I hadn't spotted that when I first looked at this entry on Making Light, but now you posted a link, I had a look. I think some of this is also in The Castle of the Otter.
A couple of them leap out at me, though. I think the one about maintaining a single viewpoint throughout the story... well, I think being strongly attached to that explains a lot about Wolfe, and although some of the consequences of that are things I like a lot about his writing, I'm again twitching with regard to whole classes of stories for which that's not apt.
The other one is labelling at least every second speech. This may be a twitch of mine, but to my mind, if only two characters are talking, paragraphing does this for you; and my own preference is only to get a "Fred said" in there when it's conveying additional information - about Fred's tone of voice, or ewhen Fred has a visible reaction to something the viewpoint character just said, or whatever. And even in multi-way conversations, I'm not sure. Am I the only person in the world who was taught that if a multi-way conversation is set down in print without identifiers for who said what, to assume that it's a two-way interchange between the last two identified speakers ?
Those niggles aside, there is a great degree of good sense in there, and I do not think I've seen a set of writing advice with so much of which I could agree. Which probably says more about Wolfe and/or me than about good writing.
no subject
A couple of them leap out at me, though. I think the one about maintaining a single viewpoint throughout the story... well, I think being strongly attached to that explains a lot about Wolfe, and although some of the consequences of that are things I like a lot about his writing, I'm again twitching with regard to whole classes of stories for which that's not apt.
The other one is labelling at least every second speech. This may be a twitch of mine, but to my mind, if only two characters are talking, paragraphing does this for you; and my own preference is only to get a "Fred said" in there when it's conveying additional information - about Fred's tone of voice, or ewhen Fred has a visible reaction to something the viewpoint character just said, or whatever. And even in multi-way conversations, I'm not sure. Am I the only person in the world who was taught that if a multi-way conversation is set down in print without identifiers for who said what, to assume that it's a two-way interchange between the last two identified speakers ?
Those niggles aside, there is a great degree of good sense in there, and I do not think I've seen a set of writing advice with so much of which I could agree. Which probably says more about Wolfe and/or me than about good writing.