The Marketplace of Technique: Open to All

"Simplify, simplify, simplify," we are often told. Sometimes this advice is good, but other times it only shows that someone is mentally lazy and doesn't want to be forced to think. Yet it was one of C.S. Lewis' merits that he was able to address high-level subject matter in relatively basic language. On my Facebook homepage, last night, I decided to tackle simplicity, as follows:

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Ever since I was a teenager, I have often been told that I should speak and write more simply. Those who say this are intelligent people, so it's not that they "can't keep up;" either they have their knowledge in different areas from mine, or maybe they're concerned that I shouldn't cause others to miss my point. Well...some subjects REQUIRE complicated explanations, because THEY ARE complicated subjects. Nonetheless, I am now going to try an exercise in saying what I want to say, really getting it said, and yet using easy words all the way through.

An appropriate subject for this exercise is the question, "Why is life complicated??" Here goes:

It's easy just to say, "Life is complicated because of sin." That's partly true, but it isn't ALL of the truth--because if there were NO sin at all, there could still be complications, only they would all be GOOD complications that we could enjoy, like music with good harmony. So even when being simple, we can't stop at only saying "It's because of sin." BAD complications come from sin, and it's the grace of Jesus Christ which saves people from sin; but what I want to do here is talk about HOW it happens in life that things GET so mixed up.

God likes truth, love, kindness, honesty, mercy, justice, humility, courage, wisdom and patience. Every human being has more of some of these good things than of others. The way the world is now, no man or woman has all of these things in a perfect way. Even if we try, we will never have all of them just right. The very best of us does not have enough of them that we could ever say to God, "See, I'm good enough already." But setting aside the idea of God being pleased with us, we don't EVEN have enough of all the good things to make our life on Earth turn out well all the time. We have moments when one or another of the good qualities in us becomes stronger, and maybe we succeed in doing something great. But the same person may turn weak and fail in the very same area, the very next day. See, that IS one of the things which create complications: the fact that we can't even continue doing AS well as we sometimes are able to do. We are unreliable, so each of us may disappoint someone else at any time.

None of us really likes to think that we are truly BAD. But even if we don't get up every morning saying, "I want to do evil on purpose today," there are plenty of ways that we FAIL when trying to do good. And our failures send us flying off in different wrong directions, like marbles spilled out of a jar. Jesus said, "Whoever does not gather with Me, scatters." The complications of life scatter us farther away from the will of God, and our scattering causes still more complications.

One way people scatter, even when they were not planning to do evil on purpose, is to misunderstand WHAT IS good. For example, someone might try to be kind--but his WAY of being "kind" might end up doing harm, such as by "kindly" buying a drink for a drunk. Also, people often choose one favorite type of goodness, and think this is the only type they need: "As long as I'm honest, I don't need to be loving," or, "As long as I'm loving, I don't need to be brave," or, "As long as I'm brave, I don't need to be humble." Since there are different kinds of mistakes to make, it's as if the road of life forks into three roads, then each of those roads forks into three more, and so on. Lots and lots of wrong directions to follow.

And everything I've said up to this point, wasn't even thinking about when we do wrong on purpose. This, of course, complicates life even more. Many persons grow evil enough that they TRY to confuse others about what's right and what's wrong. An evil man often meets someone who is trying to find the right road, and purposely lies to the other person about which way to look. Add these cases to all the cases of plain mistaken directions, and there is no end of confusion. This is why Jesus told some of His enemies, "You have shut the gate to knowledge; you did not enter yourselves, and you stopped those who wanted to enter."

Then on top of all THAT, we have the mistakes and the lies being passed along through history! One generation teaches wrong ideas to the next generation, which adds NEW wrong ideas and passes THOSE along to the generation after it. What was only a stupid mistake at one point in time, can be the law of a whole country later.

So no one should be surprised that life is complicated. When it comes to SOLVING the complications, we need the Spirit of God to make us able to untangle all the threads and backtrack all the winding trails.

I hope this made sense to EVERY reader.
 
First sentences

Does anyone else have trouble writing the beginning of a story?

A lot of writing books say you shouldn't give an explanation or a description of the character right at the beginning, but should just start with the action and work in the explanation gradually. Sometimes they also say to write as if assuming the readers already knew what was going on, but that makes it a bit confusing.

