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Post by Shrink Proof on Aug 4, 2023 17:26:55 GMT
Just become the person or the event and if you have even a modicum of talent, it will all translate into fine reading. Might try that. I haven't been myself recently...
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Post by Deleted on Aug 4, 2023 20:26:47 GMT
Just become the person or the event and if you have even a modicum of talent, it will all translate into fine reading. Might try that. I haven't been myself recently... We are not ourselves because we fear rejection by others. Reject them and you will be as a bird out of a cage. It is liberating and wonderful. Parents, teachers, traffic signs, laws, societies judgementalism, religious indoctrination. Is it any wonder that we lose our true identities? That will also affect our writing.
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Post by šrincess šµuvstarr on Aug 4, 2023 21:58:50 GMT
Might try that. I haven't been myself recently... Parents, teachers, traffic signs, laws, societies judgementalism, religious indoctrination. Is it any wonder that we lose our true identities? That will also affect our writing. All these are necessary for a functioning society, even the last one, now maligned, still plays a role.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 4, 2023 23:35:32 GMT
Parents, teachers, traffic signs, laws, societies judgementalism, religious indoctrination. Is it any wonder that we lose our true identities? That will also affect our writing. All these are necessary for a functioning society, even the last one, now maligned, still plays a role. Let society and all the white sheep keep them, and let us few black sheep strive for uniqueness and individuality.
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Post by Knygathin on Aug 25, 2023 11:51:40 GMT
A further option is writing in the format of a Fighting Fantasy Gamebook, in which the reader flips back and forth through the book and chooses their own adventure path. It makes bad prose less shameful. They are fun and seem to sell well. Besides, I don't think anyone has tried writing one of those books yet as more ambitious fine literature.
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Post by šrincess šµuvstarr on Aug 25, 2023 13:36:47 GMT
The experimental novelist B. S. Johnson wrote a book called The Unfortunates, published in 1969. Apart from the first and last sections the other sections (25 in number) can be read in any order. According to Wiki**dia this gives a total of 15.5 septillion possible combinations that the story can be read in. It came in a box. It is supposed to mirror the randomness of the human thought processes.
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Post by pulphack on Aug 25, 2023 15:12:33 GMT
Johnson's an interesting feller - his Christie Mallory novel is written as per a system of double entry book-keeping, so you have two column on each page that you can either read consecutively, going back to pp1 and starting again, or concurrently to get a look into the mind of Mallory. He also wrote a novel set in a care home for dementia where a series of chapters represent the statements of the residents, with less and less wordage and less and less obvious sense occurring with each statement, according to the degree of dementia. Then a statement from the matron reveals 'real' events. Of course, what is 'real' for each resident whose statement is represented is debatable. I'm not sure that it really worked for me, but perhaps that says more about me as a reader. Yer man Jonathan Coe's biography of Johnson - 'Like A Fiery Elephant' - is worth a read for understanding his approaches.
I've always been fascinated by different approaches to writing and presenting a story in terms of structure and how the writer can make the reader approach the text, but ultimately I think the approach that has always been the most prevalent and most straightforward is there simply because of that latter factor: it has a clarity the other methods lack. Most 'experimental' methods have been with us since Stern, after all, if not before.
PS just looked back to the first post on this thread - 'experienced (non-hack) authors'. Nice piece of snobbery.
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Post by šrincess šµuvstarr on Aug 25, 2023 15:39:20 GMT
PS just looked back to the first post on this thread - 'experienced (non-hack) authors'. Nice piece of snobbery. That wasn't me (for a change) hahaha. Johnson died not long before another of his contemporaries killed herself by walking into the sea, the experimental novelist Ann Quin. The generation he belonged to seems to have been as depressed as the Romantics. The so-called Angry Young Men reacted against their age too, but they were never as defeatist as to kill themselves.
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Post by Knygathin on Aug 25, 2023 18:04:55 GMT
A Fighting Fantasy Gamebook is still structured, having an overall definite direction, with limited choices for the reader after each section.
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Post by pulphack on Aug 25, 2023 18:09:09 GMT
Fair play, I never suggested that - the original poster does have some odd views on writing (but that's just my opinion). Life's too short to keep up sniping.
BS Johnson's death is an interesting one in that he was allegedly involved with an occult group and there was some suggestion of threats and pressure on him. Coe looked into this but could find nothing concrete. It was very odd that so many of his friends believed this with none of them actually knowing how the rumour originated. They talked of this group, knew him well, but couldn't actually tell you who they were. It's hard to know what to make of this, really. He wasn't a happy or fufilled man, and as his career and private life progress through the book, it becomes horribly inevitable. Worth checking out, I think you'd find it fascinating.
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Post by Knygathin on Aug 25, 2023 18:10:17 GMT
Do you know of any good short stories or novels written in second person singular?
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Post by šrincess šµuvstarr on Aug 25, 2023 18:59:21 GMT
Fair play, I never suggested that - the original poster does have some odd views on writing (but that's just my opinion). Life's too short to keep up sniping. I know you didn't, I was just joking around. The Johnson biography is available on my ebook provider, I'll try to borrow it. We have the B.S. Johnson Omnibus which has three if his novels: Trawl, Albert Angelo, and House Mother Normal, which is the one you mentioned about old people in a residential home. There is no introduction unfortunately. It has a list of other books by him, including two collections of poetry, and a book entitled Aren't You Rather Young to be Writing Your Memoirs? Which seems to be a collection of essays.
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Post by Jojo Lapin X on Aug 25, 2023 19:16:32 GMT
Do you know of any good short stories or novels written in second person singular? KUNGSLEDEN.
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Post by šrincess šµuvstarr on Aug 25, 2023 19:20:02 GMT
Do you know of any good short stories or novels written in second person singular? Molly Zero by Keith Roberts (I have been told).
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Post by Knygathin on Aug 26, 2023 7:14:46 GMT
Thank you very much for supplying me with KUNGSLEDEN and Molly Zero. Well actually, I have searched high and low on the Internet for KUNGSLEDEN, but haven't been able to locate it yet. But I did read the beginning paragraph of Molly Zero, and it is peculiar how awkward it feels to read 'second person singular'. Perhaps it comes from being unaccustomed, but I feel a resistance to being told how I feel, and look, and what I do. Reading 'first person singular' never feels that way, it comes natural and is accepted, because of some to me incomprehensible mental circumstance. Well, I guess it is like finding a document written by somebody else, one does not fully identify with the 'I'.
The reason I asked, is because all Fighting Fantasy solo adventure books are written in 'second person singular'. I don't know if it might also work to write such books in 'first person singular', and even 'third person'.
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