partsofspeaking

It is Friday, but Sunday is coming.  Today is the holiest day of the year for Christians, I think, in terms of how we should stop, rest, reflect, repent, redirect,  return to worship.  I am going to say something radical, perhaps. Most of us think of today as a day that shows God's ultimate love for the humans He created. And I do not deny that. Romans 5:8 is enough: But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.  However, the cross is about so much more, if possible.  It, with the necessary resurrection, is about the restoration of the universal order God created. It is about justice delayed no longer denied. It is about the kingdom, righteousness, the depth of human rebellion, betrayal, and fulfilled prophecy. Also grief and hope and expectation and promise.  To be honest, all those "themes," if you will, take more study, time, thought and work to parse out, if doing so is even possible.  Yet, ho...

I recently watch the Laurence Olivier version of Hamlet from way back. Jean Simmons, so lovely, played Ophelia. It had a lot to commend it, and I probably know Hamlet as well as any of Shakespeare's plays (definitely more than Lear, and quite a bit better than Othello and MacBeth).  However, at the beginning of the film, Olivier has a voice-over where he says, "This is the story of a man who could not make up his mind." What? How could they represent it that way? It makes the play sound like watching a man decide on a burger or a chicken sandwich. I wonder if he said that as a joke about the shallowness of Hollywood (that is, that's how the Aerican film public would see it). Hamlet is about a man grieving and in existential crisis, not about indecision. Yes, he is trying to take revenge and cannot bring himself to it, talking himself out of it at various times, but it's the why that matters.  Yet I like to turn plot on their heads. What if the ghost is malevolent...

 Look for Dr. Octavia Cox on YouTube: Close Readings: Classic Literature. She is an expert, really, in Regency and early Victorian literature.  She does short analyses--"close readings" of Austen, the Brontes, and others.  After you get used to her manner of speaking--posh British with a certain inflection--you will really learn a lot about the Bennetts, Marianne and Elinor, Emma Woodhouse, Jane Eyre, and their context in history and literature.  Today I listened to the one connection Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the Rights of Women with the first chapters of Sense and Sensibility .  Superb.

  Another piece of advice fiction writers are told to follow is to remove adverbs from their writing. And in some cases, adjectives. This again shows an ignorance of grammar. These are adverbs:   Very, hardly, barely, quite   Elegantly, slowly, expectantly, frequently   Up, down, south, northeast (in some cases)   Yesterday, tomorrow, tonight, soon   Well, poorly, there, then   The official definition of an adverb is “a word or phrase that modifies or qualifies an adjective, verb, or other adverb or a word group, expressing a relation of place, time, circumstance , manner, cause, degree, etc. (e.g., gently , quite , then , there ).”   What the advisors mean is to get rid of words that describe actions with “–ly” on them. And generally, that makes sense if you can describe the actions in more concrete terms or by using a stronger, more visual or kinesthetic verb.   “He comes frequently” is inexact. “Frequ...

I am thinking of writing a series of posts on why the typical advice fiction writers are given should be rethought, such as no adverbs and no "to be" verbs. Here is the first one.    "To Be" Verbs in Fiction Writing - Should they stay or should they go?   First of all, they aren’t. It is impossible to write without “to be” verbs.   Identify yourself, or have a character do so, without a “to be” (existence) verb. “I am….”   “My name is….”   Note that these are two different meanings, even though we use them interchangeably, and this point opens a door to a whole other issue—the granularity of language in dialogue and fiction writing in general.   In normal conversation, no one is going to notice is I say “I am Barbara Tucker” or “My name is Barbara Tucker,” but in reality, they are not the same.   How else would you express this? I suppose you could follow Spanish, “I call myself….” (“Me llamo ….”) or similar English versions, “I go by the ...

This is a review of  Save the Cat Writes a Novel (SCWAN)   Our screenwriting instructor at the college where I teach recommended, sort of, the Save the Cat book for screenwriting. Actually, I am not sure that it was a recommendation; it was more of an “it has some good ideas…” comment. He himself uses the Syd Field book, The Foundations of Screenwriting, to teach the course. Since I sat in on his class in 2021, I can say I read the book but it’s time to read it again.   Of course, I haven’t really touched my screenplay in a couple of years. I am a novelist. That is my form, along with some short fiction. However, Jessica Brody took the concepts of Save the Cat and applied them to novel writing. I bought it. I read it. I liked it, sort of.      It promises a lot more than it delivers. The website Mythcreants ( https://mythcreants.com/ ) tears it apart in several blog posts. I see their point, but everyone is in a different place in their writi...

 Oh, aren't we proud? Our representative is blowing up the House of Representatives leadership.  Yeah. Shaking my head.