Oh, and is starting with the weather ever okay? I mean, I've read lots of great books that started with the weather, but most books and articles on writing say you shouldn't do it.

I went through the Professor's Writing Club reading the first sentences of the stories, and it was pretty interesting.

Just for the record...here are 100 beginning sentences from stories in the Professor's Writing Club.

It is horrible!

Dora watched the kittens, old and young, gather around her big chair.

One night, after being unable to sleep for a long time, I left my bed to walk along the shores of a lake that was not far from the place where I was staying.

Reina was on a mission.

April fifteenth, nineteen ninety-two, was supposed to be a happy day.

It was terrible, but it couldn't be helped.

A brown-skinned boy, with more scars on his body than there were trees in his view, followed the stirring of tropical grass, offering a chance of something to eat.

Fifteen-year-old Wade Randall scrawled the name on a piece of paper and then jerked a line through it so hard that his pen left a ragged gouge in the paper.

There's a story remembered in fragments
By Scotsmen who live near the Tay,
Of a Scot who found work down in England,
A man from the Clan of MacBrae.
He had no luck with women in Scotland,
But long after he had left home,
It's been said that he found love in England;
So I'll tell as much as is known....

I don't think he ever realized how much he meant to me.

Thistle Down Stable and Academy, home of several breeds of horses and also where every highschooler who excelled in equine genetics and other equine sciences desired to go.

Two weeks before summer vacation, trouble moved in on the 14th floor.

It all started with that stupid contest!

One day, Elizabeth and her mother were walking to the park when she thought she saw a little white rabbit that was looking at a golden like watch.

On the day that he died the little mouse woke up earlier than usual, came out of his hole almost at once, and began sniffing here and there in the grass for any signs of food.

Carrissa was staring out the window-doors wistfully.

Enthroned in eternity, the First Person of the Blessed Trinity, God the Father, surveyed His intricate and endlessly layered creation.

Mithra made her way to the bower on a warm but cloudy day, a transparent humanoid sprite covered in shimmering colors she usually spent her day all around the forest, wandering with no specific area to protect unlike most of her fellow fairies.

It was only with great difficulty that I found the doorway in the mountain, in the wildlands far to the west.

The greatest moment in a star's life is difficult to describe in terms understandable to mortal men.

They were both in an open field and were marching towards each other slowly.

Ichigo twirled Zangetsu’s strap around his wrist and strolled down the alley of Soul Society.

Everyday as I see you, I know I should tell you.

I looked through the window down at my fiance' in the driveway washing his car.

High she soared and higher still, beyond and away from the sleeping city below.

A woman in her early thirties with brown hair was standing outside of a large castle near a deep forest.

My Cereal Box Crisis began one summer morning in Chester’s Supermarket.

Baby Donkey stood close to Grandfather Donkey.

In the Sung Dynasty era of China, a time that Europe would later call medieval, judges prided themselves on their status as independent judiciary.

Ancor watched as the craftsmen placed the finishing touches on what was to be his tomb.

No one likes to wake up to a loud electric guitar a few feet away from their head and a pillow being throw at them.

It was dark rainy Monday morning and the first of finals at my highschool, which in all reality meant the first day of three where I would have to be at school for only four hours.

Everyone in Tylerville shook when the Gemstone Brook was mentioned,or when the words "rickety old bridge" rolled around.

The young cabin boy, Damian, gripped the ship's railing tightly.

This is a story that takes place around fifteen-oh-two in Narnia time.

I’m sure you’ve read stories about people in mental institutions and how they don’t belong there and how they aren’t crazy! They’re just different! and how nobody understands them.

We’re weird.

It started like any other day ever did in our interesting, crazy lives.

The chaos began with a crack of thunder.

In the very early spring of a very early year in the history of the Narnian world, four Talking Tigers were conferring privately in a ravine among the
foothills of the mountains which bordered the future Kingdom of Archenland.

The concert kept playing in my mind.

It all began when I was five.

A young she-cat shivered as she trekked back to her den.

A day of days, a moment that can change your life.

Peace would never last at Reandalawo, though everyone hoped it would.

