Good writing is like good music. Both stay with you long after the experience is over, moving from your brain to your guts to your life. They each are a kind of communication from one human to another, a shared experience between the writer or composer and the reader or listener. Where reading lacks a performer bringing life to black notes on paper is a kind of advice for writers that are careful enough to understand it.
Monthly Archives: June 2009
Difficult Stuff
The movie is set in a distant time and place where just about anything can happen. The potential for amazing special effects is built into the scenario, which is always good. It gets difficult when the characters have to explain what’s about to happen in a way that is believable. Usually, it’s done with a simple analogy that the audience can relate to. “It’s like a rubber band that if you stretch it too far it’ll break!” Take the same need to explain and put it into the real world, however, and it gets even harder. Accuracy is critical, if nothing else, because a bad analogy is worse than no analogy.
Pronouns
The reader can make of it what they want. This may seem like a perfectly reasonable sentence in English to most people, but it has a serious problem. If the word “readers” is plural the problem goes away, but it’s singular for a reason. The subject is the reader, who is referred to later as “they”. In this case, “they” is not a plural pronoun, but a singular one meaning “he or she”. It’s a common usage, but it’s wrong. So what is the problem?
Barataria - The work of Erik Hare 