LEON McLAIN
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New Writer's Exchange
REMEMBER YOU NEED TO BE ENTERTAINING?
THINK FOR YOURSELF ...but think about what others say, never get discouraged, there is no call for that and it only wastes precious resources, like TIME and LIFE.
1.Who is your antagonist? ,,,give me a peak . Is that an idea for your prologue?
2.What is your opening incident , what is the protagonist doing, in his every day life
02/03/2013 This is the story of my journey. I began to write. That was in early 2011. I read a few books and started going to a local writer's critique group.
Perusing, surfing, a stumbling around the web I began to think of writing a novel. This novel would be based on seemingly unrelated events from the 50's.
I was not the constant reader----STEVEN KING talks about.Now I read and write constantly.
Read Mark Twain on Amazon The complete works $1.99 on Kindle.
THINK FOR YOURSELF ...but think about what others say, never get discouraged, there is no call for that and it only wastes precious resources, like TIME and LIFE.
Read below what Mark Twain said about writing.
1.Who is your antagonist? ,,,give me a peak . Is that an idea for your prologue?
2.What is your opening incident , what is the protagonist doing, in his every day life
02/03/2013 This is the story of my journey. I began to write. That was in early 2011. I read a few books and started going to a local writer's critique group.
Perusing, surfing, a stumbling around the web I began to think of writing a novel. This novel would be based on seemingly unrelated events from the 50's.
I was not the constant reader----STEVEN KING talks about.Now I read and write constantly.
Read Mark Twain on Amazon The complete works $1.99 on Kindle.
“The
humorous story may be spun out to great length, and may wander around as much
as it pleases, and arrive nowhere in particular; but the comic and witty
stories must be brief and end with a point. The humorous story bubbles gently
along, the others burst.” Mark Twain
In an essay entitled The Literary Offenses
of Fenimore Cooper Twain, Mark
The
Complete Works of Mark Twain (300+ Works; annotated with critical essays and
active table of contents) (Kindle Locations 115986-115987). Douglas Editions. Kindle
Edition.
Adopted from Mark Twain
1. A tale shall accomplish something and
arrive somewhere. My natural attempt is that my tale accomplishes nothing and
arrives in the air.
2. They require that the episodes of a
tale shall be necessary parts of the tale, and shall help to develop it.
3. They require that the personages in a
tale shall be alive, except in the case of corpses, and that always the reader
shall be able to tell the corpses from the others.
4. They require that the personages in a
tale, both dead and alive, shall exhibit a sufficient excuse for being there
tale.
5.
They require that when the personages of a tale deal in conversation, the talk
shall sound like human talk, and be talk such as human beings would be likely to
talk in the given circumstances, and have a discoverable meaning, also a
discoverable purpose, and a show of relevancy, and remain in the neighborhood
of the subject in hand, and be interesting to the reader, and help out the
tale, and stop when the people cannot think of anything more to say. But this
requirement has been ignored from the beginning of the Deerslayer tale to the
end of it.
7.
They require that when a personage talks like an illustrated, gilt-edged,
tree-calf, hand-tooled, seven-dollar Friendship's Offering in the beginning of
a paragraph, he shall not talk like a negro minstrel in the end of it. But this
rule is flung down and danced upon in the Deerslayer tale. 8. They require that
crass stupidities shall not be played upon the reader as "the craft of the
woodsman, the delicate art of the forest," by either the author or the
people in the tale. But this rule is persistently violated in the Deerslayer
tale. 9. They require that the personages of a tale shall confine themselves to
possibilities and let miracles alone; or, if they venture a miracle, the author
must so plausibly set it forth as to make it look possible and reasonable. But
these rules are not respected in the Deerslayer tale. 10. They require that the
author shall make the reader feel a deep interest in the personages of his tale
and in their fate; and that he shall make the reader love the good people in
the tale and hate the bad ones. But the reader of the Deerslayer tale dislikes
the good people in it, is indifferent to the others, and wishes they would all
get drowned together.13. Use the right word, not its second cousin. 14. Eschew
surplusage. 15. Not omit necessary details. 16. Avoid slovenliness of form. 17.
Use good grammar. 18. Employ a simple and straightforward style.
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