The Great Depression or the 1930’s was probably the most wonderful and most horrible time in my life.

Looking through the streets of a shocked London, one would hardly have guessed that the war was over.

I looked out the window for the hundredth time.

"Get a job!"

The German Shepherd called Flash had lost his uncle, as he got shot by a bank robber, and now was he living with the dog called Granny Rose on Fifth
Avenue.

"Your Majesty?" a small, childish voice called from the doorway.

I was born a runt, but I gained my name in this world.

The night had barely ended in the dark, empty streets leading down to the southern gate when the clatter of horses hoofs broke the silence.

The Inspector was glad that at least he had his hat back.

Ben walked along the parking lot of the set, wondering where Mike could have gone.

I couldn’t look at her as she lay still on the forest ground.

The Opera Populaire.

I hated the women in my village.

I groaned. "Why doesn't Natalie like me?"

Aro and the other Volturi thought, for a moment, that the human in a strange costume who had somehow burst into their headquarters was a delusional psychotic, someone with whom they could have some cruel fun.

I've practiced this for hours, gone round and round
And now I think that I've got it all down
And as I say it louder I love how it sounds...

"You're doing fine now, you don't have to go to school yet," he heard her saying to his youngest sister, Jane.

She slowly opened the door, the noise from the banquet drifted up through the floor.

The night was quite chilly.

I stared at Josh, who was sitting in front of me.

The wind blew a light breeze through the open window.

"He shoots, he scores, AND THE CROWD GOES WILD!!!!!"

I did a triple pirouette.

My axe hit the walls, digging for something… something I couldn’t remember.

Well, there was a nice small country called the Shire.

She could see a light---thin and pale---soft and a bit raw with luster, like an ancient bell in a church steeple.

There are certain areas of our world in which magic still brews.

An echo resonated through the throne room as the doors burst open, revealing Egeus dragging his younger sister, Hermia, by the wrist, into the
spacious room.

"...And Lord, be with my missing sister Deborah, wherever she's been since that cult of Satanists kidnapped her." :)p...)

“You pathetic creature, shut your blubbering up,” said I, to myself, in my head, where only he exists.“I know your game, but you’re doing it wrong.”

No tears came to her face…she was too angry for that.

NUCLEAR BLAST LEVELS D.C.

"Honey,get up or you'll be late for school!!!" called Mom.

The air smelled faintly sweet...

Few are the opportunities presented to a Tarkaan where he may, without fear of scorn or reprisal, unburden his soul.

One day more than a year ago, when I was eight or nine, I got out of my mother's sight and walked around my church, not really knowing where I was.

It was a lovely day outside so I had in mind to go for a walk, I prepared myself and just as I was putting on my bonnet I heard loud voices coming from the parlor, I could guess what I would hear next.

There it was!

Katelyn looked straight ahead, her gaze never leaving the next jump.

After thousands of years Amaria has finally decided to start.

Adela stood beside the thrones waiting for a order.

What a strange day it has been.

Today was my birthday.

Once upon a time, the kingdom of Lulali was governed by a widowed and unhappy king.

World War Three has begun...

I was lying on a cold wet surface, terrified to the core of what I knew would eventaully come.

20 years in prison.

It was still the dawn of creation in Narnia.

Auraya woke from sleep with a start and almost fell out her hammock.

There are boundaries in this world.

Now who could that be?

"Lura! Wake up! We’re entering Bengolarrea today!” someone whispered in the girl's ear.

It was a cold, dark night from long ago.

Miriam was walking down the beautifully paneled hall when she first heard the music.

There were two ways to learn about the wide world, travelling afar or hanging about the Moon and Hare Inn.

What would you do
If every one you loved
Everything you believed
Was suddenly SWEPT AWAY?
 
For general purposes, the best opening sentence is one which does get you into the action, but ALSO provides at least a little bit of expository information.
 
The opening of my novel "Byron on Wells" begins with a bit of novelty:

My name was...and still is...Mountebank Beaverlee, a rather odd name, which is why I did...and still do...go by Mountie.

It not only provides a bit of information but it does so in a playful way that indicates personality right from the starting whistle.

