start small, say like one dollar. MN> I read a short story based on that premise one time. I think it's in MN> the volume of Hugo winning stories Isaac Asimov edited. The sf story I read involving it didn't win or even be nominated for a Hugo. The setting was long after a disaster in Louisiana, and the intellectual narrator used it to get revenge on a jock scion. As a plot, rather forgettable; as a story, very memorable. Felix Gottschalk seems incapable of writing an unoriginal style. (No, I can't remember the story's name. It was in F&SF about a decade ago.) The other time I've seen Zeno's paradox used in fiction was a short Michael O'Donaghue piece in a long, long-ago _National Lampoon_: "Jean-Paul Sauvage, Philosopher-Detective." He used it to convince a gunsel that it wouldn't do any good to try and shoot him. --- Blue Wave/DOS v2.30 [NR] * Origin: Nerve Center - Where the spine is misaligned! (1:261/1000) --------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 159 WRITING Ref: F5G00086 Date: 04/22/98 From: CURTIS JOHNSON Time: 12:57pm \/To: MICHAEL NELLIS (Read 2 times) Subj: Profanity CJ> CJ> BS> connection between singing and swearing--wonder what it means. CJ> CJ> Both are emotive uses of spoken language. CJ> BS> Its got to be more than that. They are, after all, such different CJ> BS> forms of emotional expression. CJ> It's neurological, and has very much to do with the CJ> "right" and "left" brain business. MN> Ah, that's what I was trying to think of. Singing and obsceneties are MN> both symbol oriented, I believe. The logic part of the brain might MN> have some difficulty processing them, whereas the frolic portion MN> wouldn't. No, it isn't symbol orientation--what is ordinary language, after all? It's the emotive component. Julian Jaynes, in _The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind_, also reports that electrical stimulation in this area often causes the brain surgery patient to report hearing angelic voices. Although a lot of his general thesis has been slagged on historical grounds, the neurological part of it seems to me worth exploring. I also wonder if there might not also be a connection with the "voice" that we hear in our heads when reading. --- Blue Wave/DOS v2.30 [NR] * Origin: Nerve Center - Where the spine is misaligned! (1:261/1000) --------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 159 WRITING Ref: F5G00087 Date: 04/22/98 From: CURTIS JOHNSON Time: 01:07pm \/To: JAN CHANDLER (Read 2 times) Subj: POV JC> Problem: An adult story with a chapter with a child POV. JC> JC> This particular chapter highlights the reason a child went from JC> a 'good little boy' to being a 'bad guy.' JC> Toward the end, there is a 550 word conversation between his JC> parents that I felt was essential to the plot. AAMOF, it was the JC> highlight of the chapter, the reason it was written. JC> "Everyone" that read the chapter ended up hating the parents JC> and feeling sorry for the little kid. GREAT! They were 'sposed to. JC> However, "everyone" agrees that the little kid should "experience" JC> the damaging conversation rather than hear it. JC> Fred suggested that I cut the dialog and just hint at the JC> conversation. So, I cut the 550 words and replaced it with an 9 word JC> sentence. JC> His curiosity turned to fascination and finally JC> to horror. JC> After having done this, my muse went AWOL and now refuses to assist JC> with next weeks installment. JC> Does anyone have any constructive comments? Sounds like you went way overboard the other direction. That sentence doesn't even hint that there was a conversation, much less show the character development that you intended, etc. It's also a classic "tell instead of show." Maybe a structure along the lines of (I'm greatly oversimplifying, of course): He heard his father say "Blah." There was that something in his father's voice that meant it was important, but what was "Blah"? Parents were always keeping interesting stuff from kids. His mother said "Bleh." She thought it was important, too. But she also was trying to keep him from understanding it--it had to be about something really neat. His father said "Bluh." So that was what it was about? Gross! --- Blue Wave/DOS v2.30 [NR] * Origin: Nerve Center - Where the spine is misaligned! (1:261/1000) --------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 159 WRITING Ref: F5G00088 Date: 04/22/98 From: JAN CHANDLER Time: 11:12am \/To: RICH VERAA (Read 2 times) Subj: A new thread! -=> Quoting Rich Veraa to Jan Chandler <=- JC> I think you may have something there - role models. JC> Off the top of my head, I can't think of any fictional females JC> that I've admired. RV> Precious few, outside of lesbian literature. Recently, there've been I put all my nerve into one basket and headed to the local gay community center and checked out "Lesbian Love Stories". Mostly, the women portrayed were level headed. What caught my attention was that, sexual expression excluded, they still acted like ladies. I was actually disappointed that nobody belched beer, pinched butts, or made a pig of themselves. RV> several that are fun to identify with -- like Edna Buchannan's Britt RV> Montero (my favorite) or Sara Paretski's V. I. Warshawski -- which is RV> a significant step in itself -- but I'd hardly call any of those role RV> models and more than Sam Spade and Mike Hammer were. That field is RV> still wide open for the rest of us :-) RV> What I like about Buchanan, though, is the way she handles the RV> difference in the basic dynamics of male and female interactions: a RV> conversation between two men is a contest; between two women, it's a RV> conspiracy. RV> Well, sort of... :-) Can't say I've read either of these authors. I know my son like the Warshawski TV series. He also enjoys "La Femme Nikita," or he did until "they" Americanized it. I guess the nearest thing to a female character that I actually liked was Jo in "Little Women". Still, she let me down in the end by turning her back on writing and getting married. Jan C. ... "42? 7 and a half million years and all you can come up with is 42?!" --- Blue Wave/DOS v2.30 [NR] * Origin: Rendezvous!! 8gigs_20000files_500echoareas 512-303-1324 (1:382/92) --------------- FIDO MESSAGE AREA==> TOPIC: 159 WRITING Ref: F5G00089 Date: 04/22/98 From: JAN CHANDLER Time: 11:33am \/To: RICH VERAA (Read 2 times) Subj: A NEW THREAD! -=> Quoting Rich Veraa to Jan Chandler <=- RV> In a message to BARBARA SHAFFERMAN, Jan Chandler wrote: JC> To sum it up, men are allowed to fart and laugh about it; woman JC> have vapors and must excuse themselves. RV> Male: I wanna Coke. RV> Female: I'd like a Coke. RV> Male: I need a new car. RV> Female: I think I ought to get a new car. It gets worse: Woman thinks: Mmm good! I'd like to have some fun with him! Woman says to friend: Me? Go out with him? Never!!! Man thinks: What a broad! Man says to friend: I finally got those mag wheels on my truck. And yet, Arthur Dent couldn't figure out why Trillian wanted to leave with Zaphod Beeblebrox. Jan C. ... "42? 7 and a half million years and all you can come up with is 42?!" --- Blue Wave/DOS v2.30 [NR] * Origin: Rendezvous!! 8gigs_20000files_500echoareas 512-303-1324 (1:382/92)