h a l f b a k e r yThe phrase 'crumpled heap' comes to mind.
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NaNONoWriMo
Commit yourself to writing sixty thousand words less | |
There's a thing called NaNoWriMo, where you commit
yourself to writing a fifty thousand word novel in the
month of November. I would say that the difficulty is not
writing fifty thousand words in a month at all, but writing
pithily and well. For instance, i could just write the word
"nineteenthly"
in a notebook fifty thousand times, but that
wouldn't make it good.
For two reasons, there should be a NaNONoWriMo -
National NO Novel Writing month - where people either
reduce their output by fifty thousand words, in a Lent-like
period of abstinence, or take the stuff they've already
written and make it fifty thousand words shorter - say you
have two hundred thousand words, you shorten it by three-
quarters without cutting anything which interferes with the
quality. These two reasons are that it would mean one
spent less time writing and more time doing useful stuff
instead, and that one's writing would become more
readable and better.
NaNoWriMo
http://www.nanowrimo.org/en
The original. [nineteenthly, Nov 07 2011]
Less is more
http://www.halfbake...nes:t=_5bbrevity_5d
(Sometimes) [theleopard, Nov 08 2011]
Truth, clarity, clarity truth ...
http://books.google...ruth%20bohr&f=false
... that is all ye need to know on Earth or need to know. [mouseposture, Nov 09 2011]
Fixup
http://www.sf-encyc...dia.com/entry/fixup
A term coined by A.E.Van Vogt. [DrBob, Nov 19 2011]
[link]
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What if I just doodle a lot? |
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So, National Editing Month? Definitely useful, but yuck. |
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Why November? One of the busiest months around. |
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Aha! Thanks for that, makes sense now. |
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Shit, I accidentally deleted my original anno (it was in the
#6 spot,
between those of [RayS] and [19th]). Fortunately, I
composed it in notepad, so here it is again: |
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November is the big month for the publishing industry, so
the idea is that if you write your 50K this November, any
interested houses will have all winter to consider it and, if
they like it, get it ready for publication for next November
(which hardly ever happens, but it's a nice dream). |
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Fewer words = clarity; quite true, but there's a bit
more to it than that. |
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50K words is a deceptively hard mark to hit, which is
why NaNoWriMo is a valuable tool to the publishing
industry. For some reason nobody's yet fully explained,
concepts that are longer than short prose typically either
work out to 30- 40K novellas or full-length novels, which
are
100K+. Writing a tight, engaging piece that hits as close to
the 50K mark as possible is a display of technical prowess
for a writer. |
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If [19thly] and I now delete and repost the previous two
annos and replace them after this one, all will be right
once more. Or you can just go back and read them in the
original order. |
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// would mean one spent less time writing and more time
doing useful stuff instead // |
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// would mean one spent less time writing and more time
doing useful stuff instead // |
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Like posting or reading on the HB? |
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//Less words != clarity// |
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In principle, sure. But as an heuristic, \\fewer words
== greater clarity\\ is remarkably reliable. [+] |
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All this "less is more" business reminds me of the
[brevity] tag. I'll do a link, innit. |
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NaNoWriMo is great - I never get very far in writing anything, but world-class procrastination to avoid having to think of what to write next leads to me finishing all the things I've been putting off for the rest of the year... |
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Well, in a sense posting on the HB is writing which
could take place elsewhere, but verbosity is a
problem for some of us here. |
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[Prufrax], i'm sort of doing it now but more as a
way of motivating myself to finish things off as i
have a series of seven uncompleted shortish
stories (around four to seven cube dozen words
long each, often connected but not really a novel)
which i'd like to complete, so it's sort of similar to
what you say. I'm not actually writing a novel so
much as writing a series of connected short
stories the length of a novel. |
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Perhaps we should have NaHbIdRiMo - International Halfbakery Idea Writing Month - the idea being that by the end of the month you will have posted a 50,000 word idea to the ’bakery. I suppose to make it more fun the idea should be written online - i/e/ at the start of the month you start the idea and each day you add more text to it. The annotations would sneer, mock and belittle your miserable attempts as well as flagging up breaches of the Rules. |
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On second thoughts such a project may break either the HB, or us, or both, so perhaps should not be attempted. |
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I doubt it would break it but even as it stands i find a
certain user's ideas too long to be comfortably
readable, and that user came to mind as i posted
this. |
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You're obviously a nicer person than I am; I was going to
mention him by name. |
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Well, i acknowledge i have a similar problem but it's
probably worse in other writing. I do get that
verbosity is easier than brevity for lots of people and
i blame it on my study of continental Philosophy,
where the prose style is apparently deliberately dire
and opaque. I can see that he might find
succinctness unachievable. |
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//I was going to mention him by name// Y'all are
talking about Niels Bohr, right? |
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He seriously asserted that clarity of
expression was always at the expense of accuracy.
I've never been able to interpret that in any other
way than "wrong." |
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Perhaps I'm missing some more nuanced critique
which would require 500 words to express. |
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Yes, i agree, that's absolutely wrong. |
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Well, in fairness to Bohr, "Truth and clarity are
complementary" is rather clear and succinct.
Can't
blame him if it's inaccurate. <link> |
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Edit: He may have meant
that one starts with an unclear, but accurate
description of the truth, and refines it into a clear
and accurate description. (i.e. he was warning
against premature clarity.) And, in fact, I've
always proceeded by Bohr's route (and not only in
writing), regarding it as a lamentable inefficiency.
Bohr, perhaps, would say I was doing it right. |
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Excellent idea... and please extend it to existing novels, and even movies (like Titanic: "Build, float, crash & sink boat".) [+] |
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I think I did the other thing |
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60 words about 1400 things as 1 minute audio files |
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now a cleverer person could use all 1400 things as story elements that imply the technological obviousness of the others creating an actual readable version |
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The EM bouncy garment lifters were drying the youths garments treated as they were with kindness pheremones while extuding copies of the mechanism to provide copies to everyone at the housing complex, the housing complex which had been replaced with 7 mile square areas at which each solitary human lived after that difficult moral episode from the hitchiking ticket, wherein, it is said, just one honest cop on the stand could have prevented the apocalypse. We are getting ahead of things here, perhaps I might offer you a new GCPR protein tuning snack? No? |
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[Beanangel], A E van Vogt used to write in little bits
and join them together to keep the action together.
I haven't looked closely enough at his stuff, but i
suspect the idea was to have an exciting incident in
each bit. |
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