I believe "as you know, Bob" is from that most wonderful of writing style sheets, the Turkey City Lexicon. It's full of hilarious yet dead-on comments about the common mistakes we make in writing. Every new writer should be required to memorize it.
oh my dear dog, that IS funny. I do remember this now, one of many many fun and wondrous places I've surfed to.
Read it.
Know it.
Use it.
Cause, as you know Bob, Miss Snark, does like her partials to be piled into a festering, fungal, tenebrous, troglodytic, ichorous, leprous, synonymic heap.
12 comments:
I'm fond of reading calculated bathos.
I'm rolling on the floor. This is good! Thanks.
That's great. Hoping I'm not guilty...
I notice they don't mention that annoying cousin of AYKB, the rookie/veteran conversation. you know, the one they stick in at the beginning of a SF story where some clueless newbie asks a lot of stupid questions, so that the Voice of Experience can chuckle condescendingly and explain how the world works...
What about "chitinous"? You know, the sound made by the pincers of a 20-foot-long bug? (I think that's Lester del Ray. I always liked it.)
Only if I'm riding the bug and using the pincers to pluck clean the slush pile.
Cool list. I unfortunately seem to have a lot of those...
Another one I have is Dancing-Around-The-Calf Syndrome, which The Artful Writer defines as... "Rejoicing over some idea or concept that seems great at the time. Dancing typically continues until a wiser voice arrives to point out how stupid the idea or concept actually is.
My only problem from the list that I or others that I've shown the novel to could identify is Ing Disease. I had already diagnosed myself with this disorder and left a note to take some potent antibiotics for it right after I finish my current editing pass.
Out of curiosity, is there a problem with anthropomorphism? I had one reader complain, but my partner and I disagree. I have things like "The rusty lock fought her attempts to open it" or "The light clawed relentlessly at her eyelids".
As you know, Bob, on a pragmatically ontological level, this diatribe is a risable, ludicrously farcical, humorous, jocose and frequently sesquepedalian tutorial in how not to write bad stuff.
Jan, that's delightful!
I've been recommending the Turkey for three years now. I like the Space cowboy cliche as it fit s most wannabe sci-fi writers perfectly.
Bra-fucking-vo. I love that site.
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