(no subject)

[kippurbird]

Booo... hisss.


He didn't like it. *SIGH*

He did say I was talented though. Just not polished. And he did read it. He suggested I work on short stories. *SIGH* I do work on short stories.

*gnaws on him*

Comments

[ceitfianna]

I'm sorry to hear that but there is some good positive stuff in there.

[mistyeyedreamer.livejournal.com]

That sucks, but at least there was some encouragement in there *shrugs*

[palmer-kun.livejournal.com]

That was a quick turnaround

[easol.livejournal.com]

:(:(:(:(

That sucks royally. Sigh. Did he tell you what he thought was unpolished?

[thelittlebudgie.livejournal.com]

Ach. Well, at least the turnaround was fast so that you're not still wondering, I guess. Did he say what he thought needed polishing?

[kjtaylor.livejournal.com]

Aw man... :(

[ravenswept.livejournal.com]

Did he give you notes beyond "work on short stories"? Because that doesn't say a whole lot by itself...until you let paranoia set in and and overanaylize that simple statement and the all and everything it could mean.

[smurasaki.livejournal.com]

A quick turn around time and some positive feedback is good. I hope he gave some examples of what he meant by "not polished," though. And it sucks that collecting rejections is very much part of being a writer. Hopefully, next time, it'll be an acceptance you collect.

[swankivy.livejournal.com]

Been there! Actually last week I got two rejections in the same day! One within twenty minutes of sending the letter!

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

Yes... well, he said it was flabby and the grammar sucked.

[kippurbird.livejournal.com]

Ugh! That's no fun.

I've got two stories out with nothing rejected yet. So, there's hope.

[swankivy.livejournal.com]

Heh. I think with rejections on the current manuscript I've gotten like 15 rejections actually. . . . This one's a hard sell. :/ It's for literary agent queries, though, not stories to publishers. Only gotten one request for sample chapters and he ended up not liking it. . . .

[the-norseman.livejournal.com]

For real? I mean fill us in here.

[kjtaylor.livejournal.com]

Man, you guys just get all the luck. I once had to wait six months for one of my rejections...

[swankivy.livejournal.com]

The longest I ever waited for one was one year. ^__^;

[ravenswept.livejournal.com]

Grammar I could understand, some people just have their own way of seeing it and no other way will work, but flabby?...what does that mean? Is that like writing in English, that extra "u" in "humour" makes it overweight, or not slimming?

[(Anonymous)]

I think when someone says your work is "flabby" they mean you over describe things. Use too many words to say too little.
That's my guess, anyways. I've never read Kippurbird's book so I can't be 100% sure.

[the-norseman.livejournal.com]

Perhaps... the problem is that I'm not quite sure if it's the novel I've read or another one. It's hard to really comment on what he could have meant without having read the text in question.

[the-norseman.livejournal.com]

What are those stories about anyway?

Different mousie here

[(Anonymous)]

but flabby?...what does that mean?

Well, to give an example, the book that for me epitomizes flabby prose would be Stephenie Meyer's Twilight.

Overdescription isn't really the problem with it--at least, not as far as I'm concerned. (I'll admit right now that I have a pretty high tolerance for description as long as it's fun to read. I take absolutely no shame in being a visual reader, and writing that isn't descriptive makes me feel cheated.) True, Bella rhapsodizes at some length, a couple of times, over Edward Cullen's perfectly perfect sparkling person. But she's much too self-absorbed (and too Edward-absorbed) to be a good observer of anything or anyone else--just like Stephenie Meyer herself, who thinks regular humans are too banal and mundane to be worth observing. And she's too devoid of a personality to express herself in language with any flavor.

Flabby prose is lackluster, underperforming, insipid. It takes too many words to get the characters from Point A to Point B, and it doesn't give you anything to enjoy along the way. It tends to be repetitive, it lingers over mundane activities that we don't need to see, and it just doesn't "give good weight"--doesn't repay the reader for the trouble of reading it.

[the-norseman.livejournal.com]

Honestly my question would be this: When you write short stories are they generally set in the same universe as your novels? If so have you considered writing short stories on different themes and subjects?

Also I'd take a look at your novel and tell you what I think, if you're interested. Was it the one I've read already or a different one?

Re: Different mousie here

[ravenswept.livejournal.com]

So "flabby" (FBy) equals "purple prose" (p2) minus the off-chance the description could be interesting (guilty please (gp)) divided by the number of words used (words per paragraph (wpp) by the ratio of things be described (objects to describe (otd).

(p2 - gp) : otd = FBy
wpp

...yeah, I'll buy that.

Re: Different mousie here

[(Anonymous)]

Well, no, not exactly.

I wasn't talking about "purple prose" at all--whatever the hell that means, since there are some people who see an adjective or simile, God forbid, a descriptive paragraph, and they're all "OMGtheUUUUUUUUUUURPLE, it hurtses and BUUUUUURNSES ussss, yess precioussss!!111!elevenfactorial. And what's this? A METAPHOR! KILL IT WITH FIRE!"

It's perfectly possible for prose to be flabby even when totally innocent of anything descriptive, any adornment--when it's so flat and drab and boring that they could use it for floor tile in a hospital basement. All it takes is clumsiness, repetition, and an inability to tell the difference between an action that's necessary and one that's important.

Here's an example that still sticks in my head more a year after I read it: a fanfic in which a character, mundanely enough, happened to pour himself a glass of milk. So help me, the writer thought she needed to tell us that a character who wanted a glass of milk went to the refrigerator, opened the door, took out the carton of milk, poured himself a glass, put the carton back on the shelf, closed the door, and went back to the kitchen table, where he sat down to drink his milk.

Now, all those actions are necessary if you're getting yourself a glass of milk--you can't avoid them. But they're not important when you're writing a story--the reader can infer them, after all, if she has half a brain--and this paragraph was a prime example of what I mean by flabby prose that fails to give good weight.

Re: Different mousie here

[x-trickster-x.livejournal.com]

I wasn't talking about "purple prose" at all--whatever the hell that means, since there are some people who see an adjective or simile, God forbid, a descriptive paragraph, and they're all "OMGtheUUUUUUUUUUURPLE, it hurtses and BUUUUUURNSES ussss, yess precioussss!!111!elevenfactorial. And what's this? A METAPHOR! KILL IT WITH FIRE!"

Urgh, that really annoys me. I have a friend who's like this and as a result, has pages and pages of story with absolutely no description at all so often we have little to no image of where the characters even are. Well, unless it's describing a character's hair and eye colour and then she goes to lengths to be exact about the shade of aqua or whatever.

I don't get why people hate on metaphors and similies- they really bring a piece of writing to life when they're done well.

Re: Different mousie here

[the-norseman.livejournal.com]

The problem is that beginning authors tend to pile description upon description, while at the same time just telling what happens rather than showing it. Then they are told to stop doing that, but many of them stop telling or describing at all; even where it would be the best stylistic choice. Basically it comes from simply accepting a rule without stopping to ask why the rule is there.

Re: Different mousie here

[x-trickster-x.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think you hit the nail on the head there. *nodnod*

Re: Different mousie here

[(Anonymous)]

The problem, as I see it, isn't beginning authors so much as it is people without much discernment who set themselves up as critics, then tell the beginning authors what "the rules" are. This sort of person adores simplistic formulas like "description is bad" or "long hair = Sue" or "show, don't tell"--I suspect, because such formulas are easy to apply and allow one to play "Gotcha" with the minimum of effort.

Also, "show, don't tell" isn't a rule; it's a piece of bad advice that needs to be put to bed with a shovel.