We went trick-or-treating in the rain tonight, which is unique in my experience. To my knowledge, we haven’t had a wet Halloween night here since I was born.
Just goes to show what can happen when everybody in Southern California prays for rain at the same time.
Lynn Sislo just read some advice for writers that struck her the wrong way. Me, I think Lynn misses the point in a couple of places–though that’s the fault of the author of the advice.
Lynn quotes:
3. EMPTY ADVERBS
Actually, totally, absolutely, completely, continually, constantly, continuously, literally, really, unfortunately, ironically, incredibly, hopefully, finally – these and others are words that promise emphasis, but too often they do the reverse. They suck the meaning out of every sentence.
She feels that this rule is contradictory with–excuse me–contradicts the writer’s previous rule about avoiding flat prose. I disagree. When I write, I try to write with nouns and verbs, and avoid using any adjectives and adverbs at all. I can’t quite manage it–but the result is that I only use them when they add value.
She then quotes,
Once your eye is attuned to the frequent use of the “to be” words – “am,” “is,” “are,” “was,” “were,” “be,” “being,” “been” and others – you’ll be appalled at how quickly they flatten prose and slow your pace to a crawl….
Here’s Lynn’s appalled that evidently we don’t even get to use the verb “to be”,
but I don’t think that’s the point.
I think the writer is suggesting that writers should avoid using the passive voice. It is understood, of course, that sometimes it is necessary to write in this way. But for the most part, my prose is read more happily by others if I avoid it.
Or, as I might rephrase it,
Avoid using the passive voice. Sometimes you’ll have to. But you’ll write more enjoyable prose if you avoid it.
Passive voice tends to be more wordy, too.
Finally, Lynn’s mistaken about one other thing as well–she thinks she doesn’t write well, when in fact she writes simply, directly, and clearly. ’nuff said.
The little country of Borogravia has been at war for as long as anyone
can remember, often with next-door neighbor Zlobenia, but generally with
anyone who’s handy. And the leading nations of the Discworld have paid little
attention, for Borogravia and its neighbors are far-off, backwards, and
dull. And then Nuggan, the god worshipped by the Borogravians, decrees
that the line of semaphore towers built by Ankh-Morpork on the border
between Borogravia and Zlobenia are an Abomination Unto Nuggan–and they
are torn down.
Meanwhile, young Polly Perks, the daughter of a prosperous innkeeper,
cuts off her hair, dresses as a man, and runs off to join the Borogravian
army. As usual, she’s following a man–her brother Paul. If Paul comes
home from the wars, he’ll inherit the inn, and Polly can go on running it
as she has been for her father. But it’s an Abomination Unto Nuggan for
a woman to own property, so if Paul dies in battle the inn will pass to a
distant cousin.
And so the next day we find Private Oliver “Ozzer” Perks marching off to
war behind one of God’s own noncoms, Sergeant Jackrum, with a squad of
other raw recruits.
You might think you’ve heard this story. You might think you can guess
what’s going to happen. You’re sorely mistaken, I feel sure.
This is vintage Pratchett, not his best but much better than his worst,
and I spent a quite pleasant week of evenings reading it to Jane.
Recommended.
Version 0.9 of Snit’s Not Incr Tcl, my Tcl object system, is now available for download!
This is the second volume of Martin’s epic fantasy “A Song of Ice and
Fire”, the first being A Game of Thrones, which I’ve just
re-read in preparation for reading the third volume,
A Storm of Swords.
In this volume, the Seven Kingdoms, long united under the Targaryen and
Baratheon dynasties, is beginning to splinter into its component pieces
as different lords vie for kingship over the whole realm or just their
own neighborhood. The effluent hit the fan in the previous book, and
in this one we get to watch it spatter.
Enjoying this series, I’ve decided, requires that you carefully manage
your expectations, and that you be patient. Each volume has something like
eight or ten major viewpoint characters, with the corresponding number of
simultaneous plot lines, which mingle and separate and entwine in the most
intricate possible way. He’s telling a big story, and a political story,
and he wants to work in all of the details. And that means it takes
forever for anything to actually get resolved. If you try to read it too
quickly it becomes tedious and boring, and you’ll begin to wonder why
you’re bothering.
This time through, though, I’ve made it a point to take it slow, and to
read it at its own pace, and I’m enjoying it considerably. Yes, the
broad sweep of the story takes far longer to progress than I’d like, but
the incidents along the way, the roadside scenery as it were, easily
holds my attention. And at the end of every chapter, I want more.
