Timewaster's Guide Archive

I submit that unless the story takes place in our world OR there is a strong correlary between cultural themes, you should NEVER use the various English language curse words in a work of Fantasy.

In short, it betrays all the work of world building and characterization.

I STILL disagree. What f*** means now isn't it's original meaning, no doubt, but if your writing a fantasy that has a likewise vulgar word for sex then there is no uses in prettying it up. Doubtless, the world you create and the original meaning of f*** wouldn't match up, but the current use of the word would. Writing is all about getting the meaning across, not playing up the "uniqueness" of your world.

Jordan and Tolkien spent YEARS world building (Tolkien took decades, and Jordan too about four years), that's why they have all the individual, culturally relevant, and "unoffensive" cures (I don't think Tolkien's "cures words" could even count as cussing). Unless you plan on spending years world building, it's best to use the relatively closes existing cuss word.

Dialogue isn't a direct copy of real life speech. Accordingly, I think that the infamous f-word and the like should stay out of it, because they always stand out. Their real words in an environment that merely aims to appear real. So just as we take needless repetition, pauses and filler words out of written dialogue, we should take the foul language down a notch. Then it'll still be bloody obvious that the character is swearing, but it won't be as noticeable and won't distract the reader.

Cussing only distracts when it's awkward (fake words), or out of character. There a few people who would have a finger bitten off and not shout a cuss word (yeah, I'm looking at you Frodo).

Kevyn (sp?) had a talk with Lota right before they started all the bang bang. Since then he's been using pronouns

  In no way am I trying to come off preachy, but ask yourself, "Does my story really need these words?" and "Will I be ashamed if my mother, wife, husband, children, boss read these expletives.  The token answer among those with low self-esteem is to brush it off and say, "I don't care what anyone thinks." 

I have no family, and I really couldn't care less if people don't like cussing in my books. I give fair warnings, that's enough.

The longest one I have ever had was about nine months and that happens to be how long it took for my daughter to be born.

Am I the only one who thought this sentence would end with something about the nine months after Monsta was conceived?

Well in all fairness, I actually was a fan of them for a little bit. I read Twilight in about 15 hours--stayed up all night reading it pretty much. Meyer's writing style is addictive, and since I'm very easily entertained, I got sucked in....However, the literary value of her books is nil. And so after I got done reading, and actually thinking about what I had read....not so good. And then the hype started to kick in for the books...and I'm like "Why? There's so many other better books out there!"

And since then (over a year ago), my opinion has dropped so far that now any time I hear the mention of Twilight, I shudder....The reaction is worse for the author though. I hate that woman. More than I can possibly put words to. I utterly loathe her....

The first one is a fairly fun read, it's the second one that offended me to the point I couldn't make it past two thirds in because of Bella’s all the abnormal clinginess. Her reliance on men--teen boys--is too much to take, particularly when I’ve been raised by some very strong women.

I try to get all of the submissions, but fail miserably  

I like to read all of the chapters before critiquing something that's on, say, chapter ten. I like to know where it was and where it is now before critiquing. That means I spend a lot of time reading back over the older submissions for the story, and often get bogged down.

Others have already brought up the info dumping, so I'll leave that alone.

I'll be brief, I agree with jwdenzel, if I were reading this in a bookstore, I porbably wouldn't have made it past the first paragraph. To sum up my biggest problems as a reader:

1.   Only about half of the porlogue is present action, and there was a point in the second to fifth page where I thought it was present, but it turned out to be a flash back. Very disappointing after reading the first page.

2.   You substitute external dialog, and action (showing) with internal dialog (telling). There are times that you do a good job of showing the charater's personalities through their dialog, and then repeat the obvious in internal dialog. That gets old for a reader.

3.   You seem to be forgetting about writing all five senses. Most of the time I don’t know what the characters look like, what kind of scenery is around them, and they don’t seem to be giving any facial expressions or body language. In short, about half of it reads like a transcript rather than a novel.

Here are some small nags as I read them:

Maybe I’ve stumbled on to some foreshadowing here, but how can Thorn’s place of birth be a “far land” and “virtually nonexistent”?

If Thorn is the king, why is he living in a “small house”? I assume this means a cottage, and even a peaceful land like Kalikhan, Thorn was made king, I’m guessing, to foresee possible dangers. Living in a cottage is a huge possible danger, not just in terms of war, but also someone amongst the people who might want to be king taking advantage of the lack of guard for Thorn.

The first five or so pages aside, I enjoyed reading this--and hope for more action in the first chapter.