I see you used the opening of one of the chapters of Byron on Wells in your collection of 100 which I thank you for. Some of my favorite chapter heads are, in no particular order:

It was one of the finer days in late March when Winter, sensing defeat, sought to withdraw gracefully before the advance of Spring.

Buck was raking leaves when he heard the raucous honking of geese winging overhead.

Buck and Bramble were best friends, but they were also arch rivals.

It was April and Nature kept her promise to the dormant energies of Spring.

Byron on Wells was a sort of family, and like all families it had its share of tooks and scoundrels.

Inside every acorn is an oak tree waiting to sprout, and inside every furling is an adult waiting to grow. Yet furlings are quite different from acorns because as they grow they dream.

Byron was a pleasant place to live and raise a family, though it was not perfect, as no place ever is.

It was one of those miserable clinging gray days of late Autumn when time crawled by on sore paws.

Jack Frost had come, that jolly old faun red-cheeked with cold whose brush was the ice and whose canvas was the winter wood.

Father had strong opinions and never did anything halfway.

Hope that helps.....
 
I like starting a story right in the action, which unfortunately then lands me in the dilemma of explaining and describing things as I go along. That is doable, but sometimes difficult. My best friend, on the other hand, starts with telling something about the setting and the main characters, and she does it well: she makes it amusing and short enough that it does seem tedious. I think just about anything can work if you do it right. Even the weather.:D
 
Yes, it's me again. With another problem.:rolleyes:

At the moment, I tend to agree with whoever said a sense of humor is a writer's curse.

When I try to write down a story that's in my head, it comes out a parody of it instead. Honestly, it's really a problem. I can't write half a page without it getting all funny and satirical and annoyingly self-parodied. It's getting to be worse and worse, too. Does anybody have any advice that will help rescue my poor serious fantasy story before it *shudder* turns into a comedy?:eek:
 
Nothing wrong with having a sense of humour as long as you also have a sense of drama. There are techniques you can use to feel more empathy for your characters, and not all of them work for all people.

In particular when I write about fox pup Bramblewood, I sometimes take a break and imagine him in my lap snuggled in my embrace. Sometimes I think of funny ways he would react to things in my environment like shopping carts or jet planes. I can SOOOO see him putting a foot on the back of the cart, shoving off with one leg and going WHEEEEEEE down the parking lot! Doing this helps you put yourself into the mind of the character and ultimately write more convincing stories about him.
 
EveningStar said:
Nothing wrong with having a sense of humour as long as you also have a sense of drama.
Click to expand...

That's probably it. I don't think I have a properly developed sense of drama.:(

EveningStar said:
In particular when I write about fox pup Bramblewood, I sometimes take a break and imagine him in my lap snuggled in my embrace. Sometimes I think of funny ways he would react to things in my environment like shopping carts or jet planes. I can SOOOO see him putting a foot on the back of the cart, shoving off with one leg and going WHEEEEEEE down the parking lot!
Click to expand...

Aww, Bramble.:p
 
Just a recommendation... Never get rid of anything you write. Maybe the self-parody wasn't what you wanted at all, but you'll laugh over it later.

I know this doesn't really relate to your problem, but here's the example from my own life. Between the ages of eight and elven, I wrote the following:

Rusty, His First Big Race (A story I wrote about a 'horse race' I pretended with my sister and some friends.)

The Horse in Deltaware. (No kidding, I really did write that, even though it did not exceed one page.)

The Golden Necklace (The first story I actually finished. A fairy tale.)

The Story Whose Name I Shall Pretend I Have Forgotten. (No comment.)

The sequel to the above story. (It never had a name.)

Janet Henry and the Civil War. (Enough said.)

The Stolen Ruby Necklace (this was actually a play)

All of these stories were positively ridiculous- written before I came up with decent plots, and discovered the joy of quotation marks in dialouge. (among other things.) But now I am glad that I saved them; it is so fun to laugh over them. :D
 
My mom has rescued my writings from when I was eight and nine, so they're still around.:p They were stapled together and were mostly stories about anthropomorphic cats. The first one I wrote was called "Willy's Lizard", about a kid's pet lizard. Illustrated with markers.:D

Looking over them, the grammar and punctuation were actually pretty good. But the PLOTS...*dies*

Oh, yes, and there was that 300-page Narnia ripoff, but let's not get into that now.;)
 
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Some of you will have noticed that, just in the period of time since the Renaissance Festival season ended, I have written quite a few more installments of my Alipang Havens sequel, plus a couple more with Emmett and Queenie. What perhaps you didn't realize is that I was in a major logjam over _what_ should happen next in each story. But y'know what? I waded in anyway, and in the very process of _making_ the effort, new ideas came to me which solved many plotting problems. So, young writers, when in doubt--WRITE! Get in there and TRY, and odds are that _something_ will emerge from it.
 
