Suggestions for Writers

[pameladean]

I got this, too, from Making Light; really sometimes I hardly know how I would organize my day without Teresa's weblog.

She calls it "Gene Wolfe's Rules for Writers." I had to go look. I admire Gene Wolfe somewhere the wrong side of idolatry.

They sit so much better with me than anybody else's. I might argue with one or two, but they do not provoke an allergic reaction, a resistance like that of a two-year-old threatened with being deprived of a large fragile glass object, a mad "I won't do it and you can't make me" or "what the hell is your problem, you moron" response.

So I thought I'd provide the link:

http://subnet.pinder.net/onwriting/index.asp?name=./References/19970101wolfe.htm

I think the reason I like these better than most is partly that Wolfe and I have similar aesthetics, though hardly similar practices; but mostly it's that it hardly ever says "Never" (except in one ironic bit) or "Always," does not toy around with forbidding or prescribing very specific words and phrases, and often says "Try to" rather than "You must."

I'm quite sure a person could violate every one of them and write a good book, but I don't feel the usual desire to do just that, IMMEDIATELY.

Pamela

Comments

[pameladean]

Those are two of the ones I'd argue with, perhaps unsurprisingly. I will note that thes stricture on viewpoint includes a qualifying phrase. I actually don't think one needs an excellent reason to do much of anything in writing, one just needs to make it work, but perhaps those are two ways of saying the same thing. I agree with you about speech attributions. I must say, however, that I like Wolfe's better than the assertions that everybody's speech habits in a book must be so individual that speech tags are never needed at all.

The other one I'd quibble with is "Perfection is not sexy." Perfection is by definition sexy, it's just very difficult to write about perfection convincingly.

Pamela

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

It depends on your value of perfection. A more orthodox take on angels than the ones I am working with, for example, might make them both closer to perfect and less sexy. [ I am aware that not everyone thinks of the Archangel Raphael as Tim Curry circa Rocky Horror, but that's where I seem to have ended up. ]

[faithhopetricks.livejournal.com]

I took it more as a sort of refutation of the Flaubertian "le mot juste" thing -- "Load every rift with ore," which causes a lot of writers (well OK all right me) to sit there paralyzed with anxiety. And hell, a lot of flawed books are Great. Look at Dostoyevsky -- someone pointed out to me recently that Dostoyevsky's St. Petersburg doesn't resemble, mapwise at least, the one on earth. So what? It reminds me of that chestnut I've heard of that some weavers include a tiny flaw in the rug/wall hanging/tablecloth whatever to indicate....well, life isn't perfection, maybe. Life has flaws. Everything has flaws. Life's imperfect -- that's what makes it interesting to me. Anyhow, that's what I took it as -- I mean, you could look at a rose and think it's perfect, but it's also going to wither and die. Well, I am making no sense, obviously.

moi

[pameladean]

You make a lot of sense, but I don't think that's what he meant. That stricture is in a collection about characterization, and I don't somehow think he'd refer to goodness in a work of fiction overall as being sexy or not, I think he'd just use it of people. This is getting fairly far into weird exegesis, I do admit.

Pamela

[pameladean]

Argh, talk about making no sense. I don't know what I meant by "collection" up there, really; what I was trying to say was that "Perfection is not sexy" was in with a bunch of other remarks about characters, so I assumed that it referred to characterization.

Pamela

[faithhopetricks.livejournal.com]

Ahh. ((looks at list again)) Yes, that does seem to be referring to characterization....maybe "make sure your hero has a tragic flaw" or something. Well. It's slightly vague enough I can make it refer to non-Flaubertianism if I want, right? Does he have email? We could ask him. "Dear Gene Wolfe, Hi! Little did you reck when you wrote up this jaunty little piece on the 'rules' of writing...."

moi