It's refreshing to hear what you should do instead of only things that you can't. When the advice only ever is 'don't do this' it feels very much like everything is off limits and there's no actual such thing as writing. Writing advice is just as much teaching a writer how to do something properly as it is telling them to avoid these habits.
Great video. I listened a couple days ago and enjoyed it very much. There was definitely a lot of great advice, though a lot of it is unfortunately common knowledge in the modern day of the internet (not to say that people follow it, but this subject has been written about to death). I do have a few points of disagreement with Gardner that have to do with him contradicting himself. The big one was concerning the contiguous / continuous dream and not challenging the reader. Dreams aren't like that at all. They are a shattered shamble of symbols that have to be effortfully rationalized into narrative form for them to make sense. In fact, I used dreams as an example in contrast to essay writing when I thought at university. People natural inclination is to write like they dream, meaning in inarticulate, disjointed thought chunks. They have to be taught to do otherwise. In the case of challenging the reader or not, that depends whether your audience is the very type which Gardner would presumable have disdain for--the kind which inhale low-level, commercially successful novels akin to junk food. Now, that audience IS the vast majority of the market, so one must appeal to them somehow. However, the idea that one views his target audience as stupid and requiring spoon-feeding rubs me the wrong way (and comes off as hypocritical from Gardener). Overall, though, great video. Keep up the good work.
Thank you kindly. Gardner is a bit elitist, and a bit inconsistent. It would be fun to throw together a panel and discuss him. I'll get into other famous authors who've written books on writing as well. It will be fun to see the difference.
If we use the most general definition of propaganda, then a propaganda free novel is impossible. Consciously or not, writer will always imprint some ideas because otherwise it's not art. What really should be said is "Don't preach". Let the reader reach a conclusion, don't just outright say it.
_"Nurse, I can't clamp this artery. We're losing him..."_
_"Skill issue."_
"I'm so sorry your wife died in child birth."
Husband shrugs. "Skill issue."
It's refreshing to hear what you should do instead of only things that you can't. When the advice only ever is 'don't do this' it feels very much like everything is off limits and there's no actual such thing as writing. Writing advice is just as much teaching a writer how to do something properly as it is telling them to avoid these habits.
Part two covers conventional education and more things you can do to improve as a writer, if I remember correctly.
Writing a novel is the easy part. Getting it published is the hard part.
Great video. I listened a couple days ago and enjoyed it very much. There was definitely a lot of great advice, though a lot of it is unfortunately common knowledge in the modern day of the internet (not to say that people follow it, but this subject has been written about to death).
I do have a few points of disagreement with Gardner that have to do with him contradicting himself. The big one was concerning the contiguous / continuous dream and not challenging the reader.
Dreams aren't like that at all. They are a shattered shamble of symbols that have to be effortfully rationalized into narrative form for them to make sense. In fact, I used dreams as an example in contrast to essay writing when I thought at university. People natural inclination is to write like they dream, meaning in inarticulate, disjointed thought chunks. They have to be taught to do otherwise.
In the case of challenging the reader or not, that depends whether your audience is the very type which Gardner would presumable have disdain for--the kind which inhale low-level, commercially successful novels akin to junk food. Now, that audience IS the vast majority of the market, so one must appeal to them somehow. However, the idea that one views his target audience as stupid and requiring spoon-feeding rubs me the wrong way (and comes off as hypocritical from Gardener).
Overall, though, great video. Keep up the good work.
Thank you kindly.
Gardner is a bit elitist, and a bit inconsistent. It would be fun to throw together a panel and discuss him.
I'll get into other famous authors who've written books on writing as well. It will be fun to see the difference.
a panel discussion of this book would be something I watch @@talexratcliffe
@JoelFeila once part 2 is done I'll see what I can do.
after thinking about this for a bit, what would a propaganda free novel look like
A good question, I'll have to think about it.
If we use the most general definition of propaganda, then a propaganda free novel is impossible. Consciously or not, writer will always imprint some ideas because otherwise it's not art. What really should be said is "Don't preach". Let the reader reach a conclusion, don't just outright say it.
Boy, you really hate that fat man/storm metaphor...But so do I.
It's like a skittle in a bowl of m&ms
Also I started making this video before the ASOIAF review and forgot to take the reference out.
Don't put propaganda in your novel. That's dumb and doesn't understand what propaganda is. If you write a novel you are writing propaganda.