Yesterday, talk-radio host Hugh Hewitt was interviewing a novelist, and the novelist warned aspiring authors: get an agent if you hope to be published! The reason he gave is that publishing houses DON'T READ manuscripts anymore at all, but literary agents do read them.
 
I heard _another_ novelist being interviewed by Hugh Hewitt: this time, none other than Bernard Cornwell, author of the "Richard Sharpe" novels. Mr. Cornwell stated flatly that "There's no such thing as writer's block." He illustrated what he meant by saying that no nurse ever begs off work at a hospital just because she "doesn't feel like" doing nurse work that day.
 
There are moments of peak performance during which a writer will exceed usual quality standards Likewise there are moments when a writer will not meet the usual standards.

Yes, there is such a thing as writer's block. It's caused by the same sort of fixation that you have when a certain song won't go out of your head. And haven't you ever tried to remember a name of someone or something but when another similar name gets in your head it "drowns out" the right answer?

It is a disservice to the wonderful essence of the mind to compare it to a power lathe, capable of turning out consistent and identical chair legs. No, the mind is a choppy sea rather than a swimming pool, which is what makes exploring it exciting.
 
:) yes, there are all different forms of writing. some prefer to explain and have alot of detail more than diologe [i know i spelled that wrong sry]. c.s.lewis seems to have more explaining than diologe in his books. however, lousia may alcott [who wrote little women, little men, and MANY other books] was also around in the victorian times as c.s.lewis but she added more diologe and let the reader imagine most of it.
i, for one, love to give a taste of both to my readers. i actually like more diogloge than explaining because it lets the characters tell the story. but i also like to add some explaining [duh] so that the reader has a pretty good idea of the character's surroundings and such.
i love to write fantasy stories cuz i think it lets the reader sink in to their own imaginary world which i believe every human being has. we all want to dissapear at one time or another into a world that goes on as we would have it. :D
 
JUST TO REMIND PEOPLE THAT THE MARKETPLACE IS STILL HERE:


People tend to favor single-syllable rhymes as easier to think of quickly--like "soon" with "moon," or "wild" with "mild." But when working in a meter that fits the single-syllable rhyme, you can still make it complex by getting the syllables before each end syllable involved in making the rhyme. Like these:

"Ordered it" with "bordered it"
"Faithful heart" with "grateful heart"
"Rippled stream" with "simple dream"
"Palace gate" with "Alice, wait!"
"My father's plan" with "it bothers Dan"
"Old-fashioned love" with "impassioned love"
"Bears the load" with "where's the road?"
"Toilet seat" with "boil the meat"
 
I collected thoughts and "Ordered it"
And with my structure "bordered it"
A poem I wrote with "Faithful heart"
And published it with "grateful heart"
I rhymed a phrase like "Rippled stream"
With verbiage like "simple dream"
And paused a sec with "Palace gate"
Until I dream't of "Alice, wait!"
Secure within "My father's plan"
I realized soon "it bothers Dan"
And so with true "Old-fashioned love"
I quickly wrote "impassioned love"
My reputation "Bears the load"
And leaves me thinking "where's the road?"
Alas, I burned a "Toilet seat"
In desperate straits to "boil the meat"
 
It is not in any way cheating, because in these complex rhymes you work backward and include more syllables in the rhyming construct. If one were to rhyme the names Johnson and Ronson, their both ending with the syllable "-son" would not invalidate the rhyme, because other syllables involved in making the rhyme were different. So, to give more examples:

There's a melon here -- There's a felon here

I'm going to dance with her -- And stomp some ants with her

He's in a gloomy mood -- In fact, a sue-me mood

We want no partisans here -- We're hiring artisans here
 
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