It’s a lot like reading Anthony Trollope, really, only with sex and
violence and walking corpses.
One of my favorite movies of all time is Support Your Local Sheriff, a western spoof starring James Garner, Bruce Dern, Harry Morgan, Walter Brennan, and a whole host of other faces you’d recognize immediately. We got the DVD some while back, and every so often when I’m tired and I just want to sit down and veg I’ll pull it out and be happy for an hour or so.
Garner drifts into a small Western town where there’s recently been a goldstrike. The town has grown enormously in just a short time, and law is in short supply. The chief bad guys are a family of ranchers from out of town; their spread just happens to sit across the route to the railroad station. So not only do the townsmen have to put up the rancher’s bad behavior, they have to pay them a tariff to get their gold out of town.
What with the gold-induced inflation, Garner can’t afford to stay in town for more than about two hours; on the other hand, he really needs a stake to get him to Australia. That’s the frontier, you know (“I thought we lived on the frontier,” says one of the mine owners). As a result, he takes the job of town sheriff. Will he survive longer than the last three? Will he clean up the town? Will he wed the mayor’s pretty if accident prone daughter?
What do you think?
This movie is a gem, and I think it’s for the same reason that Singing in the Rain is also a gem (though, admittedly, a larger one)–a group of talented people got together and had one heck of a good time doing something they loved.
I bring it up now for two reasons. First, because Garner’s side kick is played by Jack Elam, who passed away at 84 just a few days ago. He appears here in his first comic role–a marvelous, glorious instance of casting against type, for he usually played the really, really bad guys.
And second, before I could manage to write something up about him, Terry Teachout beat me to it–and pointed to Support Your Local Sheriff as his best role.
First Looney Tunes, now Support Your Local Sheriff. I’ve got to hand it to Mr. Teachout: he might be the arts critic for the Wall Street Journal, but he’s no snob.
This is the latest (I think) in Harrison’s long-running “Stainless Steel
Rat” series, and I confess I have mixed feelings about it.
Slippery Jim diGriz is a thief, fraudster, and bank robber–a
self-proclaimed rat living in the walls of modern society. And he’s a
stainless steel rat, because in his world “modern society” is high-tech
indeed, spanning thousands or hundreds of thousands of worlds all across
the galaxy. At times, diGriz has been an agent of the Special Corps, the
galactic police force, following the old “set a thief to catch a thief”
principle.
The series is written for laughs, and historically has included some of the
best light comedy in science fiction. But the quality is spotty–a
Stainless Steel Rat book is generally a good time, but it’s the
difference between a top-notch rollercoaster at a theme park and those
rattly little things they sometimes have at neighborhood carnivals to
scare the five-year-olds.
What’s unusual about this particular volume is that the quality varies
from neighborhood carnival to theme park just over the course of the book.
The first half or so has some amusing moments, but is mostly just dumb.
Slippery Jim spends virtually all of it sitting around and imbibing
alcoholic beverages while his wife and sons pull rabbits out of hats in
the best deus ex machina fashion. I began to think that Harrison
had completely lost it.
The last half picks up considerably. Every Stainless Steel Rat book has
elements of the caper novel, and it’s only in the last half that they
show up, along with a sense of real danger, so that the characters are no
longer just drifting about with drinks in their hands but are actually
doing things.
I dunno. At the time I read it I was in the mood for something light and
airy, and it kept me occupied for a few hours. But Harrison really is
capable of better.
This is a competently written novel, but I confess that though I usually
like Robert Barnard I didn’t like it much.
It’s a police procedural. A quadruple murder occurs in a photo studio
belonging to a skin magazine called Bodies. Superintendant Percy
Trethowan must dig into the weird world of elite body building to find
out whodunnit.
Didn’t much like Percy, didn’t much like the folks who helped him, didn’t
know any of the victims, didn’t much care whodunnit.
Which is sad, because as I say it was technically speaking not a bad
mystery. It just didn’t appeal to me.
So my three kids are off to a Halloween party tonight, and my wife gets them dressed in their costumes. The boys are dressed as snakes (snakes? but they have arms and legs? They’re snakes, Will, get over it), and sweet little Anne, my two-year-old, is dressed as a sweet little pony, white with a long brown mane.
She’s just the cutest thing. And what does she do as soon as she has the costume on? She starts chasing her brothers–and roaring at them, hands outstretched to claw the flesh from their bones.
Yep–that’s one pretty pony.
The View from the Foothills 